Silly New Years 2015-2016 Jam

@tedthebug I encountered the same issue with not being able to change the color. I like the game concept. It's a interesting idea.

 

Damn, it worked in the editor. I couldn't get the browser to open at all to test it. I will try again & see what is happening.

 

Thanks. It's my take on the old Popeye game&swatch which I think was the first electronic game we owned (my brother saved up & bought it).

I technically have time left so I might try to add buttons instead to select the colours.

 

Nice concept! A few ideas I had while playing the game:
- Start out with only 2 colors coming down alternatingly and escalate over time towards random selection of all possible colors.
- Start with a score penalty of 0 per missed drop and escalate that over time till it's -10 or something like that.
- Make the unicorn a bit faster and over time make the body a bit fatter and make it slower (because it has eaten so much already).

The way it currently is you start at maximum complexity and zero margin for error. You can't learn through trial and error without immediately losing the game, but after you got the hang of it and have 20+ score it is basically impossible to screw up and lose because missing a drop no longer is a big deal as long as you get more than 50% of them.

Side note: I was irritated that I change the color of the horn, but don't pick up the drops with the horn. That didn't really make sense to me the way the artwork is.

 

@Arowx - I had a similar problem with the mouse and couldn't turn enough to fly around. But the game looks great, and it's quite an achievement for a 7-day jam!

 

Thank You.
But that should be fixed now, I've added mouse lock??!
Was that today?
Which version did you try?
And what browser?

 

...And an 8000kg anvil drops on everyone on the winners pedestals, ensuring everyone loses.

Or, in the ancient words of Dungeons & Dragons: "Rocks fall, everyone dies."

 

I'm done. Dealing with registration and upload.
Will post screens once I'm done uploading.

 

Done.

http://gamejolt.com/games/day-of-the-broom/118622

Dropbox mirror:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0eadohtqs8o79gf/DayOfTheBroom-1.0.0-Exes.7z?dl=0

Doesn't have a half of what I wanted, but that's pretty much the best I can do in one week working at maximum throughput.



Not EXACTLY what I had in mind, but... well, time's up.

Modeling and animation took most of the time, as a result there's no sound.

Controls:
Left/Right/Middle mouse button to attack.
From keyboard that'll be Ctrl, Alt and F key.
WSAD/arraws to walk.

Health regenerates. Slowly.

Game is very short, but if things turn out in certain way, it is very easy to lose. There's infinite continues, if you want them, though.

Max/Windows/Linux versions are included, but I only tested windows version (don't have other computers available).

---

Here's 8 minute video of me playing it and getting killed twice.

Feel free to skip forward in the video:

 

Looks promising neginfinity, I will try on linux later and provide feedback.

I tried opening it on mac and it says



Did you compile it for x86?

 

As universal architecture for both linux and macos. I don't have access to either linux or mac os at the moment, so I could only test it on windows platform.

---

I've added a youtube video if you still can't play it.

 

I've done it. For me Day 7 is over - I've fixed some AI problems, got scoring in the game, got the Chicken -> Phoenix -> Ashes lifecycle working. This game has a lot that needs to be done yet...but I think I've got a prototype worthy enough to show.

Phoenix the Chicken, v0.1 (Beta)

There are still some performance problems that I'm observing on my machine. I'm not sure exactly what's going on with those.

 

Okay I was able to survive for 122 seconds and revive 5 chickens. I also was able to climb up the pillars in the middle of the arena.

I guess it just needs abit more polish, music sfx, etc and "juice" it already seems pretty complete.

 

@neginfinity,

I think if you compile for 64bit it should work on mac, I never had any luck with the universal bit. That being said the linux version worked.

First thoughts, I like the animations and how the zombies come out of the ground, the camera control is very satisfying, the zombies I feel should get knocked back when you hit them with the broom, it's a bit too difficult to play and get to the next wave of enemies. But overall, it's a great effort in such short spaced time and the blender rigs are nicely done, so to is the enemy AI and particle effects.

Mind you I am playing on my laptop mouse pad.

 

I think I know which pillar it was that you could climb - the one in the southwest of the map, right? I'm also going to add match music, and buy some sound effects from SoundRanger.com or something to spice the game up a bit more.

I'll fix these things in my 'oh crap, just released' patch.

EDIT: Confirmed - that pillar. I always wondered in some of my tests why aggroed humans were literally jumping Mr. Chicken.

 

@Asvarduil any chance of provide a linux 64bit build, I can't seem to get unity player workng in firefox xubuntu, the screenshots look nice

 

Will do.

I'd like to get the 'Oh crap just released' patch done first, though - some SFX and fixing that one pillar in the prototype arena would likely be good ideas.

 

I didn't experience any performance problems here. Of course with this beast of a gaming laptop I'd be shocked if I had on this game!

This has really come along very well. I think this is the most promising game I have seen from you so far.

It has a very nice feel to it. Is just oozing with originality "something different". The graphics are absolutely awesome I think. The models, coloring and animations. All just looks and feels very good.

I also really liked the two different states of switching from the vulnerable chicken to the invulnerable phoenix. It really adds a lot and makes the game more interesting.

At first I didn't care for the Ashes state of just sitting and waiting for the timer to expire so I could play again. However I soon welcomed it as a time to just relax chill out before getting back at it again.

Ultimately, I think those long breaks (and perhaps because I play a lot of retro games) I found the game to be very easy. I finally just moved to the middle of the screen due to lack of challenge and waited to see which farmer would tag me first so I could take a screenshot.


Overall a very solid MVP that shows some good potential!

Fantastic job on the modeling and animation. The characters all have some real... character.

EDIT: I would have liked it better if you had implemented Arrows for movement. Having to use WASD did make it more of a challenge though.

 

By the way, default settings in the input manager map arrow keys to axes:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.                 Input.GetAxis("Horizontal");
3.                 Input.GetAxis("Vertical");
4.  

So, how do you guys even break those in the first place?

 

Good stuff!

On the 3D stuff, I personally think the level needs a lot of work...there's also some funny artifacts on the rear of the chicken model that I should probably resolve. Still - when I take this beyond beta, as it's sounding like I should, the modelling will only get better.

The Ashes phase sounds like it needs to be shorter to me - I think it's off-putting early on because it lasts too long. You did see the point of it correctly though - you have an "actiony" phase where you're avoiding pursuit, but with the promise of greater power; you have the "rescue" sequence where you can score in a different way, but are still running against a timer. The Ashes phase not only provides the 'weakness' of the Phoenix phase, it does let the player have a mental rest - a few seconds without needing to worry about anything, until the cycle repeats.

This MVP arena is indeed easy, because I didn't invest any additional time in it. This is as basic as this game gets. Going beyond the MVP will be more interesting, and to be honest, I'm not sure how exactly I will do it. Obviously, taking more time for modelling new, interesting places will help. New human types seem an easy enough way to expand the concept; traps and environmental effects seem like a good idea as well.

Still, I'm glad this stranger idea of mine works, and is fun! I'll have to dip into the "WTF Files" more often...

The reason those are broken in mine, is because I broke them on purpose. The problem with the Unity Input Manager, is that it does not allow for on-the-fly key rebinding - I prefer to have that as a setting that players can mess with in the actual game. My Control Manager allows for that, but the price is that an 'axis' can only have up to two keys bound to it at a time, and no 'alternate' keys.

For the comment that was replied to this is a problem I plan to address in my build - I intend to add a Settings button that opens a view that lets you alter things like Master/SFX/Music volume, visual quality, and key rebindings as a matter of course - no game is really complete without being able to tweak the experience for your personal comfort!

TL;DR - Unity needs to allow inputs to be rebound at runtime, and has for quite some time. This is a gripe that has lasted with me and others for years now, but can be worked around...if you feel like giving something up. I felt it was worth it.

 

Dang don't change the models too much. For example I got a chuckle out of what you are calling artifacts on the rear of the chicken model. I thought man he really gave these characters character. Chicken running around with a big butt hole. lol

For things like this I think it is good to be different. You don't want to agonize over the graphics and make the game end up looking like every other modern game out there. Just my opinion.

 

Oh don't worry, I suck at modelling too much to make them super-high quality. And it takes hours of work, which I simply do not have. The 'OMG Buttclench AAA' look is simply not an option for me, but that means I have to actually think and make things that are inherently interesting. Sounds like I nailed that.

 

I think the Unity games that do not support one or the other set of movement keys are not using the Horizontal and Vertical input methods and instead just directly checking for keys.

I do the same thing. But I have some very simple methods such as RequestMoveForward that checks for up arrow and W. And likewise for the other movement controls and the action buttons.

I used to think it was best to always allow a config but in the end there are only so many things that make sense so I just try to support them all to a good degree. And once you have that little input class made it can easily be dropped into any project. I guess I mainly do it this way because I develop in other languages and with other frameworks besides Unity so it just makes sense to me to be consistent across the board. If I was only using Unity then I would likely use their Input Manager.

 

Aaand that falls into "magic number" category.
Input manager is here to asset people with key remapping.
You can go a step further and store axis names in string constants.

Default movement scheme also aftomatically uses xbox controller if it is available. Do your subroutine handle that?

 

Great, gamejolt now believes that I'm not connected to the internet. Either way, the game I uploaded earlier is still available at dropbox mirror.

 

That's not quite how it works...at least, not for me.

You could do it with magic numbers, but it's a bad idea worthy of scorn.

Same thing for me. I think GameJolt is having hiccups.

 

If I uncomment it, it should. But yeah the code has support for controllers. I think in my Monkey X games they are still uncommented.

Monkey X just has straightforward controller input methods. For Unity I use the InControl system. But basically what I mean is this way it is very easy to go from framework to framework.

 

Let's just say that's not how I'd go about it (KISS/YAGNI principles) and leave it at that.
I just got fed up with writing "little frameworks" at one point.

 

Very cool concept. Although it does feel very slow I liked the idea of controlling grandpa with his broom. It's a different idea. Something fresh. Executed well.

Really like it that some of the enemies have a melee and ranged attack. Odd in your video it shows the little aliens immediately following the zombie folk. When I played it, the suits appeared instead of the aliens right after the zombs.

Nice weapons on the player too. And the little details such as the enemies damaging each other and actually even fighting each other. That is definitely cool.

EDIT: Forgot to say your game also looks excellent and your characters are unique with a lot of character. Really liked the touch of the cig. Between that and the broom it gives the impression of someone who just doesn't give a hoot and has not lost his composure despite being attacked by zombies and others shooting at him. lol

 

The battle sequence isn't very strictly hard coded.

I know who will show up first at the start of every attack wave and which order, but once a "wave" has started and first set of enemies has spawned, it will be slightly different every time and can't be really predicted. Enemies may pick different target, someone else will spawn first, etc.

One of the funny things is that I really had to nerf the aliens. In the first version where their lasers started working I underestimated how fast those guys are shooting, so 3 of those guys spawned in and wiped out entire floor in seconds. Damage was about 5 times higher than now and they had the most hp in the game. So, you couldn't even get close to them to land a hit on them, and even if you got close, they'd just destroy you in seconds..

Either way I picked few animation tricks from that.

Should be able to make my own rigs now without resorting to rigify templates.

In the end animation and asset creation took the most time. About 75%...80% of it.

 

http://gamejolt.com/games/unicorns-eat-rainbows/117878

latest (& last for this competition) update to Unicorns eat Rainbows.

Based on feedback I have

• amended the controls to work using GetAxisRaw so you can use A & D or arrows to move left & right
• moved the collider from the mouth to the horn
• added buttons so you can select the colours with the mouse (easy) or use the NumPad (slightly harder)
• Made the balls drop slightly quicker
• Moved the score to the top right corner.

I ran out of time to gradually add the colours & ramp up difficulty as suggested, I just made the easier changes & used it as a chance to try out buttons for the first time (I know, pretty slack to be using unity for 18mths & only just getting around to bothering with buttons)

 

Much improved. It is playable now. It took a bit to get used to pressing the numbers on the numeric keypad. Never had a need to use that in all of my years of IT. lol Anyway, after I "knew" which key was mapped to which color I was playing fairly well.

It's a different kind of game for sure. With some juice it may find some players on Mobile. I actually think this would control better as a mobile touch screen game.

 

exactly what my wife said.

Thanks for trying it

 

Just a quick note that thanks to @Aiursrage2k requesting it I went ahead and did a graphics update to the game.

As you all should know by now I really don't like to focus on graphics. Well, what I mean is I don't like to think about graphics until the game is actually complete. I see graphics stuff as basically being polish. So I like to focus on the actual game. Building the systems, the gameplay and so forth. Then at the end when it is done I can just easily give the game a facelift to instantly make it look much better and improve the atmosphere.

I already had the wall textures I was going to add at the end and I almost removed the grass texture to make the whole game plain solid colors. BUT instead I went ahead and did a graphics enhancement adding the textures to the walls and enhancing the overall lighting. 3D makes graphics stuff much easier than 2D. At least I think so.

Anyway, now you can see the game as it was intended to look when it is finally done:








Not that it will win any awards for graphics but it does now look as intended. A somewhat updated version of games such as Catacombs 3D and Wolfenstein 3D. The objects and enemies will stay low poly without textures. That is just a stylistic choice. Most of the older 3D games on consoles such as N64 textured the ground and such but not the enemies and so forth.

Alright... NO MORE GRAPHICS FOCUS UNTIL THE GAME IS DONE!!

The graphics enhancement is live on the WIP at Game Jolt.

FPS Action Adventure Version 0.1

 

@neginfinity

I noticed you are using separate objects for the joints limbs etc, I don't know if you know but the skin modifier should make modeling characters a lot easier and more complete. It should also bypass the need to retopo your model for animation which is why I don't sculpt my models anymore. (except for rare cases)

This should provide the base mesh to start with.You can then of course parent the bones with automatic weights and it should work as you expect.

Other blender artists may find my following thread useful for tips and tricks. Especially if you're interested in texturing, lighting and baking.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?358525-Perfect-studio-setup-test

 

I don't use separate objects. It is a single mesh with skin modifier applied.

If you try to use "non separate" objects - meaning continuous mesh without gaps, then your joints will collapse and deform, because model is very low-polygonal.Alien mesh has 74 faces total, for example. That's after adding gaps. The only ways around it to are:
1. Adding loops around edges - which is incompatible with desired look of the model in this case.\
2. Adding a lot of animation-driven blendshapes to every single joints. Major pain to deal with, plus you'll have to transfer shape drivers to unity too.
3. Writing your own skinning renderer - again, major pain, requires lots of R&D.
4. Making "separate" mesh with gaps on joints. Kinda similar to what has been used in early 90s. GTAIII used this style, it was also usedin Morrowind and there were bunch of other

So, basically, I picked #4 because it was the easiest due to the issues I'd run with standard skinned mesh approach.

So, yeah, I know about skin modifier, and current look was selected on purpose.

 

I need to take a look at those myself. Did you use IK inside blender and how does that import to unity? I did mess around with animations recently in a trial and error way and ended up doing it the oldschool FK way, but that was so inefficient that I thought it can't be the best way. Also it turned out that the Unity version I was using had a bug in the animation importer, so that might have been the reson why it didn't work in the first try with blender IK.

 

Yes.

Imports just fine, except you also get IK bones floating in your rig upon import. Depending on what you're doing that might actually be what you want (for example, if you're writing your own IK solver). For model without fingers you'll need at least 2 IK bones per limb.

As for issues:
Adding secondary target to elbows/knees is done in awkward way if you don't want to disturb model's original pose much. (you need to duplicate thigh/upperarm bone, then move it along local Y/X axis, then set angle in constraint, etc).
I think on import unity nukes bones that has no skinned meshes associated with them. I'm not 100% sure about that though. Sometimes it happened, sometimes it didn't.
Bone IK limits and parenting information is not automatically mirrored between left/right bones even with "X mirror" option enabled.
Root bone must be pointing UP otherwise model will be tilted the moment you select the root bone in import window.

 

Good advice, I was wondering why my object orientation was not importing properly, the root needs to be pointing up.

I also found if the bone is not parented to a skinned mesh it nukes it in unity. Also, I found some rather curious bugs in the version of blender you're using, for example if you export to fbx it doesn't work in earlier version of blender but the blend file does.

It's not perfect (ik constraints) from blender to unity, I'm wondering if maya has more consistent results. Is anyone using maya?

@neginifinity, what version of blender are you using and can you post the blend file for the janitor with rigged animation?

 

I think it looks a lot better, you know what's a wall what's not a wall etc. It's also probably a lot more enjoyable for testers to play. Maybe the next thing is to make the enemies be able to kill you, and a victory/defeat state. I couldn't find an exit or whatever.

 

Web Player:

http://www.anselmofresquez.com/WIP/First Step.html

It's not a game yet, but you can see how the controls are going to work for the jumping.
WASD to move, Space to Jump...
You can do the Megaman wall slide and kick and double jump.
This would be considered day 1.

Next up, I will make it so you wrap the screen. So, going off the bottom will bring you to the top and vice-versa.

Then you will scroll to the right, and I will put in an exit door that takes you to the next stage.

Then I will add the thing where you can be on fire for a short time. Then I will add obstacles you need the fire to get through.

The I will create a few stages in increasing difficulty.

Lastly, I will get music from Eric Matyas and make sound effects in bfxr and add some personality to the graphics.

Slap a title screen on it, do something for the ending and probably make up a $0.10 story while I take a shower.

????????

Profit?

 

@anselmo.fresquez - You've nailed the Mega Man X control scheme, perfectly. It felt great. Good day 1!

 

I like the look of it reminds of the flash game shift.

 

No doubt it looks better.

Those things are on the list as they'll have to be done at some point. I have some infrastructure and systems to build first.

I guess I generally do things in a different way than most people here. It seems most folks focus on the easiest / most noticeable things first. After they have all of the graphics polished and the main gameplay mechanic/piece/whatever in then they focus on all of the underlying details, secondary systems and so forth. Basically a good approach for an MVP.

While I kind of do that to some degree... in general I like to tackle all of the underlying details and secondary systems first. Get all of that stuff out of the way that has to be in there and yet does not produce as much bang for the buck in itself. Then after I get all of that done I'll focus on looks and the major stuff like the monster battles and level completion. Because those things instantly make a huge impact on the game.

I guess it's because I have always been an eat my veggies first, finish the main food then eat my dessert last kind of guy. Work first. Play later. And that must carry over to game development as well I guess.

 

Very nice job on the mechanics. I agree with @Asvarduil it does have a good solid feel to it.

Interestingly, these mechanics already make a huge difference in the fun factor of the game.
Try playing it without using the double jump and only quickly pressing the space bar.

When I first played it that is what I did and I thought man this feels pretty rough. A bit frustrating but still not terrible.

Then I came back and read your post again and tried it holding space to jump higher as well as using double jump. Big difference. With this barebones demo it is easy to see the impact of these additional mechanics. Great job!

 

The idea is long graceful jumps and trying to stay airborne, The short jumps are just there for situations with low ceilings that have spikes on them, etc.

I updated it with the screen-wrapping, so hopefully you can get an idea of what I mean. The wrapping will be one basic part of the game, the other part will be racing around trying to get places while you're still on fire in order to clear obstacles.

This should give everyone some llama noms, since a couple folks have challenged me to make a monochrome platformer/stupid but fun game.

 

How did you build the levels? Are they individual objects placed & scaled with overlapping etc that doesn't show because of the colouring or did you draw out one big level, or use the 2d scriptable paintbrush for prefabs that was in the new 2d toolset unity showed in the video recently? It looks pretty awesome & well structured.

 

Okay I really like that warping idea and the burning idea and the art style so it seems like its already better then the other game.

 

I like to cheat.

I simply use 3D primitives and then I throw BoxCollider2D's on them, then I am using some raycasting to check for collisions. I can use the RectTransform tool to make boxes whatever size I want on the fly. As for this game, I can get away with doing this for the whole game, since it will be black on a light background. The character will be low resolution pixel art that is stretched out, using point filtering to maintain the pixeled appearance.

Like I have said in other threads, I just do the easiest/quickest thing that accomplishes the purpose. Usually people's imagination of how I do things is waaay harder than what I actually do, because I am pretty lazy.

 

Well it is definitely working. I will try it out later on once I'm logged in for the day