Supermop - fight aliens using soap

EDIT 6: new weapon systems, new enemies, improved art, survive mode, animated first screen, improved audio
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/6phaxh1qbsh03s9/index.html

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Supermoppy/



Story mode gameplay - new video:

Survive mode gameplay:

Controls revisited:
A --> to cast the spell;
S--> soap bubble;
D--> melee attack;
SPACE --> jump,
ARROWS back-forward movement;

Some screenshots:











Hi Unity comunity,

I'd like to present you a project on which I have been working for a few months.

It's a 2D platformer with some puzzle mechanics.

The origins:
When I was at high-school my classmates used to call me "mop", and while I was remembering those days with some old friends of mine and a good beer, the idea of a walking mop who fights aliens using soap bubbles came out from my head. The possibility to use the free version of Unity, together with all the available resources and the awsome community pushed me to start the project.

Work progress:
Currently I completed only the first level, and showing the game to my friends I obtained quite good feedback, but... they're friends, and I'd like to know the opinion of other game developers and players.
At the moment I am just a hobbyist, and I made almost every asset, animation and script by myself. However I'm having so much fun that I'm thinking about invest some money and transform this in my main job.

Long story short, here's the web player build: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/w0538htopajlciy/SuperMoppy1.9web.html

and the standalone:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yqif3r94l9wdcx9/SuperMoppy0.1.9.zip?dl=0


And here some screenshots:














I'll really really really appreciate any kind of feedback.

 

Looks like a nice game from the screenshots, haven't had a chance to play the webplayer yet.

One thing I don't really like is the main character, I get that he's meant to be a mop, he's just not very likable in my opinion.

If I were to design him I might consider doing him the other way around (stick-up and strings-down) so the strings would be his body and legs and the stick would just kinda be poking out of him at the top. You could then add his facial features to the body of strings which I think would look better than them just floating there.

This is just my opinion of course

Keep up the good work

 

Just tried it out a bit ago and thanks for including the standalone version. It was interesting comparing the files and sizes to my own project. I noticed your exe is 11,334 KB whereas mine is currently 11,323 KB. So that means Unity standalone builds are probably including the entire Unity3D system in every case.

Anyway, I liked the game. Very creative. You have a good amount in there with bubbles and spell casting and normal attack. Great job!

 

@Serinx: that was exactly the first design of the main character, but I couldn't figure out a way to easly animate it (I am a very beginner with Gimp and Inkscape). After some headache I ended up with a Rayman-style design that suited really well with the Mechanim system, but as I'm improving my art skills maybe I'll go back to the original idea. However thanks for your feedback! Hope you'll have a chance to try the actual game!

@GarBenjamin: yeah, I didn't managed to understand very well yet how the executable size scale up, but I think you're right. I'm happy you enjoyed the game, how far in the level did you go?

I'm also working on mobile version, and thank to the new uGUI the conversion has been painless. Here some Android version screenshots (as you cas see from the framerate of first image i need some optimizations )












Currently I'm writing down some ideas for the second, water themed, level. Hope to post some art drafts after San Valentine's Day.

 

Hi everybody!

This weekend has been productive, and I can show you some new content that I drafted for the water-themed level.

I found this fantastic tutorial about dinamic 2D water meshes http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com...amic-2d-water-effects-in-unity--gamedev-14143

Then I implemented an approximated water physics to simulate objects' buoyancy.

And here's the main level mechanic which require the player to sail using soap bubbles:



And now a couple of enemies, a piraña:



And the aquatic version of the well known aliens



Now, before starting with the IA coding of new enemies I'd like to know what you think about these concepts... so I hope someone will give his precious feedback!

 

Hi everybody,

it's been a while from my last update.. I worked under the hoods to optimize the mobile version that now runs smooth enough on my samsung galaxy S3.
I also reworked the first level adding new mechanics (intermittent spikes, vertical moving platforms, and more). Moreover now if you take a soap orb and you're already full of soap, you gain soapness points (i.e. score points).
And I prototyped a serialization system, to manage game saves (not working on webplayer).

I've also entirely re-designed the UI, thank to the suggestions of the guy of this blog. If you're noobs at art like me, I totally recommend you the tutorials contained in this blog.

And of course fixed bugs, glitches and tried to polish up things.

I think the game is lot more fun now, but maybe I'm only trying to convince myself

So, this is the web player link of the current version: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/hc11tef5cx8d5o3/SuperMoppy0.2.4web.html

New GUI Stand Alone:



And new GUI for mobile:




Some of new mechanics:

 

That's a funny idea. I like what you have so far.

The character reminds me of the old Microsoft Word assistant somehow

 

Thank you nipoco. Yeah, maybe the absence of arms, but it reminds me the Office Assistant too and I'm going to add the eyebrows, so the similarity will increase!

Did you try the game? If so, what do you think about the gameplay?

 

I played it briefly and I think it has potential. I like the idea with the spells too.
You should try to refine the jumping a bit IMO. I think the jump speed, when he goes up should be increased. It's a bit slow. Also when he falls back to the ground. It feels a bit like moon gravity.

Otherwise, you're onto something. Keep it up!

 

I completed the first level and it's addictive The mechanics are cool.

And now, some stuff that you should improve. You should polish the movement/jump, as @nipoco said. Personally, I would change the way the camera follows the character. I preffer the camera centered on the side that the character is looking. Why? Because I can see the dangers (enemies, lasers, spikes, fire...) before It's to late to avoid them. Currently, I've to stop to see if there's a risk in front on me and this "stops the flow" of the game. The same happens when the character jumps or falls.

Hope this helps you and keep up the good work!

 

@nipoco and @Chemaxmax, thank you for your feedback! I'm happy that you enjoyed the game.

I have been working on the physics parameters for a couple of hours, increasing not only the jump speed but also the movement speed. The game now should be more "action" than before.

@Chemaxmax, the idea for the camera is fantastic, I'm asking myself why I didn't think about it before. I'm working on it right now. Maybe I'll make also the camera move a little up and down on jumping up/down. And this should give me some more freedom in the level design...

Thank you again, I'm going to post the progesses soon (probably during the weekend).

 

Hi everybody,

thank to the suggestions of @nipoco and @Chemaxmax I revisited the jump and run mechanics, and modified the camera which now is biased to the movement direction. I think the game is much more fast and fun, do you agree?

Web version:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/f3dme7ghuxa2gxn/SuperMoppy0.2.5web.html

And @Chemaxmax, I've also stole the idea of a circular shadow from your current project (fantastic job, keep up the amazing work!!!), hope you don't mind

I'm also working on the new art for the main character, thank to the help of the author of http://2dgameartforprogrammers.blogspot.it/

Is it any better than before?

 

I don't like to call it "theft", I preffer to call it "inspiration" or "tribute" (like The Simpsons usually do) xD

Of course it's better. Now it seems to be over the floor.

When I get home I'll try the new version

 

It's been a long time from my last update, but I worked quite hard to improve the game.

I made a deep graphic restyling, including the new main character as showed some posts above, new terrain textures and new particle effects. A couple of asset store items (Ferr2D Terrain tool, Toon FX pack) helped me a lot

And now a large part of the second level is completed, with a bunch of new mechanics, such as a boat that can be controlled with soap bubbles, rotating blades, new puzzles to solve, and more. The new enemies still have the same texture of the old ones, but are provided with new deadly abilities.

Here's the webplayer link:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ohjond7kz9cbapz/SuperMoppy3.2.0web.html?dl=0

I revisited the controls: A --> to cast the spell; S--> soap bubble; D--> melee attack; SPACE --> jump, ARROWS back-forward movement;

Some new screenshots:












Ok, hope you'll like the update, for me is time to go back and solve some drops in the frame rate in the second level and implement the remaining contents and level design. I'm also writing down some ideas for the third level, set in a city during night time.

As always, any kind of feedback is really appreciated!

Gianluca

 

Hello fellow Unity developers,

it's been a long time from the last update, but I'm slowly upgrading the game and taking some decisions like redesign the combat system and almost all the levels, introduce new enemies and mechanics, trying to figure out a monetization strategy, fixing tons of bugs, and so on...

But first, the link to the new version:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/vy23847g274vmnb/SuperMoppy20150913web.html?dl=0

And now some in-depth stuff: to avoid a wall of text I'll divide the updates in several posts.

So, in this post I'm talking about the Combat system revisited:
I wanted the fights to be more "strategic", where you couldn't just smash button and wait until enemy's death due to the fact it has less health. So I raised the damage of all attacks and lowered their rate. At the same time I made all the enemy bullets bigger and dealing more damage while be fired at a lower rate. I hope in this way the player will try to avoid enemies' bullets and attacks adding a little more action to fights.
Moreover I added the possibility to strike critical hits. The probability for an attack to be critical, depends on the weapon. This way I hope to have added a little more variety both to the fights themselves and to the weapons.

The next gifs (unfortunately, a little bit accelerated) show the before and after:

Strips Before:


Strips After:


Iron strips Before:


Iron strips After:


That's all for now,

More and bigger updates to come in next days, stay tuned!

 

Ok, I promised a bunch of updates, than I desappeared, I could afford tons of excuses, but I simply apologise

So, let's continue:

Level (re)design
In the previous months happened that I was playtesting the second level, and just got bored. I mean, I didn't got bored because of the puzzles, or the mechanics, but simply it seemed to me that the level didn't have an end. So I bit the bullet and decided to break each level onto 4 smaller ones. Of course now the levels resulted too short, so I redesigned each part adding more variety, mechanics, enemies and puzzles. This gave me 3 big benefits:

1- Shorter game sessions, more suitable for a mobile game (in my opinion);
2- The total length of the game increased with not so much work (I lengthened each new level);
3- Much better performance tank to the much smaller number of gameobjects loaded and simulated in each level (I also took advantage of the refactoring to implement an object pooling system).







Everything looked better, but now I noticed a couple of problems:
1- The design of the enemies looked really poor.
2- The game lacked some incitement to level exploration;

So we come to the following two enhancements: more enemies, and bonus chests + payed checkpoints!

I’m going to talk about these more changes in the next posts, now… I’m going back to coding to implement an endless game mode which I hope could provide the players with something to play while I’m developing the rest of the content ( I realized I cannot wait for the story mode to be completed before release the game if I... well... want to publish it before 2045 )

Cheers!

 

New enemies' flavors
With more levels and an overall longer gameplay, I really needed some more variety for the fights. All the enemies I implemented acted in the same way: if ranged, apprach the player untill the projectile range is reached, then fire; if melee, wait for the player, then attack; quite boring... so I designed a couple of more enemies:

Spiky



It's main ability is to explode soap bubbles thank to its spikes. It simply pathrolls a section, and if the player touches it, he will be damaged and pushed away.

Flying little pulpi (aka d... head)



I wanted to put down a flying enemy to add some aerial fight. The flying pulpi moves toward the player, and once it's upon him, releases a green plasma projectile.


These two new enemies added a lot of variation to the gameplay, especially if you consider the several combinations that can be done with other villains: a spiky in front of a green ranged alien forces the player to avoid the bullets instead of simply cast bubble continuously, while a flying pulpi together with a blue melee alien forces the player to interrupt an attack to avoid the projectiles. I’m afraid that sometimes I exaggerated with the difficulty, especially when I tried to combine environmental threats and enemies, but this is something a good playtesting should address.

I have a couple more ideas to implement and playtest, but for these two first ambiences I think I reached a good variety with a total of 8 enemies for 8 levels. Perhaps now it's time to renew and differentiate the green-blue-red enemies’ art, and add some variety to player weapons.

 

I just want to say the hero reminds me of the Frigo string cheese character... which makes me want to make a String Cheese combat game

 

I tried to register a video showing a couple of minutes of gameplay, hope you'll find it interesting. The video lags a couple of times and has no audio, but for this first attempt it's the best I could afford. Hope my video recording/editing skills will increase a bit!

@ironbellystudios I had never seen Frigo string cheese (I think this product is not available in my country), but now I notice a big similarity with the main character of my game
It could be an interesting theme for a sequel: "supercheesy, the supermoppy's brother"!

 

Some considerations about weapons
Working on the infinite mode, I found a couple of threats I really need to address as soon as possible:

1. Once you have the long strips weapon, you probably won’t change it, there are only three kinds of melee weapon and that one is the best;
2. The only enemy which moves toward the player is the flying pulpi.

As a result, a player has almost no reason to move within the map: the infinite mode becomes boring soon.

So, before falling in the “add more content” trap, I’m considering to re-design at least the current weapons to give the player a reason to break the crates looking for something.

So, let’s start from the current situation.

At the moment there are 3 available weapons in

Standard strips



Range: medium
Attack rate: high
Damage: low
Critical hit chance: medium
Special effects: n/a


Long strips



Range: long
Attack rate: low
Damage: medium
Critical hit chance: high
Special effects: n/a


Exploding strips



Range: high
Attack rate: low
Damage: low
Critical hit chance: medium
Special effects: damages all targets within explosion range


The list is really short, but the focus of the game is not the fighting, but the platforming mechanics and puzzle solving. However in the infinite mode the player faces continuous waves of enemies, so the gameplay IS fighting. I need to revisit the weapon system.

At the moment once you find a new weapon, it’s yours forever and you can change it at any time by swiping on the current weapon icon in the top left corner of the screen. As I said before, once you’ll find the long strips, you’ll probably use them forever. And if I’ll add a better weapon, the player will use it instead of the long strips. So, before adding more weapons, I decided to make them just temporary power-ups. When the player will find the long strips, they’ll be available for about 20 seconds, then he’ll return to standard strips. In this way I hope to obtain a couple of advantages:

1. More freedom for me in balancing the difficulty;
2. The players will be encouraged to look for crates containing better weapons.

Of course this will require a deep redesign of well tested mechanics (from a certain point of view, I’m dropping the weapons and I’m inserting power-ups), but… well, I’m a SW engineer, that’s my job.

I’ll probably fork the project to guarantee a safe roll-back just in case the new system results worse than the current.

And of course, I need to invent something to address the "immovable" enemies issue... Hope to fix this by simply tuning the enemies IA.

 

It's been a loooooong time from my last update, but the development is going on, and basing on some feedback from play testers, I implemented lots of changes, in particular:
- the temporary weapon worked so well that I implemented a full power-up system and a new weapon which deals damage both in front and back direction; I also added a couple of bonus power-up such as increased armor and super speed
- I re-designed the art of alien enemies, replacing the old placeholders
- I implemented two more flying enemies, a wasp and a mosquito, which cause little damage but ignore armor
- I implemented a new “survive” mode where the objective is to survive as long as you can against continuous waves of enemies
- made a new first screen with animated GUI and background
- Added several graphic improvements and tried to decorate the levels with animated objects, rocks, plants, and so on to improve immersion
- Started a serious sound design (in progress)
- tried to improve the effectiveness of initial tutorial
- improved the size of tiles colliders to ease a little bit the jumps

But a video is worth a thousand words, so let me show you a couple


Story mode gameplay:

Survive mode gameplay:

And here's the link to facebook page, any like or share is more than welcome! https://www.facebook.com/Supermoppy

 

Just a quick update to share the new webGL demo: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/6phaxh1qbsh03s9/index.html

And a handful of gifs showing some new animations and a test for a parallax foreground

New enemy hit now is different from the melee attack, and a little bit cuter I think




The new melee animation, I tried to give the player a better anticipation of the incoming attack



Revisited look for the "unstable platforms": a better tremble animation, some particles to simulate an explosion instead of previous simple falling, and nice audio effects.



Testing some parallax foreground elements to improve immersion and depth feeling

 

This game looks very well polished! Quite an interesting idea of warfare... mops and soap vs. aliens. I like it!

I havent had time to play it yet but I will try to play it this weekend and give you some feedback then!

 

Thank you @RavenOfCode, looking forward to have you feedbacks about gameplay and the game in general!

 

Supermoppy and the aliens suspended the fights to wish you all a Happy Easter!

I'm going to hide this Easter egg into the game, will you manage to find it?

 

Just a quick update:

As promised I put the Easter egg in the game somewhere in the second world




And I'm working to improve the final level screen: now the bottom section shows how many chests you found in the level




If you like this work, please like and share the facebook page too: https://www.facebook.com/Supermoppy/
Thank you!

 

A couple of updates... As usual check the facebook page for more info and updates https://www.facebook.com/Supermoppy/

So, first I started sketching the introduction to story mode...
The hand-drawn sketch:



And the first images:




Second, while thinking about how to give the player more feedback about the paths of the moving platforms, I developed a little editor tool to dynamically generate a sort of rail:

 

A little particle effect to enhance the visibility of in-game buttons. Not 100% satisfied, but it's better than before anyway...

 

A couple of updates:

First, I wanted to add some animated grass to the forest environment to increase the sense of immersion, but my laziness striked back and instead of placing dozens of objects, I ended up with a little handy editor tool. I called it grass generator, but in fact it's more general and can be used for any kind of gameobject:



Second, I've been told the game becomes boring pretty soon, so I'm working to add some more variation. I started with a new power-up, the soap magnet:



Hope you enjoy, cheers!

 

Haha very cute. Well done, how long did it take to perfect the mechanics of the game?

 

@iamthwee, I have been working on this project for more than one year and half in my free time, but I drastically changed the design last summer for the sake of more action and a more fast-paced platforming gameplay. So, I'm still trying to perfect the mechanics and the whole player experience while polishing art, level design and content.

Did you try the WebGL demo https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/6phaxh1qbsh03s9/index.html?

 

Hi all!

After I've been told quite often that the UI is too intrusive, I decided to redesign it, so now I have:
1. two movement buttons on the bottom left part of the screen
2. a jump can be performed with a simple tap everywhere in the right half of the screen.
3. The top left icon indicating the current spell became now is also the casting button.
4. Moppy auto-attacks when near to enemies, soap bubbles or crates, so the attack button is no longer necessary. This is the change that more scared me, fearing action loss for the player. Indeed, after some testing I can say nobody misses that button too much.
5. Far less information in the top of the screen: indeed I removed the experience bar (not so relevant considering the way I'm developing the gameplay) and the number of chests in the level (now when you open a chest you're told how many remain).

So this is the result: what you think, is it any better than before?