[Feedback Friday #31] - July 17, 2015 (The One Month Edition!)

News & General Discussion
21

@Master-Frog :

I made it to 5-1 Ruins of an Ancient Civilization (wave 41) and still had all lives and quit out of boredom.

What I liked

  • The game is just packed with style and “best of retro” feel. From the fantastic colorful graphics to the text introducing each round to the crazy boss designs. Some aspects reminded me of games I played on the C64 long ago. You really did a superb job on the crisp, clean, colorful and “fun” presentation.

  • The control system of the game is very simple = great job.

  • The atmosphere is excellent. I liked traveling to the different areas each with their own distinct feel.

  • The variety of enemy types, bosses and player weapon systems are very cool. It keeps things interesting and I was looking forward to what I would see next.

  • The gameplay is very solid and straightforward shmup fun.

  • The feedback is very well done.

What I think can be improved

  • The game is not challenging enough to keep my interest. I never felt that thumping of my heart thinking I could die at any moment. It was very easy to clear each wave and not be destroyed. I want to feel like my skills are being tested. Like I have to reach to stay in the game.

Summary

You, my friend, have done an amazing job on this game. Just jack up the difficulty level so I have to really try to clear the waves and stay alive. Or just add Difficulty Settings that’d work too. Seriously, you need to finish this up with whatever feedback you get here and whatever else you have in your mind to do then get it up on Steam.

2 Likes
22

I was so worried about making it too short that it seems I’ve made it too long.

I think 36 waves is more appropriate, and more fast paced action throughout. I am delivering the content too slowly, in an attempt to stretch it out.

I’ll have a fixed version up tomorrow, so everyone can complete the game if they wish to.

Thanks for your wonderful feedback, you guys know games.

23

Well I guess the easiest thing to do would be add 3 difficulty settings – call the current setting “easy”, make the “normal” like 20% faster, and “insane” 50% faster and see what happens. You could just change the “time scale” and see what happens. Or something like that .

Id break it into 5 levels with a level select (result screen - I felt like you need a breather after 10 waves – buts thats just me). Then if you did the steam route (you could give them achievements for beating hard or whatever).

1 Like
24

I had one of those suspicions about that, like the others that it was too easy.

This suspicion is that people who like it easy won’t be attracted to a shmup. So I think normal (which is hard) for most people and a hardcore mode for those who just like pain are a good idea at least.

I’m aiming for a 15 minute game, I think.

I’m working on a version that will keep you awake this time.

1 Like
25

LOL! Nice way to put it.

I’m looking forward to that insane mode. I think 50% faster would be ideal combined with your plan to shorten the game which I guess will result in each level’s difficulty scaling more than it does now. So maybe Insane would end up being about twice as hard.

Yeah a big part of the appeal of retro games is they make you really work for every minute or so of play-time you gain. My girlfriend still plays SMB a few days every week and has made it to World 7-2 out of 8-4. If she had beat it all in the first week she got back into playing it I doubt she’d be playing it much anymore. There is definite replayability in making a game challenging (without being stupid impossible unfair hard).

26

Yeah well if its only 15 minutes (I thought it was longer) then doing it in 1 sitting should be fine

27

It was longer, I’m going for shorter, faster. 4 waves then boss, repeat.

28

Okay, it’s shorter and faster… I think anybody should be able to have a decent challenge AND complete the game in 15-20 minutes.

I just beat it in about 15 myself.

I’m pooped on working on this. I don’t think I’ll add hardcore. If it gets any harder, it’ll be almost impossible.

29

A couple of months ago, I posted a demo of a stealth-based game I was working on. I’ve just started a Work-In-Progress thread (link in my sig), so I think it’s about time I got some more feedback on the design.

For those who haven’t seen this before, Spamocalypse: Aftermath is the current working title of a first-person stealth-based game I’m doing as a learning project and to test out some mechanisms for future projects. It’s set in a sealed-off forum that is infested with spammers, but also contains several long-lost treasures like the Floppy Disc of Olo-Lort and the Huta Teapot. Your player character is a thief who has been hired to sneak in and find these.

What has changed
I’ve worked on the spammer’s voices, and they now sound more like zombies. Their detection ranges have increased as well, and they will also react to the dead. The player can now pick things up, and anything you can interact with will glow if you’re looking at it when close enough. You also have three different weapons, which you can cycle through by scrolling the mouse wheel up.

Screenshots inside the spoiler tags so you can collapse them.
The general interface

The square at the bottom of the screen is the temporary light gem, which shows how dark it is around you.

A patrolling spammer

A highlighted object means you can use it

An in-game note concerning firewalls

What needs to be done
In terms of mechanics, I need to add loot, difficulty levels and objectives. However, since I have a base class for player interaction, loot and treasure won’t take me too long. I also want to add logic bombs, which will scream paradoxes at enemies within range.
In terms of everything else, I need to make some proper models, and design a better level. And I think I should give the player character a voice.

Where I’d like feedback
I’d like some on the player interaction system and the inventory, as it took a while to get them to work, and the atmosphere. As with last time, I’d like some on the AI of the enemies.

Where’s the demo?
Here. I haven’t built a new Mac version, so it’s Windows only for the time being.

Controls
They’re listed in the manual and on a screen in the main menu.
Default ones are WASD to move, mouse to rotate. Left mouse button fires the current weapon; mouse wheel cycles through the weapons. Press Left Ctrl to switch between running/walking, and Left Shift to switch between walking/creeping. When an object is highlighted, press F to use that object. The Escape key pauses the game.

30

@Master-Frog I found Meteor Crush to be too easy. The flame weapon was overpowered, especially against the bosses, and there were only one or two levels where I lost any health. Like the others have suggested, I’d increase the speed of everything and possibly reduce the damage/range of the flamethrower.

And definitely keep the artwork, music and sound effects.

1 Like
31

You caught me man… the game is fundamentally flawed.

I have this issue where the game is either too hard or too easy, and there’s really no way to balance it, mostly because you can literally only move left and right and shoot. There’s no dodging, the mechanics are very limited.

grandpa voice See kids… this is why when you create a game, you should follow an established formula.

This game was based on the idea of the game astro smash. The old game you played for score, mostly. People these days won’t play for score, they say it’s too long and boring and they just quit. So, that’s the issue. I make it faster and more accessible, and it’s too easy. If I actually made it hard by increasing the meteor speed, it would be impossible. I know, I’ve tested it. Right now you’re pretty much at the threshold with the most recent version.

Any faster and it’s just like… it’s dumb, it feels cheap. You have to rely on luck to win.

You’re right, flamethrower cheats. The flamethrower is the coolest-looking weapon, so I just let it be over-powered. In the end, the game doesn’t have a balanced challenge mechanic that I was ever able to achieve satisfactorily. It’s just a really limited game. If I made the flamethrower weaker, it ends up being useless and then you regret getting the power-up, if I made it basically equal in power to your main shot… well it’s NOT a power up at all. See?

It’s a balancing nightmare.

Then if the normal shot isn’t strong enough to clear the game, well…what’s the point of it? So then what’s the point of power-ups? Obviously, if the normal weapon is sufficient… the power ups have to be more powerful and are thus, overpowered.

At least I achieved some interesting visuals. :slight_smile:

I will just keep this style of art and move on with a traditional 2D shooter for my next project, eliminating the “on the ground” mechanic entirely.

But, that said… I think I have bragging rights for turning what is essentially a 1 dimensional game into something relatively playable, even if it’s not the most fun.

The next game I make will be like this… as in, almost literally this game but with my art style and random weapons.

AND THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR FEEDBACK

1 Like
32

oh well I guess just move on to your next game, but you could spend weeks trying to balance that wave based type of game. But you could make the powerups only last like ten seconds or something rather then always on.

1 Like
33

Don’t forget the optional “F!@% You” difficulty level, for the inevitable jerks who complain that super-mega-ultra-hardcore mode is too easy.

34

I could easily spend the next two weeks tweaking, asking you guys what you think, tweaking… etc. and end up kind of just going, well, weird… I guess it wasn’t the balance that was making it not so fun, it was the game itself. Who knew?

That’s what my gut tells me will be the case here.

I’m just happy to have made the first game… my worst game… and know that the next one will be immensely cooler for all the lessons I learned.

35

Haha… I’ll keep that in mind.

36

I’m not big on downloading .exe files on the machine that has all of my development stuff and personal info on it.

37

No problem. My explanation is that I actually can’t provide a WebPlayer/WebGL build, because the enemies’ ability to calculate how bright a position is part of a navigation system I built. That requires loading a file from the hard disk, which the WebPlayer forbids. To cut a long story short, I started this on Unity 4.6 Free. At the time, I didn’t have access to LightProbes, which is probably what I’d use for calculating light intensity at a position now. I had built a navigation system just a few days before Unity 5 was released - in fact, I uploaded my base version to GitHub literally the day before.

So, I don’t know if there’s a quick way around that.

38

I’m hoping to try this out today if family stop bugging me for a while so this may be a redundant comment now but can the power ups be destroyed if the player shoots them? That always adds risk to a game as you can’t spam shoot & strafe as you move to collect it as the chance of shooting the power up increases as you get closer to it. There’s that moment of breath holding where you have to stop shooting while you move to collect it before you start spamming shoot again.

39

Wouldn’t that GIVE you the power up?

40

I always build my practice shmups (I’m still learning to code & what changes affect gameplay) where the power up falls towards the player (I do top to bottom scrollers like old games I grew up with in arcades) so the player collects it by colliding the ship etc with the power up & shooting the power up destroys it.
Then a power up that spreads the player shots destroys more enemies but also increases the risk of destroying other power ups like shield recharge etc.

This is just what I do as I’m useless at quick dodging so I need the power ups & I find I’m holding my breath while swearing & trying to dodge enemy shots & ships.

2 Likes