[Feedback Friday #42] - May 27, 2016

News & General Discussion
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What is 6x7? It means Feedback Friday #42 is CLOSED. See u Friday, June 24!

Want design feedback for your new game? Then you’ve found the right thread! Post here to get precious player feedback. Discuss until we lock the thread to start the two week break.

How To Ask For Feedback?

  • Show - Pics, videos, or best of all, a playable game!
  • Be Concise - Who’s got time for Wall 'O Text? Less is more

How To Give Feedback?

  • Be Positive - Finding redeeming qualities in the worst of games, is in itself a game
  • Focus On The Design - Not the designer
  • Be Specific - “Your game sucks!” is for nubs

What To Show?

  • Minimally Viable Product (MVP) - Core game play >>> everything else
  • How To Scope Small (Unity tutorial)

Gigi

[PS - Feedback Friday #41 is here]

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some assembly required. I’m prototyping my game as a board game first. I’ll attach all the files you need to play. just print them off and put the game tiles together.

  • Character Sheet. Choose a predefined point OR plot your own point on the graph and follow the guidelines to determine your attribute scores.

  • ATK Reach key. Shows the reach of each weapon as if the center pace is where ever your character is. two characters can occupy the same space.
    *Ranged attacks are possible if you can draw a line from the center of your space to every corner of the target space.

    2652692--186919--ATK Reach.png
    2652692--186919--ATK Reach.png604×526 27.4 KB

  • when moving can only move to spaces indicated by the color green.
  • Game tile. print 6 game tiles and cut them out and arrange them in a donut shape as shown in this picture. 2652692--186921--20160525_203039.jpg … find something laying around to use as the walls. there is no line of sight through the whole in the middle. pretend its a large pillar.

I have two questions that I hope you can help with.
First. does everything seemed balanced? are there any unfair advantages?
Second. I need to find a formula to use on a character sheet that will turn it into an elite monster. So I can have a party of heroes fight against one character. like wise you can turn you character into an Elite and fight against another party of players.

  • I’ve been toying with the idea of adding 1 to each attribute score based on the size of the party the Elite is fighting against.

2652692–186918–EndGameCharSheet7.doc (319 KB)
2652692–186920–Game Tile.docx (33.6 KB)

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What’s up my friends? FF has never been this quiet.
Gigi

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Well, the problem is that while I’m working on something, it’s not really classifiable as a ‘game’, per se. Right now, it’s little more than a tech demo for my ever-advancing data-driven, E-Z-MOD game technology that I started in Sara the Shieldmage and publicly used in Phoenix the Chicken. I’m trying to make it so that my game tech more or less boils down to my just writing behavior, with all of the silly cosmetic stuff being ‘programmed’ via JSON blobs (in this way, I could theoretically do development during my daily commute.)

Of course, tech demo != game, right now the tech demo is just a little semi-chibi knight running around a rather enclosed room, though he can raise a shield. He (or she, that’s configurable and works) is having problems swinging his/her sword, though; they get their arm up, but they’re having trouble executing the swinging motion…

Anyways, that’s why I haven’t posted something. I may add a WebGL player or a screenshot later. I feel like my art has improved, since I’ve actually taken the time to work on my 3D since Phoenix.

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I tried to get one up but I haven’t worked out how to get the UI to scale. It works fine on my PC but because gamejolt has less screen real estate I need to make it smaller which in turn pushes all the UI elements off the view port. I also tried to use the new webgl but it didn’t work for some reason.

If I get a chance this weekend I will make a copy & shift all the UI elements & change the sizes so it works on a smaller screen.

It is just a silly multiplayer - 2, 3, 4 player individual or 2 teams of 2 players for a class assessment that needs Xbox 360 controllers.

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I love the tile layout, very interesting. Would you mind if I play around with it for a totally different game at some point in the future?

I didn’t understand the attack as I can draw a line from the centre of my space to all corners all the time, I feel that there was something else that should’ve been included to clarify it?

As for the damage, all the numbers seem very high but are also just multiples of 5. For testing you could just as easily make the multipliers 1,2,3 to keep the numbers smaller & easier to calculate. I’d suggest looking at some of the rpg games & how they create diversity & differentiation between elements, my personal favourite is the HERO system used in Champions, simply because nearly every power starts from a base effect that the player then adds effects/restrictions to until it matches what they want. For example, ranged attacks are all the same, energy beam, that has an endurance cost to use. Players can add armour piercing, which increases the cost, physical & number of shots & a focus that can be lost/stolen/broken which will lower the cost & gets rid of the endurance cost & suddenly it is a gun that can be used by the enemy if they get it.

For the elite, I guess it depends what play experience you are after. The simplest would be just to multiply the elites base stats by the number of players they will fight against so for example if the player with the least damage gets to elite status then they will have high stats & the others would need to coordinate to win since they were quite damaged to start with. If a severely damaged player reaches elite status first then the multiplier may only give them a slight advantage of the other players so the elite would need to play very strategically to hit the other players whilst avoiding damage. Elite damage would remain the same for ranged attacks if it uses something like a gun but physical Melee damage would be boosted when their stats increased. Player based ranged attacks like shooting energy from their hands would probably increase with their stats.

Sorry for the long post, I hope this is what you are after for feedback.

Sean

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Thanks @tedthebug .
I don’t mind if you use the tile layout.
the ranged attack if for ranged weapons like shooting an arrow from my triangle at you way over there in your triangle. so i have to be able to draw a line from the center of my space to each corner of the space you are in.

This is just that bare bones of the game. I’m still working on all the different ability sets. and I am stealing them from the old game City of Heros which was made by Cryptic who i think are the same guys who have made Champions.

I started out with smaller numbers. and something went wrong and I could get the health right for how much damage was being done. I tried a ton of combinations until multiplying by 50 for health and 5. increments for damage just kinda worked out. I know it screws with doing the math by hand. but when this ends up as a digital game no one will have to worry about large odd numbers. And I’m sure once I add abilities like adding fire damage I’ll have to change all of that anyway.

You are spot on with the Elite calculation. I ran a few games like that over last weekend, and as long as everyone works against the Elite they can beet them.

free for all matches tend to get real messy and people get teamed up against. I find it best to match two teams against each other or one team against an Elite.

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So for a ranged attack the line must get to each corner without passing through a wall, the centre hole or any space occupied by another player? If so then that makes sense.

Free for all games often end up with some sort of alliance happening, catering for it can be difficult. I’m playing around with a Boardgame concept of having a ‘screw over meter’ where the player that screws over another gets a bonus but the bonus increases over time so each player is trying to decide when one of the others may make use of it so that they can get to it first. Once someone screws someone over it resets to zero & starts to build again. The benefit is reduced if you use it twice in a row though so timing & mind games start to (hopefully) impact the decision process.

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As promised (threatened?) here it is, POGO LEAGUE!!!

Grab your pogo stick & bounce your way to Pogo League glory!

Pogo League offers 2 game formats, so whether you prefer to score goals or hog the ball we have you covered. By being the last player to touch the giant ball you gain control of it, as evidenced by the colour of the ball switching to match the colour of your player. It is then up to you to either guide it into one of the 2 goals before another player can touch it, or to keep other players away from it as long as possible so that you can reach the target time for having the ball under your control.

Laugh, yell, steal goals or troll your friends, Pogo League offers you the chance to do all this & more. Suitable for players aged 6 & up.

This is for a class assignment, my brief was:

Multiplayer Kiosk Game

Project Goal: Make a 2 – 4 player game that will run on a kiosk-style computer set up with Xbox 360 controllers only.

Required Elements:

  • 2-4 player game.

  • Multiple players at once.

  • Should be exciting and competitive.

  • Rounds should be short and quick to cycle through.

Limitations: Can be split screen, or all players sharing the one camera view.

Platform: Windows.

Gamejolt has a tiny screen size that will need firefox to run. I tried webGL but after spending time resizing & repositioning all the UI the webGL build just moved stuff randomly, as well as changing the size & colour of the pixels so it was unplayable.

I also included an (almost) full-screen size downloadable version.

This uses gamepads for play.
Controls are: Left joystick to control your bounce angle, A to add a jump boost left or right depending on your joystick position. If it isn’t held left or right you will bounce up.

The object is to get the ball to be your colour by hitting it. I’ve used unity physics materials to handle all the bouncing so your momentum will affect how quickly you can change direction etc. I’ve also tried to replicate the almost lack of directional control that I have when I’ve used a pogo stick without the falling off part.

For the downloadable version, hitting escape from any screen will quit the game.

Have fun.

Sean

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Well, a creative community always waxes and wanes. One group of regulars’ enthusiasm diminishes over time, until eventually someone or something draws a new group of regulars and the cycle repeats. But in my experience, by the time that happens, the community will have shifted fundamentally and no longer be the same in any way.

Very few games presented have continued beyond the initial prototypes presented here, as well. So, that certainly impacts the overall feel of the community. Sort of takes the wind out of the sails. I have a first-person shooter that I’m working on, but I’m waiting to implement the following before I show it:

  • A player model, which will be a cyborg. I need to model and animate this. It seems like a chore but I know I can do it.
  • Since Unity makes multiplayer super-easy, I want to add the ability to connect with another person.
  • I need to get the center-cursor aiming right, I just titled the gun so it shoots forward-ish, but as you may or may not know that’s not how that works. I need to raycast out from the center of the camera and then do lookrotation on the gun to that point.

Plus a lot of people here complain about downloading games… which, I mean when you think about it… just further demonstrates that a lot of the Unity community expends more effort in making excuses than they do in game development, game design or feedback.

Even if I did have a working demo for people to play… I probably wouldn’t get any feedback, anyway, as from what I’ve seen the better-looking the game, the less people seem to even ‘notice’ it. Which demonstrates another point, people tend to be very negative around here… which I think stems from developer envy, plain and simple.

I probably wouldn’t post my game, here… and I was around for the establishment of this thing.

I will probably just ask some of the other regulars through PM, since I know at least one person who would download and try my game. I can think of a few others who might try it.

In case you are wondering why I offer this analysis… just took a personality test and I’m what they call an INTP-A. You’re Welcome, America.

Also… here’s a suggestion, a thought I’ve been kicking around for a while.

If the community had membership requirements, ie some skin in the game (such as you get a rating based on your feedback from other developers) then you’d have a better thing. But as for right now, with it being open to just ‘anybody’ you kind of get what you have here, which is something that neither provides any utilitarian purpose for serious game developers or entertainment value for casual critics.

Also, this just in: WEBPLAYER GAMES KIND OF SUCK… nobody wants to sit through ads. There are alternative ways to share your game than these ad-based sites, such as a direct link to google. But in all seriousness, the ability to download other people’s executable games would be a big step in the right direction… but if there’s not even trust to do that, then there’s no community because let’s face it communities require trust.

And that is my analysis.

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I know this was a school assignment, but I’ll just treat that as an excuse and judge it like any normal game… since, you know, it’s a game… and you’re a programmer, so you can kind of change things…

+

  • Bouncing around is pretty funny.
  • I won.

-

  • Controls don’t really work. You simply don’t have enough control over your player just from a few random bounces.
  • The graphics, obviously, are not great.
  • I don’t think there’s even a bounce sound effect.
  • The overall presentation is crude, no real sense of rhythm or timing.
  • Can’t play alone.

>_<

  • I had to restart because it wasn’t recognizing my joystick.
  • More freaking advertisements.
  • Literally, it said, “Press ‘B’ to return to the main menu. I pressed 'B” and nothing happened.
  • Apparently Gamejolt thinks I’m mexican, based on the language of the ads.

OVERALL
It’s a start, the idea of combining bounce direction and the timing of bounces is not bad, but it’s poorly executed in this example. There should be the ability to lean slightly in either direction to tweak your trajectory. The controls could be more responsive, as well. I would like to see some higher resolution graphics, since there are basically no animations on the characters I see no reason why they couldn’t simply be 3D models, it’s not like they’re running or anything. Use the physics engine to your advantage. Somehow it feels cramped and tiny, and hard to really get a feel for the motion. I don’t see why the game can’t be at least 1024x768. The small-ness of it makes no sense to me. The idea of bouncing on pogo sticks around an environment to get a ball in a goal could be much better executed if some things were done differently. Also, if you are going to limit your control scheme to something a minority of people are going to have readily available if they’re browsing for PC games, you’re going to limit your graphical resolution to the absolute smallest it can be, you’re going to limit your art to the absolute lowest level that people will still actually play (this is Atari level) and you’re going to have coding bugs… you’re going to have an issue getting people to play your game, and those who play aren’t going to have nice things to say… but more likely, they just won’t say anything at all and move on.

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Thanks for trying it. Mentioning it was an assessment was just so I could include the brief I was given so it could also be judged against the ‘clients’ requirements (e.g. that’s why it needs Xbox 360 controllers). The small size on gamejolt is purely because I don’t get full screen because of their banners so I had to guess at a resolution that would fit onscreen, sorry about that.

Agree that the art needs work (this is the alpha build to present to the client for initial concept feedback). This was my first attempt at doing pixel art & I think I stuffed up the pipeline into unity because some things didn’t seem to come across properly (some colours etc).

There should be a bounce sound effect, I’ll log on later & check it out.

Not sure what happened with the joystick control. This is my first attempt at multiplayer so I used the unity way of doing it as per the couch wars tutorial. I’ve been told to use a bett solution but the learning curve is to high for me at the moment. Again, something for me to work on after the deadline.

I didn’t do single player simply because the client requirements were 2-4 players & I don’t have time to add AI at this point in time. I agree that going forward it will need it though.

I know the above sounds like a lot of poor excuses, & to a large degree they are when it comes to the final product, but I appreciate the feedback as I will try to roll in what I can to meet the assessment requirements & then fix the rest (single player etc) afterwards.

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If you don’t have the joystick plugged in when the game starts, Unity freaks out.

I didn’t even look at that part. Does the Unity built-in way work for webplayer games? (I had a problem when I was sending data to my server from a web game once).

It is all excuses. We just excuse ourselves from working hard and making stuff right. But, if you can see that then you, friend, are a light yer ahead of A LOT of other people who will never stop making excuses til the day they die. If you like this kind of game it should be no problem to make it kick butt, just make it until you absolutely love it. If you don’t like this kind of game… then jettison it out the escape hatch when the school project is over and do something fun.

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@tedthebug tried the Game Jolt version about 15 mins ago. I can’t really add anything that @Master-Frog didn’t cover. Basically have the same feedback.

…

On the lack of game posts… I’ve not done one in a while because I just saw no sense in it. I am generally always working on something testing some idea for a game. Most of the time they are just things I am working on and will never be finished.

It’s odd but few games keep my interest very long these days. Doesn’t matter if it is a super popular highly rated Indie game or something I am building… my interest just vanishes pretty quickly. I noticed in my Steam library I have become one of “those people” who buys games and about half I have never played. Just looking for something different I guess. Have played so many games by this point. Need something… “more”.

Basically I am trying to find a game project that will keep my interest through to the end again. Started playing around with one tonight. Maybe it will work out. I suppose in a way I am just doing that normal design prototyping thing we hear about where people may start 10 different projects before they find one they stick with and complete.

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Im working on a helicopter game, where your traveling through time chasing after Hitler. Each level is set in a different time period with bosses at the end, different scenarios (in one level your chasing after a train with Abraham Lincoln, in another your with moses as he parts the red sea, in another defending the Alamo), spells etc, theres different factions in the game with custom music and the guy even wrote a theme song for it.

I definitely think with steam you have to go big or go home, but Im also working on a wonderland game as well. I think you just need to be willing to work on a game for months/years to make it good, especially because you might get bored of it and not work on it for a while (then come back to it later).

Im also still working on my car game on early access we almost got over 10k downloads, most of them from bundles

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2D or 3D? FPS, shmup, platformer or something else?

I like the general concept a lot.

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I didn’t create these games but I think it will be interesting to hear what you folks think about them.

There’s this dude… Yoda Zhang… who created many little games that are available to play for free on his website Yoda’s Video Arcade.

I go there a few times per month to play some of the games.

Here are a couple for you to check out:

Naughty Gnome 2

Brain Frog

Simple presentation and the games are just very well done in my opinion. This guy excels at game design in my opinion. I think it takes real skill to be able to create such simple games yet they are very good much better than many other games I have tried that were much fancier. These games have a nice progression in difficulty & simple mechanics yet require a bit of brain juice too.

I really should support him on the patron thing he set up.

See what you all think. :slight_smile:

EDIT: I just noticed the About and other links on the site near the top. Never paid any attention to them before. Wow… this fella seems to have the exact views of games that I do. No wonder I enjoy the games there so much. lol

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“What is the question?” I’m not sure. I am sure that 6x7 = 42 and that draws this one to a close. See you next time. Same bat time (Friday, June 24), same bat channel.

Gigi

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