Below is a screen shot and demo of my UA 2008 entry, “Cornhole”. Its a bags/cornhole game where the objective is to get the bag on the board or in the hole which is one point and three points respectively. There will be a practice mode, single player mode, and two player (on the same computer) mode and if I have time a networked multiplayer mode.
There will be two ways of scoring. You will be able to pick the color of your bags. There will be three “arenas”. I am focusing a lot on camera effects, physics (especially ragdolls), and gameplay. I haven’t quite got the look I wanted as I am not an artist. If any expierenced artist out there wants to collaborate, PM me.
You line the ARC up horizontally with the left mouse button and then do the same with the distance to “toss” the bag. I will also have it be tossed using the mouse but I can imagine that being way more complex. Ideally I would like to port this to the IPhone (or even Wii) and use the Accelerometer to toss the bag on the board.
Here is the demo in its current state. Again left mouse button to play, after four bags you need to reset the app or quit the window.
Thanks for checking it out any feedback is appreciated.
Well, first off, you’ve got to fix the bag being thrown back and having the trail the whole way. When a bag is thrown, its trail should disappear while flying.
Second, my bags seemed to go through the target, even when I hit right on.
There is definitely some buggy-ness regarding gameplay and I don’t know what is up with scoring. It does have a long way to go, and I think that you probably have to be careful with something so simple that simulates an actual game – visually it is going to have to be top-notch and gameplay can’t have any flaws. The tolerance for those things goes way down for a game like this. That said, I really like that you are tackling this and look forward to seeing how the project progresses.
Yeah its buggy, scoring is definitely messed up and when the computer throws it all bugs break loose.
GargerathSunman, do you mean the bag partially goes through the board, or it simply does not collide and the whole thing goes through and hits the terrain?
And as far as the “trail” its not really a trail, but the arc the bag flys, you know its trajectory.
Turn your sound on.
To play left click once to choose the horizontal aim.
Then (and this is the tricky part). Left click again and drag the mouse upwards. The dragging calculates the distance.
Takes a little getting used to.
I would love feedback. Still looking for an artist if anyone is interested to collaborate with.
Like you said, it took me a little while to get used to the new controls. Is it based on how much the mouse moves or how fast it’s moving when you click? I made a throwing demo slightly similar to this and the user would click and hold the mouse, then drag and release to throw. That way seems a little more natural to me.
If the distance of the throw is determined by the dragging, why does the trajectory move “up” and “down” after determining the aim? It gives the impression that the bag will follow the trajectory indicated at the time of one’s click.
I think you should remove the trajectory arc after the initial aiming since it doesn’t indicate the real trajectory. That, or display the real trajectory.
The trajectory (yellow arc) is the ideal trajectory your want to aim for. I will disable it when the bag is thrown or recalculate the true trajectory and set it to that.
Do you have a demo/code of your throwing example I can take a peek at.
Here is the new look of the game with upgraded water and lovely bloom/glow effect.
You can now control the arm by clicking and moving the mouse down to the bottom of the screen (the arm moves back) middle of the screen (the arm is down to the side) and top of the screen (the arm is forward) and he releases the bag.
EDIT:
Added DOF effect and mini map viewport to help with aiming.
The mini map is great, but overall the visuals are far too busy with all of the effects, which also decrease performance.
Concerning the controls: they feel much more natural now, but the bags make it to the board even while moving the mouse extremely slowly. It will probably take a lot of tweaking to find a good balance of difficulty and “feeling right”.
Yeah I went a little crazy on the effects tim. I took out the DOF effect and it does look better!
I added an AI player that tosses the bag. Its turn based… you toss a bad then he tosses it. (Thanks to AngryAnt) I also made the animation of the toss a little better (Thanks to JeremyAce)
Pictured below is the AI player tossing the blue bag which may be a bit hard to see. I wont be doing too much updating this frequent but taking suggestions and questions. I have to focus on scoring and getting the feel of the toss right.
And here is the updated webplayer (Its a little harder to play in the webplayer because of focus of the mouse I think, its easier in the standalone)
I have been progessing a bit slower than I would have liked on this project so far. I just can’t make it “fun”. I showed my friend who is an avid gamer and said, toss the bag, he said, “ok that was boring” heh. Anyone have any ideas gameplay wise to make the game more fun.
I was thinking to make the board a bit bigger than scale, and have control of the bag when its in the air after you toss it.
If anyone has any ideas please post!
I tore apart the application code wise (it needed it, started to get messy) and am taking a different approach visually.
For one I am now doing a top down camera but it has a tracking camera as you will see in the new demo so you get the full effect of 3D. I took a step back on graphics using all diffuse materials, low polies, and maybe 1 or 2 point lights (lightmaps) soon.
My entry is now called iBags. I am gearing it towards the iPhone/iTouch. (This is a WebPlayer Streamed Demo!) I am just trying to prepare for whats to come.
I envision gestures made on the iPhone/iTouch on the touchscreen to control the bags for the toss. Certain gestures would throw it normal, others with greater distance, horizontal movement, and higher/lower arc.
Here is the screenshot of the new menu followed by an in game screenshot and the link to the new demo.
I am pretty sure the glow/bloom effect is just an effec (component) attached to the camera. I don’t think you can do it per object but I could be wrong.
I was having trouble with project management so I downloaded FogBugz Project Management tool (thanks JeremyAce for the recommendation) This has helped alot instead of writing my tasks in text edit like I have done before.
New features
Game is color independent before the code was hard coded with red and blue. Now you can select red, blue, green, or yellow for either player.
Here is the new GUI for the Main Menu.
I will be adding a game mode dropdown which will eaither be single player or multiplayer (same machine/client) non-networked.
This is so you can play against the AI or play with a friend on the same machine.
Forgive the tossing mess right now. it is on my to do list to make it smoother, more intuitive.
One problem I am having designing/figuring out is collision and scoring. The rules are one bag on the board is one point, one bag in the hole is three points.
If one bag is on the board and bounces off it doesn’t count.
If one bag hits the ground and bounces on/hits the board it doesn’t count.
If the player knocks the other players bag off (yeah it can happen :P) one point is subtracted.
I know there is OnCollisionEnter|Stay|Exit and OnTriggerEnter|Stay|Exit but I can’t see whats the best way of doing this.
The bag is a ragdoll btw so their is multiple collisions when I test for them. I guess I can tag the root of the bag and only test that against the board.
One of my questions is using an OnCollision|TriggerStay but only counting the score up once.
Thanks in advanced.
PS The Rounds code is now in. I think the font looks good but I am no artist. When you hit esc to go make to the main menu the game resets.
I was really having fun swinging the player’s arm back and forth (click + drag). I use a stylus instead of a mouse, and that felt really great. However, I then found out that it was easier to just point and click. Why bother giving the player control of the arm before the toss then?
Right now as far as distance goes is based on where the arm is from its down/side position 50% to its up/forward position at 100%. It does not yet take into account the swing of the arm. I will use the swing of the arm as a multiplier adding it into the tossing algorithm.
Next update will feature horizontal control so what you do with the mouse (moving it kinda like golden tee golf’s track ball) will affect the toss.
Also how did you use a stylus, Do you have a wacom or did you do it on your mac book’s track pad?
