| (no subject) |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|11:09 pm] |
- made a new area
- started working on a lost woods style set of areas (not really the same thing, but a set of rooms which appear mostly identical, but which are not), this will get like 6 areas done at once without too much work and may be interesting
- made the rainbow stars disappear if you have friended every creature in a room (which could play an interesting exploration role) |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|10:43 pm] |
here's the SD IGF feedback. most of it i could have predicted, and come from either the judge not enjoying that type of game (narrative driven story-games, peaceful exploration games), which is a common trend, or the game being so unfinished. still better than ID's feedback in 2007, which was nothing.
*
My high-level feedback is that this game needs to become far more forgiving and less confusing.
- Automatically moving the avatar towards the cursor makes it very difficult to have any fine control. This frequently resulted in me "sling-shotting" the avatar back and forth over the place where I wanted it to be.
- My avatar's tiny mass seemed in most cases insufficient to push around the smaller floating obstacles, when clearly they weren't intended to be a major impediment.
- Navigation of the levels was very difficult with no clear or consistent way of telling where an exit point was.
- Feedback on damage was obscure - I did not realise I was taking damage until after I had died.
- Player needs to have different game elements introduced slowly over time, and be required to use them to solve a problem, if the player is expected to learn about those elements. At a certain point I was abruptly given multiple (6 or more?) weapons/tools, as well as four lines of on-screen help text for other game functions.
- The story got in the way of the game. Cut scenes happened too frequently, and at times that seemed inappropriate, interrupting the flow of the game.
On the positive side, the graphics are nice and I was legitimately intrigued by the story.
---
This game is impossible to judge properly. It is too unfinished to compare with the other games. With that said, I will still give some feedback on the game.
I can see and feel the idea of the game: exploring an unknown planet with the intent of befriending the animals (or aliens/insects). The universe/story/characters has something quite interesting and it is therefore sad that the game doesnt live up to the idea. The technical state of the game seems to be pretty far from finished, but I still get the impression that the technical standards are not very good. The graphics is quite strange; a mix of drawn art and vector art with a isometric perspective on the background objects, while the ship and insects are top down. That in total creates a visual that I would call confusing and not very pretty. The controls with the mouse or keyboard works, but are far from perfect and the collision system is very dodgy. Was it not for the FADE weapon then it would have been an utterly frustrating experience.
So what to do? Simplify and focus! The important things are the story and befriending the insects. Remove all the annoying labyrinth like gameplay. It stresses the controls and makes the world feel pretty far from a lake! The play-world also appears to be pretty big (from the map) - but why is big good? And take a decision on the graphics, top down or isometric? (go top-down!), vector or hand-drawn?
---
I was particularly taken with the narrative and writing in this game - they are evocative and well thought-out, and a cut above many of the indie games I've played.
The art is a little primitive, but gets the job done. I think the environment art works the best, and the enemy and especially ship art could do with some sprucing up. (Though a lot of the ship effects are really interesting.)
There's quite a lot of bumping as you navigate around the world, and it's not always that obvious where screen exits are, leading to some confusion.
I like the non-violent nature of the game goals, but think the gameplay necessary to friend the creatures isn't always THAT compelling - you have to fight to not want to kill them because they don't look that lovable. Maybe that's years of doing the wrong thing impressing on me, though.
---
On one hand, I think this is a good implementation of an original idea. Unfortunately, I think that in the end, the core game concept just isn't that fun, at least for me. You may have just had the bad fortune of running into a judge that doesn't embrace the peaceful exploration that this game is about, but... honestly, I got a bit bored. I tooled around for a couple hours, befriending random creatures, but the experience never really left me feeling satisfied. I think on some level this may have just been that the friend mechanisms are more about trial and error than real puzzle solving.
Anyway, here's a bunch of additional random pieces of feedback:
- The game opened by saying "Welcome back" on my first time playing.
- The writing isn't the best. This really hurt the experience for me. Since the core gameplay wasn't really fun for me, it was key that the characters and story engaged me, and they really didn't.
- Really love all the tiny bits of stylistic flair. Subtle things like the way The Bait has that little light thing that "reaches out" to creatures that are close enough to be attracted... that stuff is great.
- Good ambient sound. I especially like the way the music fades out when you stay still. Again, great subtle touch. Embracing subtlety works wonderfully for this game.
- Overall art style was unique and cool without being gimmicky at all.
- Would have been nice to have a more explicit way of knowing which tool you have selected. And more importantly, the order that they come in... I never knew if I should scroll up or down to get to the one I wanted.
- Nice music!
- The leech guys (Rokari?) were kind of annoying. Would have been nice if the whole species got befriended at once or something so you didn't have to deal with them after that.
- The Light = one of the coolest, most lovely effects I've seen in an indie game. Great work.
- Overally, playing around with the tools was pretty fun and interesting. I especially liked when I was able to find multiple uses for a few of them.
---
I though the concept was very admirable, particularly the way it mixes up the core mechanic between the intro and the main game - but I found the narrative elements to overpower the gameplay. I thought that the basic essence of the game was nicely thought through, but the narrative elements are just too much. It reminded me of a lot of JRPGs where the exposition gets in the way of the gameplay.
---
Brave design, but it didn't hold my attention. I think with an exploration design, it needs to be slicker - the minor annoyances when there's no actual more defined goal swiftly add up to "Why am I doing this again?" for me.
Didn't help that the map didn't work reliably for me - it was either on screen or not. I think a better and more interesting map would have helped the concept a lot. Maps are *interesting* in exploration games.
(Similarly, the world itself and the general level of writing - it was just hard to imprint on the universe.)
One odd aspect was... well, for some reason, I presumed you were playing Venus rather than the Scientist. It's because she's narrating it, yes? I suspect the actual confusion caused by the stylistic decision wasn't really worth it.
Sorry this feedback isn't exactly my best here - it's just a game I found it hard to actually engage with. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jan. 6th, 2010|12:20 pm] |
(the topic was "How do we tell a complex story while allowing the player to exercise meaningful choices?")
my thought on this subject is i don't really like when games try to make choices "meaningful". every time it's been tried it's resulted in ridiculous games, usually with a moral way to play the game and an immoral way (fallout series, baldur's gate, advent rising, ogre battle, etc.). perhaps the game that seems to have done it best (though i haven't finished the game yet) is fable 2. but even there, all the choices result in is some points on some meta karma reputation system. how is that meaningful, to move a number up and down a karma slider? who cares? the choice of what class you play as in baldur's gate 2 is more "meaningful" than all the moral choices in the entire game.
so my advice would be to just give up the conceit that players want meaningful choices or that meaningful choices will make games better or more artistic. they won't, they've been tried to death and trying them some more won't work.
instead, i think it's better to focus on meaningful experiences, not meaningful choices.
(reposted from something i wrote in the tigsource forums) |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|11:09 pm] |
- made new area
- made new area
- made new area
fyrewulf and evajolli also made new areas, but i don't know how many. |
|
|
| 2009 Game Design in Review |
[Jan. 5th, 2010|04:44 pm] |
Timpoline (March) I like this game a lot more than other players, I think. The difficulty is tuned to me as the game designer, which means it's way, way too hard for everyone else. I was planning on re-releasing with full level skips and free passage to the EX levels to anyone who beat the final boss. I ought to get around to that soon; some of the best levels are the ones players are less likely to have gotten around to. I will say that I have a real soft spot for this game and I wish other people were better at it. Maybe I should make some YouTube videos of me beating some of the levels.
Gohrillas (August) I made this game in something like three hours. The response I got was disproportionate. People like old QBASIC games.
Phantom Tactics (Chapter 1) (September) I'd been playing a little Fire Emblem, see, and I pitched an OHR version to Newbie. It turned out he was already making one. Whoops. So I played around with the mechanics to come up with the concept that became the Phantom Tactics battle system. This turned out to be my most popular game of the year. I do plan on getting back to work on this game, but since the release, I've had very little desire to do so. I think that's largely because, while I know how the game ends, I don't know how I'm going to get from A to B. Maybe a little plot planning would go a long way, or maybe I just need to replay the game to get back into the mood. And maybe it's just that I had a lot more fun making...
Do You Want to be a Hero? (October) I'd been playing a lot of 7th Saga, see... I think this game does a good job of making it fun to level up frantically. More to the point, though, it accomplishes very tactical turn-based RPG battles in a way that feels satisfying. Apparently, players found the game difficult, but the irony is that I balanced the game by adding something like 3 to 5 minutes to my first clear time for each stage. This was a lot of fun to work on.
Maze of the Red Mage (December) This is going to be hard to top as a 48-hour game. It's a full, complete, playable game, and it's pretty entertaining, too, even if you end up dying more often than not. If I'd had more time to make the game, I'd be really unsatisfied with the balance, but for a 48-hour entry, it's actually pretty amazing. I'd only entered one 48-hour competition before this. No one remembers my entry and it's best that way. I'm really satisfied with how this turned out, though, and I'm considering making a DS port.
A really good year. Phantom Tactics and Maze of the Red Mage won $50 and $25, respectively (although I gave half the PT cash to TwinHamster, who did the unit graphics/animations). I don't think that's the most I ever made in a year from game design, but I didn't have a job back in my $100 year.
Think my wife would kill me if I quit my career to make $75/yr making games? |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jan. 4th, 2010|11:49 pm] |
- added some text about not running into enemies, after the first catob encounter
- moved the text about using tab or m to display the map to the mercedes recovery script, rather than the venus rejoins script; this and the above were both eva's suggestions
- spent a long perfectionist amount of time working with colors on the map screen until i have this new map colors system (pictured) -- now only rooms explored are textured
still no new areas! will do nothing but areas tomorrow D: |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jan. 4th, 2010|01:34 am] |
my new year's resolution this year may be a bit strange, but it's to play every game i own, and read every book i own (or get rid of the books that i do not intend to read). and to review indie games for timw's blog, tigsource, and playthisthing more often. i also want to go visit newedition, probably in spring/summer.
there are a lot of things i want to do "career" wise as well, but i've the feeling that i will do those automatically, without too much special effort. i find working on games kind of easy and natural now, it's enjoying personal experiences that i've been neglecting. perhaps that's because i enjoy working on sd so much that i don't really need other forms of entertainment, aside from a few starcraft videos on youtube now and then.
but playing games and keeping up to date with what games are doing (both mainstream and indie) is still quite useful as research, so i shouldn't neglect it. also, reviewing games of other indie devs for the main indie game blogs so that people take notice of them is very important work, perhaps more important work than my own game. even though i'm not paid for it, i think reviewing indie games, providing feedback to developers, and that sort of thing is a much more valuable thing to do on the historic timescale than making id was or making sd is.
in general reality is strange like that. something you can care very little about or put very little thought into can be the most important thing you'll ever do, whereas something else which might take you years of planning and concentrated effort could be relatively insignificant. it's a strange thing. so i never really know when some chance word i write or chance feedback i leave or chance conversation i have could affect things (both global/historically and/or locally/personally) drastically.
there's a thought experiment i thought up a few years ago to illustrate this. let's say you're choosing a fork to eat with. a simple decision, but the forks are not identical. one might have a few things the other doesn't, perhaps a single atom of lead, which, through unobservable, causes you to get cancer with the one fork or to not get it with the other. but you never really will know that it was that one decision which had that effect. and can't know. that's how reality works.
of course, just because this is the case, just because there's no way to determine what leads to what drastic difference, doesn't mean we shouldn't take care in decision-making. just that we shouldn't presume we are in control of things. the brain has a useful role in making many decisions, but due to very strong limitations (both in perception of reality and the process of prediction), when things turn out well or when things turn out badly it was usually not the brain's doing at all, it was just reality working itself out in its multitude of ways. this is another way in which the first virtue is acceptance.
anyway, i find that variety is better than monotony, which is why i want to play every game i own and read every book i own; too much of it is just sitting there, waiting to be experienced by me. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jan. 3rd, 2010|11:30 pm] |
- talked with fyrewulff and evajolli more about making levels and using the editor
- fixed the speed bug with the chain/line
- made it so every 50 creatures you friend a cutscene appears. however, it is coded in a fairly sloppy way; for instance if you have 49 creatures friended and then friend 2 more in a single room, the scene won't ever show up, cause you have to go to a new room with exactly 50 friended. also, if you have exactly 50 friended, get the scene, exit the game, and come back, you get the scene again.
- edited wynand's text for the first of those into separate files, and added the Mercedes: tag in front of each line (otherwise it didn't work)
- fixed the sloppy coding mentioned above; now it saves to file which scripts have been shown and checks ranges so they'll always be shown once and only once
- fixed a bug where you could use the fade function on invisible walls
- designed the 'charge' abilities of all the functions (designing those was on the to-do list, since i want to have them but hadn't designed how they'd work yet)
no areas today, but more tomorrow! also, new version of the game soon for playtesters (probably within a few days) since that chain bug really needs to be fixed for them.
also, the wish list for saturated dreamers is about 580 items long now. i told eva-jolli to pick some random number between 1 and 580 and i'd do the wishlist item it corresponds to. she did, and i did -- twice (the first one was the cutscene % thing, the second one was the designing charge abilities thing). it was kind of fun to just work on random items on the wish list. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jan. 2nd, 2010|10:53 pm] |
- made another change which may stop the flickering (initialized depth on map object creation rather than only updating it once each step); but this didn't seem to fix it. :(
- did a few more optimizations to the step sequences (i don't use step events anymore so i'll just call them step sequences) for map objects, mainly that i now check if x and/or y have changed using xprevious and yprevious before re-calculating cx, cy, and depth. because most map objects and stationary and never move, this will likely increase speed a bit in areas with a lot of objects.
- made area
- made another area
- talked with fyrewulff and eva jolli about them creating levels possibly for the game (to help speed up the process); helped show them around the game |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jan. 1st, 2010|10:38 pm] |
- made new area
- made fog/clouds have correct blend mode and not get stuck on objects
- made new area
- wrote text scene for entrance to blossom mesas (subsection of map), put it in first area of blossom mesas
- made new area
i now have the entire 'line' filled in for blossom mesas -- the way i'm constructing the map is center, then outward into 9 lines, like cutting up a pizza pie, then after those extensions into each map subsection i'll work inwards and fill in the missing areas |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jan. 1st, 2010|04:33 pm] |
best 10 snes games (the best official list)
1. secret of evermore
2. soul blazer
3. ys3
4. genghis khan 2: clan of the grey wolf
5. evo
6. illusion of gaia
7. ff4
8. the 7th saga
9. dw5 ogre battle
10. populous
another list
honorable mention: paladin's quest |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jan. 1st, 2010|01:00 am] |
best indie gams evar, by gam engine/language:
zzt: rhygar
game maker: seiklus
ohrrpgce: sword of jade
rpgmaker2k: exit fate
blitz: the you testament
c++: aquaria
xna: geometry wars
flash: vvvvvv
unity: fatale
mmf2: within a deep forest
z-code: photopia
these lists are getting popular, so |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Dec. 31st, 2009|11:19 pm] |
- made new area
- made another new area
- made another new area
this new lj avatar is from a pic taken today |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Dec. 30th, 2009|11:35 pm] |
- talked about SD with podunkian, he had an idea for the map to decrease music volume the same way standing still does
- finished the new area started yesterday with nephew (pictured)
- made another new area
just two today, but that's my fault for getting too distracted by #tigirc -- tomorrow no chat programs open till 3 are done first ^^ |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
mogri1's Friends Page