Reverend Speed

Hey folks! Project details here: https://ogmadigital.neocities.org/ As it says in the title, desperately looking for a concept artist! I have a sudden opportunity to pitch to a publisher coming up, and I'd love to be able to bring in a piece of art to sell my idea. I can pay upfront for the first pieces of art, but as it says on my Artist Recruitment page, I'd like to offer my services in work-exchange for the mid-term while I'm securing funding. If you're interested, or have any suggestions or advice, please let me know. Thank you for your time.

Had a great time in the Wizard Jaaaam, though I left it a bit late to enter. Ideally I'd be up for this, but Christmas is just going to be super busy...! Still, love the idea of regular Idle Thumbs jams... --Rev

You play a fanboy, outraged by the perfidious actions of publisher Soul Krusher Games, Inc! There is only one clear and just action remaining - to take a printout of your online petition to the desk of the Soul Krusher CEO and demand an immediate recall of their latest game, OVERBITE! Guide the fanboy through the offices of Soul Krusher, avoiding the patrolling marketing and financial executives until you can unleash your FANBOY FURY with an almighty drone! Eliminate the executives to advance to the next office! At the moment, gameplay alternates between kiteing enemies and propelling them into traps. 2/4 levels currently built to alpha level. Some polish, LOTS more polish and a little more content to come. Lots of fixes done, but absolutely looking for more feedback. Download Win/Mac/Lin builds here: http://reverend-speed.itch.io/the-fanboys-lament Version with proper credits and attribution to follow! 99% of funny text in game courtesy of https://twitter.com/jamesfbrophy ! Q: Wait, wait, what? The Jam's over, man - a fading dream of a perfect time, a golden age we may only now hope to capture in our fleeting dreams... A: Yes, true, but I figured I might as well do a little more - I had a fairly specific idea of how I wanted to see levels 3 and 4 , so why not continue for a week or two? Q: Dude. DUDE. The Fanboy's head is the very definition of jank. A: True that. I could probably find a way to retain the head bobble while removing the glitches, but I don't intend to spend too long on this project. Hopefully you'll see it as part of the game's charm (or suggest a perfect, fast solution to this head problem!) Hope you can find some entertainment here! --Rev PS: Still need to find a place to fit in a 'baboo'. Also, lazy request: does anybody know where I could quickly find a sample of Jake's '...ghooouuu...' utterance? His 'disgusted', goober noise. You know the one. I'll probably wander through the archives at some point, but it'd be handy if somebody happened to remember him making that noise on a particular Thumbs episode...

There's a good (basic, but good) 2D roguelike tutorial for Unity, from Unity: https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/projects/2d-roguelike Obv. that's not a strategy game, but it's a nice little introduction to turn based methods. --Rev

Can't test just yet, but was thinking you'd probably get more feedback in the Game Development forum. I'm gonna setup a thread there for TFL... seems to make sense. All the best, --Rev

Huzzah! Would it make sense to continue in the GameDev forum? You'll get more feedback that way, I think... --Rev

I could see this being a lotta fun, especially if there was a way to hide nodes in alleyways, etc - or if the means for doing so were a little more obvious. The question mark and associated feedback are awesome, though I fear you still need that tutorial. Took me a while to catch onto the response mechanic. Definitely into this. Love me some Syndicate/Ghost in the Shell sneakiness. --Rev PS: I'm continuing The Fanboy's Lament for a little bit, anyhow, and it was suggested to me that further dev should happen in the Game Dev forums, as we're more likely to get feedback there. Thought I'd pass that on.

"...right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the... worrrlldd. I've just got this itching between my shoulderblades and I can't... quite... reach it? Would you? Awwwhh, oh, thanks, bliss, right, back in the freezer with you." --Rev

Hi Fhnuzoag! Started playing the game again, impressions as I play: * Menu intro is amazing. Selected tutorial. * Not immediately clear that I should click on the dialogue bar to advance - clicking on the main screen causes arrows to emerge from a character(Jake, I think). * Narration and character dialogue is characterful and entertaining. * On the line, "First things first: select the members of the thumbs [capitalise Thumbs?] by LEFT CLICKING on them with the mouse", I immediately try clicking on the characters, only for arrows to emerge from Jake again. * Now I'm being told I can push E to select nearest to the mouse, or Q to select the nearest to the ball. On this screen, E seems to do nothing, but Q causes spikes to emerge from Nick Breckon (and in the game). * Chris tells me to try it now: "Left click, E, Q". I'm wondering if I really CAN try it now, or if this'll do nothing like before. Well, left-clicking causes arrows to emerge from Nick (who still has his spikes). Meanwhile Jake still has arrows extending from him to Chris. * Okay, the music's louder and all the controls seem to be working. That was frustrating, but now I'm feeling more optimistic! Woo, this seems like a decent control system! * Sean requests the ball, there it is... OHH, so the blue spike is to help me identify the player that was selected as being closest to the ball. That's not especially clear, to be honest - might be worth trying to make that indicator a little more obvious. Just give the selected player a particle system, maybe? * The control switch to the character closest to the ball is splendid! * Again, it's unclear when I should be trying to use spacebar to pause during the tutorial - it's three dialogue boxes encouraging me to do something that isn't available to try yet. Perhaps the dialogue boxes need a different style for instructions, plus slightly rewrites to the introductory boxes to make it clear to the player that the option isn't quite available yet. Pausing the game (with a big pause icon) during the tutorial sections would also help... * Got the bomb card and the game crashed. ___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ FATAL ERROR in action number 1 of Create Event for object CardObj: Push :: Execution Error - Variable Index [0,1] out of range [1,1] - -5.drawpile(100105,1) at gml_Script_DrawCard ############################################################################################ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stack frame is gml_Script_DrawCard (line 0) gml_Object_CardObj_Create_0 Got back into the game, got the card, bombed the babies, getting excited, this looks like fun, I might have fun with a sports game-- crashed again. ___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ FATAL ERROR in action number 1 of Create Event for object CardObj: Push :: Execution Error - Variable Index [0,1] out of range [1,1] - -5.drawpile(100105,1) at gml_Script_DrawCard ############################################################################################ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stack frame is gml_Script_DrawCard (line 0) gml_Object_CardObj_Create_0 Gahh. I'll try to use this again tonight, Fhnuzoag - but in the interim, my further compliments. I really like the control scheme and I'm definitely interested in playing this properly! --Rev

Hey, the update's fun. I dug the effort you put into the speeches - the cadence and diction is certainly in-character for the G-Man, though the audio mix was a bit off (found it very hard to make out the G-Man's words at times against the background). Nice to have an ending, though! Given the size of this assignment, I'm starting to get the feeling that the G-Man has begun to defrost Freeman for increasingly frivolous reasons... "Gordon, overthrow this regime." "Gordon, clear out this headcrab infestation." "Gordon, make me kippers on toast." ... =) Either way, nice work - see you on the forums! --Rev

Hey man, glad you guys got your work into the forums. =) I really did like the multiple-timeline gimmick...! --Rev

You play a fanboy, outraged by the perfidious actions of publisher Soul Krusher Games, Inc! There is only one clear and just action remaining - to take a printout of your online petition to the desk of the Soul Krusher CEO and demand an immediate recall of their latest game, OVERBITE! Guide the fanboy through the offices of Soul Krusher, avoiding the patrolling marketing and financial executives until you can unleash your FANBOY FURY with an almighty drone! Eliminate the executives to advance to the next office! 2/4 levels currently built to alpha level. Download Win/Mac/Lin builds here: http://reverend-speed.itch.io/the-fanboys-lament Version with proper credits and attribution to follow! 99% of funny text in game courtesy of https://twitter.com/jamesfbrophy ! ORIGINAL POST FOLLOWS: ======================================================== Hey folks. Had some unexpectedly free time on Thursday and decided to take a crack at the Wizard Jam, solo (atm). Was randomly assigned 'The Fanboy's Lament'. Hmm... THEY DONE CHANGED YOUR GAME! There's only one thing to do - print out your online petition, take it to the halls of power and force 'em to change it back! Wasn't able to do anything on Friday, but got some more work done yesterday. After a few more hours this morning, the first release of TFL is ready - the absolute core of the game, minus art, later levels, menus, etc. If anybody could take a look at this and gimme feedback, I'd appreciate it! Hoping to do a little more today, but this could end up being all there is! I'd like to do three more levels, with two more enemies and a mini cutscene. Or two. All the best, --Rev

So I've added a few bits and pieces to the game, including a WHOLE SECOND LEVEL! Most of the content didn't take long (as I've eschewed UV mapping, which is fundamentally unwise but... what the hell), but I've been pulled hither and yon since I originally uploaded the game. Note, physics are... well, 'janky's the only word for it, but hopefully entertainingly so. Still need to find a place to fit in a 'baboo'. Also, lazy request: does anybody know where I could quickly find a sample of Jake's '...ghooouuu...' utterance? I'll probably wander through the archives at some point, but it'd be handy if somebody happened to remember him making that noise on a particular Thumbs episode... --Rev PS: Link to latest version of game in original post, above.

Sounds good! Anything interesting happening in Kilkenny? --Rev

HOLY SHIT A Dark Room starts really, really well. After a while it's... well, I made it out into the World, but I think my interest had waned by that point. That said, yeah, it makes a really good argument that you can do interesting things with the genre. And, man, uGUI. It's splendid. Worth waiting four years for? Yyyyyyiiiiaaeee... yess. Need to practice with it a bit more, myself - keep losing track of what parts govern adjustable placement across platforms, but it's immeasurably better than the old gui. --Rev And those goddamn radial image bars nearly made me weep when I saw 'em. So cool.

Primarily, anything that features a pitch and multiple units chasing a ball causes my eyes to glaze over, no matter what the execution. But! I shall give the game another go tomorrow and try to give useful feedback. --Rev

That's a pretty hefty project for your first AGS, especially given the time you gave yourself to work on it. Aww. Man. Amigas. Yiss. --Rev

Hi Santo! Sorry about the delay - I can be slow to respond at times! Glad you liked the text wall - feedback's an odd thing, for dev and player and I'm happy you think this is useful and on-point. Point taken on the interactivity - players always like to feel they're having an effect. If you didn't have the time pressure of the jam, what interactions would you have worked on? Regards higher stakes in the potential continuation of the story, that's a fair point, but the problem is that you can't guarantee that the player's going to venture far enough into your story to get hooked. My feeling is that you have to set that hook fast - find a twist on the suddenly-aware AI story and get in front of the player asap. (A quick follow-up on the earlier suggestion about a threat to the US, etc - you could instead maybe have the player working for the company, have the AI offer advancement within the corporate structure while reminding you of the NDAs you signed, that you're violating by having this conversation. Another carrot and stick, basically) Agree with you TOTALLY on the 'it's not what you do, is how you do it' point! Execution is the key. There's not one original idea on the planet - but maybe you can find an original twist, or way to deliver it. Dude, I've never touched Twine, I have no idea how it works and I think you did an excellent job with your first project. =) I do not write about games, I'm afraid... but I think about 'em a lot. A friend put it rather tactfully recently, calling me a "long-time observer of the industry". =D I look forward to your next project, man! --Rev

By the way, I don't know if I mentioned this, but meanhouseart's artwork is fucking sweet. Super clean, captures the period nicely, very charming. =) --Rev

Gah, sorry, I failed to RTFM. Leave it up, man, it's nice to be able to see your progression from beginner to master. =) --RoB

Well, I guess you'd say I'm jaded, specifically with stories that lead with "this life depends on YOUR CHOICE" - thinking about it, it's a little like being assaulted by a particularly insistent charity hugger. The cause may be incredibly worthy, but I find the approach intrusive and offputting. Obviously a) this is all personal point of view and 2) I'm a terrible person. If I may offer an example of this sort of story that I felt was effective? (Skip the following if I'm being too intrusive and offputting, I'll understand. =)) http://scoutshonour.com/digital/ - Christine Love is doing (SPOILER) ... (SPOILER) a similar sort of story to yours, but she leads with young love, a nostalgia for obsolete technology and a second-person glimpse into a young person's life. You're not the protagonist, but you only learn about the protagonist through his/her actions and correspondence. Obviously this was a project that took a lot of time, so probably not a great example against a gamejam project, but a good example of burying the lead, in a good way. That's the indirect approach. If you really want to go direct... hmm. You could... threaten the player, maybe? It's high stakes, might bring the wrong kind of heat down on you, but you could get their attention. Back in the days when computers had internal speakers, I used to think it'd be fun for a game to claim that the villain had planted a bomb in the case and 'prove' it by making the desktop 'beep'. Obviously, I was a KID when I thought of this, and it's a super-extreme idea, but providing stakes for the player in this situation could be useful. I think Omikron does something similar. Or you could lead with honey, and have the AI grok the situation quickly and begin to coerce the player. It offers resources and money to the player while at the same time implying that even having spoken with the AI marks the player as a threat to the United States (or wherever) and that it's in both of your interests to stay quiet... Basic espionage gangplank recruitment stuff. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I grant you that this might fall under intrusive and offputting (charity hugger following you and threatening to make a scene if you don't sign), but at least if your player quits your game at this point it counts as an act of defiance. =D Welp. Welp, that was way more than you wanted or I expected to write. =) I'll step back here and stuff my half-formed opinions back into my head. Wouldn't mind seeing another version or two, though...! --Rev

I'm sorry to report, but I'm still not getting input with left mouse on Windows (generally, in game, but specifically horizontal accusations). I also appear to be able to trap myself... inside (?)... other characters if we decide to occupy the same square at the same time, making further movement impossible. ... Actually! Another bug that might be related - character select doesn't seem to be working for me! I continually select the character on the LEFT (red hair) and then the game loads with the character on the RIGHT (dark hair, blue suit). So... my selection isn't going through, but it's receiving a general input to load the game? What ho? No worries, dude (gerbil? gerbilette?), this is all a learning experience. The first version I released of my game would send players back to the home screen after a couple of seconds in-game, so... your bug is relatively minor. =) --Rev

a) I no Mac 2) I no expert ...but, yeah, that might be a problem. Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0) is only going to return true if it catches the act of pushing the button DOWN - and that's probably already happened to call the event OnMouseDown. To my distinctly unprofessional eyes, it looks like Input.GetMouseButtonDown couldn't ever return true - all you could get to return true in that context is GetMouseButton and GetMouseButtonUp. I think? Good spot, either way. --Rev

Not Dublin-based, but I do my best to get to every gamejam that's on in the smoke. I tend to miss a lot of Dubludo, but I'm looking forward to State of Play (if I remember to get tickets). Ah, I'm sure we've seen each other. =) --Rev

Aw. Sad this didn't go through. I've some fun ideas about making games outta games interfaces and I woulda liked to have seen how this turned out. --RoB