Teljoor
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Posts posted by Teljoor
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This will probably be my last update before the final release. I've removed the scoring system since it was mainly a distraction on screen, and I don't plan on implementing a high score list at this point.
I've been working on implementing more levels and patterns using some simple shapes. This does make the obstacles harder to identify (see below), but it's still doable in motion. One drawback with the 3D shapes is that the sprite mask method I used for the player's shadow doesn't seem to work with them. I'll have to see if I have time to fix that.
I'm also working on a sequence where a big owl appears to shoot stuff at you. It's not really different mechanically from the rest of the game, but I'm hoping it can add some oomph to the final sequence. It's proving a bit tricky to get the timing for the animations right, though.
I think I'll be able to finish the game on time. My main concern at this point is if it will be balanced right in terms of difficulty, readability, and game length. It shouldn't be too hard to patch if it turns out there are really major problems, though.
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I was pretty busy last week, but I think I've more or less finished all the basic functionality I wanted. There's a scoring system, health bar, and a checkpoint system. I've also added enough features to the obstacle spawner system that I think it'll be able to handle whatever I want to add without too much trouble. I've given up on the obstacle reflection idea for now.
For the rest of the week I'll be implementing subsequent sections. I hope I can add some more complex optical effects without making the whole thing unreadable
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This is what it looks like now (not much different from the earlier screenshots, but I'm hoping to add different graphical elements in later sections):
On 1/12/2020 at 11:46 PM, jan said:Wow, that looks awesome already!
I don’t know if it would fit the style of the game but maybe you could project some kind of real/fake shadow onto objects that are underneath the player to help communicate how close they are.
Thanks. I thought having a shadow was a good idea. I've implemented it in a basic way using a sprite mask that's only visible on the obstacles (it's faintly visible in the screenshot above). Thanks for the idea
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On 1/15/2020 at 5:12 PM, z_bill said:Whoa this is mega cool. It reminds me of the start of each level of MDK. Parachute sequence.
Will you ever land? I hope that's the ending. You land and everything's ok...
I don't have any concrete plans for the setup and ending of the game. At the very least there'll be some congratulatory message at the end.
On 1/16/2020 at 2:04 AM, Ganz said:Nice! Do you plan on having any collectibles like coins in there? That could be a way to teach the player where the "impact layer" is, but with positive reinforcement?
Thanks. Right now I'm not planning on adding collectibles. The score just increases with each obstacle you successfully dodge. I'm hoping the shadow and the changing colors will be enough to make the dodging intuitive. The checkpoint system should also make it easy to try again if it's not immediately intuitive.
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The game has been released
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Jam entry: https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-10/rate/556421
Game page: https://teljoor.itch.io/piercing-the-4th-dimension
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For my final Wizard Jam entry I wanted to do something relatively simple in concept so I can be sure I'll be able to finish it. I enjoy parallax effects and 2D animation, so I thought it would be neat to base it the episode title 'Piercing the Fourth Dimension' and create a sort of obstacle dodging game moving through 3D space with (mostly) 2D objects. I think it will be fun to see what kinds of effects I can create using geometrical patterns and simple movements. I recently got a big batch of game music and sounds from a humble bundle, so I hope I can get most of the music and sfx from that.
I guess my basic idea of what the game would be like comes from the 'Ninja Pipe Cleaner' microgame from Wario Ware. Maybe a bit of Thumper and Audiosurf as well, but since it won't be a rhythm game that only goes so far.
https://www.mariowiki.com/Ninja_Pipe_Cleaner
This is what I started out with on Friday:
Basically, the player stays at the same depth and obstacles are created some distance away. It all fades to black at a distance, so it looks infinitely deep. I'm now working on determining some basic obstacle types so that I can start figuring out the gameplay. I think I'll try implementing a way for the player character to reflect a single obstacle once every few seconds. Ideally I'd also like to implement some sort of final challenge/boss battle, and having an active element will make that easier. One thing I'm concerned about is that it is kind of hard to tell at what point an object is at the same depth as the player character, which makes avoiding collisions harder. I've now got it so objects change color when close and fade out when they can no longer collide, but I think I'll need to add something more.
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I'd also like to thank the organizers. The first game I ever finished and published was a Wizard Jam project. I think the emphasis on non-competitiveness and the generous time period helped make it easy to jump in. It always felt like a very 'friendly' event.
I'm looking forward to participating in January.
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The shooting mechanic is pretty fun and the designs of the Blandoids and t-shirt gun are nice. The biggest quibble I have is that the most difficult part of the game is not actually the shooting or dodging, but picking up the coins after. Once you get going there is basically no point at which there isn't a Blandoid shooting at you, so it's easy to get hit while running after coins.
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My takeaway: as long as you land on your feet, you'll be ok! I felt that movement and falling were quite slow, which was good to get used to the controls, but since there are no air tricks as far as I could tell it also lead to a pause in the action on each jump.
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A very neat adventure. I liked the different movement types for some of the boots, especially the 'magic' boots' auto-jump and forced movement. I managed to get the cat puzzle piece by just trying solutions, but I couldn't figure out the puffin puzzle.
SpoilerIt seemed like I would have to jump up to the top part of the room twice, but doing so would interrupt the note boots' sequence with the other boots' sounds, so I'm not sure if I was on the right track. The three steps at the bottom where also a bit hard to tell apart.
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Our game has been released!
Jam submission page: https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-9/rate/456934
Main game page: https://jmolenaar.itch.io/motormouth
For now it is just the HTML version. Max/Linux/Windows builds will likely follow later.
I think we managed to iron out a lot of wrinkles during the final day. It always feels rewarding when things sort of come together in the final stretch. Now to hope everything's reasonably tuned and comprehensible to players who haven't spent two weeks working on the game.
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I've updated the thread title to reflect the game's new title. We're planning to make some more final changes and submit the updated version to the jam page tonight.
The main things we're unclear on is how intuitive/responsive the controls are and how well the difficulty is tuned (it goes up as you play). But we can easily change those based on further testing and feedback, either today or in the coming week.
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18 hours ago, phill said:Good work! Also great that you limited your scope in such a way to not get overwhelmed. I love rhythm games so I'm keen to try this out!
Thanks
. I think we're on track to finish it by Sunday. The game isn't actually a rhythm game, just sort of inspired by one, but I hope it will still be enjoyable.
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A quick update:
- basic gameplay loop works
- random pattern generation is in
- all control types we intended to have are working (button, switch, slider, radial)
To do:
- more npc conversations (we're currently testing with just 4)
- add animations to sequence demonstration
- add sound and music
- scoring system and energy meter
- increasing difficulty with number of rounds played
There's still a lot to do, but we're aiming to have all the essentials done by next Friday, so we can spend the weekend on polish and all the odds and ends we want to do before release.
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The game has been released! Check it out here:
https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-9/rate/456934
https://jmolenaar.itch.io/motormouth
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For this wizard jam I am working with a friend, who may also post some later updates in this thread. This will be his first game in Unity and my first time collaborating on a two-week project. To ensure that we can finish it, we have come up with a simple concept that should be very doable but could also be extended if we have time remaining.The basic idea is to have a 'simon says' main game mechanic where the player is presented with a series of instructions and then has to repeat them. As the game goes on the instructions could get more complicated or have to be completed faster.
The visualization for the game is based on the endorsement of 'interacting with humans', from episode 7 of Important if True. The player supports a robot learning to talk and interact with humans. The concept is a bit like the 'First Contact' minigame from rhythm heaven, but it should be pretty different in practice since there is no rhythm element and the input uses different types of buttons.
We hope to at least implement conversations and maybe also gestures and other ways of communication. To be clear, there is no real choice in how to communicate, it is just for visual interest and feedback indicating if the right buttons were used.
In the mockup above the console and buttons are shown in the bottom of the screen. The buttons flash in sequence and the player presses them in the same order. The basic gameplay is currently implemented, but it is only a single fixed sequence with no loop or randomization. The slider and radial buttons are also not functional yet.We hope to have all the planned control types implemented by the end of this week, as well as having the animations, sounds, etc. hooked up so that we can run through a single complete sequence. After that we should also have a better idea of how we can best set up randomized instruction sequences.
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This game was easy to get into and the different concepts for each minigame all worked well without being too similar to each other. I liked the sound bites after each segment. 'Shoot the glass' was still the most difficult minigame to me, so good thing it got toned down if it was even harder before
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Searching for a 'hole' is a great gameplay concept to utilize particle flocking concept. The subsequent challenges also do a good job of introducing the game concepts gradually. When it moves into 3D the effect is kind of breathtaking. I felt the music really helped to keep it from being frustrating when I couldn't easily figure out what to do. Great work.
On 1/30/2019 at 8:38 PM, Henke said:Now I kinda wanna try to make something like this in VR. A thing where you shape the flow of particles drifting through the air by waving your hands around could be suuuuuuuper trippy.
Cosmic sugar VR is kind of like this, if I remember correctly. https://store.steampowered.com/app/559010/Cosmic_Sugar_VR/
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I managed to beat the first challenge also, though I didn't try for the advanced ones. The controls looked kind of intimidating from the description, but with the tutorial it was actually pretty intuitive. As far as UI goes, it might be easier to select different parts to build from a grid instead of cycling through one at a time.
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The mechanic of lifting things to lift bigger things is very intuitive. I also like the 'too easy' prompt which makes it clear you can move on to bigger things.
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The mosquito sounds and music combine to make a good, scary atmosphere. I also liked the look of the swarm effect when the mosquitos exit the car.
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This is well written. The feeling of contempt really comes through. I like that basically anything you do results in new prompts and dialogue, so you aren't going in circles trying to find one specific key or something like that. From what I played there seem to be a lot of different branches. Alexa even had a reaction for the order in which I went into different rooms.
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It's a good-looking skeleton. I like how the legs move one after the other. It's a bit hard to aim with the dinosaur moving around while you shoot, but you can spray so many projectiles that it ultimately doesn't matter.
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I liked that the descriptions both for the scene and the letters were not too extensive. If there is a lot of descriptive text in interactive fiction of this kind I sometimes end up skipping through the later bits. The music is nice, I feel it sets a comptemplative mood.
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It IS fun to chase humans around
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When I read the description I wondered why a visual novel would use gamemaker instead of a more specialized engine like Ren'py, but the minigames made that clear soon. I can't really judge the story since it's basically just the setup for now, but it's neat having some simple games in there.
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It was a good idea to have a summary up front for each witness, because I expect I'd have a lot of difficulty getting a sense of their personality from their statements and keeping them mentally separated over like 8 different interviews. Having important topics in italics also really helped to know what information was important. I also really liked the sounds used to set the mood (the rain, sounds of passerby, knocking on the door, etc.).
Since I'm not really sure if I got the investigation part of the game right, I'll just write down a few impressions (this contains spoilers for the different endings).
SpoilerI'm not sure what degree of certainty I was really supposed to get from the testimonies. I ended up guessing that the husband was the murderer based on the victim's still having some money on her, a witness's testimony referring to the husband scheming something with Bernard, and just the fact that the initial evidence made him the least likely suspect.
The ending where you accuse him does seem to be the most extensive, but it doesn't absolutely confirm that he is the culprit.
I am assuming the endings do not depend on your prior actions, repeating the whole investigation before your accusation. If interviewing potential witnesses is supposed to change the endings or alter information you can get in further interviews that should certainly be made clearer.
On the whole I feel the game sets its scene well, but lacks clear feedback the player's performance. For instance, it would help to have some indication of how much of the available information you have gathered, either in general or for each individual interviewee. I realize that given the theme this uncertainty in police investigations is part of what the game is trying to communicate, so feel free to ignore that suggestion.
I also noticed a few bugs, which I'll list here. I don't think any of them make the game unplayable or anything, so it may not be worth the trouble to fix them.
The first is that there are some tokens showing up in dialogue. This isn't really a problem. Maybe it is because I am playing on windows or hardware-related.
The second is that when time ran out, I got an error message and then a blank screen. I just restarted the game to proceed, so this also wasn't a problem in terms of being able to finish.
Lastly, I noticed that bringing up a topic to a potential witness that I heard from another witness seemed to switch the conversation to that witness. For instance, bringing up 'schemes' resulted in a response from Arthur Kelly, even though I was talking to someone else at the time.
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It seems that the current upload only has a macOS build. Are you planning to also upload any other versions? Unity should be able to build linux and windows versions, too.
[Released] Piercing the Fourth Dimension
in Wizard Jam
Posted
The game has been released
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Jam entry: https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-10/rate/556421
Game page: https://teljoor.itch.io/piercing-the-4th-dimension
I haven't been able to test the linux or mac os versions myself, so please let me know if you have any trouble with those.
The toughest part of the final steps was getting the progression of obstacle sequences right. Hopefully I've managed to make it not too frustrating. The collision detection is a bit finicky, but I erred on the safe side, so you might be able to seemingly move through some obstacles. I wasn't able to get the shadows working properly in all cases, but I've left in the implementation as-is since it does help in avoiding collision with some obstacles.
I'll be playing some of the other jam entries in the coming week and during the showcase weekend, but for now I'm taking a break.