[Release][Testing] Mayday Mayday - Cockpit Freakout

[hedgefield]

Looking through the episode titles I got the most vivid game idea from this one, and imagined a Top-Gun-esque scenario where the pilot is pressing buttons and flipping switches in rapid succession to save his failing plane. Also this seemed like the game idea that required the least effort, which is nice as I'm working on three other projects at the same time as a freelancer   (although I might have to revisit Osama's Dog and Layer Jake at a later date).

 

Anyway I figured first things first and get a cockpit in there (placeholder photo that I nicked off the internet) and make it FLY.

 

 

 

[hedgefield]

Spent some time with the game again today, and after putting in some QTE keyboard prompts on the various buttons and panels yesterday, I wrestled with getting them to recognize the correct key input and translate that into your plane either freaking out more or less.

 

I've got it working pretty okay now, it picks a keyboard key at random to display, and if you press the correct key before the time runs out your plane stabilizes a little bit. And conversely if you press the wrong key it starts shaking more and more and eventually spins out of control. Tomorrow I want to look into making the situation escalate when you miss a keypress as well, I suspect that will be tricky.

 

[Synnah]

Looking good! I meant to say that I really like the sense of motion and distress in the first GIF. What are you making this in? Unity?

[hedgefield]

Thanks! I'm using Unity yeah. The motion is a combination of spawning empty gameobjects with trail renderers and 2d cloud sprites at some distance from the player and moving them forwards at a high speed. Once they pass the player's field of view they are destroyed and get spawned again in front. So the cockpit isn't actually moving.

[hedgefield]

Made some good progress yesterday putting in a win and lose state, and I made a cheesy start screen main menu type of thing. It too has camera shake.

I just have to do audio now and I have a few extra touches that I want to put in, but I wonder if I'll have time for that.

 

[hedgefield]

Finished up the game this morning and it's an itchio now! It could use some tweaking so I'll probably use the last few days until the deadline for that, and I hear that it crashed the macbook of at least one person, so if anyone is willing to try out the Mac build before the deadline and report back, that would be sweet.

 

http://hedgefield.itch.io/maydaymayday

[Patrick R]

This is the most stressful game I have ever played. I lasted about six seconds before I started freaking out and had to turn it off.

[eRonin]

Oh my god my heart. But I managed to do it on the third try! But seriously though my heart.

[gerbilsinspace]

It didn't crash my macbook. Hurray!

[Synnah]

I like this! It does what it sets out to do, which is create a sense of panic, really well.

 

I did notice that if you slow down and don't worry about hitting every key, you can basically only go for the ones your fingers are nearest to and not worry about things getting worse, as this only happens when you get a key wrong. Once you realise this it's much less stressful, and you level up into a skilled pilot.

[Spenny]

I pressed 0 keys successfully and freaked out successfully.

[hedgefield]

I did notice that if you slow down and don't worry about hitting every key, you can basically only go for the ones your fingers are nearest too and not worry about things getting worse, as this only happens when you get a key wrong. Once you realise this it's much less stressful, and you level up into a skilled pilot.

 

Haha yep that is my pro strat as well. Originally I had intended to also make the key prompts you miss add to the failure, but that meant you basically failed in three seconds unless you were a master of the keyboard. And if I had then increased the time of each prompt you could win it with easy. So it was a tough balancing act but I am pleased with the skill/fun tradeoff I ended up with.

 

Thanks for checking it out! It was fun to make something completely different to what I usually make.

[Reverend Speed]

WOOHOO I am a freakout pro. That said - is the speed the buttons appear at randomised? I had one game where I just could not keep up - letters and numbers kept flashing up at a super-superhuman rate. Awesome abstraction of that first-time-flight-simulator feel. Really dug the music, the speedlines and the famed virtual cockpit. =) Could you take this further? Whole commands to type, levers to pull with the mouse, etc...? Though that might be taking you towards something like Artemis...

 

 --Rev