[RELEASE] Live from the Past - A Ludonarrative Dissonance Hockey Game

[Nappi]

UPDATE: Released

 

https://ktomi.itch.io/live-from-the-past

 

 

 

Summary

 

My plan is to recreate one of these 

in an abstract video game form.

 

Instead of having having 5 players + goalie per team my plan is to have just 1 player + goalie per team. To change lanes the player has to pass him- or herself to another lane. The puck is attached to the attacking player, but if the defending player manages to touch the player+puck combo, then that player gets the puck.

 

Target render

 

I was excited to get started and already made a mock-up of the board in Inkscape.

 

Gameplay

 

- Left stick to move back and forth along the current lane.

- Right stick to aim. The actual aim direction is camouflaged from the opponent by the fake arrows, while the attacker still knows which arrow to follow.

- Right trigger to charge up your shot, release to shoot. The longer the trigger is pressed, the faster the shot. However, charging up also reveals where the player is aiming, as the fake arrows start to fade away or diminish or something.

- Left trigger to "magnetize" (or possibly "demagnetize") the lane towards which the player (or player+puck combo) is heading after a shot. When the player encounters a magnetized lane, that lane will become his/her new position. My plan is to highlight the magnetized lane so that the other player can predict the pass, but a skilled player can still trick the opponent by "demagnetizing" the lane just before the catch.

- A button to quickly switch between the player and the goalie.

 

Balancing the gameplay

 

... will probably suck. Things to fiddle with include movement and shooting speed; size of player, puck, and goal; attack time; one-timer mechanics.

 

Where I need help

 

As this is my first time making a game, I will probably I will probably be bothering everyone on Slack with silly Unity questions.

 

I might also need your help testing the game: I doubt that I will be able create an AI within this time frame. In addition, I may not be able to get anyone to test this game with me locally during the jam (this is not as sad as it sounds, really). I'm hoping to implement a very simple network multiplayer (Think "What is your IP Address?") for this game, but I have no idea how much work this really is

 

I'm good in terms of art assets for now, as I actually like tinkering with vector graphics. I would also like to make some stupid background music myself, but it might be that I will go for someone else's services in the end.

 

Diversifiers 

 

The episode title "Live from the Past" inspired me to think about a team sport where the team is replaced by one player with time travel (and teleportation) capabilities. The earliest version of this idea involved the players playing a quick round of 1 vs 1 snake. where the final arrangement of the snake would represent a sort of wibbly wobbly probability density function along which the players could move and teleport however they pleased. It quickly dawned on me that this would be too much for me to implement (I have never made a game before), and that most configurations of the snakes would make the actual sports part pretty pointless.

 

Therefore, the gameplay does not match the title anymore, but I decided to keep it (for the time being at least), because of my second object which is to maximize the Ludo-Narrative Dissonance of this game by creating a bonkers story mode. Think loneliness and boredom contrasted by fast paced team gameplay. Think LFTP - A Spike Jonze joint. 

 

Other possible diversifiers: Idol Thumbs, Could you repeat that?, Dishonored Holidays, Box Art, From the horse's mouth.

 

 

 

[theschap]

This sounds so awesome!

[Mythalore]

Nice work on that mock up really slick, are you going for that style for the actual game?

[Nappi]

Thanks!

 

Yes, that is the art style I'm aiming for (for now at least).

[Nappi]

 

I wanted to start with something where I can see the progress, so I focused on purely cosmetic stuff first. Now that I have the player and the puck ready, I can focus on making the lane system work. I expect that this might take some time. 

 

[zerofiftyone]

Very good look. Very nice. 

[Nappi]

Thanks!

 

I expected this to be the hard part in terms of programming, and I was right. I encountered a lot of problems, but I also learned a lot. 

 

 

(Man, OBS is not great with these colors)

[Nappi]

I'd like to thank everyone in Slack for support, technical and otherwise, over the last couple of evenings! I hit a really rough patch as a result of my inexperience with Unity, the use of a 3rd party asset whose workings I did not fully understand, and my decision to use 2D Experimental Preview of Unity. The 2D build has nice features such as 9 slice for non UI sprites, but it did not work with the 3rd party asset, so I reverted back to a different version of Unity, which in turn involved importing most of the sprites and GameObjects again.

 

Anyway, I'm glad that it is over with. I'm not expecting similar big structural problems for some time now, so I think working on the prototype will start to feel fun again.

[BluShine]

Looking great so far, reminds me of Videoball. Would be amazing if this could support 4 players or even more!

[Henke]

Nice! Loved those hockey games as a kid, looking forward to this.

[Nappi]

Thanks!

 

BluShine, 4 player would definitely be interesting, but might be outside the scope of this jam.

 

Lots of work on triggers and colliders, and some visual improvements on lanes. Next, I will have to implement puck stealing, add goalies and goalie lanes, and make a script for score keeping. After that, it is testing and balancing (although, I suspect that the game will still  be fairly unbalanced after this jam), and moving on to UI and the story mode.

 

 

[Nappi]

Title screen test. I'm not sure I'm focusing on the right stuff here...

 

[Nappi]

 

I have implemented nearly all of the gameplay features I was planning on. I still have to implement passing as a goalie (regular "passing" is essentially the same as switching lanes, but the goalie can't switch lanes, so I'm thinking that when goalie passes the ball, it passes the player as well).

 

Lots of tweaking still to be done too. For example, as I was posting the video I noticed that the relative size of the puck and the player does not remain constant. I also need to play a lot with movement speed, shooting force curves, drag, etc.

 

I hope I will actually get to the ludonarrative dissonance element of the game before this Jam is done. :S

[Nappi]

Did some tweaking, and played around with the title screen / main menu animations

 

 

[Nappi]

 

That trail thing is still very much a work in progress. I just wanted to see if it could be made with the Particle System in Unity.

[theschap]

B-E-A-Utiful! The gameplay looks super smooth.

[BigJKO]

Holy shit this looks amazing!

 

[Nappi]

Thanks a lot guys!

 

The game is now released. I will still add music, controller selection, and color options at some point, but I'm too tired to continue now. Please, let me know if the game crashes and burns on launch.

 

The story mode is a bit of a mess, but I still wanted to include it, because it was one of the earliest ideas I had when I started to plan this project.

 

https://ktomi.itch.io/live-from-the-past

 

 

 

[Nappi]

In case someone has downloaded this but not tested it yet, I uploaded a version on itch.io that is slightly less eerily quiet (i.e. I added some sound effects, and background music/sounds). I would like to do better job with music/sounds at some point, but I'm pretty burned out at the moment, so we'll see.  

[atte]

I really like the simplicity and the classic ice hockey game inspiration. I tested this alone so I can't comment how well the 'real game' works but it does feel and look nicely executed. This kind of restricted but analogue movement and aiming is a very interesting concept and I can't quite think of other games that have it like this.

It would require some finger dexterity and multi tasking from the player but, maybe having the option to move the goalie with L and R triggers while still being able to control the attacker would work. That way you could quickly adjust the goalie position while continuing to move with the attacker.

 

And this is an almost opposite gameplay thought and it would be quite a different game but... I wonder how this would work if your team was 2 (maybe 3) attackers and a goalie. Attackers couldn't change lanes and L shoulder button for example would switch between them. This would of course demand other changes in the core gameplay too and resemble more that plastic ice hockey game.

Some visual nitpicking: The seleced option could be highlighted/emphasized more in the menu and the rink background circle texture, even though subtle, was distracting me a bit. Maybe an option to select other styles including a blank(ish) texture.

 

[Nappi]

Thank you very much for trying the game out and for the comments!

 

The player + goalie gave me some headaches, and I would need to play some multiplayer to actually see how broken the system is at some point. Someone else suggested separate controls for the goalie as well, and it might eventually be the way to go. I did not implement it yet, because (a) I felt like I didn't have the time/energy to figure it out during the jam, and (b) because I thought that fast enough switching mechanic might approximate the situation, since not many players would be dexterous enough to efficiently multitask between the player and goalie anyway. One of my ideas was to adjust the movement and shooting speed such that the defending player could easily move the goalie in a position where a direct shot would be difficult, and then proceed to try to steal or mask the ball with the player character. Again, balancing this will be difficult and require a lot of testing.

 

I considered having more players on fixed lanes as well, but did not try it out due to time constraints. This would require quite good lane design and/or a sucking mechanic so that the ball wouldn't get stuck in a place where it cannot be picked by any other player (definitely doable, of course). As you say, it would be quite a different game, but super interesting.

 

As for the visual stuff: I totally agree with the highlight thing and I will add colored highlight or something at some point. It is especially bad when your cursor remains on top of one of the options while your controller highlights another one. I can also see how the circle texture might be distracting. As you can see from my progress videos, I decided to add the background moving and flipping background texture at one point, because I didn't want the game to be quite so visually minimalistic. After that, the contrast between the textured background and the completely blank rink started to bother me and I hastily created a texture for the rink. As you say, this can be easily solved by having optional styles.

[Patrick R]

Really like the presentation a lot, but you should definitely mention on the Jam page that this requires a controller. I was able to navigate the menu with mouse and keyboard fine and enjoyed a lot of story and then when Nick starts mentioning the left and right stick and bumpers, my heart began to sink.

[Nappi]

Good point! I mentioned it in the itch.io page, but many people probably download it directly from the Jam page, so they never get to see requirement. I'm new to itch.io and the separate Jam page thing confuses me a bit.

 

I would definitely like to add mouse and keyboard support for the game. Shouldn't even be too hard; I just need to find the energy to do it. As this is still a two player game, one controller would still be required to actually enjoy main part of the game, but that would still be much better situation than the current one. I know that two xbox controllers is a really steep requirement for stupid jam stuff. :S

 

 

[Patrick R]

Yeah, the separate game and jam pages is so weird to me.

 

[Nappi]

I added an experimental keyboard and mouse support for beta v1.2.

 

You can change the input settings in options now. If anyone wants to play through the story mode or test the basic functionality of the game but doesn't have a controller, he/she can set the input method for player one and then skip the setup for player two by pressing esc twice. This is still a multiplayer game, so one controller is required to play properly.

 

I also uploaded a new video with some more sound effects and background noises: