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Berzee

[Released] Beware of Falling Samurai

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UPDATE

Download link here: https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-4/rate/101763

Let me know if you play it and if it runs without catastrophic failure. :)

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Hooray!

 

I started making a game about falling samurai several days ago. I don't have terribly much time to devote to it, so I picked something that I thought I could use to just mess around with a few aspects of Unity that I've never had occasion to use before, such as ragdolls and Pro Builder. It's coming along! The hardest part has been making a gif or a video to put in this thread (because none of the free recording software I try is working with my computer for some reason) so I decided to make the thread without anything like that, just to register my participation.

 

Anyway, here's a not-moving picture of some falling samurai. Another thing I don't have time to do this week is learn how to rig characters in a way that plays nicely with built-in Unity ragdolls, so these samurai look suspiciously like the default Unity 5 Man wearing a helmet I found on the internet.

 

http://i.imgur.com/qHn3vU2.jpg

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Whew! Didn't have time to keep a very good dev log =T but I finally finished the game. I'll update the top post with the link but here it is again: https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-4/rate/101763

 

Try it out and let me know if it, y'know, runs. =P

 

 

Life lessons I learned during this jam:

-- Unity Ragdolls are bogus. They're not as magical as I thought, and even when using the built-in unity man, they still stretch and deform and result in torn polygons flashing 'cross the sky. But they're ragdolls so they're still fun by default.

-- ProBuilder is great! I tried the free version and I felt a tiny bit like a Level Designer for a few minutes.

-- I've done third person camera stuff before but this is the first time I've tried doing it in a full level with like, walls and corners and stuff. It has made me realize that you better have a real good reason for choosing third person instead of first person when you're making a game, given the extra headaches it causes (the good reason in this case is, of course, ragdolls!).

-- Probably I learned other things too, things so profound I haven't even realized them yet.

 

Now it's time to rest and recuperate, and then play all the other games. Hooray!

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Also -- my wife and toddler are playing this game right now and she is telling him, "Those mans are really tired and sick. That's why they're resting on the ground. Yep, they're fallin' out of bed."
So there's some alternate-reality family friendly lore for you.

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When I view the game in the itch app, it says it's not available for windows, but I was able to download the zip file and run it manually. It does run, but I can barely move (the character's just running in place and moving forward very slowly). Also, all the red samurai seem to be falling in one place in the corner near the start. Is this a bug, or am I missing something about the controls? I'm just holding 'W'.  (If it isn't actually supposed to work on windows that'd also explain it, of course)

Just to be clear, everything's animating at normal speed, it's just my movement that's slow. 

 

Edit: I just checked the app again and saw I could install it through there now. Maybe I overlooked it the first time. The movement issue is still there though.

Edited by Teljoor
update on how the game runs/potential bug

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I fixed the itch page so it knows the game is for windows, mac, and linux now. =)

 

Bummer about the movement bug. =( May I ask what version of Windows you're on (I have run it on a couple different win10 machines thus far)? I will have to try on a few more computers to see if I can get it to break. In any case thank you for testing! I will let you know if I upload any potential fixes. At least your guy will be safe from falling samurai where he's stuck. :wacko:

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I'm on windows 10, too. Could be that it's not a common issue, of course. Hope someone else can test it too and report back.

 

Edit: I think I've found the cause. I had the graphics set to 'Fastest', which was the default. When I switched it to 'Fantastic' it ran normally. The red samurai were also falling in different places. There must be some connection between the graphical quality and the way distances are calculated, or something.

Edited by Teljoor

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Yep, I'm pretty much just waiting for one more person to confirm that it works for them so I can decide that it must be somehow All Your Fault. ;)

*holds breath*

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Really funny game. Falling samurai is just a good concept. And the umbrella "boing"... really good.

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Aha, just saw your edit, Teljoor, and it clued me in to the problem. Turns out I had a line of physics-related code outside of the special place where Unity requires all physics code to run ("FixedUpdate", if anyone is wondering). I uploaded a new version that should let you play on Fastest now if you want to...although it turns out that there are no shadows at all on Fastest, so the quality settings are kind of like difficulty settings too! :P

 

Thanks for playing as well, kevin888. ^_^ I think we can agree that the moment when I found that boing sound in the Youtube Audio Library is the moment when this project became Art.

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This is great! Lovely intro comic, funny prop choices (that hat and those ropey looking parasols are brilliant choices) and most importantly a clever mechanic - using the shadows in a 3D world to judge where things are going to fall. I could definitely play a lot more of this if you expanded it out and added a bit of visual and audio polish.

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5 hours ago, Squawk Squardon said:

On Itch.io it's marked as Pc Mac and Linux downloadable, but I only see a .exe in the download. Am I missing a thing?

Nope, just me being a numpty. =P I've added mac and linux builds now. (No idea if they work though! I don't currently have a good way to test them. Except for you, Squardon! u r only hope).

 

10 hours ago, Ben X said:

This is great! Lovely intro comic, funny prop choices (that hat and those ropey looking parasols are brilliant choices) and most importantly a clever mechanic - using the shadows in a 3D world to judge where things are going to fall. I could definitely play a lot more of this if you expanded it out and added a bit of visual and audio polish.

Gee thanks. :D

I think if I ever did come back to this, the first order of business would be to figure out some way to rig it so you could get an idea of how close the falling objects are to the ground. Maybe see if there's a way to make the shadows get darker as they get closer...

It also occurs to me that if the game was longer, a simple way to make the later levels a bit tricky would just be to have the sun start setting. =) It would be a lot more challenging if it wasn't high noon!

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Checkpoints are such a good quality of life addition here. The first time I got hit with a falling samurai I thought "Oh geez, am I gonna have to restart at the beginning every time, this is gonna suck" but it turned out real good. Feels like a very good test for an actual game.

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