One8Two8

[Release] The Pizza, the Bee, and the Trash Can

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Link to final version

 

This is my second day working on a game inspired by the latest Important If True podcast "The Pizza, the Bee, and the Trash Can". The plan is to make a game based on trying to survive swarms of bees using traps (which will include a trash can in some capacity). I've chosen to use roughly drawn cartoon style images facing the camera, mostly because it is within the scope of my art ability.

 

So far, I've mostly worked on bee behavior (which is still far from perfect). Next up is making the bees respect solid objects and to let bees sting the player.

DevImg1.jpg

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The bees now respect solid objects (except in cases of low framerate). Next up, I need to start working on some actual gameplay. Right now my candidates for traps include: Trash cans, bug zappers, honey, pollen, nets, and wind. The tricky part will be making sure that all the traps are balanced. It seems like it would be easy for the player to simply set up an attractive trap like honey to bait bees into deadly traps, so there will have to be some limitation on either the placement or effectiveness on these traps.

Bee-Test-1-lq.gif

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9 hours ago, One8Two8 said:

The bees now respect solid objects (except in cases of low framerate). Next up, I need to start working on some actual gameplay. Right now my candidates for traps include: Trash cans, bug zappers, honey, pollen, nets, and wind. The tricky part will be making sure that all the traps are balanced. It seems like it would be easy for the player to simply set up an attractive trap like honey to bait bees into deadly traps, so there will have to be some limitation on either the placement or effectiveness on these traps.

Bee-Test-1-lq.gif

 

This is a very good GIF. 

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On 6/3/2017 at 11:38 PM, One8Two8 said:

Bee-Test-1-lq.gif

 

😙👌

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I started hacking together some traps. I am not quite happy with any of them yet, but it is a start. Once I improve the logic of the honey trap, then I will be able to work on some more interesting traps. On the other hand, the bomb/petard seems good enough already (except for the placeholder explosion). I'm not sure how placing traps should work in the final version. Right now, it just places the trap at your feet and doesn't collide with the player, but later on it might be placed by clicking on the desired spot.

 

The other thing I need to figure out is how to format the gameplay. I'm not sure if I want it to be wave based, with all the bees starting out already spawned, wave based with gradual spawning, or just a more highscore style with bees constantly spawning at an increasing rate and points being awarded for each bee killed.

 

Finally, sound design might be the trickiest part. Footsteps, bombs, and music seem fairly straightforward with the help of royalty-free websites, but bees will be trickier as they need to sound seemless.

 

 

Bee_Test_2_lq.gif

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This game so far looks like:

 

what if the mimics from Prey were the bee plasmid from Bioshock?

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Thanks everyone

 

I haven't made many updates recently because I was mostly working on odds and ends. I now have a nice functional main menu, proper bounds around the play area, the beginning of a proper game-mode, some sound, a minimal hud, and a butterfly net. The net is super hard to use and looks pretty weird, so more work is needed there.bee test 3.gif

 

I tried to do some optimization, but it turns out that my inefficient hack that I put together at the beginning of the project is faster than well-made code. Go figure. I've thought of some other optimizations, but they are lossy and would be time-consuming to program, so I'll hold off for now. So the current cap for bees is around 800 at 60 fps (on my machine), which is less than I wanted, but good enough. I wish I could do some operations in a separate thread, but Unity does not play nice with it, so it probably wouldn't make the game any faster.

 

 

Edited by One8Two8
Moved image around

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This is adorable - lovely Roger Hargreaves illustration style and a jaunty tune. I didn't know what the hell I was doing (couldn't get honey to appear, for example), but I sure killed me some bees!

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3 hours ago, Ben X said:

This is adorable - lovely Roger Hargreaves illustration style and a jaunty tune. I didn't know what the hell I was doing (couldn't get honey to appear, for example), but I sure killed me some bees!

 

Thank you. I will try adding a bit of description to how the honey works to the itch.io page. Most likely, you didn't have any honey when you tried to place it down. They should unlock as a random drop as you kill bees (although there is no indication for this). I included the number of items available in the bottom right corner of the honey icon, but it isn't quite clear that this is the number of honey available.

 

Since people are doing some polishing up to this weekend, I may use that time to make it more clear.

Edited by One8Two8

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I did have some honey (or that number went up anyway) but I couldn't work out how to drop it (or why I would want to - does it trap the bees so you can blow them up?).

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Just now, Ben X said:

I did have some honey (or that number went up anyway) but I couldn't work out how to drop it (or why I would want to - does it trap the bees so you can blow them up?).

 

Did you try pressing 1 while grounded? The honey attracts some bees to it so that you can dispose of them without being attacked.

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Ah, I think I tried 1 when I didn't have honey but then forgot to try that key again when I did. It's a little confusing to have a number as the key for it, especially when it's right next to the counter display!

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26 minutes ago, Ben X said:

Ah, I think I tried 1 when I didn't have honey but then forgot to try that key again when I did. It's a little confusing to have a number as the key for it, especially when it's right next to the counter display!

 

Very true, thank you for your help. I will change that in the weekend showcase version.

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I updated the game to use G as the honey placement key and now it shows an indication when the player tries to place honey without having any. Thanks again to Ben X for the feedback which lead to this clarification.

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I killed a lot of bees! I wasn't sure how to get them to stay by the honey reliably, and I couldn't find a way to hit them with my net without taking damage myself. I made do, though. Sounds like you got the bee sfx working well in the end.

 

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4 hours ago, getinthedamnbox said:

I killed a lot of bees! I wasn't sure how to get them to stay by the honey reliably, and I couldn't find a way to hit them with my net without taking damage myself. I made do, though. Sounds like you got the bee sfx working well in the end.

 

 

Thank you for the feedback! Programming how the honey works is a bit of a balancing act, so I can see why it would seem like it isn't working. The way I have it coded, when the bees are looking for a new target (honey or player), they go to the nearest one unless the honey in question is already occupied by 20 bees. Maybe that number should be higher, but I just don't want 800 bees all fighting for the same bowl of honey. I could also make it so honey takes further priority over humans, but there is also a balancing act there because I don't want bees traveling across the map to get honey. I am definitely open to feedback on improving how the honey works to make it more intuitive.

 

The net is a bit of an acquired skill. I'm generally able to survive unscathed (for the most part) by sprinting backwards while swinging. Still, it is my hope that as the waves get bigger it becomes impossible (or just very skill intensive) to survive just using the net.

 

The bee sounds were actually much less of a problem than I expected. I haven't done much with audio in the past so this was good experience. It turns out that seamless versions of recorded audio is very difficult to create, so I just settled for a longer, imperfect recording of a bee and hoped the recording was long enough so that the seem isn't noticeable unless you are facing a single bee.

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22 minutes ago, One8Two8 said:

The way I have it coded, when the bees are looking for a new target (honey or player), they go to the nearest one unless the honey in question is already occupied by 20 bees.

 

Aha, got it. I was trying to get a million bees to chase me and then put down a honey/bomb trap to take them all out, but now I understand why that wasn't working. I'm not sure what the solution is, but some feedback to explain when honey is "full" would be helpful. That or eliminate the limit and try to restrict the power of the honey in some other way.

 

24 minutes ago, One8Two8 said:

I'm generally able to survive unscathed (for the most part) by sprinting backwards while swinging.

 

Nice, I actually had this thought after I finished writing my last post. I wonder how far I could've gotten by trying that. I think one thing that would help is a particle effect or other visual cue at the point where a bee is hit by the net. That would help me feel like the net and the bees occupy the same space.

 

28 minutes ago, One8Two8 said:

It turns out that seamless versions of recorded audio is very difficult to create

 

It can be a bit of a pain at first, but it gets mechanical once you do it enough times. I take it you've already looked up tutorials and stuff on this, but, if it's helpful, the method I use is:

 

1. Split your clip. (I usually look for a spot where the waveform is at the center, because that minimizes/eliminates the little "pop" that can otherwise happen when the clip starts playing without being faded in. You might not have to worry about this if the very beginning of your clip will never be heard, though.)

2. Now that you have two clips, reverse their order. (Move the left one so that it's on the right, or vice versa.)

3. Crossfade the clips. This will be the "seam" in the loop, but because you're crossfading it, in won't be noticeable.

4. If there's a fade-in/fade-out on the outside edges of your clips by default, remove them.

5. Glue the clips.

 

Looping_an_audio_clip.gif.090a5eea368510d9b2322abf4e1164b1.gif

 

You can use the same method to make looping gifs and videos.

 

 

 

 

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@getinthedamnbox Thanks for the help! I tried using some a couple of those techniques, but couldn't get the result I wanted with the sample I had. Next time I will try following those steps.

 

Based on your feedback, I uploaded a new version with a few changes. I added a small particle effect to the bee when it is hit. I also increased the honey capacity so it should feel a bit more intuitive.

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