SuperBiasedMan

[Release] Get Hoisted

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The year is 2025. The world's technology has combined into a tyrannical 45 brained super computer that's constantly learning and evolving to outsmart everyone that tries to stop it. That's why the world needs your skills in hoistball, the hot new sport of the future. You are the worst hoistball player in the world, and we need you to face off against the computer. You must intentionally hoist yourself so that it can learn your bad habits and slowly become less and less intelligent until it's a pushover for us humans to dismantle.

 

EDIT: Get Hoisted has been released! Get it here: https://superbiasedman.itch.io/get-hoisted

 

This is "Get Hoisted" a hoistball simulator. Hoistball is a futuristic fast paced game that's basically dodgeball with grenades. You're facing off in matches against a powerful AI, but your objective is not to win. Instead, you have specific challenges like "Hoist Yourself" where you need to be blown up by your own rebounding grenades hoist balls. Each match is about you trying to complete these self hoisting objectives before the match is over, because whoever wins... you lose. Each time you complete a challenge, the AI will then adopt that behaviour in the next mission. So the AI gets less effective over time but you still need to make sure games last long enough to complete each new objective.

 

The idea is that each level will be an interesting challenge where you have to hamper yourself in a different way. The prime example of "Getting hoisted" requires that you lose your team members by getting caught by the rebound of your own hoist balls. But that means you can't let them get caught out by the enemy team's hoist balls. And you also need to make sure you don't accidentally start killing off the whole enemy team without completing the challenge. Each challenge will be a different way of skillfully hampering your own side and I'm hoping to name all the challenges after silly Idle Thumbs network memes like "Get Hoisted", "Stay Spicy" and "I Scorn My Past Self"

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Started on this today, just for a little bit after work but I already have rudimentary player control in there as well as the ability to launch bouncing hoistballs. It's strange getting the bounce to look right from a top down perspective, but I have the principle of the motion in place and just need to fix the numbers so it feels right.

 

I've also done some basic style set up for the art. Picking out a few colour palettes to use. It'll be sprite art, and I'll be attempting to make it have a neon style glow, without ruining the limited colour palette. I have a promising test, but I'll work up some more before sharing these tests.

 

Feels like a good start anyway, but with lots more to do. 

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Such a good concept, I love the idea that perfect matches would be entirely boring and our flaws are what make things interesting. What engine are you using for this one?

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It's gonna be in Unity, as I usually use what I already know to try squeeze more juice out of my two weeks. :P

 

I have some basic movement in now. Just arrows to move, click and hold to launch hoistballs. Plus you can toggle between different members of your team. I think the primary obstacle now is figuring out the AI for your dormant team mates as well as the enemy AI. That's all entirely new to me so I haven't even figured out where to start so I've just gotta look into some resources.

BasicControls.thumb.gif.164d1978df9d0ab90393289daaf05004.gif

 

I also added a glowy ghost trail effect.

GlowTrail.thumb.gif.9ebe5713a9bcee693f7a9683611fb526.gif

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Nice progress @SuperBiasedMan!

 

If you need a hand with the AI stuff I'd be happy to talk it through, it's about the only part of game programming I actually enjoy, well that and ui. :lol:

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I fell off updating here because a lot of my time at home was spent jamming rather than updating the devlog, but I did submit this!

 

I managed to implement an AI system, with thanks to Mythalore for some advice on designing it. It and the game in general is a bit rough, but it definitely taught me a framework for how to do this stuff. And I could do it a lot cleaner the next time round. :P

 

Also big thanks to @Atlantic for composing the cyberpunk music for the game. I just gave him my vague wishy washy ideas and that was all he needed.

 

You can find it here: https://superbiasedman.itch.io/get-hoisted

 

All in all I'm pretty happy about what I learned, and already excited to hop onto a new project to make use of that knowledge. ^^

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I like the simple art style, especially the movement "trail", and the music is awesome! I didn't quite figure out how to win against the AI, but I got some good self-hoistings.

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