Jason Bakker

Post Your Game for Playtesting and Feedback!

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I've also have a post up for my week 1 game up here if anyone is interested.

 

I could not play your new game because, alas, I only own one 360 controller. =P But I played the canyon game and read the post about it. Those are some pretty impressive 1-week canyons! I found some sweet caves, the best being a crack in the wall leading to a giant cavern whose only exit was a little skylight just big enough for my ship. The experience reminded me a little bit of the Beggar's Canyon race from Rogue Squadron. (I identify with the part of the article about iterating on technical stuff while neglecting to iterate on fun. Now I feel bad for being a person who just typed the phrase "iterate on fun".)

 

 

I just played SUPER PUNCHY FACE too (I had to resort to IE to be allowed to download it and now I probably have punchy-face viruses). Was happy that when I right-clicked, a shield bubble surrounded me just as I unconsciously expected it would. ^_^

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I could not play your new game because, alas, I only own one 360 controller. =P But I played the canyon game and read the post about it. Those are some pretty impressive 1-week canyons! I found some sweet caves, the best being a crack in the wall leading to a giant cavern whose only exit was a little skylight just big enough for my ship. The experience reminded me a little bit of the Beggar's Canyon race from Rogue Squadron. (I identify with the part of the article about iterating on technical stuff while neglecting to iterate on fun. Now I feel bad for being a person who just typed the phrase "iterate on fun".)

 

 

I just played SUPER PUNCHY FACE too (I had to resort to IE to be allowed to download it and now I probably have punchy-face viruses). Was happy that when I right-clicked, a shield bubble surrounded me just as I unconsciously expected it would. ^_^

 

I'm glad that you got a beggar's canyon vibe from it, I was partially inspiried by the first level from Rebel Assault

I think the Rogue Squadron level is an homage; the layout is pretty much exactly the same.

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I was hoping I could get some feedback on a game I'm doing as part of one game a week . You can find it here (you'll need two xbox 360 controllers connected to play. I tested it out on firefox, and it seemed to work pretty well). It's local-multiplayer; grab the purple thing and take it back to your side while avoiding your opponent. It's the result of about 4 days work so far.

 

I've also have a post up for my week 1 game up here if anyone is interested.

 

I played the space ship game, and actually had a lot of fun just flying through the endless canyons and bumping off of things. It reminded me of space ship sequences in old Star Wars games. As a side bonus, your game makes some crazy fractal psychedelic patterns when you move the mouse outside of the Unity window and cause the space ship to spin at insane speeds:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kyuxf8hf24h7efx/Screen%20Shot%202014-11-22%20at%2010.12.45%20AM.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bj9iz0c3f8pybx6/Screen%20Shot%202014-11-22%20at%2010.13.08%20AM.png?dl=0

 

They're extra-trippy in motion.

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I read both of these ages ago but totally forgot to reply to them which is terrible form, sorry you guys

 

Thanks for the feedback! I actually think I can have a good way of exploration working. I have a sort of running fiction in my head that you're a submarine and the friends are fish, so it could be about you exploring around the seafloor and I definitely have directions I could take that in to flesh it out past one screen.

 

Those are both good suggestions. Simple things to just improve the basic interaction. Likewise, I want to make the graphics a little less plain before I build onto the code. As I said to you on twitter, looking at the whole is something I ought to do more so I think I'll run with that a bit first.

 


 

I finally gave SpaceThing a look! It was as gorgeous as the screenshots showed. Unfortunately my 2 year old mid range PC is kinda garbage so it wasn't the smoothest experience.

 

Sadly I don't have anything of worth to point out apart from a couple bug things. One isn't a big deal, but out one window I was able to see the edge of the skybox texture and it was kinda jarringly noticeable.

 

The other thing was just that I walked into one tiny room that had no floor and was just able to fall right out into nothingness. As far as I'm aware, I didn't accidentally ask it to take out the floor or anything.

 

Yeah the skybox is super not good right now. I haven't bothered making it nice because I'm not sure if I'm gonna do some cool randomised/procedural thing with it and change it up based on what's happening in the game. I put a sun in it today though! https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B3L7u4xCEAAEsJ3.jpg:large

 

 

Yup, that did it.

The lighting is so photo-realistic. It almost feels like Myst or some sort of panoramic displaying application, but with a different type of distortion. I'm not entirely sure what that distortion is, maybe it's the fact that I'm looking at it through a flat screen. 

Building rooms is impressive, it works. I felt like Siri was helping me design the perfect space-doublewide for my particular needs. The voice in my head was like some sort of car commercial or something.

"This wall, can we get rid of it."

"No problem."

 

I'm glad you put in additional lines for an ad-lib feel. Oddly, I really wanted her so say "Let me go ahead and take care of that for you." but she never did. 

 

I know there are more recent examples of the pandering customer-service fantasy, but this is the only one I could recall specifically:

 

 

Thanks! This is rad stuff to hear. 

It's interesting that you cast the computer as female. It was always male in my head, but I think it's probably best left unspecified, unless it ends up having VA or something. I don't really want to do that, but maybe people don't want to be reading all the time?

 

Thanks for playing you guys!

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I don't know what Chrome's problem is, but I think it just flags raw .exe files as malicious. I've put the file in a .rar, hopefully it will work: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zbsqlj442zgi5n3/SPF%2011-19-14.rar?dl=0

 

 

Thanks for the high praise clyde!! Means a lot to me. I would be interested in hearing what kind of interactions you did create though :3

 

 

Berzee! I tried the swirly bouncing color game! Not a bad idea, though I wound up solving the levels by bouncing one color back and forth in a small area while I waited for the other one to collide with it. Probably not the kind of engagement you're looking for - maybe there should be a limit on how long you can hold the lines for or something so I can't sit there with it forever.

 

Tasty I will try out the multiplayer game next time I'm at a friend's house!

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Thanks for the high praise clyde!! Means a lot to me. I would be interested in hearing what kind of interactions you did create though :3

 

-Controlling the flow of enemies with the door.

-Killing enemies with the door.

-Timed parries.

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d (>.<) b

 

Awesome! That parry needs a lot more work for in terms of animation and sound effects and yada yada, so I'm glad it actually reads like it should!

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I made a lil' browser game about some colorful specks traveling in majestic orbits. Maybe I will expand it into more of a thing someday, but if anyone wants to play it and let me know whether they find it neato or just infuriating, I'd be much obliged. :)

 

Here is a choppy animated graphics interchange format of one of the levels:

8eG8HTr.gif

 

If I came across these little guys in a surrealist walking simulator (something like this), I would be fascinated by them for a good while. In a simple (simple as in elegant rather than easy) puzzle-game, I just lack the motivation necessary to internalize the movements and color-relations enough to succeed without it being a complete accident. I'm sure that for others the reaction is the opposite; they would probably only be interested in figuring out the depth of their interactions in a puzzle-game rather than in a larger world. I think they look beautiful and I enjoyed messing up on number 3 and watching them grow into a single, fluctual, blurred plasmic form. 

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If I came across these little guys in a surrealist walking simulator (something like this), I would be fascinated by them for a good while. In a simple (simple as in elegant rather than easy) puzzle-game, I just lack the motivation necessary to internalize the movements and color-relations enough to succeed without it being a complete accident. I'm sure that for others the reaction is the opposite; they would probably only be interested in figuring out the depth of their interactions in a puzzle-game rather than in a larger world. I think they look beautiful and I enjoyed messing up on number 3 and watching them grow into a single, fluctual, blurred plasmic form. 

 

Seeing these show up as will-o-the-wisps in a larger game would be pretty great, I agree. (If I ever felt like further complicating the maths with another dimension =P). I'm glad you enjoyed watching level 3 spiral out of control; that's one of my favorite things too. ^_^

 

The main regret I have about what I made so far is that if you actually do well, the end game is that you've destroyed all the pretty colors and are left trying to make two tiny dots intersect. Kind of anti-climactic... maybe I will need to give some of the levels different victory conditions somehow. I'm also not the biggest fan of arbitrary/abstract puzzles -- usually I want at least some NPC Face telling me why I'm doing the thing. =P Maybe a future update will include some of my ideas on that front -- but first I will probably take a shot at making the endgame of each level a little bit less regrettable (or, making it so that as you destroy specks the saturation of the world decreases and there is sad piano music and you were the bad guy all along -_-).

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Maybe you can put some context in by making it look like you are moving the colors into something that becomes more colorful.

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I made a really shitty narrative platformer about how I am sad. http://graysoneevans.itch.io/more-often-than-sometimes

 

I enjoyed the raw sentimentality in a brief spurt. 

 

I found myself jumping down the pit when it said that obstacles were meaningless and jumping onto the spikes when it said I must make a decisison everyday. I haven't gone back to see what the result of skipping those would be. I enjoy your use of fail-states; especially when they feel like intentional decisions. It's interesting to see this done when it's not the crux of an epic narrative.

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I enjoyed the raw sentimentality in a brief spurt. 

 

I found myself jumping down the pit when it said that obstacles were meaningless and jumping onto the spikes when it said I must make a decisison everyday. I haven't gone back to see what the result of skipping those would be. I enjoy your use of fail-states; especially when they feel like intentional decisions. It's interesting to see this done when it's not the crux of an epic narrative.

 

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out a way to convey the way I felt mechanically, I felt it was important to make you physically make the choice. My games are personal for a reason and meant to be a dialogue, maybe even a conversation. I think I fail in that respect 100% of the time but I am trying, making a game takes time and trying to make something small in a night can be tiring.

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I have something that vaguely resembles a video game for you guys to try: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vrxtrgos6a6ksxc/Axon.zip?dl=0

 

It's a wave based survival game that plays sort of like a cross between a third person shooter and an action RPG (think Monster Hunter or Dark Souls).  A gamepad is strongly recommended, but if you insist, the keyboard/mouse controls are as follows:

 

WASD + Mouse to look/move

Hold the Right Mouse button to aim, press Left Mouse button while aiming to fire your weapon

X to swap ranged weapons

R to reload

Hold the Left Mouse Button while not aiming to equip the sword, use QEZC or 1234 while the sword is equipped to do melee attacks

Hold Left shift to sprint, tap it to dodge

QEZC or 1234 to use abilities (must be found and equipped in the loadout screen)

Left Ctrl to crouch

 

If the gamepad controls aren't sufficiently explained by the game itself, please let me know so I can fix that.

 

I haven't really hit any milestone that would signify that the game is ready to show off so much as I feel like I've gotten too deep into making it and need some outside feedback to regain my perspective.  Please let me know what you think.

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I guess I'll chime in, @Tasty Shrimp, short and sweet, I'd be interested to see the concept expanded on. The Half-Life intro could have played something like that, would have been pretty sweet.

 

@Lork, I think I mostly managed to figure out the controls without reading any of the tutorial, the combat feels nice and it looks nice too, I didn't play for very long but I would've liked a little bit snappier/faster reload times, the dash move and the neon blade was very nice. I played with xbox controller.

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I guess I'll chime in, @Tasty Shrimp, short and sweet, I'd be interested to see the concept expanded on. The Half-Life intro could have played something like that, would have been pretty sweet.

 

@Lork, I think I mostly managed to figure out the controls without reading any of the tutorial, the combat feels nice and it looks nice too, I didn't play for very long but I would've liked a little bit snappier/faster reload times, the dash move and the neon blade was very nice. I played with xbox controller.

That's good to hear, thanks.  The long reload times are there to encourage the player to employ a mix of melee and gunplay rather than sticking to one or the other, but as you say, they may be a bit too long.

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@A Tasty Shrimp Platter

This feels really good. The buttons snap nicely. The reverb gives me a sense of the space I'm in without seeing it. I can hold down the mouse-button and rake all the switches. I was really surprised/impressed by that last one. I tried to do it assuming that I would not be able to. Very satisfying.

 

@Lork

Your game is suggestive of a finished product that is of much larger scope than I am familiar with giving feedback on. The reason I have a hard time giving feedback is that all of it would be dependent on unknown or undeveloped parts. I don't know what your priorities are and I'm not sure where you are trying to go. That said, I'll just say what I would want to do with this as if I was making it. Maybe you can get something out of that (possibly because you will realize that you don't want to do what I would do and that will allow you to compare my ideas to your unknown preferences, making them more clear). 

 

-I think the enemy movements are currently boring. It feels like I'm in some training-simulator rather than in an interesting situation. This is more because of the enemy-movements than because of the environments. Floating around and sometimes teleporting nearby is not interesting. In games like Halo 3 or Call of Duty, enemies will either be perfoming idle tasks or they will arrive and prioritize placement. Either way, a big part of the enjoyment of that type of game is when I am observing their behaviors. Taking cover or flanking implies intelligence; rushing me implies resolve, stupidity, arrogance, or a lack of interest in survival. Your enemies just seem like they are just going through a laundry washing-cycle or something. The mirror-cubes are an exception to this because they feel like they are observing and surveying me. There is a massive amount of potential behaviors that you could add to these little fellows and I'm not sure what your end result is intended to be so it's hard to suggest some. And example would be that if you want to focus on shooting from cover, then the enemies should also be aware of cover as more than something to path-find around. For instance, they might gather at the edge of a wall and then rush you together. Maybe one of them is a sapper that rushes your cover to destroy it so that the others who are waiting can advance. As a comparison, if you are planning to add any amount of verticality or variations in platform-height a frog-hopping enemy would be interesting. 

 

-If I was making this game, one thing I would not be able to resist the temptation of is making friendly-fire between the enemies likely and performative. Trying to get one enemy to hit another never gets old for me and I will go out of my way to try and do it.  Imagine how cool it would be if an ellipsoid hit a mirror-cube while trying to hit you and all of the mirror-cubes then decided  to attack the ellipsoid instead. This would give the enemies personality. That's what good shooters do, they give the targets personality.

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Oh hey, I didn't notice this thread before I posted a new one at https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9863-wildfire-a-game-about-fire-propagation/ - Not sure if that needs to be deleted and I should post in here?

 

Anyway, I'm making a game called Wildfire about fire propagation.

 

1511336_10153022984551419_29686302869461

 

You can download it here (4MB): http://sneakybastards.net/wildfire_tutorial_test.zip

or from here: http://www.dropbox.com/s/hazev545p3vtkxg/wildfire_tutorial_test.zip?dl=0

 

It's a tutorial and a couple of levels. Any thoughts you have, would love to hear them!

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I don't want to publicly post builds, but if anyone wants to help me out and playtest the Android game I'm working on, I'd really appreciate it. It's going to be my first commercial release: a mobile version of the classic 80s arcade title, Tapper. Still a couple weeks out from release, but I'd really like people to start taking a look. PM me your email if you're interested. Thanks!

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I made this a few months ago. Primary purpose was a bit of html5 canvas practice and having a very basic game design (and no art design) but still allow for different play styles.

 

You should be able to play it to the end in 2 minutes or so.

 

WASD controls

ENTER for item shop when you have some moneys.

 

 

See if you can find a way to cheese my design, exploit the system to turn on easy mode.  I can tweak all the values for balance.

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I don't want to publicly post builds, but if anyone wants to help me out and playtest the Android game I'm working on, I'd really appreciate it. It's going to be my first commercial release: a mobile version of the classic 80s arcade title, Tapper. Still a couple weeks out from release, but I'd really like people to start taking a look. PM me your email if you're interested. Thanks!

 

I'd say try the "plug my shit thread", esp if it is a commercial release people might be more inclined to see it there. I'm iOS i'm afraid so no can do. If you are heading to iPhone deffo poke me.

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15650633293_39945fa6a3_c.jpg

 

 

It's obviously not a game, just fire, and it's early days, but I would like feedback on whether it behaves as you guys would expect being presumably all fans of Far Cry 2. Certainly aesthetically the particles could look a lot better especially where it climbs walls.

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