TIGSource Forums

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/254701/blog/dsd/jan_16.jpg)

Deep Sea Descent is a flying-and-shooting action game.
Explore the caves until you reach the ending.

I also have a (long-running) thread (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8098.0) in Devlogs for this game, but I know not everyone reads that forum. The game's still unfinished, but feedback is welcome.

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dJ-wKkRo2A

Play:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/254701/builds/index.html

Cool, it's like a new-age Ecco the Dolphin. Solid controls and I liked the whole shooting option thing as opposed to using a mouse (which is even harder on a laptop).

I only beat the first two levels so as far as feedback I found the tracking mines to be a little cheap (too fast?) and the in-gameplay text didn't look as good as the rest of the game.

New build.

I just did some tuning on the enemy balance(and added a hard mode toggle while I was at it, which is essentially "make enemies move faster.") I've heard several people express frustration at the tracking mines now, because the cardinal movement makes them tend to go right at your blind spots as they close in, so you end up with a "helpless" moment between when they enter the blind spot and when they hit. Slowing them down makes this worse, if anything, because you feel more humiliated at missing such a sluggish opponent.

I'm solving this with a little cheat: you will now think that you're better at managing the blind spot than you really are. The mines have added a very slight arc to their movement, just enough so that it brings them closer to your center of mass(and thus more likely to hit).

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/254701/blog/dsd/jan_17_text.jpg)

Could you tell me more about the text? Like, is the font itself ugly/hard to read? do I need more variation or effects? (I could easily slap on an outline or drop shadow with Flash filters, or with a little more work, animate with scaling or tweening...) And does the system font I use for tutorial/help text clash with the bitmapped one? I've wanted to try to improve the graphics but haven't been sure what to try working on, so this really helps.

Just took a look at the YouTube video, since the Flash player doesn't seem to be working on my Ubuntu desktop for some reason (I'll try the game later when I'm in Windows). There seems to be something strange going on when you steer the ship up and down. It looks as if it's turning in the opposite direction (i.e. when you go down, it seems to be tilting upwards, and vice versa).

I found the text in the tutorial and the levels blended with the background fine, but yeah it looks pretty dull. For instance in the picture you posted, if you could match "Left, Right move. A to select" with the other text such as "Cancel" without changing the size much I think that would fix it.

Is there supposed to be an occasional static-y noised flickering overlay on the whole game screen? Also the sprites move rather slowly. Is there some way to see a FPS counter -- maybe my laptop isn't fast enough (1.6, integrated graphics).

@chrknudsen: I'll try reversing tilt direction for the next build - but the fundamental flaw is really in having a "side view" game with "top down" shapes, which I did because the ship model had an unidentifiable and extremely flat side-view profile, just like a real manta. :shrug2:

@BinaryMind: I'll see what I can do about the text. (fingers crossed)

@george: Yes, there is supposed to be a whole-screen flicker effect. It happens when you're damaged. If anyone finds it seizure-inducing let me know and I'll tone it down some more.

Re: framerates. Press Ctrl+P to show FPS during play. What is your OS? If it isn't Windows, the game will probably be slow and there is nothing I can do about it. This game pushes Flash's rendering performance hard and that is a really OS-dependent thing. You may also want to try the 10.1 beta, (http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html) it made the game run substantially faster for me.

OK, I get a consistent 40 fps (without 10.1b), is that normal? The video definitely looks like it plays quicker than what I was seeing.

I like it. Has an underwater Metroidvania thing going on. Controls were pretty solid, and the ability to "after-touch" your shots was an excellent addition. Sound was good, and the music had a nice retro feel to it.

The models were clear and nice, but my only complaint is the environment was a bit repetitive and dull. This is the underwater world... should be vibrant and alive. Lots of variety and colors.

Past that, great work.

New build.

Major changes include a revised timing system which will make the game feel a little faster and a lot smoother, bilinear filtered fonts(done by abusing Flash 10's 3D functions, which makes them a bit blurry but no longer aliased), various bits of HUD polish, and some content(very first-pass, largely unfinished) for e1m3 and e1m4.

@george: It turned out that FPS wasn't displaying properly because of my old timing mechanism. Try the new build, and please tell me your OS/browser combo as well.

@Chaotic Heart: I dislike my environments too, but I kind of built myself into a corner with the 3D high-res assets. It'd take at least a month to make a really good attempt at lush, detailed backgrounds, and I don't have any more months to spare. I do plan to keep iterating over the lighting, at least.

Summary: Nice Start. :handthumbsupR:
I only tried out a couple of levels.
I like the style and it plays nice. Feels like it could use a bit more polish. The big thing is it feels like it needs more focus on the gameplay/level side of things.

Not sure how far into development you are and what kind of feedback you are looking for but here some thoughts:

*Really like the evironmetn and character renderings.
*Has nice Deep Sea feel.
*Character art and level art don't seem to match.
*Not sure of the story.
*Whats the trilobyte sonar for?
*Loading icon for loading levels would be nice.
*Took some time to get the controls but they feel good.
*Would be nice if there was a watery movement effect (water blure would be awesome but proabably out of scope. A shadow effect on the ship when you hit the dark areas would also be cool. In short adding a few things to make the world feel more alive and less static would be nice. The lights are a nice touch.
*It'd be nice to know what switches do when you hit them. I thinkt he locations were close but more info would be nice.
*Only having one bullet is kind of annoying.
*Combo meter could stay up a bit longer but that's debateable. The I'm not sure if I like that there is a score, this game feels more about exploration.
*Teal UI doesn't appeal to me, but doesn't necessrily need to change. Font is OK.
*I like the trilobyte and arced shots but they don't seem to fit a purpose. I used the trilobyte once to hit a switch. The left/right forced seems like an arbitrary limitation. I'm not sure what these are adding to the game and yet they seem to be the primary player mechanics.

In short I like the setting and gameplay ideas, it just feels that the mechanics aren't integrated. Looks really good so far.

No build today, but I will probably have one tomorrow(mostly refinements to e1m3-e1m4 and the introduction of "hidden mines" which only the sonar can see)

@del: Nice feedback. There are two general things I can respond to here - the graphics and the mechanics.

The graphics are basically overscoped. Going for high quality assets makes everyone(myself included) hyper-focused on the details, more so than if it were some low-res pixel-art thing. I could downres it all so as to start pixelling in new assets and make it look more lively, but I'd really have to swallow my pride on that one, and it might not even be the right move! I may be able to do some of those water/shadow effects, loading icon, etc., It's just a matter of time and performance/gameplay impact. I considered water effects and one of the potential problems that steered me away from them is that the distorted look may harm gameplay, but since I'm hearing it suggested by someone else, it's on the table again, and if I can work out the details and make it perform OK, it will probably make an appearance in a build very soon.

For context: I am eight months into the project with a little under a month to go. This is actually the third iteration of a game concept I did years ago. Each time has been a little bit different, but the progression is towards larger scope, features, and refinements. Preproduction - research, engine and tools coding, refining the creative concepts and planning an art process, etc., was the first six months. The end of November was when a playable game started taking shape, content started getting built, etc. and I have been moving very fast since then and have very few unknowns on the creative side of things, thanks to all that preproduction work - I know what the characters are like and where the story goes, and it ends up being a very non-standard game story. There is ample room to keep working on it for another year or more, at least, but I have to cut myself off and push towards shipping, and leave the unanswered stuff for a sequel. (I'm already thinking that a sequel would be more open-world, have shops and levels and upgrades, etc., to give an idea of how much room there is for the concept to keep growing)

As for the mechanics, there's basically two ways I can take that kind of feedback; one way is "I'm really not using these mechanics properly in the level design," and the other is "you aren't comfortable working with them yet, given the amount of time you've spent playing, and how I went about giving them tutorialization and contextualization, thus you feel ambivalent about their worth." I think the real answer contains a little bit of both, because the thrust of the design is to make really cool non-standard mechanics, and push each mechanic a little bit farther as the game progresses, so that by the end you're doing some fairly complex things with all of those abilities. But making the mechanics non-standard means that I'm breaking a lot of new ground on how best to introduce them to the player and how to make them feel good moment-to-moment. I don't think I've nailed exactly how to exploit the mechanics yet, but that's one reason why I'm running a feedback thread - give me cool ideas for how to use aimed shots, the trilobite, and the sonar, and I'll at least try to investigate them :handthumbsupL: :)

New build, fixes some stuff, adds some stuff. Lots of little improvements, overall. e1m3 and e1m4 are starting to get some shape but are not contextualized well(you'll almost certainly run afoul of the hidden mines).

The game worked fine on my machine.

It is nice, that the game has so many features.

Using WASD & the Arrow-keys is uncommon. I expected using WASD & mouse the Arrows & mouse.

The physical bounding boxes of some objects could be better. The bounding boxes of the shoot-at-me-buttons are for example smaller than the graphics.
The bounding box for the ship is to small. In this case I would change the graphic of the ship. Otherwise it could break the gameplay.

I would prefer, when it would be possible to leave the drone at any time, so that I swims back by itself.
It would be nice, when the main-ship would also have the sonar-function to locate hidden objects.

Keep up the good work! :)

New build. Lots of little refinements. I was at a convention and got a few one-on-one feedback sessions in, it will be harder to "break" the tutorial now and get confused.

@JackNeil: Thanks for the feedback. I finally found a solution for the player ship sprite to look OK from side view: I scaled it larger along the Y axis so that it's a bit more "fat" :durr: So that is solved. I've also tuned up the collision in general.

The drone auto-swimming back and the main ship using sonar are somewhat troublesome features. In some segments I would like for part of the challenge to be the retraversal, the going back and finding new enemies, and automatic movement goes against that. Giving the main sub sonar may be the right move for player annoyance but reduces incentives to switch vehicles. Good questions. I will be thinking about them.