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Ok, so this is an early build of a platform game we're working on. It will generally involve pushing movable objects down the level and into a hole while at the same time avoiding and shooting enemies.

(http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/9561/201011161846111440x900s.th.png) (http://img72.imageshack.us/i/201011161846111440x900s.png/)

Linux download (http://doubledude.com/wp-content/uploads/Chompgate_lin_201110.tar.gz)

Windows download (http://doubledude.com/wp-content/uploads/Chompgate_win_201110.zip)

There are no enemies in this build, but there is a movable object on the top of the level, and a hole on the bottom.

The feedback we're looking for is:

• Is the character easy to control?
• Is the level interesting? Would you change something about it?
• Is the movement too fast or too slow?

The controls are:

• Arrow keys - move + aim up/down
• Z - jump
• X - shoot
• mouse scroll - zoom camera

Please help us make this game right by sharing your opinion :)

hey, I'm working on a physicsy platformer too inbetween bouts of my mech game. I love them, TRINE is particularly cool

I reckon the feel can be tricky to get right when everything's controlled in physics (at least, for me anyway)

I don't know your approach, but I tend to whack friction on my characters to 0 and then hand-code the 'feel' to get good control of it, sometimes physics engines have a tendency to dictate things they don't really need to

anyway, having said that I think your game feels nice :). I've only a couple opinions to share-
1- landing on the edge of a platform pushes me off it, due to the spherical character shape. There might not be too much to solve about this, it could just be the way it works- but we're used to seeing characters stand still right until they have nothing but their toes on the platform edge

2- I don't like slowing down when I land- imo its nice to have that feeling of 'hit the ground running' which often you get in platformers. The slow down feels like it stunts flowing action (which is why you may want to consider a custom friction solution)

3- the mass of the ball feels a bit high- its a bit of an effort to get it moving

look forward to seeing this develop!

Thanks a lot for the comments :)


Yes, this is due to the shape of the hitbox. You could actually see the outlines of the hitbox in this build and it is an octagon. Basically what I wanted to accomplish was for the character to slide off a platform when his centre of mass is hanging outside of it. I think I like it that way more than the standard "hanging by one pixel" thing ;)


Thanks, I'll certainly look into that, although there is already a custom friction solution. Actually I never notice any loss in speed when I land, but I'll run some tests, outputting the exact speed, so I can see if it actually changes and how.

EDIT: Ok, I think I know where the slowing down experience comes from. It might be because while landing you are generally moving quite fast vertically, but the moment you land all your vertical speed is lost and only your horizontal speed remains. So you're not slowing down horizontally at all, but you ARE moving much slower in general. Maybe I'll try to find some solution for this, thanks!


This is actually not due to the mass of the ball but due to friction against your body, as the ball rubs against the floor (it must in order to roll) it also rubs against you, but the forces act in opposite directions. I will be looking for some workaround later, this shouldn't be too hard.

hm, I don't *think* I'm imagining slowing a bit sometimes when hitting the ground- I dunno, putting a pattern in the background might help judge that (or er, like you say just measuring the velocity :) )

i just thought of something else which would be cool :) itd be ace if you could stand on top of the ball and run one direction, and the ball goes the other with you on it :D

i don't even want to think about the fudging necessary, but itd be cool :)

Now when you run there is a force applied to your body so that you move. The main difference between this and reality is that in reality the force acts on both you and whatever you're pushing your legs against. Maybe just applying the force to both yourself and the object you're standing on will result in this? I'll definitely try :D

1st. You are from Poland, nice1 ;)

Controls are too delayed and character is moving to slow.
There is no restart of level when im going back to menu and clicking on "play".
When I'm holding jump and then land on platform character is doing second small jump, should be some delay with that.

Hey there fellow Pole!


You're the second person to say that, even though I've already increased the speed and acceleration. I'll probably ramp it up again.


That's because it's not the purpose of this demo :)


The ability to jump instantly after landing is a feature. It's actually quite popular in platformers, but if more people don't like it I'll consider taking it out.

-If you have no momentum, you push the ball super slowly.

-Sometimes the lack of momentum shift in the air pisses me off. You get some speed on the ground in one direction, want to reach a platform in the other direction and don't have the momentum to do so.

Do you plan on adding more ball pushback when it is shot? The way it is barely makes influence, and maybe there's room for a lot of situations, especially with enemies present.

The ball is there just for the test, it isn't final in any way. We wanted to test the movement system and the level design.

I thought low mid-air acceleration worked for the better, but seeing as people don't like it (and even consider the on-ground acceleration too low) I'll probably increase it.

Thanks for the comment :)

Well, I was happy that there were a bunch of paths I could take the ball through. I can use or avoid every part of the stage at will, depending on what path I chose.

I'm guessing that enemies will force you to take or avoid some parts of the stage, instead of just blasting through the most obvious route shooting everything in your way.

There will most probably be two portals from which the enemies will spawn, each on one side of the map. And they will chase you wherever you go, so sometimes you will be forced to use the route that is not swarming with enemies ;) at least that is what I expect to accomplish.

Assorted thoughts:

The friction feels really unresponsive and slidey. I've had good luck making physics platformers by putting the characters on wheels and powering them with a motor constraint. I also have a somewhat strange feature in Chipmunk called surface velocities that adds some extra velocity when performing friction calculations. In both cases you have to use huge friction values to make the controls feel responsive.

Air control is maybe a little on the weak side, but felt acceptable.

Jumping feels a bit floaty. Higher gravity will probably help. It seems like you are giving the player an initial upward velocity and then applying an upward force as long as the jump key is held down. I think it would be good to make the upward force match gravity, but only for the first 0.2 seconds of the jump. I think that's pretty close to what Mario does and it's worked well for me after some tweaking in prototypes I've done.

You should only jump when initially pressing the key. If you hold the key down you jump repeatedly. This makes it really easy to jump accidentally when jumping up onto a platform.

I'll be increasing friction and character acceleration, so it will be less slidey and more responsive.


Thanks a lot, I'll definitely try it, sound reasonable :) And will probably increase the gravity as more and more people are mentioning it.


Not the first person to mention that, so it will probably be out.

OK, I followed the feedback and here is another test release, I also updated the links in the first post:

Linux download (http://doubledude.com/wp-content/uploads/Chompgate_lin_201110.tar.gz)

Windows download (http://doubledude.com/wp-content/uploads/Chompgate_win_201110.zip)

The changes are:

• More acceleration (more responsive controls)
• More friction (less slidey)
• Increased gravity (less floaty)
• Changed the jump according to what slambecke said (much better, but I prefer 0.25 seconds instead of 0.2)
• Only one jump for on key press, no more constant jumping
• The ball is easier to push around
• A LITTLE bit more of air control

In addition to all that I moved my whole game engine from GLFW to SDL, so now the game features .ttf fonts and .png graphics ;)
Comments are still welcome!

  :epileptic:

I'd recommend avoiding spaces in file-names... looks cool though - I'll check back later to see if newer versions will work.

Oh yeah: in case this is a problem my end, system is Ubuntu 10.04 64 bit, Dell Vostro 1510 Laptop. Fairly powerful rig (for a laptop), fairly generic, stable (LTS) distro.


William

PS - In my game, Segfaults are the most powerful enemies. They hide in unallocated memory and are immune to the printf. Good luck  ;)

Two things I noticed for now:

Regarding level design, you can get permanently stuck between the lower blue platform and the platform next to it due to the shape of the collider.
(http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/48/chompgatestuck.jpg) (http://img14.imageshack.us/i/chompgatestuck.jpg/)

Another one is regarding the movement.
When I try to inch forward towards the edge of the platform, as soon as even tiny part of the octagons lowest line is no longer hitting the platform, the character slides. Tapping once would normally move the char for about 1/4 of the lines length, but in this case it's almost full 4/4. Hope that's coherent enough so you understand what I'm trying to say :durr:

Thanks for the comments!

I'm close to 100% sure that the segfault is due to the error in texture loading, I'm not handling those correctly, I usually just let the game crash if there's an error like this ;)
And it probably IS due to the space in the filename, will fix soon.

I'll try to come up with a solution for this, or I can at least kill the character when it is crushed with an object like this.

This is because the bottom vertices of the octagon work as 'legs' for the character, when only on is touching the ground the friction is much lower then when both are. Is this really a problem?

I wouldn't go so far as to call it really a problem, it's just something I personally feel is a bit off. In platformers generally the controls work in a way that unless there is some difference in the ground, like ice for example, the character would move the same amount for each unit of time while you hold down the movement key (+- the time it takes to accelerate/decelerate). Since there is no visual indicator that the character movement amount changes when you get close to the edge, it feels a bit funny.

As for if it could really cause some trouble while playing the game, the only time it could be really annoying (that I can think of) would be when you inch in for a very precise jump. That being a problem or not would depend on the level design, as in if such jumps are included.

Hey you dude!

I didn't bother to read any other comments so my opinion is quite unspoiled :p

I have never really had much to do with platform games but regardless of the direciton you take in the future it may be quite badass.

The controls are quite standard and easy to get. Thumbs up for setting the defaults to arrows + zx keys - I'm left-handed and wouldn't like it that much the other way around with wsad+something configuration ;)))

The level is obviously boring!:P Well, don't get me wrong here, I just can't wait until you mock up something more like a real level rather than just a techtest.

Personally I'd made the dude's physics much more dynamic. Now it's fine when you walk but after performing a jump the dude gets kindda slow and slopy. I don't want to elaborate any more than that on this matter for now as I'm a dexterity freak and my ideas in this field won't be mainstream :p

It takes quite much effort to push the somebluething but I find it kind of cool, makes you think of it as of a mighty artifact or something. Hope you'll be able to drive over your enemies with that thing, too, leaving nothing more than blood splatters all over the place haha;p What I noticed is that it's hard to stand on it since it feels so slippy. I want to jump on it and be able to make it roll by keeping the right balance haha!:P

Nice dude's gfx.

What I like about this concept most is that if you add a timer/timelimit of some kind it may be even more fun and entertaining, looking forward to future releases!

Yeah, I know it will never be enough skill-demanding for you, Q3 freaks :P


I'll try to implement crushing enemies with the objects. Not sure about the 'running on the ball' effect.


Trust me, there will be enough interesting things going on in the actual game. And the increasing difficulty of staying alive will make up for the lack of any timer.

Should have read the other comments:

error loading texture: gfx/flyin left.png
Segmentation fault

 

Yeah, about that...

:'(

Fear not, the test build has been tested enough and I'm currently working on an alpha. The problem with textures on linux would be resolved by then and there will be much more to test :) enemies, points, options menu etc.