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brog
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« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2010, 05:24:22 AM » |
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I'd definitely recommend making the walls and floors different colours to each other. Sometimes in that video it's hard to tell what's what.
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Alex May
...is probably drunk right now.
Level 10
hen hao wan
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« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2010, 06:30:35 AM » |
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Looks good, I mean it looks like it works properly. Even for testing / placeholder, as brog says, it'd be nice to have a different texture to see which bits are floor. I take it you'll have no gaps between the walls later? Any plans for any game-play beyond navigation?
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andreiichim
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« Reply #3 on: January 13, 2010, 06:50:05 AM » |
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Thanks for the tips.
I have different IDs on each face so it will be easy to make the floor and walls look different.
I will also increase the size of the "player".
This worked for me but a lot of people told me they couldn't tell what's going on so I'll fix this in my next preview.
For gameplay... I'm not sure yet. All I can think of is adding traps (but I have to think more about this). I'm hoping that ideas will come once things start to work the way I see them now.
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I_smell
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« Reply #4 on: January 13, 2010, 08:05:26 PM » |
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I started really liking this idea within like the first 5 seconds of the video. Hell, from the words "3D sphere maze" I liked the sound of it.
Here's some ideas: A maze with multiple layers; by which I mean floors. Like you can go downstairs into the sphere, removing the top layer.
I think the obvious choice for a title screen is a sphere with the menu options extruding out from it. You could spin around it with the mouse.
I hope this game develops some kind of art direction or aesthetic. Like a hedge maze or a city, or some kind of- like maybe your goal is to acquire some kind of ore from a bunch of different planets.
Maybe sometimes there's a person lost in the maze that you have to find.
Maybe you can fall through the centre of the maze and end up in the same place on the opposite side.
You could have one segment of the maze rotating, like a rubix cube.
I was gonna suggest that maybe you could push things around, but then there's allways the possibility of it getting stuck in a corner.
I really like how light and shadow are working on this sphere, especially at the north n south poles. Maybe the player should radiate light to take advantage of that. I don't know, but do something with that.
That's it, I'm spent. There's a good amount of potential in this idea, you could have something.
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« Last Edit: January 13, 2010, 08:09:20 PM by I_smell »
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andreiichim
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« Reply #5 on: January 14, 2010, 12:47:25 PM » |
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Thanks I_smell, those are some awesome ideas. I decided on a art direction and it doesn't fit that well with a few of the gameplay ideas that you've mentioned but I will keep them in mind and give them a try in the future.
I want to give it a plush look and make it easy, fun and casual. I want to keep it as simple as possible (this being my first game I don't want to over do it and work on it all year). If it turns out to be a succes I might make another more complicated version with a SF look that will have all kind of shapes (not just sphere, but rubik's cube, torus... etc) movers, teleporters, floors, AI that follow you.
The main menu will actually be a solar system with the sun being the Options menu and the plantest different spheres (different sizes = different difficulties). I'm hoping I can keep everything in once scene to avoid loading / changing maps between the main menu and the game (I hope it will work).
I could add collectables spread across the level that will be hard to find but that unlock something cool. As I said, I don't want to turn it into a single player game with a lot of depth... but a quick 10min game that everyone could enjoy from time to time.
To make it more challenging I might add water and lava... and similar things that can be found on a planet and fit my gameplay.
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Jonathan
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« Reply #6 on: January 14, 2010, 04:41:39 PM » |
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The only advice I could offer is to do something to help the player differentiate between the floors and walls, it was a little confusing. Beyond that, I like the concept and... The main menu will actually be a solar system with the sun being the Options menu and the plantest different spheres... this is rad. |
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I_smell
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« Reply #7 on: January 15, 2010, 02:03:00 PM » |
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Oh I didn't know it was your first game. The main menu will actually be a solar system with the sun being the Options menu and the plantest different spheres (different sizes = different difficulties). I'm hoping I can keep everything in once scene to avoid loading / changing maps between the main menu and the game (I hope it will work).
Both good ideas! |
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object_0
Level 0
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« Reply #8 on: January 16, 2010, 09:57:41 AM » |
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Looks good. As others have mentioned it would be interesting if you added more game elements to it. Here are a few ideas on top of my head:
* Collecting items with a time limit.
* Have patrolling enemy spheres in combination with hide slots in the maze corridors.
* Have ramps to allow travel over selected walls.
Good luck with your project!
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it's your birthday.
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Inanimate
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« Reply #9 on: January 17, 2010, 01:28:59 AM » |
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I think a plush look is a great idea! I eagerly await more progress!
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andreiichim
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« Reply #10 on: January 17, 2010, 03:32:06 AM » |
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Looks good. As others have mentioned it would be interesting if you added more game elements to it. Here are a few ideas on top of my head:
* Collecting items with a time limit.
* Have patrolling enemy spheres in combination with hide slots in the maze corridors.
* Have ramps to allow travel over selected walls.
Those are some great ideas. My main problem is that it might be difficult to make it balanced because the maze will be randomly generated. I would have to write a smart algorithm to spawn enemies and hide slots in the right places to make it challanging but at the same time easy enough so you can finish the game. I will try it though, because it will be a lot of fun. I updated the firt post with a new video. I fixed the camera movement and I added a "Maze Completed!" screen when you solve the maze. I already have the planets (basic spheres atm) in the main menu and now I'm working on on making them rotate around the sun. |
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« Last Edit: January 17, 2010, 03:38:48 AM by andrei313 »
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andreiichim
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« Reply #11 on: February 11, 2010, 04:49:54 AM » |
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I have randomly generated mazes now:  Next I have to wrap the maze around a sphere and then start working on gameplay elements (collectable items, timers, enemies) |
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« Last Edit: December 23, 2014, 03:05:45 PM by andreiichim »
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andreiichim
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« Reply #12 on: March 13, 2010, 05:47:19 AM » |
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I did most of the things I wanted to do  What I plan to do next: I decided to add enemies and some power-ups that will help the player defeat or escape from them. The goal will be to colect some special items and then go to the end of the maze with them, while avoiding the guards of the items. |
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I_smell
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« Reply #13 on: March 13, 2010, 09:29:56 AM » |
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Whaaaaaaaat I didn't expect this to come back lookin hot as fuck. It made me look through a whole bunch of other videos and oh jeez, UDK is awesome.
I think knocking the dots around is weird. I like how they drift out and look like stars, but it's a shame that half of em just knock around on the floor. I hope you somehow encourage them to fly outwards.
Other than that, you got it goin on.
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shrimp
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« Reply #14 on: March 13, 2010, 11:16:17 PM » |
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Interesting. I like the art direction of the solar system a lot and look forward to see where you go with the maze gameplay. The thing I thought was most weirdly awesome was how the dots get pushed around and float away to form a cloud around the planet. If you can somehow keep this (maybe just for some special level or mode or player status effect) that would be neat. Actually it made me think that it's what Pacman's nightmares would be like if he was really stressed: "I'm supposed to pick up the dots.. but they always slip out of my grasp..."  |
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andreiichim
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« Reply #15 on: May 04, 2010, 01:54:06 AM » |
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I added enemies and power-ups.
Watch the new video here:
The game starts with a fixed number of enemies and every 5 seconds a random enemy replicates and drops a power-up.
The power-ups are Mist (you become invisible for 3 seconds to the enemy), Shock wave (you push away all the enemies that you touch) and Electric Shock (you kill the enemies you touch).
At the moment you have to use keys 1,2 and 3 to trigger the power-ups but I want to change that. Most of my friends that played the game said it was hard to keep track of what power-ups were available and didn't know what key to push to avoid being killed by the enemies. I'm thinking of doing it like in Pure: you have a bar that fills up, if it's full and you pick up a new power-up you get the next level of power (Mist - ShockWave - ElectricShock). This way you only have to use Space to trigger the current power-up.
The down side of this is that you don't have the current freedom to trigger the power-up you want. I noticed, for example, that I like to trigger the Kill power-up every time I'm close to more then 3 enemies. This way I know I can kill a lot of enemies with a single power-up. And if I have an Electric Shock and Mist and there's an enemy in my way I can use Mist because I don't want to waste a powerful power-up on a single enemy. So the strategic part of the game suffers a little because of this.
Overall I'm not happy with either... I hope to find a better way to make it easy to use but flexible at the same time.
I also have a cool story and a name for the game but I will reveal that later (probably after I have an official site for the game).
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« Last Edit: January 22, 2011, 09:05:42 AM by andrei313 »
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andreiichim
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« Reply #16 on: January 22, 2011, 09:05:26 AM » |
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I received a warning saying this topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days  Why is it so hard to finish a game?  Anyway, I kept working on it but not as much as I would have liked to. I have some progress to show here: The game is now called Newton vs the Lazynots and I will release it for mobile devices, I think it fits better there (tilt controls coming soon). I'm having some problems with the gameplay time. It takes 2-3 minutes to finish a maze and there are 5 planets... 15 minutes of gameplay will not make a game so I need to find a way to make people want to replay on the same planet more then once. The maze is randomly generated each time so that's a plus. I was thinking of adding goals that need to be done before unlocking the next planet, something like: save 20 spirits, finish the maze in under 60 seconds, kill 100 Lazynots... etc. All these are not doable in a single run and you have to use different tactics each time to do them so this shouldn't be boring. You can also get rewards for doing the challanges, like the PowerUps (you start with no power-ups and you get them one by one) I can probably increase the dificulty depending on how many times you played on a specific planet to make it more challanging. Any thoughts? And another question of mine... When do you know a game is done? |
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cosec
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« Reply #17 on: January 22, 2011, 09:18:14 AM » |
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Just wanted to let you know that the main video link has a bad URL. The game looks beautiful though  |
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andreiichim
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« Reply #18 on: December 22, 2014, 08:35:02 AM » |
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Almost 3 years since my last update on this thread... independent game development takes a lot of time. I made some major changes since my last update, one of them being the fact that I switched to Unity. The game is almost complete. Here's a gif with some gameplay:  |
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« Last Edit: January 26, 2015, 07:24:53 PM by andreiichim »
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happymonster
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« Reply #19 on: December 22, 2014, 09:54:26 AM » |
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Looks nice!
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