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[RyanHuggins]

Hello, my name is Ryan Huggins; and I'm currently working on what I hope to be a short project for high school. I usually refer to it as Project CAS, but the official name is City Across the Sky. The game is ultimately an attempt to make some money towards research for a cure to degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. I've been working on the game for awhile (it's my first project), but I haven't gotten very far yet; I only have about 5 more months to complete the game! I've decided that I'd like feedback (I can handle negative feedback presented in a relatively constructive manner) and here I am prepared to post my game for the first time to the public.

What I have is very, very short, and honestly, not incredible, but that's why I'm here. I'm hoping to get ideas and input! I'll be using this topic for posting updates and ideas about the story, gameplay, and design. [More screenshots at end of topic]

Story --> The game itself isn't really super focused on the cause (fundraising), but the story does have a theme that can be related to degenerative diseases. The story follows a woman named Lilian (Lily), who has recently been diagnosed with a disease that is slowly, but surely eating away at her organs and will eventually kill her. Lily has a son whose father disappeared several years after he was born--he was lost in a boating accident and left their son, Aster, adrift at sea for four days by himself. Since the accident, Lily has promised herself, and Aster that he would never be alone to fend for himself again.

Due to the disease, Lily may lose her life and thus, orphan her son--breaking her promise in the process. The game revolves around her search for a cure and the events that drive her through the stages of her disease.

Early on in the story, Lily's disease begins to take its effect and at the same time, a mysterious man in red begins to appear around her. At around the same time that the man starts appearing, Aster disappears and Lily struggles to cope with the stress of losing her son and the complications of her own disease. Much of the game involves Lily searching for her son, and along the way learning more about her disease and the history of the island that she is living on.

Gameplay --> I'm hoping for the game to be exploration-based. Combat isn't so spectacular (yet?), but I honestly wasn't hoping on having too many enemies or focusing too much on the combat aspect. Ammunition for the gun that Lily carries around is rather limited and expensive; she isn't supposed to acquire it until about 1/6th into the game (but you have it in the alpha build 01). The exploration basis will be aided by the use of 3 "grenades" that can slightly alter your environment or manipulate the location/movement of your enemies. These are currently still under design and implementation drafts.

The majority of the direction will come from the environment and the items that you find. I hope to implement a system where the items you find can be examined in a menu and Lily's thoughts/possible context for all items can be read about. Items such as notes and books that are found can be read in their entirety; these items will provide both story progression tips as well as information about the island and environment that will help the players understand the world better.

Other than that, the rest of the story will be portrayed through several major cutscenes and through NPC/NPO (Non-Player Object) interactions.

I'm looking for feedback on:

• Art and Level Design
• Dialogue and Pacing
• Combat Gameplay
• At this point, any and all things... :D

Screenshots -->

Video -->
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0f7kEO1K1M

Any other information, as well as tons of conceptual art and detailed updates (but no public builds) can be found at my blog (in my signature). :D Thank you for any help!

[EDIT]: I am no longer releasing public builds. Just information, videos and screenshots.

[Spooder]

Controls are unresponsive, health does not seem to work (mine went negative and I did not die), pretty boring.

Seems like a great idea, and it looks nice, but it needs work.

Hope to see some more polish!

[RyanHuggins]

Thank you for the response.

I honestly just haven't gotten around to coding in death yet, in relation to the health thing. Other than that, I was wondering what you mean when you say that the controls are unresponsive? I am the game's designer, so they respond pretty well for me, more than likely because of the practice, but I'm wondering what you mean.

[Spooder]

I'm not sure how to explain it...everything just felt kind of wishy washy, like there was a delay or something. I may boot it up again later and see if I can get a better grasp on it.

[capn.lee]

I really liked the art in this game, the colours all worked together and everything was simple yet also quite pretty.

I had a problem timing jumps, it seems as though if I try and jump at the last moment before a ledge, i would fall, i had to time my jumps slightly early. This may be what Spooder is referring to. You may also want to take a look at changing how the running mechanic works, auto run after a set distance made me fall off a ledge as I darted at the last moment, it might be worth dedicating a button to running and climbing to allow better control.

I had a real problem getting into the game because control would get taken off me too frequently. Consider allowing all of the subtitles to come up while you navigate, like the climbing and moving instructions did. The game feels largely non-interactive at the moment.

Got this error at one point:

Code:

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 2
of  Step Event
for object obj_wolf_elite:

In script Establish_View:
Error in code at line 235:
           if (enemy_firing == 0)
               ^
at position 14: Unknown variable enemy_firing

It occurred when moving past the town, into the forest level.

If I could make a strong recommendation, build a little assault course within the game and play around in it to try and get a feel for what does and doesn't work for navigating it. I understand you're now personally an expert at it because you've had to play it so much in testing so maybe get a friend or two to play with it too, observe them running and jumping around and try to figure out how you can make it flow better for them. Especially in an exploration game, the player needs to be able to feel like they can freely move around and shouldn't have to fight with the controls to climb the wall or time the jump.

What you have could be really good, I know I've focussed on problems but I'm quite happy with how you've dealt with some parts of the game (the text in the opening was refreshingly frank for this sort of game).

[RyanHuggins]

@Spooder -- It would be helpful if you could let me know precisely what you mean at some point. Thank you.

@capn.lee -- Thank you for the long response. I don't care for long praise posts, so this is really what I'm looking for. I'll definitely look into rewriting the auto-run mechanic. I always presumed it would be an issue for some people (it's even an issue for me sometimes, I might make it so you have to hold another button to sprint, like you said). As for climbing, I've never really been happy with any game's climbing mechanics, they always seem off at first. As you play, you generally get used to them, but there is no set standard atm, so I'll probably leave climbing as it is.

Just to make sure I know what you are saying...

• I should rework the walk to auto-sprint mechanic
• Add more tutorial text to help players get a quicker grasp on gameplay?
• Fix whatever error that is (I'm actually redoing all enemies, so it should be alright at some point. )
• Add more interaction? (After the intro (which is what you would have played, the game opens up almost completely. :D)

[capn.lee]

Just to make sure I know what you are saying...

• I should rework the walk to auto-sprint mechanic

yes, not sure what method would work best, maybe just a slow increase rather than a sudden burst of speed would do.

• Add more tutorial text to help players get a quicker grasp on gameplay?

no, sorry. I thought the tutorial text was adequate, what I was trying to say was that the story text in the intro didn't warrant taking control away from the player.
To take for instance the scene after shooting the wolf where the character starts to feel bad for killing an animal, I see no reason why that should have been a cut-scene. You could have kept player control while bringing the text boxes up as the player continues to travel.

• Add more interaction? (After the intro (which is what you would have played, the game opens up almost completely. :D)

I didn't get much story after finding out the child was missing, I think I ran off the wrong way, I spoke to a couple of people who hadn't seen the boy then kept going until I was in the woods. It isn't about how interactive it was so much as it annoyed me that I was being stopped from exploring because my character really wanted to tell me how she was feeling. If she could tell me without stopping me exploring, that would work so much better for me.

• Fix whatever error that is (I'm actually redoing all enemies, so it should be alright at some point. )

I wasn't sure if it was even worth telling you about the error, I possibly just ran onto a level that wasn't finished. I picked up a learned behaviour from games that if the game looks like it wants me to go one way, I should explore every other way before continuing. 

[RyanHuggins]

Again, very much thanks for the response. You've actually given me an idea for a different pacing style for the game actually. I'll probably go and rewrite the walk/run thing tonight or tomorrow.

I was thinking of opening up the game right after that 2 minute intro cut-scene. After the house cutscene I'm debating whether or not I should just completely open the game up there or not.

Regardless, thank you for the input! And in relation to comment on the art, I think the art and music are the best parts of the game right now. :X I'm a new programmer, so I don't feel like mechanics will be all that great until they are completely refined towards the end of development. :I

[CorazonAzul]

I played the game about 20 minutes

PRAISE (Don't care, right?)
Sank right into the story, good job. Graphics bright, colorful, welcoming, polished. Game convinces me it will be a unique and refreshing cutaway from other games

INTERFACE
Tiny resolution- is there a way to enlarge this game? Felt worried about no visual controls to quit or save the game. Pressed some keys taking a pot shot at finding a menu of any kind. Upon pressing ESC, there was no confirmation before the game quit. My punishment was starting all the way over, as 'Continue' advanced me to an unfamiliar level. I'd like to see tweaks here to give new playtesters an easier and more productive experience

DIALOGUE
Sometimes it flies off the grey boxes' boundaries

CONTROLS
I agree with the already mentioned "last minute jumping" control, needs that tweak. Otherwise tight jumping/climbing controls

[RyanHuggins]

PRAISE Response
--Just wondering how far you played up until? I'm debating removing the portion of the story after you exit the house. Opting for a more player/exploration-centric story. Since the game will be shorter, it'll give the player more to do! Information will be explained through NPCs and such (I'm redoing the message system this week!). This is mostly a time-constraint issue. Haha.


INTERFACE Response
--For now you can fullscreen with f4, but I probably won't add the options to multiply the screensize until later on. As for the play-tester assistance stuff, I'll be adding auto-saving and a prompt for quitting to help (among other things). Saving hasn't even been coded into the game yet, I might put in a way to save your location and main story progress for now, but other than that, pretty much nothing else will be saved because it's not complete yet. D:

DIALOGUE
--I'm rewriting the dialogue system (and NPCs and Enemies in general). I coded them pretty badly. #newcoder :I

CONTROLS
--I'm not sure how I could go about fixing the last minute jumping thing honestly? It never seemed like much of a problem to me (or anyone else who'd playtested). However, the run-sprint mechanic will be changed. :D

[Glic2000]

I liked the look of the screenshots, but when I tried to run it, it just said "Not a valid Win 32 application."  I assume this is because you used the old version of Game Maker which doesn't support Windows Vista?  I'm using Vista 64. 

[RyanHuggins]

That's very strange. I use Game Maker 8.1, so that's honestly quite odd. If you care enough, check back on Sunday when I release a new build? :D

[Glic2000]

Oh, sorry - it seems my download did not finish correctly. 

I'll have to download it again and try it later.

[RyanHuggins]

UPDATE:

Just letting everyone know that I'll be releasing a new build of the game every week (on Sundays) or so until the major mechanics have been completed and are satisfactory!

@Glic2000 - I appreciate the effort! :D Any feedback is welcome, negative is preferred!

[Glic2000]

I played it for a while and here are my comments:


Pros:

- I liked the visual style a lot.  I have a weakness for retro games and I thought the graphics were very well done. 

- I thought the controls handled very well, except as noted below.

Cons:

- The window was much too tiny, until I pressed F4 to run it full screen.

- I could not figure out what to do and eventually got bored of just wandering through the screens.

- I disliked how the character sticks to every vertical surface, even those that are too short to be climbed.  I also did not understand why I would be pressing in the opposite direction to climb; it's just not intuitive. 

- I couldn't figure out which objects could be interacted with.  I kept pressing the UP key in the hope of discovering something, and I was very surprised when I found a building I could go inside (even though it looked just like the other buildings). 

- No sounds or music, which seemed odd in a game which is 30 megs.

- The GUI refers to the ASC keys for using objects, but they never seemed to do anything.

- At one point, my character fell in the water at the bottom of the screen but did not seem to die as I could still move left and right, even though I couldn't see her.