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[ryansumo]

Hey all we have a web version up for our traffic management game called Traffix.  We'd appreciate you giving it a shot and giving us some feedback on it. Thanks in advance!
http://traffix.infinite.ly/

Update:  On another forum someone mentioned that we might entice people to play the game by providing a screenshot.  So doing something now which I should have done much, much sooner:

[dEnamed]

Interesting concept. The sound effects were a bit loud, certainly much louder than I expected, nearly blasted my headphones off my head. The game itself is fun, although I'm having trouble with readability - the parking spaces with cars on them are messing with my head, telling me there are cars waiting at an intersection when there aren't. At the same time the moving cars sometimes blend into the background when I'm not focussed on them.
I'm not sure how you'd go about improving readability on this game, but I feel it does need some small improvements in that regard.

[Exorph]

I get a 500 error when trying to access the site.

[EugenySG]

loading stuck at 68%

[Pandara_RA!]

Game played using Pokki on Windows 7:

Pokki Feedback:
I understand this isn't part of the the test, but it may be nice to understand what I had to do to pokki to uninstall and reinstall traffix.

1. Pokki refuses to be removed in add/remove programs and simply crashes windows explorer, and there isn't an uninstaller in the folder with the program, which made me feel cautious.
2. Upon removing Pokki and reinstalling it it told me Traffix was still installed, though doesn't play the game when clicking on the traffix icon anymore.
3. Uninstalling Traffix then uninstalling pokki causes Pokki to still think Traffix is installed
4. Rerunning the Traffix installer at that point, tells me pokki has the game still installed
5. I go online to find a "Pokki Clean up tool" that should be included with Pokki, after completely removing pokki with the tool, and reinstalling the game finally installs properly again and runs =].


Traffix Feedback:

Menu/UI
1. First time I ran Traffix clicking on full screen crashed the game.
I am completely unable to recreate this bug I've done everything from uninstall everything to reinstall tried all compatibility settings etc and it just wont crash anymore which is good.
at the time it crashed I was using Java/flash/unity all at once and it fixed upon restarting the game once.

2. There is no exit button on the game
Why isn't there an exit button? hehe.

3. The game locks itself in the bottom left on my screen and it is totally unable to be moved like say a normal window, you can resize it to fullscreen though =]

Sounds/Music
1. The honk honk at the start of loading the game seemed a bit too loud compared to the in game music later presented.
2. the 3..2..1 GO! dings are far too loud compared to the music that plays after, I fear the count down but enjoy the music.
3. The crashing sound of failing to direct traffic is also very loud.
4. After playing the game for some time the music completely stops =[
5. The crashing sound effect sounds very soundboard like, maybe it's just me but it seems out of place.

Gameplay:

1. I think my older brother's dialog after walking in the room and me introducing him to the game sums it up perfectly

Me:"Hey, come check out this game"
Brother:"Oh this looks interesting"
Me: It's a game about traffic management
Brother: "Wow that 3.2.1 is loud"
Me: haha, yup
Brother:"Oh, that's awesome do you need to let the traffic flow by switching them?"
Me: Uhh huh
Brother: "Oh then what comes after that, are there like levels or upgrades or powers or something now?"
Me: Nope
Brother: "Seems like it would get samey quickly, and make me lose interest"
Me: Sounds about right.

There are other features to the game like ambulances and such, though once you hit a skill cap (about 60-100 points for me) you get winded of playing again if you lose.
this can be remedied by breaking down the game into levels in addition to the survival mode, or adding things to spend your traffic points on, either in or out of the game, I just think my brother nailed it by saying the game would drop interest as soon as it felt samey, and once you hit your skill cap playing the same thing all the way up to that cap and trying to inch out just one more point doesn't feel rewarding in some way besides self accomplishment. =]

Final thoughts:

The game feels polished and clean (besides the sound effects) and it has a great base to build off of, I enjoy the concept immensely though feel it doesn't satisfy the excitement I had upon seeing the charming gameplay, I wanted more of it, but felt it just hit a wall quickly.

[RedHickory]

I like the fact that the game is quite polished and that it's HTML5, but after I died the first time I didn't go back and try it again.  Neat concept, but would need some more depth before I would call it "fun."

[anselm_eickhoff]

HTML5 game that doesn't "require" Chrome Webstore - nice
(didn't try the Pokki thing)

Feedback:

1. The music fits really good, but the beeping sound in the beginning sounds very "lost".
Maybe give it more reverb or just remove it completely?

2. I like the introduction/tutorial, but it should say explicitly that vehicles will crash if you switch too fast.
(This was unexpected for me, because even IRL drivers are not that dumb)

3. Make the background (streets, buildings) vs. gameplay elements (intersections, cars) more visually distinctive!
(I felt way more overwhelmed than I should have been, simply because the situation was too hard to read)

(BTW: first post, looking forward to be part of this fine community )

[ryansumo]

Woo thanks for the feedback!  Let me try to reply to some of it!

On Pokki: We mostly went on Pokki because of their dev contest.  Since we didn't place, I think it's safe to say that we're likely going to be ignoring Pokki from here on.  My partner wrote a blog about our adventures with Pokki though, if any of you are interested in reading on it:
http://pintsized.co/

On audio: Neither of our two man team (I'm art, my friend's code) are really audio guys, so we know that there are some issues that need to be handled there.  Appreciate all the feedback about this.

On readability: This is a little frustrating to me to be honest, because it's something we knew would be a problem and already tried to address, specifically by desaturating the buildings and darkening up the road so that the more colorful cars stand out.  I'm honestly at a loos at how to fix this, although since it still keeps cropping up I guess it's still an issue.

On not having replay value: This is another concern that's been voiced before.  Our first thought when making the game was that ideally it would be replayable because you'd want to beat your high score, kind of like endless runners?

We do have some plans to give players more incentive to play again, like giving them ranks at the end of the game, achievements and that sort of thing.  We're also planning on adding one more element to the game design that I think may help address the monotony of just clicking on the 4 hotspots, so stay tuned!

[anselm_eickhoff]

Hey, I thought some more about this, because I really like your idea.

Readability: I did a little mockup, turns out the vehicles are easier to see if you make the roads whiter and their contrast lower, they also fit better to the buildings then. I also added ever so slightly drop shadows to the cars and desaturated and decontrasted the cars on the rooftops even more:

Mockup

If it helps, here is the .psd

Replay Value

Our first thought when making the game was that ideally it would be replayable because you'd want to beat your high score, kind of like endless runners?

The problem with this is that players never really feel a sense of achievement or completion (for me, breaking my own highscore is almost not rewarding at all)

So my suggestion is:

1. Add more levels

Make easy, short ones for the beginning (get 20 points to proceed or something) and harder ones. Make the map layout a little different every time, add things like ambulances and the other cool stuff (I only got to see when opening Chrome's Inspector) one by one.

This should not be too much work, since from what I've seen your assets are nicely modular.

2. New gameplay elements

How about a rail crossing? The difference to normal intersections will be that the train comes no matter what and the player has to react to early signals of the train coming (sound, visual cues)

Or: a river, with a drawbridge. Like trains, you can't stop ships, but they are very slow and predictable.

When you have a river, you could also have a ferry loads cars until you tell it to cross the river.

The last level could be something ridicolous like this:
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/images/gibraltar-airport-4.jpg

Let me know what you think!

[surrounded]

Screenshot looks great, but no matter how many times I refresh the page, I can't get past the "loading 0%" screen. It just refuses to load. I'm using firefox if that helps.

[ryansumo]

Hey Anselm,  I'm glad you're so excited about the game, the mockup and the feedback is really generous of you!

The mockup is really interesting, although my sense is that it looks better as a still image than when the cars are in motion.  Part of my reasoning about making the roads so dark is to establish that these are the only lanes that the cars will go through.  Having the lanes be almost the same color or value as the buildings may ultimately be more confusing.  However I'm still downloading the PSD and my partner and I will discuss it.

re: the gameplay elements, what's funny is that we've actually discussed these already.  Our idea was that this first iteration would be the "vanilla" version of Traffix, then we would update with new versions set in different regions of the world, with each of them having a new gameplay element (ie the trains, riverboats, etc.)

I really feel that the new gameplay element that we're adding now is going to really make the game that much better, though I'm hesitant to talk about it right now,and would rather let folks play it when it's done so they have fresh opinions on it.

surrounded: Sorry about that, that's really annoying. :|  We'll try to sort that out when we can.

[ryansumo]

Hey all, we've updated the game with some tweaks.  I made some changes to the map which I feel help with readability.  I made the road much darker and made the road markings more transparent.  I think this helps make the "play area" much clearer.

I've also made a new version of the parking lot, this time with vertical cars, so that there's never any confusion about whether or not that car is in the play area.

You can also now post to facebook with your top score if you like.

The new gameplay element I was talking about earlier isn't here yet, we're still in the process of deciding how to implement it.  Anyway please do give this new version a try and see if it addresses the readability issues.  Thanks!
http://traffix.infinite.ly/

PS Should we just have a devlog already?

[anselm_eickhoff]

It is more readable :handthumbsupR: