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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsCRAWL: arcade dungeon crawler where your friends control the monsters
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Author Topic: CRAWL: arcade dungeon crawler where your friends control the monsters  (Read 210094 times)
barneycumming
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« Reply #400 on: February 25, 2015, 06:27:06 AM »

we're heading off to GDC in a few days, so we thought we'd make our lives harder by trying to squeeze out an update before we go!

we are idiots!

but it seems to have worked out- update is live woo Smiley


 
i managed to get one of the new enviros in there - the mines - and added a lot of little polish details to the existing dungeon Smiley
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Low_Chance
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« Reply #401 on: February 25, 2015, 06:35:44 AM »

Wow, another update? You guys are awesome!

Hey, wait... that evil god of darkness at the very end there... was that... moonman?
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barneycumming
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« Reply #402 on: February 25, 2015, 03:09:04 PM »

uhoh how'd that moonman get in there!
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metlslime
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« Reply #403 on: February 26, 2015, 04:26:38 PM »

I love all the art and animations in this.  Looks great.
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wizardfu
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« Reply #404 on: February 26, 2015, 05:06:58 PM »

Crawl is such a work of art. Loved it from day one. Way to go Barney and Dave!
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SafetySnail
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« Reply #405 on: February 26, 2015, 06:03:14 PM »

Found a strange bug in the newest update that made all music completely stop whenever player 3 (Bot) was the human.
Not a problem anytime anyone else was the human though, just player 3. Happened around the 6th dungeon.
Absolutely loving this game and the frequent updates are just awesome. Great stuff guys!
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barneycumming
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« Reply #406 on: March 25, 2015, 03:45:45 AM »

here is an animation process vid- mostly just testing out my video capture setup, with a goal to do dev diaries and stream/capture lots of pixel art Smiley



hopefully this is interesting for pixel artists!

@SafetySnail thanks for the report- I will harass Dave (the programmer half of the team) about it :D!
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Mya
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« Reply #407 on: March 25, 2015, 04:31:13 AM »

Killer artwork, & very cool to see your working method - are there any pixel artists out there that inspire your work, or that you think are particularly worth checking out?
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barneycumming
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« Reply #408 on: March 25, 2015, 04:41:13 AM »

for me, Paul Robertson is the best Smiley

http://probertson.tumblr.com/

his style is all over the Scott Pilgrim and Mercenary Kings games (among many others)






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barneycumming
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« Reply #409 on: March 25, 2015, 04:45:34 AM »

PS. here is some unrelated animation I did recently for a silly game jam we started while flying back form San Francisco Smiley





if anyone is curious what the hell that is all about, you can get the whole stupid story here:
http://www.powerhoof.com/gdc-ice-vine/

and play the game we made in your browser Smiley
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Olsen
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« Reply #410 on: March 25, 2015, 05:45:06 AM »

Your pixel animation is utterly next level.  Lush as shit.  Good work.
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barneycumming
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« Reply #411 on: March 25, 2015, 03:46:45 PM »

hey thanks dude Smiley Somerville looks awesome by the way!
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One-bit Punch
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« Reply #412 on: March 26, 2015, 03:39:46 AM »

PS. here is some unrelated animation I did recently for a silly game jam we started while flying back form San Francisco Smiley

I've only done full-blown character stuff with 3d, but great work like this is making me want to try it out with pixels  Toast Right
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gambrinous
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« Reply #413 on: March 26, 2015, 07:59:32 AM »

Quote
At this point we’re just reeling about the hotel room in a daze, sweating profusely and eyeballing the K. In the back of my mind I’m thinking I could just crush Dave’s skull in, mix up a little cereal in the remains of his head and spoon it out with a comb, but when I can’t even find a comb or an appropriate face-crushing hammer, the harsh realities start to kick in.

Laughed out loud at this bit  Gentleman
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baconman
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« Reply #414 on: March 29, 2015, 11:10:24 AM »

Been playing this awhile now with a few local yokels, and this game...
It's already A+ material. Only thing that seems to feel off is hit-recoil. There's no pushback *at all*, and this is a pretty critical element of a game where the players are fundamentally fighting for "control of screen space." The sound for impact is there, the delicious gore is rewarding, but there is little spacial consequence to scoring a hit.

This kind of thing *can* be countered with a once-a-floor force-push that each hero player can activate, by panic-pressing the attack + special buttons together, in case they get pinned in, maybe a 1-second stun and huge knockback to the monster characters IF they're within a pretty tight radius (15 px diameter, perhaps); in order to counter stunlock. I presume that, primarily, is WHY there isn't tremendous hit reactions.

While the animations in the game are FREAKING SUPERB ACE-LEVEL SHISH; the ambiguity of them and lack of physical feedback makes it retardedly hard to tell when you're hitting something, or where the hitboxes may/may not be. That was the biggest niggle going around my crew. The second was with the monsters in particular - it would be very helpful if there were one noticable feature of each of the creatures that became tinted, depending on which player was controlling it. Controlling the ghost-things and slimes was fine, but when people started controlling creatures en masse, everyone quickly got confused as to what they were.

Regardless of whether you put reactions on the hero character, the monster ones certainly need some, because it goes back to space control - the hero player needs a range to keep monster players in check, the monster players need range to keep the hero player in check; but the hitstun/pushback to monsters is critical to balancing the "many vs. one" approach that the game is built upon.

You can also add some simple, fun variation to the shot traps - some of my favorite variants include burst-shots, bank shots (one bounce) [this would add SO MUCH FUN to USING them], and spread shots.

PS: Your AI/bots are at a *very good* competitive level. Do not let ANYONE fool you into thinking it's too hard or too *insert adjective here* - it's a tiny bit above your core player level, which is GOOD, it pushes players to improve without making it feel impossible to do so. This is how you make players good in solo settings, which is what makes the game SERIOUSLY FUN in SOCIAL ones.


PPS: Super jellybeans of the artstuff; it's the troublesome part of my projects. Your application of stretch/squash, blur, and line of action is almost unparalleled. Smiley Last I saw it applied so well, "Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies" was a thing.


PPPS/EDIT: Oh, and one more potential gameplay element came to mind - PLAYER BAITING. Giving the monster/ghost characters some kind of switch they can press (or not press) to grant the hero player some kind of critical reward, but at the cost of some strategic positioning, or to put them at increased risk of the traps. Not sure on the details; but I thought it would at least be worth mentioning and bringing some attention to.
« Last Edit: March 29, 2015, 11:35:30 AM by baconman » Logged

barneycumming
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« Reply #415 on: April 01, 2015, 02:23:50 PM »



Pretty self-explanatory I guess Smiley  I've wanted to animate him since the very start, and I finally found time!

@baconman thanks for the compliments and the considered feedback dude Smiley  The specifics of the knockback have been an annoying issue with Crawl, have been through many iterations, and I'm still not happy with them- hopefully I get a chance to revisit at some point!  

The monster confusion is an issue that has come up before, and is something on my list to prototype some solutions for Smiley

As for traps with bank/burst shots, we do have them in, but they are later unlocks so many people haven't seen them- we just rejigged the unlocks actually to front load the more core stuff so people will see it in a few games, not like 20 games down the track like it was before!

Anyway, thanks for the feedback, this is always very valuable for us!
« Last Edit: April 02, 2015, 03:39:08 PM by barneycumming » Logged

blekdar
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« Reply #416 on: April 01, 2015, 02:31:08 PM »

Well that is just fantastic.
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Paul
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« Reply #417 on: April 02, 2015, 07:53:07 AM »

Brilliant. I love his final form
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tortoiseandcrow
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« Reply #418 on: April 12, 2015, 07:50:22 AM »

Absolutely loving the game - it's definitely a party favourite at my house. The main thing that's hampering our replay of it is the limited number of bosses. Across a pretty wide range of players, I notice that we tend to blast through the game fairly quickly. Having only one or two bosses makes it a bit less exciting to boot the game back up for a third round because it gives the impression of being more of the same. For every single player I've played the game with, the very first thing they've said after their first game was "Wow! This is cool! How many different bosses are there?" And their faces kind of fall when I say there's only two and I have no idea how many more will be going in. Because while the low level enemies can feel like a bit of a grind for some players, absolutely everyone loves the boss fights.

What you mentioned about the unlocks also kind of plays into that - it seems like the game really blossoms over time, but in order to succeed as a party game (at least at my place) it needs to be sufficiently diverse from the get-go. Generally we're not getting to the deeper levels very often. In games like Spelunky it makes sense to have a lot of the content tied to your progression through the world because the focus of the game is on seeing how far you can get. In Crawl, however, your objective incentivizes you to finish the game as quickly as possible, which means that a lot of the content that requires you to go further in the game doesn't get seen and makes the game seem shallower than it is.

Normally this isn't a thing I'd fuss about for a game in development like this, but it seems like a lot of your energy is going into the "cooler" high tier enemies and deeper levels that I don't anticipate seeing much of in the games I play with my friends. We don't want to play more in order to get more variety, we want to play more because it is evident that there is a great deal of variety already there (and be pleasantly surprised when we unlock further potential variety).
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skaz
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« Reply #419 on: April 12, 2015, 03:05:49 PM »

Awesome pixel art man. I haven't tried the game yet, but I know I will Wink Just so you know, when messing around with character for a not yet started project, I did put the main character of craw in my photoshop document, as reference. In the end it doesn't look the same at all, but anyway, you inspired me a lot Smiley  Hand Thumbs Up Right
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