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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsReturn of the Obra Dinn [Releasing Oct 18]
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dlan
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« Reply #300 on: October 22, 2014, 03:25:53 AM »

I didn't go far into the game, just looked around on the ship deck, but the whole look and feel is really nice. Really good sound design too, love that you can ear the wooden creaking sound of the ship under your feet.

I spotted rendering errors with the doors, depending of the camera position they would disappear, here some screenshots to give you an idea of what happened:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/65951148/cache_img/2014-10-22-12-56-00-16.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/65951148/cache_img/2014-10-22-12-56-07-65.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/65951148/cache_img/2014-10-22-12-56-48-04.png
(no doors here)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/65951148/cache_img/2014-10-22-12-56-11-45.png
(here only the door handle is missing, but shadows are rendered)

I'm on Win7 and my graphic card is an AMD HD5700.
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dukope
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« Reply #301 on: October 22, 2014, 03:50:16 AM »

Hey guys, thanks for all the great feedback so far.

The intro sequence and the intrusive text popups at the start are all temp things just to get the player going in this early build. I got a little worried at the last second that nothing is clear and added the "find the muster roll" and "determine everyone's fate" cards. In the full game there'll be more chances to nudge things without straight-up telling the player like this. 

There's always a problem with early builds that it's easy to think you're seeing a bug or getting stuck because it's unfinished. Those explicit cards are supposed to clear some of that up for now.


...are you going to keep size modes in final release ? or are you just testing which one people going to like, imo looks best on small framed.

I'll probably keep all the sizing modes and maybe add some more. Which one looks best depends on personal preference and monitor size.


notes as i go, feel free to ignore:..

Good stuff! I had to look up Ghost Trick. Smiley

Music is the one thing I had to basically punt on for this demo. I like the moment composition, but not the instrumentation. And the theme song is still in progress. I've had trouble getting a good orchestral sound; mainly because I know nothing about orchestral instrumentation.

You're right about the pacing too. I'm going to try enforcing the watch's rules to slow things down in an understandable way. So, for example, you can't cancel a moment trip to quickly move between the past and the current time - you have to wait.


... Some initial feedback: perhaps there should be a way to end the "time rewind" early (unless there already is and I missed it)?
... Also, invert mouse for the final version! ...

There's no way to end the moments early. Initially that was just a UI thing but now I prefer that you're stuck and at the watch's mercy. I'll definitely have an invert mouse option in the settings.


First of all I'd like to say the the game is bea ut if ul

Nice! I threw the screenshot key in there at the last possible second and I'm really glad I did.


Quote
...Due to the mysterious atmosphere and setting of the game I found the "determine the fate of passengers" slide
a little redundant....

Yeah, that's just a makin-it-totally-clear-for-this-early-build thing. It'll be more natural in later builds.


This is unbelievably awesome. I wasn't expecting the quality of the models. The way the hand goes out and grabs doors feels so immersive, I don't know why I've never seen other games do it before.

Thanks! The door grabbing mechanic was a lot of work but I think it was worth it. You may notice that the book grab is different but the box handle uses the same grabs as the door handle. Saving myself some work there.


...The only thing that bothered me was the quotation marks on the text are wrong...

I'm not even lying when I say this also bothered me, but not enough to fix yet. I need to check if the font has opening quotes and which UTF code they are. It'll get fixed is what I'm saying.


... the Latin is wrong, it's usually memento mori. However, I believe memento mortis is actually also right, since memini takes the genitive, and mortis is the gen. of mors

I know zero actual Latin but I'm familiar with how all over the place translations can be. Wikipedia has or also memento mortis, “remember death” on their memento mori page but that's obviously too easy. Someone on twitter suggested first "Memento Mors", then either "Memento Mori" or "Memento Mortem" based on this page here.

If anybody knows for sure (if that's possible), please let me know. Otherwise I'm gonna change it to "Memento Mortem" since I think that captures the sense of "remember this even where someone died" that I'm going for.


...I spotted rendering errors with the doors, depending of the camera position they would disappear, here some screenshots to give you an idea of what happened...

Thanks for the pics. Unity has a lot of really nice, easy to use systems built right in. One of those is occlusion culling, which can be generated at the click of a button. Unfortunately, trying a myriad of values for blocker and hole sizes gives me various dropouts on the ship. I need the culling for performance and the current settings have the least crazy dropouts. That spot you've found there is the only one I know about. I'll keep tweaking the values until it works.
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JobLeonard
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« Reply #302 on: October 22, 2014, 04:18:07 AM »

Wow, wonderful demo! Loved Papers, Please so looking forward to where this will go. Also, if you want to have another look at dithering options (or maybe even give players a choice), are you aware of this dithering algorithm?

http://pippin.gimp.org/a_dither/

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bloomingbridges
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« Reply #303 on: October 22, 2014, 05:27:07 AM »

I absolutely adore the hand shooting for and holding onto things that I can manipulate <3 Also walking stairs feels really refreshing and of course nice aesthetics.  Hand Thumbs Up Left Awesome stuff!
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dukope
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« Reply #304 on: October 22, 2014, 05:30:18 AM »

...are you aware of this dithering algorithm?
http://pippin.gimp.org/a_dither/

I haven't seen that one yet. Looks pretty good, gonna try it out for the characters. Thanks!
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melos han-tani
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« Reply #305 on: October 22, 2014, 06:05:06 AM »

well this is a nice surprise! itch.io too!
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cosmictides
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« Reply #306 on: October 22, 2014, 07:11:43 AM »

Been looking farward for a playable build for a while, but am i the only one having trouble downloading it? Tried 3 times now and the download freezes just before it finishes. :/

edit: Worked now. Dunno what happened.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2014, 07:26:37 AM by cosmictides » Logged
BottledBacon
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« Reply #307 on: October 22, 2014, 07:28:08 AM »

Some suggestions I'd like to add from playing, many of these could be seen as me being a dumbass, but they're real player experiences:

1. Resolution I'd quite like the option to up the res, as you posted a while ago. I seem to remember you weren't a fan because it diminished the art-style but honestly I don't agree that the game would lose anything. I'd at least like to see a demo build with that option, to see how people respond.

2. Alter the introduction of the watch: I actually got stuck immediately when playing because the box appeared on the boat before I found the book, and I kind-of forgot about the message to find a book once the game gave me a death-watch that reverses time. So I kept popping in and out of death-snaps looking around and thinking it was cool but having nothing to do.

3. Make how the book works clearer Like someone else suggested, it was my third or fourth time going into the book that I actually noticed you could edit the 'fate' bit yourself.

I thought maybe I was supposed to do something in the flashbacks to trigger it being filled in, and I was just missing the action. If the manual input (which I like) is made clearer that would be good.

Another little note is that the [X] being the way to confirm 'This is how I think they died' made me nervous to click it, because it seemed to suggest it might clear my answer or just exit it without saving.

4. Evac the death snaps I saw you comment that you liked being at the watch's mercy, but honestly I disagree. I remember wanting to go back into one so I could hear a name in the speech that came before. I heard it, and obviously wanted to go back to the book and apply what i'd learned. But you can't use the book in the flashback... and you can't exit the flashback. So I sat there for however long just waiting for it to end before I could play the game again. It killed the flow and you don't feel like a magic detective when you're sitting around doing nothing because the game won't let you. Either let the player jump out of them, or give them something to do maybe.

And finally a question: Will there be a way in the game to show the player they got a death (or not) correct? If this were the full game I'd worry I'd messed it up if there wasn't some feedback on my answer. Even if the player said 'That seems likely' or something afterwards to let you know you got it.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2014, 07:52:45 AM by BottledBacon » Logged
coah
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« Reply #308 on: October 22, 2014, 07:56:24 AM »

It's very interesting. The rendering works really well I think and the structure of the game is great.

Opening doors is so well done its almost sickening how great that feels.

My stumbling block was just finding the clock at first, it's not a big issue, I think it's good that I got a bit stuck with that as it sets a precedent, I think this is fine.

That I could edit fates was very intuitive to me and I found it quickly because after I had thumbed through the book I was looking for other ways to interact with it. If you'd like to optimize that as a few people are bringing it up as an issue, Id probably just extent the highlight position to the entire line instead of just the editable field. But I do think it works well right now too.

So,
 Hand Clap Smiley
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Bezzy
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« Reply #309 on: October 22, 2014, 08:28:56 AM »



This is unbelievably awesome. I wasn't expecting the quality of the models. The way the hand goes out and grabs doors feels so immersive, I don't know why I've never seen other games do it before.

Thanks! The door grabbing mechanic was a lot of work but I think it was worth it. You may notice that the book grab is different but the box handle uses the same grabs as the door handle. Saving myself some work there.

Necro'd my account to say, thank you for even doing this system. I've had this exact approach in mind for a long time (with target poses, blending based on proximity, and speed toward targets all driving a parametric animation system and lots I'm sure I didn't figure out, lacking the opportunity to experiment much). Any time I try to explain it to people they have fobbed it off as "like Trespasser, snerk!". So, it gets sidelined.

it is really vindicating to see someone pull it off! Massive respect!

Actually, with a couple of days, recently, I got something half way toward it with some directional blend poses to angle the hand toward a target.
https://vine.co/v/Om5wDddqArI
https://vine.co/v/OmJnIpwPulQ
https://vine.co/v/OmJvbY0wmJe
But yeah, I dunno. I love you.
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« Reply #310 on: October 22, 2014, 08:34:05 AM »

Sorry, I already played this game:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/02/the-vanishing-of-ethan-carter-review?watch

And it's much more enjoyable.
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rj
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« Reply #311 on: October 22, 2014, 09:00:30 AM »

rude

i mean i want to play ethan carter too

but rude
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classics_nerd_throwaway
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« Reply #312 on: October 22, 2014, 09:04:45 AM »


... the Latin is wrong, it's usually memento mori. However, I believe memento mortis is actually also right, since memini takes the genitive, and mortis is the gen. of mors

I know zero actual Latin but I'm familiar with how all over the place translations can be. Wikipedia has or also memento mortis, “remember death” on their memento mori page but that's obviously too easy. Someone on twitter suggested first "Memento Mors", then either "Memento Mori" or "Memento Mortem" based on this page here.

If anybody knows for sure (if that's possible), please let me know. Otherwise I'm gonna change it to "Memento Mortem" since I think that captures the sense of "remember this even where someone died" that I'm going for.


Hey Lucas, huge fan of your games and Classics guy here too. Thought I'd chime in and try to clear things up for once and for all, especially now you've stated that "remember this even where someone died" is the sense you're going for.

Allen&Greenough is your best friend there and it's very specific about the allowed uses and nuances of memini+acc/gen constructions. Based on that I don't believe you can make a strong case for the imperative-accusative memento mortem, however. A&G stipulates that the accusative case, here mortem, is used when you have an actual personal connection or experience with the thing/person remembered.

So that makes using the imperative form memento wonky. It's kinda like ordering someone to remember their own death. See what I mean? So I would use the accusative with a personal first person verb. Now that I think of it, it works with the game's idea of you actually traveling to the moments of those deaths and experiencing those moments yourself. MEMINI MORTES? "I remember their deaths." Something like that. You probably don't want to wade into the forest of relative clauses to explicitly supply the sense of "where" and so on forth, but let me know if you have any questions.

Cheerio!
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dukope
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« Reply #313 on: October 22, 2014, 09:14:40 AM »

Sorry, I already played this game:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/02/the-vanishing-of-ethan-carter-review?watch
And it's much more enjoyable.

I just found out that Ethan Carter has a similar mechanic. Apparently Cryostatis too. I guess this ground is fairly well tread.

Anyone that's played Ethan Carter, how similar is it to this Obra Dinn build? EC looks really good but I probably won't play it for a bit to avoid any kind of influence.
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« Reply #314 on: October 22, 2014, 09:38:30 AM »

I love this!

Played on a 13" Macbook and found the default visual mode to be totally fine at full resolution.

I've noted that many of the rough edges are just a factor of this being an early dev build, so I won't bother bringing those things up. The only thing that really irked me anyway was the quotation marks, as someone else mentioned. Actually, I also found it a bit dissonant that a dude is hoisting your box onto the ship, but there's nothing but nebulous space around the ship. I'm sure you're aware of this, but yea, I found it a bit disorienting that the ship is just kind of in the middle of nowhere.

Considering this is an early dev build though, I was surprised at how much great nuance and subtlety there is already in the sound design, the animations, and the mechanics in general. I absolutely love the hand stuff, I love the stair-walk, and the general concept definitely hooked me. I'm really looking forward to playing the finished game. And though you seem to be finding a lot of kinks in the visual style (based on previous dev posts being mostly devoted to tweaking the visuals) at this point I personally felt like it was working really well.
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« Reply #315 on: October 22, 2014, 09:55:40 AM »

I just have to say that the voice acting was surprisingly great. A lot of the time, indie games tend to have sup-par voice acting but this was just so convincing and immersive, great job!

The only very small complaint I have is with a certain part of the time mechanic. Frequently, you'll want to revisit the various skeletons and go to the past again so you can gather more clues, but there's no way to speed up the amount of time you have to wait. This made gathering clues a tad bit tedious for me at times, since after I found what I was looking for, I found myself having to wait around doing nothing until the timer ran out. If you ask me, I would suggest having a way to speed up the time a bit, possibly by holding down the spacebar or double tapping it.

Other than that small issue though, the demo is great! This is a day one purchase for me.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2014, 11:11:08 AM by Twario » Logged
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« Reply #316 on: October 22, 2014, 10:15:27 AM »

Excellent demo! Looks good, and interesting concept.
Was there any way to snap time back, other than waiting for the clock to run out? I was always waiting impatiently, and was missing the ability to open the book while in "clock-mode".
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« Reply #317 on: October 22, 2014, 11:28:30 AM »

Sorry, I already played this game:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/02/the-vanishing-of-ethan-carter-review?watch
And it's much more enjoyable.

Anyone that's played Ethan Carter, how similar is it to this Obra Dinn build?

From what I've seen it doesn't seem that similar. You do see still scenes of people's deaths in EC... but it's like a storyboard, and it's just part of a game where you put them in the right order to unlock a cutscene of it happening.

That might change later in the game though. In my opinion, The tiny amount of infomation you get, and deduction that you have to do entirely by yourself in Obra Dinn seems to be pretty different from that mini-game in EC.
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« Reply #318 on: October 22, 2014, 11:52:53 AM »

I found that playing on anything but the framed views gave me considerable eye strain after not too long.  As in, my eyes really really hurt now. It was really really bad It'd be nice if there was a 'low-impact' mode where the white isn't so strong, perhaps ALA f.lux colour temperature changes.

Sensitivity slider would be very nice.  I'm probably an outlier, but I use a very low sensitivity in most first person games (52.2cm/360) and the default high sensitivity was really disorienting at first.  

I felt myself longing for the player character to cast a shadow/have some feetsies to match that cheeky hand you have going.  Perhaps you could even not cast a shadow when wandering around in the watch-world to sell the idea you're immaterial/not REALLY there.

The default controls are nice but I found myself wanting to use the mouse buttons to interact with things.  RMB for right hand, left click to pull up stop watch seems intuitive to me but maybe you have other plans moving forward.

The voice acting delivery was okay but the stuttered pacing because you want to keep each card to just a few words weakened the delivery.  Lines which really have nothing wrong with them felt comical because of the pause mid-sentence.  Maybe i'm alone on that one.

The interface for filling in the crew muster is cumbersome and as i flicked through the pages I found myself dreading ever having to fill it in.  Even filling in the 2 fields you can deduce in the demo felt troublesome. Perhaps holding USE and dragging the mouse could turn the page, rather than fingering the corner of the page. Using A & D to turn the page, space to select and W &D to select options (all the selection dialogues are lists, vertical, you could navigate them easily with W/S).  

As you fill in the death report, automatically opening the next menu you could fill out turns entering "Killed > by Crewmate > Name > via Weapon" from 9 clicks to 4-5 clicks, which means a lot when you're entering in 40-50 names.  At present the book interface feels finicky.

As other people have mentioned, some way to move time along faster while using the watch would be nice and/or being able to access the book while in the watch scenes would feel a lot smoother.

I found myself having to re-enter flashbacks just to make sure I was looking at the right person. I can totally understand not adding this, but maybe being able to take pictures of the scene so I can assign names to faces without having to re-enter watch scenes would be nice.  I'm thinking in the long run as you explore hte ship and find more and more bodies it'd be nice to be able to look at a body and have the game hold up a picture of that person's face when they're alive with their name scribbled on it.  Again, totally understand if this is outside the scope/design of the game but I feel like it'd make it a lot easier to keep track of the large number of crewmates/death scenes I imagine will be in the longer game.



Really good stuff though.  I fished up my TIGS login details just to write this post so you definitely have my interest.  Looking forward to seeing where this goes
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« Reply #319 on: October 22, 2014, 12:23:07 PM »

Hello Dukope,

I follow this project for quite a while now. I like the visual direction of the game and I am really impressed how far you have come with the development in such a relative small amount of time.

So of course I used the chance to play the test build and here are my impressions so far:

The graphics:

Like I said before, I really like the graphic style and the art direction. Without a question, the game looks pretty unique. The model work is excellent too. The ship looks great so far. But the dithering still needs some work, while it can look really good at times, I think you are not quite there yet. especially the sky look really messy and does not work for me. In general I would say the bright areas work better than the dark ones.

Sounds and movement:

The ambient and movement sounds are outstanding and they make for a great atmosphere. I love how the sounds change depending on you position on the ship. Walking feels great and the arm animation/object interaction is a awesome idea. Even if I was a bit disappointed that so far I can't interact with anything but doors on the Obra Dinn. I constantly tried to open cupboards and drawers and stuff but to no avail. Would be great I we could interact more with the ship.

Game play:

So far the gameplay feels a bit like 6 degrees of sabotage (great game btw) but with a time travel twist.
Question is, I am (the player) just a agent that has to find the truth of what happened and who has to deduce who killed whom and how? Or will I have any influence of how the story unfolds? I am in any danger? The test build felt extreme linear. Like press "space to continue". Go to skeleton press space, door opens to next skeleton and so on. Personally I hope the actual game play will be more involving for the player.

I also wondered how my time travel opened the locked door, I have not interacted with the door in any way. So why is it open when I come back? Would have been more logical if I went back in time, walked through the open door and waited for the clock to run out. Kind of Silent Hill style.

Speaking of the Clock, I also think it breaks the flow of the game to let the player wait for the clock to run out. Before the time travel starts the clock rewinds an bit, maybe let the player rewind the clock himself. So he can chose how long his trip will be. Like player presses "space", the clock starts rewinding, if he releases space, the time travel starts. The longer he holds space, the longer the his travel will be. With a maximum time of course.

Also all dialog should be skippable, there is even less tolerance for un-skippable dialog or cut-sequences than for black frames around the game window. ^^

Theres more that crosses my mind, but thats all for now.
« Last Edit: October 22, 2014, 12:30:21 PM by ZoidZilla » Logged
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