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[Fermenter]

Indeed, that minimal/flat-shadow aesthetic, yo. You're pulling it off well! 

[GrahamOfLegend]

At work yesterday, I had a vision of what the logo could look like... So I made it  . HectiCube now has a logo! I guess that means that it's legit now?

[Kyuugatsu]

I like the logo, I think you can reinforce the "cube" idea by making the shadows shorter so they complement the letters to make a cube. Right now they make a long box instead.

The game itself is fun. I don't think it'd be as fun with a bot, either.

[GrahamOfLegend]

I like the logo, I think you can reinforce the "cube" idea by making the shadows shorter so they complement the letters to make a cube. Right now they make a long box instead.

The game itself is fun. I don't think it'd be as fun with a bot, either.

Thanks Kyuugatsu! I like your idea, but I tried it and it wasn't working. It felt less like a shadow, more like an isometric view of a 3d object which I wasn't feeling.

Glad you like the game! It's really meant for 2 people, but there's such a strong demand for AI that I want to at least see what I can do with it you know? At least that way people can play and "practice" while their friends aren't around.

[Nikolas]

So I got to check out your game today!

Good Job! 

Gameplay feels like a mix between airhockey, foosball(?I don't know if I got the word right, table football?) and the game TENNNES, which is great.
The only negative aspect I've got to mention is that it doesn't creates as competition, as the "games" I've mentioned before
I don't think this is necessary for a game to be good, but it raises the replay value alot I think).
Sometimes the ball bouncing feels a little random wich could maybe cause this?

Presentation is very nice. I like the graphics and music and the whole game feels very "juicy".

[GrahamOfLegend]

Thanks for your feedback Nikolas! It started out simply as pong (which is minimal tennis) and then I themed it for the world cup, adding goals. But since the characters move all around and not just vertically, it's mostly akin to air hockey now. It's essentially footennockey haha.

I'm definitely working on it to make it more competitive in various ways. Some people I've played with actually suggested that the ball is more sporadic making the game more "hectic" as the title suggests. That's the biggest part - tweaking the movement of the ball.

Also i'm going to play around with adding urgency to it. E.g. I'm gonna implement a system where when the ball is on a player's side, their goal grows in size so they want it off as soon as possible, then when it's off their side it shrinks again. This also makes games go by quicker.

[Nikolas]

That sounds cool 

I can imagine people do tricky shots just to keep the ball on the other players side as long as possible.

[DarthBenedict]

btw is there going to be a bot that you can play with?
it's hard to find some friends to play it with.

At first I wanted to have an CPU player, but at this moment I have no idea how to program that. If it was just moving up and down and never had to actually go forward to attack it would have been more manageable, but at the moment it's completely over my head. Right now I'm just working on making it a complete game n then see where I go from there.

Also, I find that this is a common problem with multiplayer only games (like Sports Friends, Towrfall, etc) but when you do have people to play with, it's truly a memorable experience. That's what I want out of this anyway .

Here's a couple of suggestions for AI:

Easy mode - (both coding and playing against it) If the ball is above it, it moves up. If the ball is below, it moves down.

Hard mode - Raycast from the ball in the direction of its velocity. If it hits a top or bottom wall, calculate the reflection (this should be handy) and repeat until it hits the AI players side of the pitch. Then make the AI move towards that point.

[GrahamOfLegend]

Here's a couple of suggestions for AI:

Easy mode - (both coding and playing against it) If the ball is above it, it moves up. If the ball is below, it moves down.

Hard mode - Raycast from the ball in the direction of its velocity. If it hits a top or bottom wall, calculate the reflection (this should be handy) and repeat until it hits the AI players side of the pitch. Then make the AI move towards that point.

Thanks DarthBenedict! I actually started to work on some AI because a lot of people were asking about it + I moved primary development over to phones and tabs, so I figured I may as well make AI a focus too. I never thought about using a raycast from the ball to do it though, i'll look into that.

Right now I basically have it so that if the ball is on the human player's side, the AI player is in a defensive mode, just moving vertically to protect the goal. If it's on the AI player's side, I had added it as a gameobject to the script so that it can always know where the ball is and it moves up / down / towards it accordingly. The only thing I'm still trying to flesh out is what to do when the ball goes behind it.

I want to have some pics / gifs / a build maybe for people to play around with soon

[GrahamOfLegend]

Hey guys. it's been a while since I've actually posted anything new. So... UPDATE!

1.) New Look

I decided that I wasn't feeling the last look of the game anymore. When it was World Cuppong, it worked, but since I've outgrown that theme (and since the World Cup is over), I decided to make it cleaner and more minimal.

*Note: The goals are omitted from this image because I wanted to get the controls working correctly.

2.) Touch Controls.

Several people have pointed out to me that this would make a perfect touch game for mobile devices, so that's exactly what I did. I switched the primary focus to phones and tabs and I must admit that it feels a lot better when you play on a touch screen.

3.) Artificial Intelligence

Another thing people really wanted was a CPU player. I got the AI working to an extent. It's not perfect, but it's great for the moment!

My next task will be to deal with goals and how they work. I want them to not just stay stationary, but they'll be moving left and right. Also, when the ball hits the wall with the goal, that goal will increase in size and slowly decrease over time.

[GrahamOfLegend]

Here's a mock-up that I did in Illustrator for the new look with everything running. The goals will now be thin bars that when hit, you lose a life (the 5 squares are lives). The bars also move from left to right. I want to have them grow / shrink, but I'm not sure how yet. It'll either every time the ball hits the wall or grow over time. The game / round ends of course when all 5 lives are lost, and the ball won't stop moving until then.

[GrahamOfLegend]

Hey guys!

So, I've been really busy (both HC and non-HC stuff), and I made a good amount of progress on HC only to come to the conclusion that it just wasn't working. Back when it was just on PC and it was keyboard controls, the game ran nicely. Now that mobile is my focus, it just wasn't the same. It didn't feel as precise and ontop of that, there were some issues that I couldn't resolve without upping the device specification requirements, and for something that should be so simple I didn't want to do that.

SO! I'm switching things up a bit.

What's the same:
Goals.
Ball.
Stage.

What's changing:
The players/bars/mechanic.

No longer will you move a pong-like paddle to hit the ball, but rather, each player will shoot the ball to get it to the goal, kinda like in pool (billiards). I'll have some pics/gifs soon! Maybe even a build perhaps

[GrahamOfLegend]

Hey folks, I've been slacking  . I haven't been posting enough here, and I've been getting distracted too easily. Welp! No more. I'm just gonna start posting more frequently - maybe once or twice a week, more depending on whether or not anyone comments. I have that new mechanic I was talking about kinda installed (explained below). Also, surprise! Here's a build. It's nowhere where it needs to be, but now is as good of a time as ever to show it. Currently I only have a build for Android devices. Something like a Nexus 5 or a similarly spec'd device is recommended, but I'd love feedback from all devices so I know how well it runs on various devices.

A mockup for the new version of Hecticube

Notes:

• How to Play: Touch and hold anywhere on the bar at the bottom then drag in a direction to spawn a bullet. You can continue to move your finger in any direction to aim, then to fire, simply release your finger from the screen.
• Currently only one player is active.
• AI has not been implemented as yet.

You can download Hecticube Build 23 here on Android devices.

[GrahamOfLegend]

GIFFY GIF

Here's the first gameplay GIF of Hecticube after the big mechanics change. (Note: that line that's being drawn from the bullet should have an arrowhead coming from it, I just haven't done that yet). Also! I'm having difficulty figuring out how to not make the shadows look so jagged (I'm using the free version of Unity 3D btw, not sure if I mentioned that or not). Any suggestions?


Pew pew.

"Gameplay GIF of Hecticube Build 25"

[acatalept]

Really like the aesthetic, and I wouldn't sweat the jaggies in Unity: phones/tablets are getting so hi-res these days that it may not even be worth the performance hit of enabling antialiasing at the expense of fluidity/responsiveness/framerate.  But it's worth doing some A/B testing or even making an option (enabled by default that can be disabled on lower-spec devices?).  It's been a while since I've worked in Unity, but I seem to recall I could enable 2x MSAA on my ancient Samsung Galaxy Nexus (similar to a Galaxy S2) with my game cubrick and still maintain a playable framerate at 1280x720.  This was using Unity free version, so it was the more expensive multisampling AA enabled in Quality Settings versus the higher performance Pro options like FXAA etc.

I tried build 23 on my Galaxy S4, runs very nicely, I like the icon too btw ;).  I'm not sure where the gameplay stands in this build, but after launching a "bullet" it seemed I had to wait 5 seconds or more until it would let me launch another one?  Or maybe I was touching/dragging from the wrong place (I assumed the "touch zone" was roughly the bottom quarter/third of the screen)?  In any case, I couldn't get a "hectic" fusillade of bullets flying toward the ball as I had hoped ;)

Good luck with this, looks like it'll be a lot of fun -- I can't think of any fun, hectic local two-player android games I've played aside from Fruit Ninja's 2P mode, but this fits the bill nicely.

[GrahamOfLegend]

Thanks acatalept! Since I'm a designer first, then a coder, the jaggies bug me to no end haha. I'll do some A/B testing with the anti-aliasing and see what comes of that. Otherwise I'll just do my best to not let it bother me. I like the idea of it changing depending on the specs of the device - ultimately that may be the way to go.

Glad to know that the build works nicely on your S4! The gameplay is still somewhat early. Thank you for the feedback - you can shoot as fast as your fingers can swipe. I now notice that the touch area doesn't stand out enough. That darker blue section is where you shoot from, but I guess i need to make it more obvious and/or bigger. I plan to add several things to it, one of which being "charge shots" which will give people an incentive to not only do rapid fire shots.

I'm glad you think it'll be fun. I haven't played the 2 player fruit ninja mode in so long, but yes! I want it to have that level of intensity / excitement. I also want to make it multi-screen if I can, but that's not for now.

[GrahamOfLegend]

GIFFY GIF

New GIF demonstrating how the goals in the game work. Essentially, everytime a goal is hit, it shrinks in size and begins to flash, showing that it's temporarily invulnerable. It gets smaller and smaller everytime it gets hit until the final hit where it completely disappears and the game is over.

[GrahamOfLegend]

Now that the goals work, I have a full, playable game! Once the round is over, it just repeats until you decide to stop playing haha. It's not gonna stay like that of course, that just a temp thing.

[macepoodle]

What can I say, I'm very much hooked by the simple yet very appealing visuals you have here. You know you have something good when a person can't seem to unglue themselves from looking at the animated gifs of the gameplay. Great work so far!

[GrahamOfLegend]

Thanks @macepoodle! That makes me happy! I hope people enjoy playing it as much as they like looking at it haha.