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[ThePhotoshop]

I'm making a game inspired by the fire propagation system in Far Cry 2. It's a sidescrolling

stealth platformer that uses the manipulation of fire and resulting propagation as its primary

mechanic. Made with GameMaker.

I'm looking for broad feedback on this prototype. Is it any fun? Is it too easy? Is it

incomprehensible?

Download link:
http://sneakybastards.net/wildfire.zip

Thanks for your time!

[phampire]

Cool concept, I always enjoy games with fire systems. I found the game easy enough to understand but I disliked how picking up fire or water and using it have different controls. Using water seems to have a click and hold approach while fire requires a click and then a click and hold. 

The AI seems a little too easy to trick I could get spotted and jump over them into some bushes and be completely safe. I also feel like if you light an enemy on fire and they run into grass it should catch on fire, but I could see how this would make it unbalanced. 

I also noticed that the trajectory line is not completely accurate as it would not take into account the width of fire/water. Here is a screenshot showing an example where the projectile would hit the wall and not the level below.   



Being spotted through solid walls needs to be fixed, although it doesn't seem to impact gameplay too much. Smoke surfing is a neat idea but it got me killed 90% of the time, I think a slightly higher smoke float time would make it more of an option.

I feel like the sound made by moving or jumping should be in proportion to how fast you were moving or how high you fell. Currently a tiny jump makes the same noise as a big jump. 

I think a checkpoint or quick save system would be good considering that enemies instant kill the player.   

[Quicksand-S]

I saw this on Twitter. Looks interesting. Any chance you'll put up a standalone EXE rather than an installer?

[ThePhotoshop]

Thank you for the feedback! I have a new build uploaded here that addresses a few of those concerns:

http://sneakybastards.net/fire_propagation-1.0.0.15.zip

Also, it has art!

[debugchicken]

well the installator was indeed uncalled for, the standalone would suffice

about the game, I was kinda overwhelmed by so much mechanics being presented simultaneously.

the enemies literally text-saying they fear fire is kinda strange. I don't think the text is needed if the animation is well made.

I feel this game has potential but it mainly needs change on the level design. For example I feel that capturing and trowing fire at the very beginning gives too much liberty, a torch imho would be better. Also the torch could ward-away enemies timely.

[ThePhotoshop]

A new build is downloadable here (as a standalone):

http://sneakybastards.net/wildfire.zip

- Health no longer regenerates automatically. You must find water to return to full health.

- Smokejumping has been temporarily removed.

- You can no longer jump over enemies to avoid them.

- Currently, the only way to be hidden is to crouch in grass by holding 'S'.

[Quicksand-S]

I finally gave this a try.

-The grass sprites are on rock in addition to stone, which looks a bit weird. I'm not sure if that's a bug. It would probably look fine if the sprites didn't have a flat bottom, though (the same goes for the burned grass).

-The character's walking animation is a bit strange but I love the idle animation.

-I encountered a TON of slowdown when fire was spreading through a field. That seems a bit strange because I've done similar things with smoke effects in Game Maker without that much of a frame-rate hit. Maybe it has to do with collision-checking or something. It might be worth disabling collision checks for smoke that is spawned by ground that doesn't have a ceiling nearby.

-Any fire that's off-screen should maybe not produce smoke until it gets close to the edge of the view and then instantly produce a column of smoke (with ceiling checks). That way, there's no smoke processing going on off-screen.

-One thing I did in the past is I made smoke that hit walls/ceilings shrink slightly so that its radius was never large enough that it never extended through that wall/ceiling. The trick is to make sure it doesn't get too small either, possibly by just making its collision box large enough that its center won't get too close to the wall/ceiling in question.

-Maybe when two fires are next to one another they could use a wider version of the flame sprite to fill in the gaps.

-It's possible to get stuck in the side of a block (The right side of one, anyway. I didn't find a good place to try the left side when fire was everywhere).

-Variable-height jumping (where you jump higher if you hold the button than if you don't) would be nice.

-The camera should probably be tighter, so I can see at least as much in front of me as behind.



Do you plan on making fires go out over time? Once an area is blocked off, it kind of brings the game to a standstill.

I'm not sure where you're going with the gameplay. I didn't know what my objective was, or if there was one. The tech is nice, though.

[ThePhotoshop]

Thank you for the feedback, this is very helpful.

Can I ask how you went about creating your own smoke system? You're correct in that the slowdown is caused by the smoke, but I was getting the impression it was simply the number of smoke objects on-screen at once, rather than any properties they were exhibiting such as collision. I will play around with disabling the collision and see if that improves framerate.

In terms of the number of smoke objects, I do have code that destroys them when they move off-screen, and that makes them only spawn when they appear just beyond the view boundaries (before this the entire level would continue generating smoke and I'd have single-digit frames-per-second).

I do like the idea of combining fire nodes when adjacent; perhaps this could also work to spawn larger (and therefore fewer) smoke objects as well. My main concern is having enough smoke objects overlayed in a single vertical plume to resemble a consistent column of smoke. I've played around with reducing the spawn rate of smoke objects and it ends up looking awful.

Would you be able to elaborate on what you find strange about the walking animation? Also, by a tighter camera, do you mean more zoomed out to allow more in view at all times, or one that moves to be slightly ahead of the current facing direction?

Currently there is no objective other than burning all the enemies; at the moment this is a test level to experiment with how the fire systems interact with the layout and AI.

[Quicksand-S]

Can I ask how you went about creating your own smoke system? You're correct in that the slowdown is caused by the smoke, but I was getting the impression it was simply the number of smoke objects on-screen at once, rather than any properties they were exhibiting such as collision. I will play around with disabling the collision and see if that improves framerate.

From what I can tell, my smoke was a lot like yours. I just made objects that rotated at various speeds, changed in size and faded over time. I think I had one version that changed color over time too, so it would start out orange, turn grey and then transition to very dark grey.

Do you have anything else going on that's related to the smoke? For example, is your AI's visibility affected by the smoke?

I just did a quick test of only smoke objects (rotation, alpha, size and position changes 0). With 4000 smoke objects, I was getting just over 60fps. Adding about 40 obstacles for the clouds to collide with brought the frame-rate down to 40fps, so that seemed to have a fairly large impact (although changing how the collision-checking was done didn't really have any impact at all). That said, unless you've got thousands of smoke objects this shouldn't be an issue. I wonder what's going on in your case. I would think it should be able to handle at least a few hundred smoke objects at once without much trouble.

In terms of the number of smoke objects, I do have code that destroys them when they move off-screen, and that makes them only spawn when they appear just beyond the view boundaries (before this the entire level would continue generating smoke and I'd have single-digit frames-per-second).

One thing I do with rain and snow, which might be useful here, is that I create a fixed number of precipitation objects at the start of the room and recycle them rather than destroying them. That way, I always know how many objects will be in the room at a time and the frame-rate is consistent. It makes it much simpler to adjust everything to achieve a certain frame-rate when the numbers are constant like that.

Would you be able to elaborate on what you find strange about the walking animation?

It's a bit of a sideways waddle or crab-walk. There isn't nearly enough limb movement in my eyes.

Also, by a tighter camera, do you mean more zoomed out to allow more in view at all times, or one that moves to be slightly ahead of the current facing direction?

Zooming out could be helpful considering how little the player can see of their surroundings, but it depends on what sort of atmosphere you want. The zoomed-in camera helps with the sort of claustrophobic, "trapped in the smoke and fire" feeling.

At the very least, though, I think the character should be centered. Showing the view slightly ahead would probably be good too.

[ThePhotoshop]

Thanks for the elaboration.

So I tested a screen full of fire nodes creating smoke, and managed about 40fps.

After removing
- All collision conditions (walls, player for visibility)
- Opacity reduction
- Size scaling
- Speed reduction
- Additional visual effects like the orange glow

I end up at about 57fps with the exact same number of smoke objects onscreen.

This is obviously an improvement but if you were getting about 4000 onscreen at 60fps, obviously something wrong is still happening here.

This is kind of disappointing as I'd really like the smoke to play into visibility. Would you have any ideas on how to improve efficiency? Perhaps fewer but larger smoke clouds?

[Quicksand-S]

This is obviously an improvement but if you were getting about 4000 onscreen at 60fps, obviously something wrong is still happening here.

Well, that's 60fps with no input, no AI, no layered sprites (ie. no grass), etc. but yeah, I would expect you to get more than 60fps unless you're generating a lot more smoke than it seems like you are. On average, how many objects do you have in existence at a time?

This is kind of disappointing as I'd really like the smoke to play into visibility. Would you have any ideas on how to improve efficiency? Perhaps fewer but larger smoke clouds?

I have a feeling larger smoke clouds might look weird. You could try having fewer clouds but letting them last longer (ie. slower opacity drain). That way, you'd still have the build-up of smoke wherever there's a ceiling.

You may also want to consider scheduling object creation. Have a timer of some sort in the background and whenever a fire is spawned it is assigned a time slot during which it creates smoke objects.

Or you could try what I suggested before and just have a pool of smoke objects that each fire draws from. Instead of destroying the clouds, you make them invisible and non-reactive until a fire needs one. Then you move it to that fire and make it active again, so you're not constantly creating and destroying things.

It's probably a good idea to have fires go out, either after a certain time or when there are too many in existence (put out the oldest one).

At the moment, I can't think of anything else you could do, apart from just trying to make every other aspect of the game more efficient to compensate for the drain caused by the fires.

[ThePhotoshop]

If you get the chance would you be able to tell me what frames-per-second you get on each of these 3 versions? Just stand still and fill the screen with fire nodes.

http://sneakybastards.net/wildfire_nocollision.zip - Removed smoke collision and visual effects

http://sneakybastards.net/wildfire_nocollision_fx.zip - Still no collision, but effects re-added

http://sneakybastards.net/wildfire_collision_fx.zip - Collision and most effects re-added

[Quicksand-S]

I was surprised to see that you didn't put in an FPS counter for me.   I used FRAPS, but it may have affected the frame-rate a bit.

NoCollision: 57fps

NoCollisionFX: 56-58fps

CollisionFX: 45fps


In the actual game, if I light the first platform the frame-rate goes down to 45 as expected. If I then walk right on the bottom level toward the water, the frame-rate goes up but only to 55. Without lighting any fires, it's a solid 60fps in that same spot so it seems something is being done with the fires off-screen. Are they still being drawn and animated? Maybe they're even creating objects that are then destroyed instantly? That would explain it, I think, because you wouldn't be taking the "multiple clouds of smoke" hit to the FPS but would still probably take a hit from the constant creation/destruction.

[ThePhotoshop]

Hi again! I have a brand new playable build here with a whole load of changes:

http://sneakybastards.net/wildfire.zip

Some of the main tweaks:
- You can hide in unburnt grass
- Enemies can't see you through smoke
- Enemies don't catch on fire instantly, but will run away from fire
- You can drop a smoke bomb!
- And a whole bunch more.

Here is a sweet Vine showing how you can emerge out of fire and terrorise enemies: https://vine.co/v/O6i0JrDBijp

Would love some feedback if you have the time! Cheers