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[Mr_Triage]

Play here

Update 2
Hello everyone, here are the new features of this update:
-With your mask on, Press 'f' to plant c4 which destroys walls and people!  But be careful, backup will be called if an explosion goes off!
-Guards have much better pathing and do not walk through each other anymore.
-I've fixed a lot of gameplay bugs
-The player's character will how aim in the direction of the mouse when his/her mask is on.

Update 1
I've added a lot of new features and cleaned up the game quite a bit.  I've implemented most of Quicksand-S's and Kiwisauce's suggestions.

Notable changes:

- Ammo is limited, you have 6 silenced pistol shots.  Once you run out, you can walk over a dead guard to pick up his unsilenced gun.
- "Last Seen" indicator.  A marker appears where the guards think you are and where they will investigate.
- Guard's have a much slower reaction time, they won't insta-kill you when they see you now.
- Money is automatically picked up and dropped off when you are near the money/van respectively.
- Choking out guards takes priority over unlocking doors or dragging bodies.

As before:

-Zoom with the mousewheel
-Lockpick doors with [Space] key
-Put on your mask with [v] key before you can fire your gun or lockpick.

Any ideas for what I should name this game?

Many thanks for checking it out, I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about it!

-------------------------------------------------------
Original Post
Hello Everyone!

My first build of my "Stealth Bank Robbery Game" (inspired by Payday2) is up at http://triagegame.com/stealth/menu.html!  Feel free to leave me criticism and/or suggestions.  If you want to stay updated on the progress of the game feel free to subscribe to the mailing list http://www.triagegame.com/stealth/menu.html#mailingList with your email (I promise its only for rare, relevant updates like release).

It works best on Chrome, Safari, and on Firefox.
It does not work on Internet Explorer.

Many Thanks!

Jordan

[Quicksand-S]

Wow. 7fps in Firefox Developer Edition, 60fps in Google Chrome. I've never seen such a huge difference.

Anyway, I enjoyed it. I died pretty quickly the first time and couldn't figure out how to reset without refreshing the page. If there isn't a way, I think there really should be. Gotta let people get back into the action.

It was pretty cool to see police fanning out to track me down, but a lot of them ran into my bullets (the ol' "go stand where twenty other guys have just been shot" thing). If they were to avoid areas where someone has just been killed, that might be better (ie. wait a certain time before approaching any body). They also seemed to just walk around the building and didn't look like they were going through it to get to me (I was outside the building at the top left). Still a nice start, though. It felt overwhelming seeing a ton of police coming, and then more reinforcements after that. (Is there a limit? I'm typing this with my character lying dead, and the number of cops has reached crazy levels.)

I like the music. It reminds me a bit of the action music in Mafia.

When you're dead, button prompts like "[Space]" still show up.

I was very happy to see that entering a restricted area, even without a mask, got me attacked.

Enemies overlap one another far too often. I also saw one walking down the hallway above the money bad in Diamond Store, and then when I looked again he was gone as if he'd just disappeared through the wall or something. It was also really strange to see new police coming out of the wall in the second level.

On my first real attempt to get the money (in the Diamond Store), I grabbed it (No prompt for that?) and headed for the car. I got shot at a few times over those red areas (I thought they were solid...) and then got to my car only to die as I was trying to get into it. I pressed space. Maybe I died an instant before that? I feel like the car should be solid and maybe I should be able to run around to the other side of it to take cover while I get in. In any case, the AI seemed more intelligent this time, with some going into the building and others that had been there returning to where my car was in order to cut me off. It worked perfectly.

This is really good so far. I think the rate of reinforcement spawns could be lowered a bit and the AI adjusted slightly, but otherwise the gameplay is pretty enjoyable.

[Mr_Triage]

Thank you for such a detailed reply!  A lot of the stuff you've mentioned is just things I have yet to get to.  The AI goes to the last place you were seen, so if you standing at the top left and they went into the building there was probably no police or camera that knew were you were.

I apologize for the lack of prompts, I've put a few in but I should've explained that space picks up the money and space drops it off.

The red areas are supposed to be desks.  Better images would clue users into that so for now I'll just have to explain it (there's a blurb on the start screen about it, not that I expect everyone to read it).

Okay, so improving the AI and better tooltips will be next on my todo list.

Again, thanks a bunch!

[Mr_Triage]

Oh also, do you have webgl enabled on your firefox?  That would explain the fps drop.  You can check here: http://get.webgl.org/

[Quicksand-S]

Yeah, it's enabled. It's the daily version of Firefox, though, so there's always a chance it has some new bugs in it.

Firefox Developer Edition - 7fps
Firefox - 14fps
Chrome - 60fps
Safari - No WebGL support in Windows and the game wouldn't load.

[Kiwisauce]

I tried this using Firefox (non-Developer), and it worked fine. I'm on a Mac. I got 60 FPS, and I didn't notice any buggy sounds.

I thought this game was pretty fun overall, but I also probably didn't play it the way you intended. There's a nice amount of mechanical depth given how much of an alpha this is. I managed to complete both levels, after a few tries on each.

So, some comments:

- I quite enjoyed the music change when you put on the mask or enter a restricted area. Nicely done. However, it felt odd to me that the heart-pumping music kept going once you were dead. It would be nice to make death more punchy, by playing a sound effect and either playing the original music or a different 'you sure are dead' song.

- At first I was annoyed that guards were shooting me from offscreen. I eventually found that scrolling would zoom, but then I felt obligated to play zoomed all the way out due to the advantage that seeing the whole field gave me. Not sure what you want to do about that issue. Maybe eliminate the zooming and implement a maximum firing range?

- Before you die, you can press escape to return to the menu. After you die, it seems like the game just stops accepting input entirely, so I had to refresh the page.

- Does dropping the money do anything? It's good that the 'drop money' action seems to have the lowest priority of all the spacebar actions so it's hard to accidentally drop it, but I'm not sure why it's an option. I thought maybe you'd move faster without it, or not be able to shoot while holding the money, but nope!

- Speaking of priority of the spacebar actions, I had some trouble with the doors. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but can you not unlock doors leading to restricted areas before you have your mask on? I also had problems with corpses in front of doors, before I realized you had to drag the corpse away before unlocking the door.

- It takes time to put on your mask manually, but it goes on instantly if you enter a restricted area. This made me never want to put it on myself. I'd just wait for a guard to open a restricted door, step over the threshold, and instantly shoot them.

- I don't understand the health system. Sometimes I'd just die in one hit, sometimes I'm pretty sure I got shot 3 or more times without dying. Maybe the bullets were missing me? Anyway, it's not clear whether you're getting hit or not if that's the case.

- I found it amusing that you can be unlocking a door while rapidly shooting behind you. Probably not what you want to happen though, hehe...

- It's a nice touch that you can shoot the security cameras and disable them. That and the 'saw something disturbing' mechanic add to the stealth aspects of the game. However...

- I wasn't stealthy in the slightest. Having unlimited ammo made it far too easy to run around spamming the gun and committing mass murder. Yes, the cops would usually show up when I tried this, but then I would just find a good corner to camp and spam a death laser of bullets across the threshold which the police would calmly saunter into, one by one. Very amusing to me, but again probably not what you were going for. Because of this I never really bothered hiding corpses, which I feel could be one of the more interesting parts of this game strategy-wise. The easy solution to this is to give the player limited ammo.

[Mr_Triage]

Thanks for the comments Kiwisauce!

Dropping the money enables you to take off your mask again, but that's all it does. 

The zooming comment is a good idea, I might just make their range depend on how far the player is zoomed out because I'd like to keep zooming as a feature. 

Yes, I should have explained better, unlocking is only possible with your mask equipped.

The player has no health, but the guards tend to miss a lot.  I wanted that to make it more intense.

Hehe, yes, you can shoot at any time in any direction   I know it doesn't make sense but its fun!

Hmmm, maybe I should limit ammo.  I've noticed that just about everyone figures out the death laser of bullets at some point!  I'm going to work on bettering the AI as well.

Thanks so much for playing!  I've really put a lot of thought into the detail and your suggestions are all excellent!

[Mr_Triage]

Update:
Play here

I've added a lot of new features and cleaned up the game quite a bit.  I've implemented most of Quicksand-S's and Kiwisauce's suggestions.

Notable changes:

- Ammo is limited, you have 6 silenced pistol shots.  Once you run out, you can walk over a dead guard to pick up his unsilenced gun.
- "Last Seen" indicator.  A marker appears where the guards think you are and where they will investigate.
- Guard's have a much slower reaction time, they won't insta-kill you when they see you now.
- Money is automatically picked up and dropped off when you are near the money/van respectively.
- Choking out guards takes priority over unlocking doors or dragging bodies.

As before:

-Zoom with the mousewheel
-Lockpick doors with [Space] key
-Put on your mask with [v] key before you can fire your gun or lockpick.

Any ideas for what I should name this game?

Many thanks for checking it out, I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about it!

Jordan

[Vincelee]

Game was a great concept but I feel as though you need to add a restart button and your character should die when you get shot instead of the game just freezing. all in all i enjoyed playing the game, i though it was cool the way the guards spread out and search the area for you once they find out that something is wrong. nice work and keep it up mate.

[Klaubauf]

Really fun game, however I've realised a few bugs or issues;

1. Guards don't care that I'm carrying around dead bodies.
2. Killing all the guards is incredibly easy even when they all spawn because they walk in a straight line, if you could somehow get them to split up slightly that way you can't wipe them all out in one bullet or make it so bullets can't pierce.
3. Dying means you have to restart the whole game.
4. Once you win you can't go back to the levels unless I'm missing something here.

Either way; great concept, I seriously loved this game and really want new versions. No seriously, I love stealth games and this is a great stealth game, minus the bugs and needs a bit of polish.

[IMBATMAN]

Love the game
Loved the camera movement with the mouse and being able to scroll out

the are a few bugs but it is a brilliant game in all

[Mr_Triage]

Vincelee, thank you for the comments!

Game was a great concept but I feel as though you need to add a restart button and your character should die when you get shot instead of the game just freezing.

I wasn't aware of this bug, usually the game offers "Press [Esc] to restart".  There must be some error that I'm not aware of.  I'll look into it.  Do you remember anything about the circumstances when you died and it froze?  What webbrowser are you using?  Did this happen more than once?

Guards don't care that I'm carrying around dead bodies.

Yeah, for now if your not wearing your mask they won't attack you.  It's on my todo list to fix this.  I think I might just not let the player be able to drag bodies without the mask on.  Do you think that is an acceptable fix?  Thanks for the complements!  I will absolutely keep updating this so stay tuned!

that way you can't wipe them all out in one bullet or make it so bullets can't pierce.

This is really strange because bullets can't pierce any more, that was in the last version I posted, so I'm really confused here.  The guards can; however, shoot each other on accident, is it possible that is what happened?

@IMBATMAN
Thanks! 

[Tunabeez]

Very fun but the line of sight for the guards can be very odd especially with corners.

[Quicksand-S]

I tried the new one briefly.

-Dying worked fine for me. It would be nice if "restart" just restarted the level instantly rather than taking me back to the choice of full-screen or not. I don't see why dying would make me want to change my mind about that.

-It's nice that I can take off my mask, but that seems like it might be a bit overpowered. I didn't do a lot of testing, though.

-Guards kept spotting me from outside my viewing range so I had to zoom way out, which made me feel more disconnected from my character. I'd much rather just have a fixed zoom level and AI that is less likely to spot me when off-screen.

-A guard spotted me through an open door (through the actual door, not the opening) and tried to shoot me but of course all his shots were blocked by the door.

-At one point, I was surrounded by three guards. They were all very close and all shooting at me, but it took maybe twenty or thirty shots for them to actually hit me. I was up against a wall that was below me. Maybe they were aiming slightly inside the wall or something?

-I found the text about ammo and pickups completely useless because it was so far away from where I was looking (my crosshair). It might be a good idea to put make info pop up there or above the character instead.

-I like that the mask switch is quick, but picking locks takes forever. I'm not sure why that bugs me in this game when picking locks in Thief or Splinter Cell took longer, but this feels worse for some reason. Maybe it's just that the guards notice me from so far away.

I didn't enjoy the game as much this time around. I felt like guards spotted me far too easily, so I kept getting into huge battles which ended quickly because I didn't have enough ammo. I guess I'm supposed to be stealthy, but between some guards seeing me from outside of my view and other guards somehow spotting me through doors and things, I haven't managed to actually get through an interior room stealthily (in level 2). I'm also unsure what their cones of vision are like. Do they have peripheral vision? If so, is it different from their normal vision?

To me, this game feels like it's trying to be both a stealth game and a crazy action game, but the stealth is made less enjoyable by the enemy AI and the action is ruined by the extremely limited ammo, so I just find it frustrating. Personally, I liked it better when it felt more focused on the action side of things, but if you want to make it require stealth then I'm sure that can be made to work. I'd want to be able to watch guard movements and avoid ever being seen, but in order to do that I need to have a better idea of the AI's capabilities (like maybe a subtle cone-of-vision like Mark of the Ninja).

Maybe I just didn't play long enough. I don't know.

[Mr_Triage]

Quicksand-S,

Thanks for playing it again!  Yes, I'll have to limit the guard's view range, that seems to be a common problem.  I'm not sure how a guard spotted you through an open door, I'll do some testing and try to replicate that bug.

Yes, the guards have peripheral vision.

This game is supposed to be a stealth game,  I'll try adjusting the AI and fixing bugs so that it won't ruin stealth.  I do primarily want it to e a stealth game, but I may add either more ammo or more weapons to give the player the choice to playing it as an action game if they want.

Again, thank you so much for the comments.  I'll post again when I update these changes.

Jordan

[PowRTocH]

This is pretty fun. I don't have any useful comments other than hoping you'll be polishing it and fixing the bugs and making an obvious volume control on the main screen. Also I couldn't press the Level Select screen after I beat the level.

[bdsowers]

I gave this a look. Not too shabby!

• Seems to be a bit bugged on my Mac. When I start the game up, it doesn't always center on the player. If I move my mouse around a bit I'll eventually find him.
• The zoom seems to have a weird velocity where it never stops (I'm using a touchpad, not a mouse wheel).
• I managed to get the enemies into a funnel where I was able to choke them all out one after the other. Like 10 guys. I was safe the whole time (they kept shooting each other).
• It seems like enemies can see through walls? The "last seen" indicator often seemed to suggest this.
• I don't understand the function of the mask. Is it just a thing I have to put on to walk in certain places? It doesn't seem to change how anything responds to me.

[debugchicken]

Gave it a try, its becoming nice.

- I'd take off the mask stuff. I don't aggregate gameplay value. Also it refers too much to hotline miami
- The character it not always facing the mouse. I think he should.
- The zoom is really nice. a big in.
- After you kill a couple of guards, no more guards appear.
- Guards AI needs to be tweaked.
- More weapons and enemy types would be nice for it not to get old too fast
- More types of gameplay too, not just stealing but maybe bringing things.. if you play hotline miami you know what I'm talking about

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

[Mr_Triage]

Thank you all so much for the comments!  This is really encouraging.

I'm in the process of add a lot of your suggestions into the game, but it is taking some time, so I'll post again when the updates are uploaded to my site.

@Mirrorlink,

I do want to keep the mask because it allows the player to be seen by guards in non-restricted areas without causing alarm.  (Inspired by Payday2).  That way you can get into a good tactical position before everything goes down.

Yes, AI and more guns is on my todo list!

@bdsowers,
I've had the same thing happen on a track pad, I'm not really sure why this happens yet.  Oh and I'll fix it so guards don't shoot each other anymore

[Mr_Triage]

Hello everyone, here are the new features of this update:

-With your mask on, Press 'f' to plant c4 which destroys walls and people!  But be careful, backup will be called if an explosion goes off!
-Guards have much better pathing and do not walk through each other anymore.
-The player's character will how aim in the direction of the mouse when his/her mask is on.
-AI is a little smarter.
-I've fixed a lot of gameplay bugs

I plan on adding more weapons and a level editor in the future.

Play here

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Jordan