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[MinskWorks]

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UPDATE 15/04/2012


Pre-Alpha demo now available here.

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UPDATE 12/03/2012

http://minsktown.com/2012/03/12/animal-cage-progress-report-09032012/



Information on Environments ,features, content and bug fixes.

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UPDATE 23/02/2012

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26077237/ACBuild004.rar

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Hello, this is the first public appearance of ANIMAL CAGE, my Physics based rogue-like built in Unity.

I'm after specific bits of feedback as development is still early on, but if you have anything you want to recommend then I'll be sure to take a look into it.

The specifics I'd like some feedback on are:

• How does the Physics interaction feel? I have placed wooden crates, mattresses and both full & empty barrels.
• How does movement feel?
• Also Audio and Visual (going for a Quake meets Escher setting). Anygood?

Build Notes:

• Fire is Standard assets
• All objects have Wood characteristics (i.e. audio, damage)
• can fly on physics objects if held (i'll fix that much later on, helps with debugging)
• Colliding with the floating gray box at the top of the stairs will give you a hammer and nail (you wont notice any difference). This can be used to hammer two objects together or one object to the environment. To do this, collide with the gray box so the item disappears. pick up an object and hold it on place of another. Hold Right Mouse button down till the object becomes connected (3 seconds should do it).

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26077237/AnimalCage/Physics%20Demo/WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html

Also, and this one is important. What game-play does this inspire in you? Survival? Adventure? Exploration?

Thanks, Greg

[imaginationac]

Movement's slow. Feels irksome now, but it could work for you. Not enough game to tell.

From what you have, I got kind of a Thief: the Dark Project feel to it.

I'd like to see what this becomes.

[MinskWorks]

Yes irksome seems to be the correct term here. I added a second speed (was using it as sprint) that can be initiated with the 4th mouse button (if you have one!).

The slow movement might work better in smaller spaces, but it's something that can be edited by simply changing a number so I won't get hung up on it till environments become more busy (more items, junk etc).

I'm heading for somewhere between amnesia - without the scares, the coast levels from Half-life 2 and the original quake's setting/ambience. In all honesty I'm taking a very loose approach to design. Setting myself certain goals which I'd like to see and letting the bigger picture form from during the creative process. We'll see how well that works out.

Thanks for the feedback anyway, I'll check out thief tomorrow and see what kind of vibe I get from that.

[mihai]

First, you could light up the place a bit more for testing purposes, it is really dark on my screen, almost missed the barrels.

1. Movement feels fine for me. If you go for amnesia style, it is OK, especially if you have a sprint option.

2. Physics manipulation seems great. I managed to manipulate the bed in any way I wanted, like picking it from different sides and it reacted realistic. The only thing I would do here is let the player get closer to objects. A capsule collider will do better here I guess, maybe you are using a spherical one? I noticed that I started to "push" the bed while being like 1-1.5 meters away from it.

3. About audio, it sounds good, but it is too few to really say.

I'm looking forward to see more of it

[MinskWorks]

I'll remove lighting from future test until I have a full lighting pass. I'll just render the scene in white till then, sorry about that.

I'm using a capsule collider, Originally I used a box collider but moving on terrain was horrible. The reason the collisions on the player are so wide is to stop the screen clipping through the environment or objects. I'll look into this in more detail though, maybe I could have specific collision checks or just enhance the environmental colliders... hmm.

Thanks again, glad to hear you found the physics interaction nice, I guess I can stop worrying about it so much now!

[mihai]

In my game I use layered collisions.In your case I would do the following:
Make two empty objects with two colliders, one bigger and one smaller and assign them to your player object (player is parent). One object is in the walls layer, the other in the objects layer, to say so. Then you move all walls in walls layer and objects in objects layer. After you do this, you go to Edit->Project settings -> Physics (something like that) and there you have a collision matrix. Make sure you check collisions of walls with walls and objects with objects, but not walls with objects. By doing all this you ensure you are using different colliders for different things in your game. Your implementation might differ though, this is just a suggestion.

[MinskWorks]

No, that actually makes a lot of sense and should work perfectly. I'll get onto that today.

[mihai]

Correction on the above: I think I messed up a bit there on the hierarchy as it is not the player which should be the parent, it should be the child of the colliders. But you get the idea:)

[MinskWorks]

Lastest build. This time, in downloadable .exe (windows)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26077237/ACBuild004.rar

So this is just an update on the physics, some environmental tests, I upped movement speed (may be some audio bugs) and some procedural item placement.

The objective at the start of the game will be randomly generated. The lockers also have procedural generation (are the lockers locked? Jammed? Open? Do the lockers have an item inside? What is the item - currently restricted to plank of wood). The demo cannot be completed as I'm yet to design an end-game. But if you bring back the engine or battery to the boat you can slot it into a fixed position.

So I wont say much more other than controls:
WASD movement
Mouse 1 grab
mouse 2 throw (weld, with hammer and nail pickup and holding one object onto another - must be held for 3 seconds).
mouse 4 sprint
space jump
shift crouch

Feedback on where you would like to see this go, and any gripes, feedback, enjoyment welcome.

thanks,
Greg

[mihai]

From a technical point of view it looks and feels better than the last version. As a game I don't know what to say as I don't like this genre so I haven't played it all. I guess it all depends in the end of what game do you want to make, but I wouldn't go much further on technical details until I would have a game design ready.

[MinskWorks]

This is where I'm having trouble finding a focus.

My Idea has morphed and deformed that the original concept is lost under piles of design concepts.

I have 3 major game genres I'd like to make:

• An adventure game where there a several methods of solving a single puzzle. I'd imagine pure-blooded point and click adventure fans would despise this idea.
• A Quake-esque game with rogue-like tendencies. Things like starting the game with a standard grenade launcher and as the player progresses through the environment having randomly generated power-ups for the player to stack onto the weapon (damage up, multi-grenades, range increase, incendentary rounds, etc)
• A survival game with a barricade system.

Think I'll give the quake idea a quick proto-type today. Need to find focus as money is running out!!!

[mihai]

The rogue-like thing sounds the most fun for me and it is the most easy to implement if you get to the point where you can really generate your level geometry just like rogue-likes do. On any of the other two you have to manually edit levels yourself, which might be a bit problematic if you are on a tight budget.

[MinskWorks]

New blog post Update, any and all feedback requested.

http://minsktown.com/2012/03/12/animal-cage-progress-report-09032012/



Does the B&W instantly put you off? The world will be quite animated so I'm hoping that it works well to reduce information whilst not completely blending away all my hard work.

[MinskWorks]

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UPDATE 15/04/2012


Pre-Alpha demo now available here.

Controls:

WASD : Movement
Left Click : Grab / Pickup / Interact
Right Click : Throw / Push
Middle Mouse Button : Use held object
Shift : Crouch
Space : Jump
Mouse 4/5 : Sprint

Known Issues:

Jumping is not frame rate independent; if you have high fps you will barely leave the floor, low and you will jump as if you were on the moon.


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