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[larsiusprime]

Hey guys, I'm working on a game for my Master's Thesis at the Texas A&M University Visualization Laboratory and I was wondering what you guys thought of what I had so far.

Here's some concept art:



And here's a mockup from what the game will look like:



It's called The Little Monster, and it's a cross between a platformer and a point-and-click adventure game, I guess, with some branching story choices and a morality system.

It has two basic things I want to do differently than most games:

1) Mechanics - not super innovative, but maybe something fun. I was inspired by the mechanics in Within a deep forest, but wanted to see if I could implement the mouse as that's less carpal-tunnel inducing

2) Morality system - I want to make a more nuanced morality system that escapes from the simplistic dualistic systems we've seen in games like KOTOR and Fable. It's a little too complicated to get into right here, so I'll just put up a link to the project's website which explains it in greater detail:

http://www.fadupinator.com/lm/

There's also a demo available, which basically just showcases the game's bare-bones mechanics, some music, and basic level design & art.

http://www.fadupinator.com/lm/demo.htm

It's a work in progress, and won't be done for at least a year, but I've wanted to share it with the indie games community for a while and now I've finally taken the scaffolding off the website. Halloween seemed like a good day to announce it

Kind of a short post, but I figure since I already had a website with a full explanation and pics I'd just link to that rather than repost it all here. I hope that's not a violation of forum etiquette? I read the rules, but I never know about these things...

Oh, and Nifflas is helping me with the Music for the game! You can hear his song, "Fairy Tale" in the title screen of the demo.

[Xander]

For thesisiness, I'll try to play it in the morning, sadly I have absolutely not energy to manage it right now. Looking mighty interesting though!

And no, I wouldn't worry about breaking forum rules and regulations and good manners and customs, though it's nice of you to be concerned. Basically for feedback purposes, the more we know the more we can try to help, so so long as there's a lot of information somewhere it ought to be fine by us, though more screenshots and information wouldn't go amiss here I don't suppose.

[handCraftedRadio]

Really cool demo. I love the graphics, and the music was really good too. The controls seemed pretty smooth, although I did find it a little hard to move around with the mouse. The controls also seem a little weird when changing screens, like it was hard to keep moving. There was also one part where there were a bunch of hearts in the air and I tried to climb to the top of a different screen and jump into the next one but I was unable to keep moving inbetween screens. Besides that everything else was fine. It's great and I'm really excited to see more of the game. Keep working on it and keep us updated on the development!

[kingdiz]

This was indeed cool. Good gfx and music (no sound fx yet). As for the game play I think it was good, but I found it hard to jump. I figured out that it wasn't just pressing the left mouse button any time I wished, I had to time it and there was a delay, whitch I found little desturbing. I think that a platformer should go a little faster. But set aside from that, this was really good, and have great potential indeed!

Keep working on it and keep us updated on the development!

[Pacian]

2) Morality system - I want to make a more nuanced morality system that escapes from the simplistic dualistic systems we've seen in games like KOTOR and Fable. It's a little too complicated to get into right here, so I'll just put up a link to the project's website which explains it in greater detail:

http://www.fadupinator.com/lm/

For what it's worth, I read that and decided that I really want you to succeed with this game.  :-)

It's important that we note that these are cliches, though.  There are certainly a few RPGs (Roguelikes in particular, I think) where the monsters behave in the same fashion as the player - picking up weapons and gaining experience, for example.

[Guert]

I tried the dmeo a bit, quite interesting but the controls turned me off. It's not fundamentaly flawed, it's only that few little things bugged me too much.

A) The jumping mechanics was a bit hard to understand. I also didn't like the fact that the character keeps on bouncing all the time. I wanted him to take a breka once in a while.

B) I felt I had too much control over the character. I couldn't move the mouse around without the character following the bat. I think it would be better if the character would only move toward the bat when the left button on the mouse is pressed down. This way, the player can easily move around easily and control the character very precisely at the same time.

The graphics look good. There are few problems with visibility tho. Sometimes, I though some of the ground was part of the foreground and vice-versa.

Besides that everything looks great and shows potential. Keep us noticed of further development!
Later!
Guert

[larsiusprime]

Hey thanks for the great and useful comments, guys!

Yeah, I think there are some ways I can iron out the bouncy mechanics. Right now the main system has two flaws:

1) You are always moving and can put yourself in peril (at least if I ever put anything scary in the game)
2) The bouncy algorithm isn't 100% intuitive.

I put in two kludgy work-arounds for these things, but I don't think anyone really noticed them as such, which says to me they might be bad features:

1) Pressing "z" will make you stand still (and bounce higher)
2) Every time you scroll onto a screen, Nous pauses to give you a second to reorient yourself. You can turn that feature off in the options menu and adjust the pause time.

So, most people never noticed the "z" key feature, and I imagine they want to stand still by default rather than move by default, so I should fix that. Second, so far everyone just interprets "scroll pausing" as some strange force that arbitrarily makes you wait on every new screen.

So, here's what I'm thinking I'll do:

1) Like Guert said, the Little Monster will only follow Nous when the left mouse button is down and held.

2) Change the bounciness so that Nous' vertical position, not how long you've held down the left button, indicates how high you will jump. So if you want to bounce along the ground, move nous level with the monster in a horizontal direction and then click. If you want to jump, move nous higher and click.

3) Make the little monster's default behavior be to stand still and not bounce.

I'll try to get a demo of that out in not too super long. What do you think? Would those approaches solve the current problems?

[Tex Pine]

Does the fire the monster shots by hitting Space works in this demo? I couldn't make anything with them, but I don't know if this is a demo limitation.

The music is great! How did you got it?

[larsiusprime]

The fire created by the torch when you hit spacebar is a half-implemented weapon. It's not ready yet, and it's kinda glitchy. It's supposed to bounce along the ground and stun or kill enemies.

But seeing as there's no enemies yet it doesn't do much

As for the music, I am working with two musicians: Nifflas, from Within a Deep Forest and Knytt, gave me permission to use a few of his tracks that hadn't shown up in games before. The title screen music, "Fairy Tale," is his.

The song in the game, "Mystery of the Bells" was made by my good friend Devon Motola, who is just an awesome musician I met through a friend.

[larsiusprime]

Hey guys, I updated the movement controls:

Now, to move all you have to do is point Nous somewhere and then left click.

To NOT move all you have to do is let go of the left mouse button.

The higher Nous is, the higher you will bounce.

Here's the link:
http://www.fadupinator.com/lm/demo.htm

Are these controls more to your liking?

[kingdiz]

Still a wonderful game, its easier to jump now, but its still hard to get it right, I had to "time" it when i bounces, I don't like that, but hey thats the only thing I don't like about this game. You got the mood right(tileset, music), the graphics and except for the jump thing all the other movments have been greatly improved. Keep on the good work and show us more levels

[larsiusprime]

Any suggestions that might make it easier to move about? Controls are pretty important, and so I'd like to do my best to nail them as well as I can.