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[Pepwuper]

Hi everyone!

We are a small team of Unity developers from Studio Pepwuper, and we started working on this project about 3 months ago. The idea is simple - to re-create our childhood memories of playing with neighborhood kids. Essentially it's a family-friendly version of CTF where players are divided into two teams and compete in real-time against each other.

And here's the twist: each player brings one Giant into the game to help them. The Giants are AI-assisted so you don't control them directly, but rather you issue commands and they act accordingly. We have our first Giant in the game now (the powerful Rock Giant George) and will be adding another Engineer-Robot-type Giant soon.

Development Screenshot:



Here's

, click the image below to go to the YouTube video (don't know how to embed it on the forum directly...)



We are building it for both touch and mouse/keyboard interface. Let us know what you think! Especially on the art style and game concept/idea. We are still early in the process so the more feedback the better! And don't forget to check our blog http://www.pepwuper.com/blog/

Thanks!!!

[The Monster King]

giant monsters and giant robots are two of my favorite things however it seems i have no incentive to play your game as the giant monsters/robots are not playable. It sounds like all the cool stuff the AI gets to do... I don't really like the idea of playing as a small child and neither did I as a child or most childs that I knew back then!!

otherwise i like a different take on multiplayer gameplay.

since the child characters seem to be equipped with all the standard children abilities (annoyingly run around, get eaten by giant monster / robot) what else can you do besides capture flag and look at how more interesting the AI controlled character is

what are your plans on choosing characters and their abilities, and why did you choose to make monsters AI controlled?

[Pepwuper]

Thanks for the feedback!

The idea is the "kid" in the game is your avatar that you can customize in the future. The giants are where different "classes" will be based. So if you bring a HWG type of giant into the match, the game will play differently if you bring a healer giant into the game.

I didn't explain it very well with regards to controlling the giants. They are semi-automatic - meaning you still tell them what to do. For example, you tell the giant where to build a wall, or where to use special attacks, and it will act accordingly, then come back to you afterwards.

We decided this simplifies control as the player already have the avatar to control (with various items to use to set up traps and to attack opponents). Having to control the giant directly might just be too much for the player.

So essentially, the Giant will be like the dog in Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi (http://store.steampowered.com/app/34282/), or Hobbes

[Pepwuper]

A small playable demo to show you how to control your giant in the game!

• The Rock Giant will follow you and attack other players nearby.
• Press “Q” and click on the ground to have him punch and deal area damage there.
• Press “W” and click on the ground to have him create a wall at that point

<Play It Here>

[Mikademus]

I don't have a Mac but I will feedback from the video. The visuals are good, if not stunning, but have a pleasant and relaxing atmosphere. I suspect this is what you're aiming for, so if so you've succeeded! I lack shadows: if your engine supports it, they would probably help the graphics quite some.

There needs to be sound effects, because your visuals are good enough that their lack is screamingly obvious.

I have difficulties following the flow and goals of the game. Is the boy chasing bananas? Where is he going? Why? There needs to be some kind of cues to help players and onlookers orient themselves.

The "touch-screen and run there" mechanics isn't doing it for me: I feel detached from controlling my avatar, but perhaps this can be addressed by adding some deftness-based movement options such as side-stepping and feinting by tapping around the model, or by simply holding your finger down in the direction you want to run to make the player feel to be in constant control.

Cheers for a great concept and trying for something new and positive!

[Pepwuper]

Thanks for the feedback! yeah we'll be adding music and sound to the game later. We've been spending most of the time working on the backend multiplayer networking system. As for the goal of the game - it's basically a Capture The Flag type of game where players are divided into two teams and compete. But instead of controlling your own character in the game, you will also control a Giant to help you with the match! Hope this explains the gameplay better. We are still a long way to go before finishing it up, so hope to show you guys more as we go!

[Pepwuper]

Oh by the way you don't need a Mac to play the browser version - just need the Unity Webplayer plugin and it should run on Windows as well.

[SP9000]

This looks great!  I obviously can't say anything about gameplay, but the visuals are very charming.  It reminds me of the good ol' childhood days . 

giant monsters and giant robots are two of my favorite things however it seems i have no incentive to play your game as the giant monsters/robots are not playable.

I actually like games where the player isn't in direct control of their "weapon", so I was quite happy to read that design decision!  I'm trying to reason why it is enjoyable, but I am failing.  To me it just is.

As far as controls go though, you may want to make it so that the mouse button can be held down to direct the player instead of repeated clicks. 
Keep it up.  You have a great idea here, I hope you finish it.

[Pepwuper]

Thanks for the feedback and the suggestion on the control.  Since the game is designed for the iPad, it'll be a bit annoying to hold down the finger on the screen while it blocks the view, but would definitely be a good option on the PC/Mac. We actually had something like that earlier in the development but it didn't work very well so we disabled it. We'll re-visit it and see if we should add it back ! :D

[SP9000]

Yeah for me it was instinctual to hold down the left mouse button.  I am not at all familiar with tablet based games, but I can see how obstructing the gameplay could be annoying.  I know it's nice and clean from the developer's perspective to have standard controls across all platforms, but in most cases I think they should be modified to suit the input methods.  Of course it is a trivial thing to change, so there's no need to worry about such fine details yet if you don't wish to.

[Mikademus]

Repeating myself to chime in with SP9000, I think you are doing a mistake insisting on only click-to-go-there controls.

[Pepwuper]

Thanks guys for your thoughts on the input on PC/Mac. I think it's a good point and we'll put click-n-hold back into the game for mouse driven devices! :D It does seem more nature (similar to diablo-type of games) and also it works really well with Torchlight.

so point taken, will do!   

[The Monster King]

actually like games where the player isn't in direct control of their "weapon", so I was quite happy to read that design decision!  I'm trying to reason why it is enjoyable, but I am failing.  To me it just is.

i can sort of understand this interest but games where i can play as a child are very numerous. games where i can play as giant monsters are surprisingly sparse, especially those that allow themselves to be fun

wait though, does each player bring a giant or only each team? because if a bunch of people control him at the same time sounds like it would get messy. unless there is a "it" who controls him? if so what do the others do? just run around? I guess it works. sometimes i want too many things and forget simplicity. you better have a lot of monsters. monsters. (have you guessed i like monsters)

[Pepwuper]

haha the idea is that each player will bring one giant / monster. So yeah, expect to see a lot of them running around! 

[The Monster King]

oh then that's okay then I guess! I thought it was each team at first. I still would prefer playing as monsters but the idea is still much more interesting.

i'll beta test that shit any time

[Pepwuper]

Hahaha great! I'll make an announcement when we are ready for some testing, hopefully soon!!!! 

[Pepwuper]

It's been a while since the last update! We've been busy refactoring all the networking codes and migrating the project to uLink. Here's a video of the current state of the game. We are holding back on migrating art assets until later so it doesn't look as good as previous versions yet, but now we have the giants all synchronized!

Video on YouTube:


Blog Post:
http://www.pepwuper.com/giants-synchronized-in-new-version/

[Pepwuper]

Robot vs Rock

For the past few weeks we’ve been working on adding a second Giant, Nick the Robot, into the game. The Robot Giant is similar to the Engineer in Team Fortress, someone who can build turrets! (55 sec mark on the video) The turret detects enemy within range, and rotates to the target and starts shooting. In this video, you can see how it works, as well as the chaotic action that can occur between Giants from different teams. I was running all three games (server, player 1, player 2) on my laptop so the game gets a bit laggy sometimes which caused synchronization issues – something we continue to optimize. Also the 3D model for the Robot giant is still in development, so we are currently borrowing Lerp from the Unity3D tutorial for prototyping.



(blog post: http://www.pepwuper.com/robot-vs-rock/)

[Lex]

My word might not be worth much but it looks really cool. Like Pokemon less the Pokeballs and with giants. I definitely want to try the beta. Goodluck!

[Pepwuper]

Thanks Lex for the encouraging words!  And good eyes, we think of this game as a "Starcraft meets Pokemon"