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[diegzumillo]

Hello everyone

Orbitroll, a 2.5d browser game I'm developing, can best be described as a generalization of the classic Lunar Lander game.  You control a small ship, under the influence of nearby planets' gravity and with limited fuel, and must complete missions. Each mission has a series of objectives that can vary from simple "land over there" to more complex objectives, like deploying satellites into orbit and making interplanetart transfering maneuvers.

What I don't have but intend to have eventually:
- Music and sound effects, obviously
- A thorough tutorial, explaining not just the interface and controls (which are pretty simple) but an actual orbit dynamics quick overview. I realized that this kind of dynamics is not intuitive at all, most people accelerate in the wrong direction and become frustrated
- More missions, but not more of the same, different kinds of missions.
- More planet models and textures, including a intro logo etc. General polishing.

Link to web player:
http://gamejolt.com/games/other/orbitroll/11012/
Thrust with w or up arrow and rotate with a and d or left and right arrow keys. Notice that rotation applies a torque, if you want to stop rotating you have to apply torque in the opposite direction.

Any feedback is appreciated. If you think it's missing something and is not listed above, let me know.

[Quicksand-S]

I'm not sure what's going on. The game is unplayable because I start off every mission in an uncontrollable spin, before I even touch any keys and before the camera even gets to my ship.

It seems to think that I'm pressing Up and Right, but I'm not and I wasn't when I started the game either.


Edit: I think it's on my end. Another Unity game I just tried had the same problem. I don't have a gamepad connected or anything, though, so I'm not sure what caused it.

[diegzumillo]

Have you tried reinstalling unity plug in or using a different browser?

It sucks to know the only person trying the game have technical problems.

[Quicksand-S]

I've played quite a few Unity games in the past. Not sure why this and Whale Bait are giving me trouble. Apparently this issue can be caused by PS/2 keyboards (which I have). Maybe there's a way to fix it on your end, because I've seen a lot of Unity games work with this keyboard.

[TertiumQuid]

I was able to play it, but felt the physics mechanics were very awkward. Even after a few runs it still felt that the main challenge was fighting the input itself, not world gravity or terrain or anything else. Also: on the first mission I was confused about having to travel left, even though the viewport pans across the goal; I'm just so accustomed to traveling left to right to make progress that it took a few attempts before I realized my mistake.

Cheers!

[diegzumillo]

Thanks for the feedback

changing the direction to the right is easy enough.

The movement has two facets: rotation and thrust. rotation can be made faster by increasing the torque, but that might make stop spinning a little trickier.  Thrust efficiency really depends on the local gravity, but I can decrease the gravity on the first levels. Equivalently I could also decrease the mass of the ship.

[diegzumillo]

I've played quite a few Unity games in the past. Not sure why this and Whale Bait are giving me trouble. Apparently this issue can be caused by PS/2 keyboards (which I have). Maybe there's a way to fix it on your end, because I've seen a lot of Unity games work with this keyboard.

I read that wrong the first time. I have a PS/2 keyboard as well, so that can't be the problem 
Are you a Mac or Windows user?

[Quicksand-S]

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit. Tried the game in Firefox and Chrome with exactly the same results.

[diegzumillo]

We seem to have the exact same system. I'll keep looking for a possible cause.

[chaosTechnician]

I'm with TertiumQuid.  The controls feel too floaty.  Once I start rotating my ship, it's unexpectedly hard to get it back upright; it just seems to slowly keep rotating once I've started. 
I've played games like this before, so I know what to do and how to do it, but it's rather difficult for me to accomplish anything with it the way it is right now.

[diegzumillo]

I'll increase the torque. After this update I would appreciate a second assessment :D (i'll let you know when I update it)

The fact that it doesn't stop spinning is simply conservation of angular momentum. I could, for the sake of gameplay, stop by force the ship from rotating when the player isn't pressing anything, but when I'm playing I enjoy having control over the rotation. This comes particularly in handy when trying to keep the ship oriented along the orbit, for example.

[Quicksand-S]

I fixed the problem. I had some non-existent joysticks set up (a way to force my real gamepad to be in slot 2) and I guess they were interfering with Unity games. It works fine now.

As for the actual game, I feel like the control is sluggish, but at the same time I know that faster movement would be just as frustrating.

How about having a key that you hold to shift between high-power thrusters and low-power thrusters? That way you can have both "coarse" control and fine control over your rotation and velocity.

[diegzumillo]

How about having a key that you hold to shift between high-power thrusters and low-power thrusters? That way you can have both "coarse" control and fine control over your rotation and velocity.

First, thanks for persisting and trying my game :D
About your suggestion, I tought about that! The regular movement would be faster and more responsive, and holding a key would be for fine tuning. I was trying to avoid doing this to keep the controls as simple as possible, but seeing that everyone feels the controls are unresponsive, it might the the best way to go.

[Quicksand-S]

Interestingly, I was thinking about it the opposite way. Most games, by default, have a "run" key so players are used to holding a key in order to move more quickly. Then again, some games do have an "Always run" setting where holding a key causes the character to move slowly...so I guess either way works. It might be interesting to see which style people like better.

[teoma]

I love it... I haven't played Lunar Lander since I was a little kid. 

Initial thoughts-
  -Mouse Control option might help it feel more modern
  -Camera zoomout seems like it would be useful, but hard to mess with it while you're busy controlling the rocket.  Some sort of dynamic zooming like in the Super Smash Bros games would help.  (like so the rocket and target are both always on screen, or at least an arrow pointing to the target if it's offscreen)