TIGSource Forums

~ OVERVIEW: ~
Frudglebutt was originally a cross between the cardgame 'shithead' and a 2D platformer/brawler, now it's mostly just a brawler though.

~ KEY FEATURES: ~

• up to 5 players
• gamepad support
• 3 game modes (2 of which don't suck!)
• customisable controls
• Custom character setup

~ WHAT'S NEW: ~

• wolfman, monkey, succubus, incubus, crocodile and penguin avatars
• custom characters, control settings and game options now get saved

~ STILL TO COME: ~

• sound
• music
• balancing

it'll be a while before I do this though, I do have other games to make ^__^
also there's a possibility of adding network play later, but I'm not promising anything.

~ ALL RELEASES: ~

• V0.1 Beta Carotene (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17113.msg496785#msg496785)
• V0.2 Beta II (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17113.msg502608#msg502608)
• V0.21 Beta II.I (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17113.msg503206#msg503206)
• V0.3 Beta PINUS (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17113.msg520408#msg520408)

~ SCREENS: ~
(http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/8002/frudglebutt021.png)

(http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/295/frudgle2.jpg)

(http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/4597/actionshitheadeditor.png)


~ ORIGINAL POST: ~

Apparently, but she scares me  :whome:
Looks a bit like Alice as a spree-killer in Wonderland.. any influence or am I reading too much into the shapes?

I vote best-out-of-3 spear-tossing game! Sort of like battleship, but 2D and with spear-tossing! Maybe you can't see the other player's map or something, but get informed how close your spears were to the target, and when you hit one.

 :lol: no idea if you had a plan yet or not, just thought I'd toss that out there, since it sounded simple enough to do as a short game hehe.

Good luck sophie!

If you are going to hate the idea tomorrow you should finish it today. Judging from past work this can't be anything but awsome. Good luck Sophie.

and here I was thinking you were going to make a competitive fishing game.

nope that's pretty much it, my thinking was 'brawler with a card-game theme' and my head jumped to Alice :)


yeah, I'm not going to do anything like that! :D tbh I can't stand guessing games like battleship, sooooooo boring! :P


too late, I already hate most of it! D: thanks for the encouragement though! :D


this is always my fallback, in fact I might even be able to work it into my current idea maybe.

currently the idea is retaining the card and fighting themes, and combining a 2D brawler with the 'shithead' cardgame. it's presenting a few conceptual challenges but I think it could turn out quite interesting. (although whether it turns out to be something I can complete in the time limit is another issue)

I need to think more on my idea anyway, but thanks for the words of encouragement guys!

local multiplayer is go!
(http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/5818/multiplayerf.png)
got little randomly coloured test models jumping around in unity. should support 5 player local but I only have 2 gamepads and the keyboard. going to have to test it with more players on tuesday. :B

pretty much ditched the bunny girl thing now, game is going to be a cross between shithead (the card game) and smash bros brawl or something.

a cardgame? YES. its going to be AWESOME. basically, instead of just taking turns to place a card from your hand on the deck, if it's your turn, you have say 15 seconds to do it, fail or place the wrong card and you lose a life. not your turn to place? use cards in your hand as weapons/explosives/shield to encourage others to lose their lives and keep your own :)

probably not going to be particularly easy to learn, but I don't care. people want to enjoy the game, they best put in the effort >___>
besides I think this idea makes for a nice balance of action and strategy :)

If the game was hard to make, it should be hard to play? :P

What's with all the card-games?

Also, this sounds pretty nice! I look forward to trying it out; that gameplay sounds neat, and I've always liked your style.

naw, what I meant was since there are a lot of rules, that will make it harder on new players. ^__^;

anyhoo, screeny time!
(http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/4209/actionshitheadpic.jpg)

got most of it in place really, you can put cards on the pile (based on shithead rules), pick up cards from the deck, and use cards to battle directly too. use different suits for different effects, diamonds leave a trail of pointy crystals, hearts give you a temporary shield, spades can be used as a projectile weapon and jokers steal a life from each other player and gives them to you :D

just need to set up a handful of things and matches will actually be playable, after that I'll make it so you can have different customisable profiles instead of having to just have the random character colours and basic model pictured. after that I just work on the pretties I guess. I am expecting to have a go at making it play across the net, but it's not really a goal for the competition, I have other things to be doing and I wouldn't even be entering at all if I were more sensible >__>

 :handclap: :-*

(http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/7646/shockwavebaby.jpg)
I'm so near to having everything in the game I want, so I'll probably be able to post a reasonable build tomorrow. I'l like to go on and do some balancing but time is being a bitch to me on other stuff so I'll need to probably leave it more or less as it is after tomorrow for a while.

anyhoo, my todo list is pretty much:
- make it so players with no lives are ghosts
- actual interface for making custom characters
- interface for customising controls
- make an animation for when wallsliding, gone too long without one ^_^;

so yeah, hopefully I'll get that done tomorrow, I'll call it a beta and just balance it later :)

I really like the graphical style you've got going. I've gotta admit I've actually gone through life without ever learning how to play shithead, though I have heard of it, so no idea what the gameplay'll be like yet  :P

I love those character models, did you just make those?

I've never heard of this card game, and this graphical style is wonderful. Keep up the awesome ideas!

I don't know what's going on there but I love it  :-*

PLEASE call it the beta carotene version.

thanks! and yeah, all made especially for this game :)


honestly I don't get why, you chemistry nerds are weird, but it seems cool so why not! :D


and so we have reached version 0.1, AKA "Beta Carotene"   :handmetalL:;D:handmetalR:

I've included a readme textfile that has the rules and some considerations for setting up the controls, but in short: if you're playing with gamepads and only one person on the keyboard, you're golden. if you are playing with lots of folk on one keyboard, it's gonna depend on how good your keyboard is.

anyway, here's some pics:

and that's pretty much it for now, theres some serious things I need to fix, some serious balancing of the game that needs doing, but I seriously have other things that I need to do. so whilst this is only the first update, it'll probably be the last for a while, hopefully I'll have time to wrok on another release before the compo ends, but I'm happy to have gotten even this far right now.

anyway, I really, really want to go to bed now, g'night o/

As your game was previously known as "Bunny Girl" beta carotene was a pun. It's the thing that gives the orange color to carrots  :)

Wow the character animation and controls are incredible. How did you do the tails?

Awesome characters.  ;)

Looks great!  It's pretty difficult to keep track of all the rules while playing though.  Maybe some visual reminders (in-game) about what cards can be played on, and what extra actions each enable would be helpful.  Actually, I can't help but wonder if the card-graphics could be substituted with some other facade to make the rules even more clear(?).

gah, I should have seen the connection there, well, maybe I'll put a bunnygirl character into the next version.

Thanks! as for the tails I have a script that takes a chain of bones and makes it behave all rope like, I originally made it for hair, but I've found it useful for lots of stuff thats 'ropey'. it's a mess but I'm happy to share it if you want. :)

yeah this is a serious issue, I only got round to seeing the game actually played by multiple people on tuesday, and it was next to impossible to keep track of everything going on. and your suggestion was mirrored by a couple of people there.
stuff like having your avatar flash when it's your turn, cards changing colour depending on wether they can be placed on the pile or not, having a little time between turns and maybe even a messagge like "player X failed their turn, Player Y GET READY!"

but tbh I'm thinking thr rules are perhaps a bit to complicated as they are, I'm super happy with how the core controls worked out and I'm tempted to make the card gameplay much simpler and like you say, change the cards to something a little more distinguished.

That would be great! I'd love to see how that works. I'm just getting started with Unity myself so I appreciate any learning opportunities!

The movement and animation are so smooth; this is turning out really great!

it's a real mess so I'd be weary of trying to learn from it, but here you go (http://www.pasteit4me.com/2165013), just drop that on the root of a bone chain :)

I know I said I wouldn't be working on this in a while, but I got one thing out of the way, and thought "I'll just fix one thing" then one thing became a whole list and... well... NEW VERSION TIME!

most important things about this release are that the game finally has a bunny girl, and that there are 2 new game modes. the shithead (now just 'card') mode is pretty much unchanged, but you can tweak game settings to make it a little more bearable if you insist on playing it ;)

as for the 2 new modes, you have Survival and Feed the Thing!
survival is pretty much hurt each other for points, I think it should be pretty fun and a nice less complex and confusing mode. I mean, card fucked me up and I made the bloody thing.
Feed the thing, though I haven't tested it properly with other players (will do after a sleep), I think is going to be the most fun mode. you must be first to reach the thing, and whilst you own the thing you can feed it cards, but thats ALL you can do, no shields, no attacks, no traps. but feeding the thing is the only way to get points, so if you own the thing, you're everybody's target :D

less important but still good new things are missles now fire 3 at once instead of one, and don't look quite so crap, card pickup points now have timers to limit how often they can be used (can turn it off in the settings though) and a few other neat little tweaks and fixes :)

screenage time:

seriously, if I update this again before Lottie's Dungeon, someone shoot me.  :-[

so got round to playing the game with some folk today, and made some improvements (I knoooow what I said last post, pretend I didn't  :-[)


Made card graphics, better trap model, + other visual tweaks to tie the cards to their behaviours better.

most importantly though, you have the option of displaying your hand and health right over your character, since looking back and forth at the hud is a big distraction. also, instead of having buttons for 'move card selection left, move card selection right and use card', there are now just buttons to use each card :) same number of buttons, but much less distracting.

just reducing the number of things you have to think about that aren't playing the game :D

Great choice of controls, imo. I like this better.
I want to play this with someone, so I'll try to test it out with some friends tomorrow.
Nice work!

Haha, thanks! I'll have to model something with a long bone chain now to test it out properly! :D

Also I'm looking forward to what other names this game takes on before the end!

for fluff, got a new fixed up version of the ribbon script I put together at the UK TIGjam last month, now supports nested ribbons and fixed a gross glitch, here y'are (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9766731/RibbonScript.unitypackage) :D

anyhoo, it's that time again:

this version is really just a bunch of new avatar models, and the game now saves stuff like created character profiles, input settings and game options. so you only need to set that stuff up once (unless you are happy with defaults and random/default charas, then you need to set it up zero times!)

here's the new avatar models:
(http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/9818/frudglebuttwolfman.png)
(http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/1654/frudglebuttsuccubus.png)
(http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/3964/frudglebuttpenguin.png)
(http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/6448/frudglebuttmonkey.png)
(http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/2733/frudglebuttincubus.png)
(http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/2715/frudglebuttcroc.png)

I was going to add a new level, maybe with some air jets that blow you around and some spinny saws to give damage it you are pushed into them, also I coded sound and put some sound effects in but it sounded horrible so I decided for the time being it's best mute.

was going to fix that stuff, but I started watching Buffy season 2, and damnit I had to know if Angel was going to get his soul back, would they find the floppy disc with the translated incantation? would Ozz ever appear in 2 episodes in a row before season 3? would Spike get into a fight whilst in the wheel chair?

all these questions needed answers. and whether I was right to seek them out instead of putting more polish into the game before the compo deadline is not something you or I can say, only history, and our children will know.

I'll work on it more some other time though :)

Aw, thanks! I really dig that ribbon effect. New characters are looking good, as usual.

Ok we tried this with two people on keyboards the other day. We all liked the movement, controls and interaction with walls -- all very intuitive and smooth. It's fun just running around, spamming cards randomly. But, ultimately, the card system left us confused and unsatisfied.

We didn't know:
How many cards are there?
What card produces what effect?
What is the purpose of this effect?

We weren't able to make effective use of any of the cards, despite there being some with cool effects.

Maybe it was the perspective, or the fact they both share finely-tuned movement controls, but we really just felt like attacking each other directly Smash Bros style and knocking each other around.

This led to a brief discussion: Do you keep trying to make the card system work or switch to a less original, but more proven style of gameplay? How the cards work now, a simple fighting mechanic would probably be more satisfying. But then does the game lose some of it's novelty? Does it lose some of the reason to play it in the first place? We couldn't decide what was better.

Thanks, and good luck!