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Thubalup Thubalup Thump Crack Whump (TTTCW for short) is a two-player (local play only) game of medieval jousting.






(http://vigeo.pl/games/tttcw/tttcw-title-screen-final.png)



Setup:

On the title screen you can configure both players. You can change their names (letters and numbers only, no space!) and you can indicate whether a given player is Sir or Lady (just click a proper text above their head).

You can always return to the title screen by pressing ESCAPE key.

Gameplay:

The aim of the game is to dismount the opponent. You can do it with your lance but the opponent can deflect your lance with their shield (to deflect the lance the shield must be in the same position - shield up if lance is up, etc.). The exactly same rules apply inversely so have to use your shield to deflect opponent's lance and not get dismounted.

If you score in a given round, your score indicator will flicker.

Controls:

In the game you control lance and shield of your knight. Both lance and shield have three valid positions (up, middle, down). When no button is pressed both lance and shield assume middle position. Now the buttons:

Left player:

• [ Q ]   lance up
• [ A ]   lance down
• [ W ]  shield up
• [ S ]   shield down

Right player:

• [ I ]    lance up
• [ K ]  lance down
• [ O ]  shield up
• [ L ]   shield down

Standard keys:

• [ ESCAPE ]  return to title screen
• [ SPACE ]     start, continue, etc.
• [ P ]  pause game
• [ + ]  increase sound volume
• [ - ]   decrease sound volume
• [ 0 ]  mute all sounds

Trivia:

• This is my first publicly available, complete game ever. So please, be gentle.
• The music comes from the website of Jon Sayles (http://www.jsayles.com/familypages/earlymusic.htm) (there's some really nice medieval music, go check!).
• Ouch sounds for Sir were performed by me. Ouch sounds for Lady were performed by my wife, Joan (hi Honey! :durr:).

Technicals:

• The game is built on top of Flixel and uses Box2D to simulate falls of dismounted knights.

Known bugs:

• On Linux there may be some noticeable sound lag. It's not Flash's fault (some drivers problem, I believe).
• On Linux there may be some annoying screen flickering. It is Flash's fault (try updating the Flash Player version).

What's the acronym stand for? How does the game play?

Totally Tubular Tournament Chess World? (knights, horses, physics... okay the last one doesn't fit.)

Haha, not even close! ;D It stands for Thubalup Thubalup Thump Crack Whump and it is my random interpretation of sounds that can be heard during jousting tournaments! There are galloping horses, lances hitting shields, lances cracking on knights and finally knights falling off horses and hitting ground! As to physics, I'm going to use it mainly to model gorgeous falls and I'm fine with it. ;)

That said, I've hacked together the first playable prototype: Thubalup Thubalup Thump Crack Whump - prototype 01 (http://bit.ly/dEKF1x)

(http://i.imgur.com/PRrRI.png)

It features:

• controllable knights
• knight/lance, lance/shield collision handling
• scoring system

There are some glitches but all seems sound and fair. It feels much rock-paper-scissors right now but the controls scheme is not final and I'll be working on it (but feel free to comment if you think of something more predictable/skill-based).

The graphics!  :-*

I will have to give this a go tomorrow when i have someone to play it with haha.

Hm... I've received some signals that sometimes the controls do not work the way they are intended (i.e. the knight falls off the horse althoug he was protected by the shield). Could anyone please confirm?

Interesting real-time RPS.  Are the player customizations going to effect gameplay at all?  I only played a half dozen rounds or so (against myself), but didn't run into the problem you've described.

Nope, character customizations will be strictly decorative. I think this game could be most appropriate for small house parties where friends compete with each other in a hot-seat fashion. Therefore rules should be as simple as possible, and the gameplay as skill-based as possible, just like in Wii Sports for example.

Simple and fun.. loved it! :)

Nice game. Some times the knigth on the right side does not get knocked off when he is blocking middle and the the left knight is striking low. It happens about 1/3 the time.

Hahah awesome; I like where this is going. :)

Yeah, I've seen this. But the score was updated properly? Wasn't it? :beg:

Right now I'm delving into Player.IO to see how much will it take to make it online. Basic Flash/Flixel (client)/C# (server) integration with Player.IO is a snap. The harder part will be moving all the physics code to the server because I have no experience with C#. I've found the Farseer library. It's a C# port of Box2d but I have to figure out how to reference it in the server code. Anyone has done it before?

Meh, looks like using Box2d in Player.IO server code is unfeasible/utterly hard/unreasonable. So it's time for plan B! Focusing on offline, one-computer multiplayer for now and deferring online multiplayer for later. Also I guess it's going to be totally enough if the server solves knight/lance/shield collisions in a simple Flixel-like manner and the knight fall ragdoll animation is handled on the client side. After all, this animation is just for the lols!

Today I started implementing menu system. Typically in Flixel menus are made as states but I'm to try another route. I want to the menu to be totally independent from the current state so you can switch states in background or update the current state while walking through various menu screens.

Doesn't the left player have an advantage, because they're turned away (and thus it's harder to see if their shield is centered/down)? I guess both players "facing forward" like the right player looked wrong? :(

I just couldn't visualise the left player facing toward the "camera" and yet be able to move his shield up and down (it goes way below horse's back). Yet I see your point although I thought players are rather going to concentrate on opponent's lance.

You don't have to simulate falling physics on server side, do you?

Of course not. :) They're just for the lolz after all... ;)

So making multiplayer for this game won't be so hard, hm?

I guess I'd be able to restructure the code in one evening to make it capable of online multiplayer (I mainly have evenings to work on the game). But it poses a dillema: focus on an offline (on one keyboard) multiplayer that I have now and finish the game before the deadline or try to add online multiplayer and risk not finishing the game because of the scope (I expect a ton of online-related technical and design issues; having gameplay controlled by the server is just a tip of an iceberg).

You are right, it's better to finish singleplayer game than not finish multiplayer.

Of course online multiplayer is still on my TODO list. Just later. ;)

Sure,
btw: goshki like "gorzki"? :)

Yes. :-)

It may look like the project has died silently but that's not the case. And to proove it, here are two screenshots of what it currently looks like:

(http://vigeo.pl/games/tttcw/tttcw-title-screen.png)

(http://vigeo.pl/games/tttcw/tttcw-gameplay.png)

Unfortunately I don't have enough time to implement all the features I have planned in the beginning so my current objective is to do the minimum plan and polish what I have as much as I can before the deadline and then we'll see.

Oh, and the latest version is here (http://bit.ly/dTtmqH).

Screen from "so what are you working on" (http://i.imgur.com/BGLqJl.jpg) thread is funny.
I like the style of graphics in this game and waiting for some multiplayer (official TIG's tournament? :D).

I just saw this for the first time, and it's great! A sort of high speed rock-paper-scissors/chicken sort of thing. I hope you're still planning on online multiplayer. That would be tons of fun.

Unfortunately online multiplayer is totally unfeasible before the deadline because I'll be able to work on the evenings only. :concerned:

But when the compo is finished I'll get back to Player.IO and give online multiplayer a second shot. 8)

I'm glad this one's still going - the new version seems a lot livelier (more impact effects?) The horse faces remain my favourite thing.

Will you do any animation for the thubalups?

Will

Yes, I'm planning to animate horses' legs, heads and tail. There probably will also be some clouds to fill the sky.

New version (http://bit.ly/dTtmqH) is up! Now with player configuration and sounds!

(http://vigeo.pl/games/tttcw/tttcw-title-screen-player-configuration.png)

It's really hard to tell where the left players shield is. I think it should be infront of the knight instead of behind.

All right then. Tomorrow I'll make a new version of the left knight with a fully visible shield. Player convenience is most important. :)

Aaaaand new version (http://bit.ly/dTtmqH) is up! Added clouds, multiple backgrounds, female breastplate :eyebrows: and the left knight facing the camera (as Nugsy suggested) so the shield is visible.

(http://vigeo.pl/games/tttcw/tttcw-title-screen-clouds.png)

He has got shield and lance in the same hand? :)

Nope, shield is in the left hand. He's just turned in waist so that he faces the camera. :giggle: Compare to the guy on the right - his lance is also in the right hand so the lance is behind him. ;)

Anyway, I've got one more thing to do, which is animating horses' legs. I'm super reluctant to do it because I haven't done any animation before. But it's a must-have for me to be able to call the game complete.

Aaaaand it's DONE (http://bit.ly/dTtmqH)! Final touches include horse animation, sound of horse gallop, more distinct female knight and last (but not least) MUSIC that I found on the page of Jon Sayles (http://www.jsayles.com/familypages/earlymusic.htm) (there's some really nice medieval music, go check!).

(http://vigeo.pl/games/tttcw/tttcw-title-screen-final.png)

I love everything about this game!
The concept was simple but fun, great graphics, great animation and the
choice of music very fitting.
Well done!  :beer:

Glad you like it! :beer:

very cool, love the game's style and simplicity. Great job!

I know you're done and all, but it's just a little annoying that if you're typing in a name for the character and you happen to press "p," the flixel pause box shows up and the music stops. You can still type into the box at that point, but it freaked me out a little bit, I thought I broke it.

Also, I just hit a little glitch where if you tap up or down on the lance at the very last second, the other player never dismounts, but the score counter goes up.

[edit]
Basically if any win is registered in the last split second, albeit a shield moving away or a lance being put in place, the losing player never dismounts. I can get both players to get hit but not fall off at the same time. :concerned:

Game's great though, I love it.

Yes, I've had a hard time earlier with this so I put it away and left it as it was. But because you've pointed it out and it's still before deadline, I've decided to iron it out. I've added a limit that disables player controls once the knights are in a given proximity. This way there should be no strange false-positives that you experienced.

I've also added a little indicator in the middle of the ground that greys out once the player controls are disabled so it's easier to track how much longer you can change your decisions.

Could you please try the game again and see if it's better now?


That's another glitch I put away for later. But as I'm already fixing the above problem, I've also fixed this one. Now the Flixel pause should not kick in once the focus is on one of the input fields (but it still kicks in once the game loses focus).

Link's showing up blank right now.

EDIT: Nevermind, there just isn't a preloader.

Much better.  ;D

Great! :D

I don't know what happened to the preloader... Some kind of mystery. :wtf:

Edit: All right, the preloader is back. Basically the input pause prevention was done in the wrong class and whole game had to be loaded to start the preloader. :facepalm:

Pro logic.  :giggle:

Kind of like Nidhogg but on horse back. Very nice.

The game comes together really well. The graphics all work together and it's a simple, clear mechanic. It's the kind of game I would be proud of.

Despite all this, it only held our attention for a few rounds. Being essentially a twist on Rock Paper Scissors it suffers, I think, from some of the same problems as that game. You can make guesses at what the other person will pick but in the end it's just a guess. (Or, at least, that was our experience. We just chose a random combination at the last minute that was as unrelated as we could get to what we were doing leading up to the confrontation.)

Really, though, the game is not trying to do any more than this. It works on the level it's trying to work on.

Other thoughts:
We played on a TV so it was hard to read the smaller text like the instructions and keys.

We didn't realize you could enter names. Maybe there is a way to make it clear you can change that text? The gender choice was a nice touch, though.

The light grey "letters and numbers only" under the name field seems unnecessary. (I think people will realize this if they try it.)

When you click on a name, maybe have it auto select everything so you can type in a new name without having to delete things first? (Or, maybe just have the default name disappear the first time you click on the text field?)

I wonder how would the game change if the inputs were reduced to 2? Just SHIELD UP and LANCE UP. So you would have 4 possible input combinations. Hmm, well, just a thought.

Thanks for making the game!

You are totally right. The game came out as trying to read other player's mind based on their previous rather than current actions. Initially I've had plans to make controls fully physics based (the lance would bend a little under it's own wieght and it would be prone to braking if the stress was too big) but it feeled too inconvenient in the prototyping phase. That's why I stayed with the simple RPS mechanics.


Also about 2 button control-scheme - I've considered making the lance and shield automatically swing up and down and letting the player stop swinging by pressing appropriate key but I ditched this idea with full physics controls. Nonetheless I think it's a good thought to reiterate all the concepts I had in the beginning.

But I definitely am proud of how the game came out. It's my first fully complete game and I see its conciseness as a good compromise between finishing it that way or not finishing at all.

Thank you for your input, it's really valuable. :beer: