WOW, thanks for the excellent feedback! I'm also glad you played for an hour or so! If I could, I'd nominating you for playtester of the month! As you mentioned a lot of PC accessibility features are secondary to getting it working on tablets, but that doesn't mean I'll be ignoring PC altogether, so the PC thoughts are still very valid.
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The only bug I encountered was that when playing on the highest resoltion on fullscreen...
Huh, that's a really peculiar one; I've always tested in Editor or in windowed mode so I never noticed this! Thanks!
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Text is blurry on the instructions w/ my resoltion. Actually, quite a few of the assets were blurry to me, such as the win screen.
Yeah there's a lot of compression with mobile screens & memory constraints in mind. I can try increasing the resolution on PC though.
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I think what I am missing is more feedback from the direction changers...
Hmm, yeah these are good ideas. I hadn't thought of the pitched audio for them, so maybe that'll help!
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(Oh, and in one of the early levels the changers are literally blocked by tubes, making it impossible to optimize. Very annoying!)
Which level is this? Anything that is interactable shouldn't be blocked by a pipe, so this may be a mistake.
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I was a bit confused that there was no reward for going past a level's goals...
Hahah that's true! Maybe I can have a different number of thumbs up show up at the end, and confetti when you perfect it.
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...The timer and how close I was to my quota was completely lost on me - because I am focusing solely on the gameplay screen...
This has been a real sticking point in my face-to-face playtests. I have a couple ideas on how to resolve this with an in game element, but we'll see if it makes it into the game.
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Maybe a "play level" button can pop up when highlighting a lvl?
Great idea, I'll try that out.
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I was not a huge fan of the music and turned it off after about ten minutes.
LOL that's fair... it's procedurally generated, but I think it tends to wander around a bit too much. Would you say that it's better in some parts of the game rather than others?
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Replaying levels multiple times to beat them gets tedious when one starts to learn the pre-defined food patterns. Randomize to some degree?
This is peering a bit behind the veil, but the spawning orders for almost every level IS in fact somewhat randomized already! The thing is, for the first week of levels anyway, it's randomized in such a way that the player should never be unfairly 'blocked' from spawn pipe to end. Later on I start getting a bit more unfair c:< I can probably make it tougher once you hit quota though and are just shipping surplus units, that should be a simple change.
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The story sets me up as a dude working to help my family - but after the intro they are never seen again! Just a bunch of pie tests Sad I don't care about pie tests..
HEHEHEHEHE Again, I really appreciate you trying my goofy little game out. If you have any games that you would like playtested, please send me a PM or hit me up on Twitter!
When I try to run it I do get the signature warning, but even when I tell the game to run nothing shows up on screen. When I try to run it again, it just continues to presumably close itself. I know I've run GM games on here before, so this is new to me.
Hmm, I tried running this on Windows 10 Home and nothing came up; like not even a loading bar or a window. What did you use to make this, if you don't mind me asking?
You're drinking your morning ritual when something causes you to pause. Whatever happened to that one game you wonder to yourself that was posted in Offering Paid Work like 2 years ago? I mean, working on it just wasn't in the cards for me, but I sure as heck wanted to playtest it and then subsequently purchase it at full price for myself and several of my close friends & family; you know, the ones I deeply care about. You assume that this is just a fleeting memory, a few dozen synapses firing in a different order from usual. It doesn't even occur to you that this thought may actually be something more, something called destiny.
Hi! I'm belbeeno and I've been working on this game for about 3 years and change. Factory Hiro is a 2D action puzzle game inspired by a game I played a lot as a kid on my Macintosh Quadra 650 called Factory: The Industrial Devolution. My goal is to bring something similar to tablets, where I feel it is best suited! You manage an assembly line and try to assemble as many parts into products to ship before the day's end. It's a test of reflexes, planning and patience, and you'll have to be fast on your feet (fingers?) when it invariably all goes awry.
Since the last post, I've teamed up with some amazing artists (Randy O'Connor of Escape Goat 2 and Waking Mars fame, and notorious mememancer KC Green), started my studio Rad Zone Games, and pressed many buttons on my keyboard to the point where this game is more or less feature complete. Now, I just need playtesters, and that's where *tight zoom while I point at the camera, smiling* YOU come in!
Please submit any feedback you may have either here or in the comments for the itch.io page and I'll get back to it. Anything that comes to mind is nice, but I'm particularly looking for bugs, inconsistencies and things that are confusing. There is an iOS build, but since the game is still in development provisioning is a bit of an issue, so apologies if that's your weapon of choice!
There's a Lolo vibe to this one! The silver powerup is a nice change, and the tutorial is pretty intuitive, although I believe it does force some deaths in order to teach some mechanics; obviously not a big deal considering there aren't limited lives in this game.
It may be a matter of preference but I'd restrict the movement to tile based (like Sokoban). If you are really set on this style of movement, I would say tighten it so that there's no delay between pressing the button and moving. This doesn't really pertain to the feedback you're looking for, but I thought I'd mention it.
I believe you shoot in the direction you last pressed, so some sprites where the character is looking in the cardinal directions would help make this more obvious at any given time.
Lolo fans will know that the medusas (or trees in your game) instantly kill the player when they come in range, but this isn't really expressed in game other than the tree opening its eyes.
OGMO has treated me alright (http://www.ogmoeditor.com/) mostly because it's A) free, B) what I'm used to, and C) open source. It's a little dated now, but according to his twitter Matt Thorson's making a new version. I would make changes in OGMO which saves to .oel & .oep, which are just XML. From there any old XML parser gets the data into your game. I've heard recommendations for Tiled, based on both functionality and support.
Just as an addenda to the last post, I was just introduced to Budget Cuts, a game that gets around the restrictive walking space limitation by making heavy use of what I can only describe as the Translocator gun from Unreal Tournament. Video seems cool, but also disorienting. Plus, I'm curious about the accuracy of knife throwing, and how much of a learning curve there is to doing it repeatably. Will have to try this to see how it feels and decide whether this is something we'll be seeing more of in the future of if it's just this game's gimmick.
Also, just as an observation (curious if y'all have seen this as well), but playtesters for VR physics games and particularly new playtesters LOVE to just throw shit around. Like, if you can pick something up most peoples' first reaction is to try and either hurl it, lob it in the air and try to catch it, or toss it over their shoulder. Anybody else noticing this?
Another more popular, and almost obvious design choice in First Person experiences is to not depict the protagonist's arms in the game.
Definitely; for the arms, IK matching the hands to the shoulder without tracking the players' elbow is a difficult problem. If they're being tracked, rendering the hands (or some representation such as a gun, the actual controller, etc) is something that's quite common in current VR games.
I'm wondering now; are there many VR games that render the character's body or do most games just do a disembodied camera and maybe hands? Do they limit the angle of rotation as you look down, or can the player look down far enough such that they can see into their own neck? And if they do limit the angle of rotation, how does it feel as a player to try and look at an angle that the game doesn't allow?
Another big limitation (until the Virtuix Omni becomes cheaper) is the fact that walking type movement might cause motion sickness.
I don't feel like there's as much funding from the people with money going into things like the Virtuix Omni as there are going into just the VR headset and tracking for room-sized games. I'm unsure if this will change, but my gut tells me if a developer could were to support something like the Virtuix Omni (on top of already going all in on VR) they can expect their audience to be the intersection of people interested in the game, people with the device in question (which will be fragmented the more headsets there are) AND people who have an Omni. For the time being, I'm going to say that most of the lower end devices are going to have games that focus on either cockpit-style or on rails gameplay rather than a lot of walking...
It is worth noting that the space that people will be playing in may be restrictive. As I'm living in a small apartment, were I to pick up a Vive or PS VR I doubt I'd pick up many games that had me do anything more than standing in place or seated on a stool.
I'll start it off with some of my findings, specifically on Cardboard:
Things to avoid
Moving people when they aren't expecting it
Constant acceleration
A large HUD that's right up against the player's face with a moving 3D background
Frame rate MUST be constant, and ideally as quick as possible
Don't be a dick! When players put on the headset they are also putting their trust in you, and nothing ruins VR for someone entirely like exploiting that opportunity to throw a jumpscare at someone.
I'm still trying to figure out what does work, but that seems to be a lot more work to find than mistakes. Much like with mobile though, a big focus initially will have to be on intuitive controls which become the standard. What is VR's 'A to confirm, B to cancel', or hamburger button? Do buttons even make sense in VR? How about VR's equivalent to mobile pinching and swiping? One example I've come across; people generally prefer nodding to confirm versus staring at a button because as it's a natural response to being asked a question.
Like it or not, VR is getting closer to becoming consumer accessible hardware and is already getting into the hands of both big-budget developers who can afford high end units AND shoe-string budget indies with models like the VR Smartview, Google Cardboard and the Gear VR which have Unity support out of the box. This opens up a lot of potential for creative exploration of the VR space, but with it comes many new design challenges that need to be addressed. Much like the early years of mobile games, I'm seeing a lot of design choices in the first generation of VR games that maybe made sense for other platforms but usually don't work in VR and in some cases can be down right harmful.
So let's talk about this! It doesn't matter if you've just played a game or two or have been developing for years, my hope is that we can all discuss VR seriously!
Some things I'D like to discuss:
What are some good rules of thumb and pitfalls to avoid when designing a VR game?
What are some things that work on PC/console/mobile that you tried to carry over to VR? How did that go?
Are there things that some VR games do particularly well?
What about VR games bugs you or makes you sick? Any examples?
How do we keep people comfortable in a game? How do we avoid VR sickness?
Hope to see some more time spent on making it clearer how clicking on a line with change the play field; as it stands the change is so suddenly on click that it's hard to keep up. Also, maybe color merging? Like, you could have red & green start gates with a yellow exit gate?
And just out of curiosity, how are levels made? Do you generate them or make them by hand? In either case, how many do you plan to have? And how do you plan to quantify difficulty for a level?
I love these sorts of board games, where the dice drive the game in real time. Escape: The Curse of the Temple is a personal favourite.
I agree with Azimoth though; the game itself feels very random and there are long periods of time where nothing is happening at all. I didn't really get to see the robot in action during my 2 playthroughs, but after 2 plays with an AI I didn't feel like playing another, as I didn't really see any way 'I could have done better'.
Such detailed sprite work! Metroidvanias aren't really my jam, but if you need help getting started with Unity, there a lot of good boards on the forum to post onto for tutorials, direction and resources. Will definitely be keeping an eye out on your work in the future though!
Really neat! Definitely needs some optimization (bogged down my laptop pretty hard on Chrome) but I'm looking forward to seeing what sorts of things are taught later in the game (haven't gotten past the div tutorials, maybe when I have a bit more time to play).
I think it would be wise to either make the state change between typing / in game more apparent; perhaps having the HTML editor box toggle console style after pressing '~'. As it stands right now as I try to edit the text the arrow keys are pretty overloaded.
Also, not sure if this is intended, but I really love how I can sort of hack the game using the inspector; Here's my solution to level 3 (I think?):
It's a shame that it's 3 in the morning for me when your business hours usually start, because I would otherwise jump on the opportunity to work on this beautiful project. Keep up the good work, I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for this one!
Thank you for all the people who applied; there's a lot of very talented artists who sent their portfolio, and I plan on responding to every e-mail. If you're reading this, it is probably too late! The poison has already taken effect! I mean... I'm probably on my way to finding the artist for my game!
If you're wondering how things are going, please check out my website (http://www.belbeeno.com/) for news, or my Twitter for updates and YouTube links to 90s music. Sorry if you're here looking for work and just ended up with a link to Natalie Imbruglia's Torn.
You're all lovely! Keep up the good work!
Here's the old entry for those who are curious.
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Hey there! You look nice today.
This is a repost from OPW (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=47720.0) but since I'm considering rev share as an option as well, I figured that I mine as well post here too! And I don't think reposting in this case is against the rules...? If it's bad form, please let me know and I'll take it down. Otherwise, let me start from the beginning...
Oh, and before I go on, just a heads up that I'll be out of town in the coming week (May 4th - 10th) on personal business, and that I will be checking the forum and e-mail regularly in the evenings so feel free to continue sending me inquiries, comments or feedback. Alright, on with the post:
I'm Ryan Lee, a solo game developer up north in Vancouver, BC. I'm currently working on a 2D action puzzle game based on a game I played a lot as a kid on my Macintosh Quadra 650. It was called
back then, and my game is tentatively called Factory now. I'm trying to improve the game and evolve it for the tablets, where I believe it belongs, using Unity. It seems to have evolved rhythm mechanics, and things are getting pretty exciting! Here are some animated captures of the game:
It would be MORE exciting though if it wasn't covered from head to toe in programmer art. My 'Debug widget' is a character I made like 4 years ago: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/428691/booty.gif. Hopefully this is where you come in!
The game is in dire need of a visual overhaul from someone with an eye for design and usability. Here's a quick list of things that the game will need off the top of my head:
Sprites for the factory's parts need to be responsive to user touch and animated to match the beat of the level. I would really love to have things animated using traditional animation, but you're the boss! Let me know what you think would look best.
Environmental, non-interactive backgrounds, which may or may not be animated. Once again, would love to hear your thoughts!
Per-level sprites for ingredients, mistakes and finished products, which shouldn't be too complex; they should have a clear sillhouette making them easy to identify even when they're small, and should make sense contextually; for example "That's a bottle, and that's a cork. I should cork the bottle", "That's a layer of cake, and that machine applies the cherry on top", or "That's a pile of junk and not a hand in a Kuribo Boot flipping me the bird".
Potentially additional work in designing particle effects.
Potentially additional work in designing levels if you're really keen on that sort of thing. I'm using OGMO.
What I'm NOT looking for:
No pixel art! I want something that's unique and fresh.
No lone wolves! I need to work together with you to get the game matching your artistic vision for it. That means lots of communication! You should be willing to have meetings over stream occasionally, talk on IM (like Hangouts) often, and understandable English is a must.
No newbies! Sorry! I'm betting my savings on this game, so I need to finish this efficiently and professionally. If you're fresh out of school, come find me during a game jam and we can figure out something then!
What I AM looking for: I'm looking for an artist that's creative, motivated, passionate about usability & design and funny! I have a general idea of an artistic direction that I think would be fun, but frankly you're the professional so we should sit down and figure out what'll work! A functional knowledge of Unity and SVN is a plus, but if my socks are knocked clean off my feet when I see your wicked good portfolio, I'm sure we can something out. Although all applicants will be considered, I'd like to encourage under-represented developers (including but not limited to women, members of ethnic minorities or people identifying as LGBTQs) to apply.
If this sounds like you, then please PM me your portfolio, and some contact info. I'm open to revshare or hybrid pay/revshare models if you're interested in teaming up but are in need of cash. Hopefully we can make something that we'll all be proud of!
A bit about me: I come from about 5 years of hired game development as a programmer, 3 years of which were spent making 'Triple A' games. I quit all that to work on games independently about a year ago. If you're interested in finding out a bit more about me, please feel free to check out my website: (http://www.belbeeno.com). I play Insect Glaive & Hunting Horn on MH4U and I'm trying Lance with Evasion +2; I gotta say, it's pretty fun.
Just a heads up to any applicants after today that I'll be out of town in the coming week on personal business, and that I will be checking the forum and e-mail regularly in the evenings so feel free to continue sending me inquiries, comments or feedback. You're all lovely! I hope for many nice days in your near future!
Thank you for all the people who applied; there's a lot of very talented artists who sent their portfolio, and I plan on responding to every e-mail. If you're reading this, it is probably too late! The poison has already taken effect! I mean... I'm probably on my way to finding the artist for my game!
If you're wondering how things are going, please check out my website (http://www.belbeeno.com/) for news, or my Twitter for updates and YouTube links to 90s music. Sorry if you're here looking for work and just ended up with a link to Natalie Imbruglia's Torn.
You're all lovely! Keep up the good work!
Here's the old entry for those who are curious.
Quote
Howdy, y'all!
I'm Ryan Lee, a solo game developer up north in Vancouver, BC. I'm currently working on a 2D action puzzle game based on a game I played a lot as a kid on my Macintosh Quadra 650. It was called
back then, and my game is tentatively called Factory now. I'm trying to improve the game and evolve it for the tablets, where I believe it belongs, using Unity. It seems to have evolved rhythm mechanics, and things are getting pretty exciting! Here are some animated captures of the game:
It would be MORE exciting though if it wasn't covered from head to toe in programmer art. My 'Debug widget' is a character I made like 4 years ago: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/428691/booty.gif. Hopefully this is where you come in!
The game is in dire need of a visual overhaul from someone with an eye for design and usability. Here's a quick list of things that the game will need off the top of my head:
Sprites for the factory's parts need to be responsive to user touch and animated to match the beat of the level. I would really love to have things animated using traditional animation, but you're the boss! Let me know what you think would look best.
Environmental, non-interactive backgrounds, which may or may not be animated. Once again, would love to hear your thoughts!
Per-level sprites for ingredients, mistakes and finished products, which shouldn't be too complex; they should have a clear sillhouette making them easy to identify even when they're small, and should make sense contextually; for example "That's a bottle, and that's a cork. I should cork the bottle", "That's a layer of cake, and that machine applies the cherry on top", or "That's a pile of junk and not a hand in a Kuribo Boot flipping me the bird".
Potentially additional work in designing particle effects.
Potentially additional work in designing levels if you're really keen on that sort of thing. I'm using OGMO.
What I'm NOT looking for:
No pixel art! I want something that's unique and fresh.
No lone wolves! I need to work together with you to get the game matching your artistic vision for it. That means lots of communication! You should be willing to have meetings over stream occasionally, talk on IM (like Hangouts) often, and understandable English is a must.
No newbies! Sorry! I'm betting my savings on this game, so I need to finish this efficiently and professionally. If you're fresh out of school, come find me during a game jam and we can figure out something then!
What I AM looking for: I'm looking for an artist that's creative, motivated, passionate about usability & design and funny! I have a general idea of an artistic direction that I think would be fun, but frankly you're the professional so we should sit down and figure out what'll work! A functional knowledge of Unity and SVN is a plus, but if my socks are knocked clean off my feet when I see your wicked good portfolio, I'm sure we can something out. Although all applicants will be considered, I'd like to encourage under-represented developers (including but not limited to women, members of ethnic minorities or people identifying as LGBTQs) to apply.
If this sounds like you, then please PM me your portfolio, some contact info and your estimated rates. My intention is to pay per-milestone payments, but I'm also open to revshare or hybrid pay/revshare models if you're interested in teaming up. I'm also open to hearing about payment models that have worked well for you in the past.
A bit about me: I come from about 5 years of hired game development as a programmer, 3 years of which were spent making 'Triple A' games. I quit all that to work on games independently about a year ago. If you're interested in finding out a bit more about me, please feel free to check out my website: (http://www.belbeeno.com). I play Insect Glaive & Hunting Horn on MH4U and I'm trying Lance with Evasion +2; I gotta say, it's pretty fun.
Junkyard Excavating Robotic Keepers to be employed in all ASH HOLE SALVAGE junkyards
ASH HOLE SALVAGE are on the cutting edge of technology today having employed a fleet of highly experimental automated junkyard maintenance robots labeled Junkyard Excavating Robotic Keepers. As they are built to replace humans, any employees involved with the following tasks are asked to "clean out your lockers and get the hell out" effective immediately:
Waste recycling
Disposing of surplus scrap
Dispatching deviant and hazardous junk
Jumping on platforms
Jumping off platforms
Keeping the pipes clean
Anybody involved with these tasks should evacuate the premises immediately or be escorted by attack dogs. All remaining employees (upper management and Ricky the janitor) are asked to join your colleagues in the cafeteria for champagne and tacos to celebrate a record high profit margin this quarter.
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Much like with mobile though, a big focus initially will have to be on intuitive controls which become the standard. What is VR's 'A to confirm, B to cancel', or hamburger button? Do buttons even make sense in VR? How about VR's equivalent to mobile pinching and swiping? One example I've come across; people generally prefer nodding to confirm versus staring at a button because as it's a natural response to being asked a question.
