Met an animator whose excited to work on Trash TV with me, we're going to try out an Machinarium style line drawn thought bubble for communicating ideas. I think that may me more fruitful but this will sit as my plan B.
Originally I wanted to make the game text-less but recently I've changed my mind on text based tutorials.
On the first level the player interacts with objects there is a half broken television which acts as a minor mentor
Naturally players will walk over and attempt to interact with the TV by guessing which button is used for pick up. If too much time elapses after they've made an attempt the TV calls out the correct button to press.
What do you think of the implementation of speaking characters and the minor tutorial? One half of me feels the cheese dialogue will cheapen the experience, the other half feels it'd add humour and charm. Also Trash TV is back into full time development now so I won't be as quiet as I have been.
So I just watched this http://criticalpathproject.com/?v=38442494 and found it a little frustrating that that 80% of the words were 'uh' and that it didn't explain anything. I tried to google it but maybe he's saying "three eggs", I dunno. Anyone know what he's on about?
Afraid not, it's all place holders at the moment. In a bit of a risky move we're trying to do more tech stuff first, just to check its within our skill range, rather than getting a vertical slice.
Hey everyone. Announcing my next game Epic Space Opera.
So it's a story focused stealth metroidvania with a rewind time mechanic.
That's a lot of modifiers so lets explore each of them.
Story focused. Not a point a click and probably no cutscenes as I can't stand them. We're currently experimenting with a Half Life approach in that the story is told entirely through dialogue without overly getting in the way. It's also driving the visual theme of the game, from vignette and color correction effects to the title of the game (ESO is a story genre).
Stealth. I've always been a massive fan of stealth games and given the choice that's how I play all games, from tiny stealth elements like silencers in Call of Duty to robbing every shopkeeper in Skyrim. There are definitely sub-genres of stealth games, some people like to never be seen and never kill anyone to the other extreme of ambushing a group of enemies at the last moment. Where this game will fall will be down to player testing and whatever feels right but we'll aim for ambush tactics first.
Metroidvania. With the time control mechanics the game is going to be more about gaining knowledge to unlock new areas rather than getting the purple key card to open the purple doors. For instance you may make a dash for a computer screen to read a door keycode and alert everyone in the facility in the process. Then rewind back, undoing the panic and continuing on with a little hindsight.
Rewind time: This feature is in and working and has a braid style to it. *Near* unlimited in use and distance you can travel back. This will hopefully allow us to make very tense, hard enemies, but also be very forgiving.
PS. I'm still working on Trash TV and that's my main focus, but my best friend is coding this while I'm finishing up TTV and will be joining him once it's finished. I'm pitching in design and a little artwork every now and then until I go full time coding for the project.
Apologies for the lack of updates, I took a month out of development just for some rest (been working on it over a year solid). The break has been good, coming back with fresh eyes I can see all the changes that are needed.
Today I focused on getting the game more polished for exhibiting at the Rezzed PC event.
Improved the lighting system so that enemies can now emit lights. Hopefully this makes the vending machines more recognizable as a vending machine.
I've posted the link into the steam forum thread too and I appreciate you signing up with TIGsource to let me know about the issue. I hope this solves the problem you were having, let me know if it doesn't.
Congratulations, indeed. Nice! How easy was it to get into Steam?
It was part of winning Intel's Level Up competition. That reminds me, by the way I won Intel's Level Up competition - Best Character. Steam were hosting all of this years winners demos. My distribution contract only covers the demo at the moment. When the game is nearer finished I'll ask for a full distribution deal.
Yea I think I will tweak the end of the level, before when I didn't have it take control a lot of players jumped off the crane/crate for fear of being crushed. I'll rework it to lock the player in with a door or something, flip the emoticon to a heart to reassure the player too perhaps.
I'll keep an eye out for anyone else wanting a slightly more punchy movement.
I'm really glad you liked it, made my day!
How do you feel about the length of the demo? As the game isn't available to buy I didn't want it too long and that's why I branded it as an 'interactive trailer' to cue that it's intentionally short and has the aim of a trailer. Shame it doesn't run in browser really.
Since the game is more puzzle focused I wanted to make getting hit by an enemy more forgiving than traditional platforming games. So I thought since it's an old TV that's lost it's signal when you get hit you regain that signal controlling you, like it's controlling all the other characters in the game. It makes you run until you hit a wall, at which point you'll turn around but I left jump enabled so it kinda becomes a game of canabalt... I guess I really need some way of explaining that.
Oh yea and at the end of that level it takes control while you stand on the crane up to the next level, very rarely there's a cutscene moment like that. The emoticon was a thumbs up but everyone's thought it's a sweat drop so far, I guess I'll need to revisit those.
I've been assigned a task, to make a simple racing game with perspective but strictly in a 2D engine. Luckily the player can only travel in a straight line, so I just have to scale up images and move them slightly as you approach, but I was wondering if you're travelling directly towards something on a dead flat road just how much bigger should it get as you approach? I assume it's exponential but my current tests look a little off.
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated. I've shortened this one to 45 seconds, with a kinda optional post 15 seconds. I think it's a pretty neat idea, to cater two the different attention spans a little and reward those of us without ADHD.
Yea, this is generally how I felt about it. I showed my buddy this thread, trying to convince him to cut the corner, but he's still insisting it gets done. Now that he's going to do all of that code though, I have to admit it's alot easier when it's not your own 2 months, to just agree. Also I didn't make it fully clear, the diagonal will enable curved and odd shapes as well, although I doubt they'll be many of those.
I'll see if I can persuade him to get it working aligned first and then see if he can be bothered. That a really idea.
Bishop, when you were first trying it did you feel any of these pressures?
Occasionally, sometimes I was reading and nearly ran out of time in one of the rooms before stepping into the next to have the timer jump up a minute. I think locking them in a room for the forced death is a good approach. Perhaps the timer could be invisible until that point? You get stuck and then it fades in with a minute or so left.
Also I forgot to mention I had to complete the tube station puzzle twice, didn't step through the door in time on the first completion.
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City Tuesday is due for release sometime in the next couple of months on Xbox Live Indie Games.
Hey Chris, I think us XNA devs are in the minority on here. Just played the demo you posted. I think it took me about 3 minutes to get through, maybe 5 tops. I never really struggled with any part of it majorly, but there were a lot of minor confuses at the start, simple feedback issues.
The escalators too me a few attempts to realize you hold up to move up them rather than diagonal. The timer confused me a little, how it counts down in the hub world and goes up occasionally in the tutorial. Perhaps instead of having a minute per screen, give 5 across the whole tutorial and a faster speed up time notch, or maybe even a complete reset button. I also feel the tutorial should come before the hub world rather than something you access from it, but that's fairly minor. Oh yea, picking up a coin took me a little while, might have been a hit box thing.
Yes. The time to move around that level shouldn't be too long. A minute tops. It's not going to turn into fez. Thinking of that, I'm tempted to put a QR code on wall that says just that.
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