I'm impressed by all that you tried to do. As grueling and ineffectual as the period that led to burnout was, you still managed to finish what you were focusing on, and learned more about yourself in the process. Do try not to recreate that experience any time soon, but it wasn't a total waste!

They where wrong about that as you can clearly see on the reaction of not only the critics but also many streamers and players.

Wrong in what way? At no point in the games developments were the devs aiming to get high review scores. That is not the metric they used. Their metric was how closely the game felt like you are a slugcat, while still able to be enjoyed by players. They have said many times that they don't know how well people will react to it, or how the review scores will be.

But anyway, I am still against karma. I love the game itself and the couple hours or so I've played, but the deaths just feel too painful to me. Sure, sometimes you learn something before you die - but a lot of the times you have a cycle where you just die and don't earn anything. You lose your karma, and just wasted 10 minutes. Well, 20 minutes, because you lose the karma that you had earned before that.

I just... I want to play the game. But I don't want to play either. I really want to play... but I don't want to die. And playing means dying. So here I am, with a game I love, that I don't want to play. It's... disappointing. Especially after waiting and following along for so long.

I do really think the game can still be very close to feeling like a slugcat, but able to be enjoyed by more players. It's so close.

Quite an achievement! I look forward to playing this game for a looooong time.

All in all I do have issues with the karma.

Take Dark Souls as an example. You collect souls, and if you don't spend them, you risk losing the souls you have collected. But once you spend them, you have earned whatever character progression you spent. You can make a risk/reward assessment of whether you want to spend them now or save up to spend them later. I am not an expert in the game (maybe there are special cases where it happens) but you can not lose the character progression you have "saved". Dark Souls is not as unique as it is made out to be. It is a tricked out checkpoint system, not that different from Super Metroid.

Second, is world progression. Once you have unlocked an area, it stays unlocked. Once you've lit a fire it stays lit. You (again, in general, I haven't fully explored the game) will not lose your world progression. You can die 100 times in a row, and the only loss you will feel is the attempt at progress you were making in that session.

Now, take an old-school action game with no save system. In the action game, you will have lives. You know you will need to save lives to get as far as you can get. You know you may need to start at the beginning if you run out of lives. It is clear going in that the game is asking you "can you beat me?" and you attempt to do so, in a single sitting. You can try again another time when you fail.

Finally the roguelike. It is clear that you are only going to get so far and have to restart.

The issue with the Rain World karma system for me, is it has elements of both checkpoint systems AND roguelikes. It is not really that clear what it is asking you to do. On the one hand, it asks you to explore an interesting world, and on the other hand, if you explore too far, you will be worse off than if you never leave the first area. Players are excited to finally make it to a new checkpoint in a harder area - but then discover that maybe they aren't actually good enough at the game to survive in that area.

I think artistically, this is valid. And some of the goals of the project are being realized. But it may be more pronounced than it needs to be.

I'm not sure if these are compatible with the games design, but here are my suggestions for alternate karma systems. Heck, they could just be another mode, so no one who likes it the way it is can complain too much

Zone-based karma: Each zone has it's own karma level, and they start at zero. You still lose karma until it goes to zero when you die. But you don't need to worry about losing karma from other zones. Gates in all zones would need 3, or 4, or 5 karma depending on how many days you want the player to survive in that area. You keep the game loop that was intended, of finding a new area, and then learning how it works well enough before moving on. But you won't undo your progress of unlocking that zone. If an area is too hard, you move to another one and try to "beat" that one.

No karma loss: This might be more applicable to an "easy" mode or whatnot. You don't lose karma when you die. Just your food. This is a pretty big loss already. Potentially, increase karma requirements to make up for the fact that you can kind of keep throwing your head at the game until you manage to get enough lucky runs to collect the karma you need.

I'm not super hot on either, those are just my suggestions. I think the existing system MAY be the best of possible options to implement what the game wants to be.

'deadparrot':['dead','not living','ceased to be','ex-parrot','pining for the fjords']

With a big project like this, keeping momentum is more important than progress, so yeah the smaller updates are probably better than trying to save up for a good one. Nice to see you delving back into it, hope the code you left behind isn't too smelly

Ok, so coop is my favorite way to play any game. Even if it's really badly implemented. I didn't realize it was even considered for this game, but it sounds amazing!

My preference for the screens would be to only switch screens when both players are at the exit. While it's a limitation in some ways, it always creates fun moments where someone is trying to catch up. With splitscreen, you can just run on ahead and let him get behind.

Me and my friend have a catchphrase for dying in co-op games: "There's always another coffin". So many games will have something somewhere where the dead player will respawn. Sometimes the other player has to actually go rescue them (left 4 dead, spelunky), sometimes it's just where you respawn when you die. Of course in Don't Starve, which may be more along the lines Rain World is with its survival element, you have to actually work pretty hard to revive the other player. I'm not sure how it should work in this game, but maybe you have to bring extra food to the "sick" player in the shelter to revive the other player.

I got to try this at PAX, it lived up to the 5 years of hype! I was super impressed by the AI, it's one thing to read a discussion on how the AI works and to wonder about how effective that will really be in-game, and another to be in that world and acting and reacting to the living agents that are all around you. Combined with the glorious sound work and distinctive visuals it was my favorite experience at pax. I meant to swing by and see some more of the behaviors but got lost in the rest of the con...

I finished the game last weekend and released on time. I will do more of a post-mortem in due time, I am quite wiped from crunching one weekend and then paxing the next. I'm spending the next few weeks engrossed in some comfort gaming (adventure games happen to be my jam there) and not working on anything too intensely.

The game hasn't sold well, but it has sold a bit. It's my first game, so I may have had too high expectations for the first week. I think it's too early to know why it's been slow to excite people, but I have many theories of what hasn't helped me. So many theories There is some hope on the horizon, as wishlist numbers are pretty good - if all of my wishlist numbers were sales then I would have come close to matching my predicted numbers. I believe they are waiting for either an update or a price drop/sale.

All in all, I'm pretty proud of myself. Somewhere around June, I decided I wanted to actually finish a game and release it on steam rather than developing a project for 4 years and then burning out. I did just that, without a slip in the release date either. I stuck to my plan and shipped, and I think the game is pretty good as well.

I think with a few more updates I can turn it from pretty good to good or even great. But I have to decide how much more I want to invest here vs starting a new project. And when I do start a new project, it's going to be hard to find one that is the next step up from GravPool, rather than going off and trying to work on a pie in the sky dream game that I burn out on again.

I'm such a dreamer that it can be hard to force myself to at least keep one limb on earth. I think having my first game on the market will help do so. Is it a leg or an arm? Maybe just a finger.

Excite! I can't wait to check out Rain World for the first time at PAX!

I've added... a lot in the past few days. I didn't end up making it to that meetup where I was going to do some more user testing. It may be a real missed opportunity, after all that I have done, I finally got a chance to play with my sister, and she had trouble figuring out how to do anything in the game. Absolutely nothing is clear, and with hours to go, I don't know how much I will be able to do to steer things back in the right direction.

It's what always happens with game design for me, and I'm not sure how to fix this problem, besides more user testing at more points during development. As you develop, you end up testing your game a lot. The more you play it, the better you get at your own game. Eventually, it feels far too easy, and the worry about the game seeming too easy - even knowing that this can happen - means tweaks to challenge tend to enter in. This cycle repeats many many times, until you end up with something like "I wanna be the guy" when you were intending something more like "Super Mario Bros".

There are a few things I can do to adjust balance in the other direction. All that I know, is it is either going to be too much or too little

Additions in the last week:

The space scenery was alright and everything, but was a bit too static. Solution: asteroids!


It would be nice to know where you actually hit the ball to have more feedback. You can never have too much feedback in the chaotic and busy world of VR. It's surprisingly hard to keep players focused on what is important! I attempted to make some cool sparks that bounce off, but wrangling unity's physics was surprisingly difficult. There are more important things to work on so I shelved this for now.

Survival mode! With some thought, I came up with a framework for the endless survival mode. Some of the most important parts of game design happen when away from keyboard - I thought of it while lying awake in bed (I'm not getting a lot of sleep) Essentially, it just keeps giving you new arenas with more balls and bombs in them, and less holes in the arena, and a shot clock ticks down. If you run out of time, you lose. When you complete a level, you get some time back. I'm not sure that it is "fun" yet, but it was surprisingly easy to implement, especially after having that afk time of thinking through all of the possibilities.

The challenge was in digging back into my woeful *math* skills and remember how logarithms work. (The amount of seconds you get back at each level is a logarithmic function). Here's a shot of the kind of levels that are generated. Yeah. They are pretty random.

Finally, I've worked on bugs. Lot's of bugs. Even though most of my testers have commented on the lack of bugs, they are still in there. Fortunately, even though I took a HUGE risk adding a third game mode, I managed to not introduce any new ones. And in the end, I feel a lot better about this game with 3 modes rather than 2. It feels a little more complete.

And with that, I will open things up to the public tomorrow and see what happens! I don't expect to sell very many copies. It's a bit of a unique game, even for vr, and the age of the small, casual, but unique vr game may have passed. (I had started development really at the height of that phase). But it will be interesting to see how people respond. I've worked probably harder on this project than any other. But as we all know, how hard you work generally doesn't indicate one way or another how the audience will feel about a work. The product, and the user's expectations, will make their ultimate determination.

I would like to see more procgen exploration in rulesets vs in the environment. I think that one of the things I enjoy most about games is that learning aspect - figuring out what the elements are in the game and how they interact. If the algorithms were constantly throwing new wrenches into the mechanics, I would be more likely to stick around longer, as once I have mastered the mechanics is precisely when the game becomes dull. No Man's Sky is a clear example of the opposite - you master the mechanics in the first hour, and then the rest of the game exploration of all of those crazy worlds is just not enough to carry the game, as there is not a lot more to learn.

The closest I think we've seen to this are loot systems in ARPGs or roguelikes. Every new piece of loot you have to analyze, as you just don't know what kinds of positives and negatives are going to be thrown at you. The best arpgs provide their fans with many many hours of entertainment, even ones that do not take place in a procedural environment.

Eventually even there you do approach the limit. Once the mind can sum up all of the data into an integral and see the equation behind it, then they have mastered the "meta" mechanics and there isn't any more to learn.

Another good example of the kind of procedural gameplay I'd like to see explored more is the nemesis system of Shadow of Morder. While I didn't like the game and the movesets in those types of action games don't hold much depth for me, it was interesting to not know where the bosses were going to be, what their weaknesses would be, or how they would attack. No one complained about the shallow algorithm there because it was such a light touch, but it was enough to change things up and keep players in the zone more.

I think finding gameplay that suits procgen is perhaps backwards. The best approach might be to see how procgen can enhance a particular game and give it more variety and longevity.

Maybe your younger self really wanted to work on games - but that doesn't mean "game designer" was your destiny. Perhaps your skills are actually best suited to working on tools or programming effects or drawing art for someone else's design vision? It's dangerous to go alone after all!

But it could be that you just haven't found your project yet. I've had a similar sort of design crisis going on for a while, between shutting down my impossible mmo project and now, of trying to find a project that is at the right crossroads between my ambition and my ability. I've been keeping a journal of all of my game ideas, from the awesome to the terrible, and just kind of waiting for one that was really worth expanding upon.

I think for the longest time I would just have an idea and then start building something for it, taking the time to actually evaluate my ideas and consider their viability has helped me to focus. Maybe a similar kind of soul search can help you.

I love everything about this! I went down a similar path with behavior trees and npc collisions and  pathing in my game. I just wish I could draw as good as you.

The scariest part is definitely showing it to others. If they don't like it I think that they don't like me, and I'm very much the people pleaser type who wants everyone to like him. I envy people who don't care what people think.

There is also the fact that once I show off something I'm working on, I lose a little bit of control of it. Once other people can comment on it, they might change my vision. Sure, it might actually steer the project onto a better path, but that loss of control can be scary.

It's important to face your fears. I'm trying to bring others into my process a bit more lately, it is hard to do everything on your own. In actually trying to release something for the first time, I have found there are benefits to getting feedback, and working to a deadline. It's stressful, but I am looking forward to how my skills grow in these areas.

Feedback is HIGHLY valuable in the game making process. I think it can also be dangerous, especially for projects that are early. Personally, I prefer to wait until I have a pretty clear picture in my head of what a game is before I get feedback, and I also prefer to get more thourough, critical feedback from close friends or like-minded game devs than posting something early on itch and waiting for who knows what to come in.

But that's just me. If you are trying to figure out what prototype to develop, running a few of them all the way to distribution and seeing what kind of play you get might be one of the better ways actually.

Latest gif:


The cram session is in full blast!

Over the weekend, I worked on fixing bugs, adding random polish, and taking most of the feedback I had gotten that I agreed with and trying to determine which things would be worth looking into. Oh, and rescoping and rescoping the game so that I have a chance of finishing!

There are repeated comments on the somewhat drab looking game world, but I kind of don't know what to do with that one. The game is generated by an algorithm, putting together a couple pre-made pieces for the walls. The focus is on arenas that make bouncing balls work well with each other. Deceptive areas where they almost score but then bounce back in, holes that are hard to reach, or a lot of room for the balls and bombs to cause chaos together. I'm not really using the generation that well, as there are only a handful of environments. But it feels like a lot of work to change the art, and I'm not sure what I would change it to. So I have contented myself to add enough other things going on in the world and the scene to hopefully distract from that.

I've been working around 4-8 hours a day on this in addition to the 8 hours of work at my day job. It's kind of killing me right now, but only a week to go, and then I can take a breather.

I submitted a final-ish build to valve on monday and by tuesday it was accepted, so I can hit the button whenever I like. Overall, I've been pretty impressed with the steam process, even if some things seem more complex and unintuitive than they should be. Having a build be reviewed in 1 day? For a VR game? And I know they actually loaded it up and tested it, because they found some issues which I had to correct.

Tomorrow I take the game to the local vr meetup of ~100 people. I'm hoping since there is a 1v1 mode in GravPool, that I can get people to sign up for a tournament of sorts. Maybe I could give something away? I have a gearvr I don't use much... I also have a lot of pax badges, I might be willing to part with one of them.

After that, I have a final weekend to try and do better at promotion and finish final polish. There is one more game mode I was thinking of adding, an endless survival mode where missing a shot ends the game, which shouldn't be too hard that I may be able to sneak in. As fun as the game already is, I know it's pretty light on content, and I suspect the audience (if anyone shows up - see doing better at promotion) may ding me for that.

I've still made a game I'm pretty proud of at this point. Definitely a milestone in the gamedev life.

Well done! Yeah it will be a bit sad to not be following this games creation any longer.

[Game Development is Blood, sweat, and liquid crystals]

Game Development is Blood, sweat, and liquid crystals

I am getting close to the end of GravPool development, which is exciting, but I definitely enjoy the start of a project more than the end. All of the possibilities stretch out before you, and anything can happen. I participated in a 2-week game jam with the intent to prototype the vr game I will work on after I finish GravPool.

It turns out, trying to make 2 games at once isn't the best idea. I ended up putting very little energy into the new game, and continued to focus on GravPool. Probably the better choice, but I did hope to at least finish a submission for the jam.

While testing my game, "Puncher VR" a few minutes before the deadline, my stress led me to panic and this is the result:



Yep. I not only punched those virtual kangaroos, but my TV as well. I loved that TV too. I'm going to see if I can get a replacement through Best Buy, I think for once I actually bought the protection plan. So we'll see. But I definitely learned a lesson. And I might work on a different "game 2" when I get to that point lol.

GravPool Milestones

Since I last posted here, I've done a lot. The finish-line looms but I am more excited than pressured by it. I did in fact manage to hack a turn-based multiplayer in, and it works pretty well. Much of the in-game bookeeping needed to be refactored, but the code is a little clearer and more isolated now, which will help when I add more modes. I went with the three turns model, but haven't tested extensively to see if that works well enough. Each player gets three shots, no more and no less. Bombs still play a pretty substantial role - they can be used to eliminate the other players balls from the scene, but you also lose a lot of points for setting them off. And knocking your opponents balls out scores for them.

I set the multiplayer game in a larger arena, big enough to better support all 16 balls. I had forgotten how challenging 3d pool is in the bigger arena, but it feels about right to me.

Other than multiplayer, I've been iterating on getting that physics to work right. It's close, but there are still some bad situations you can get into. If you happen to have the stick right next to the ball when you press the trigger, it will act as if you did a light tap. I want to refine that so that it wont let you activate physics at all while the stick is touching anything. This is also a problem in that you can take your shot through the wall if the ball is in a corner, which removes some of the fun I think of trying to line up those awkward shots.

Finally, I added steam leaderboards! I am even more convinced that the base gameplay is fun, as I have been playing with the other testers and fighting for scores. So far, I had one incredibly lucky run that's twice the score of the next best player. I didn't set off any bombs, and got a combo on almost every shot.

In the middle of my score session American Pie came on the radio and I took a break to dance in space with billiard balls floating around my head. VR may be deadly for tvs but it has some great surreal moments

Testing

I'm cramming this weekend to finish some items related to polish and clean up the remaining bugs, and then going to bring a near-final build of the game to the local monthly VR meetup. There are usually 100 people there, so depending on interest and time I hope to get a lot of good feedback there. It will be great if I can get some folks to play a multiplayer session and see how that goes! If everything goes well, I can implement the final tweaks that weekend and be ready for a smooth launch the week after.

There are 2 other gameplay modes that I will have to add post launch. I'm still deciding between launching in early access, or just having one of those fun post-launch patches that adds a lot. I want a survival mode where you go through a large number of procedural levels and if you miss a shot or set off a bomb you lose; and then I want to make a puzzle mode where you have a limited number of shots to beat each level and have to hit the balls in a certain order, or hit the certain colors to a certain side of the arena etc. I would want a level editor for that as well.

I've never put this much effort into a project for this long (it's been about 3 or 4 months), so having a deadline has helped me immeasurably. I really recommend giving yourself a strict deadline for your projects if you can.

Amazing. 1000 expansions on top of what already seems to be one of the most in-depth conversation systems I've ever seen. Individual personalities within a culture. NPCs who get bored easily and ones who listen too long and give away too much.

Even a scrollbar!

What will he think of next?

Oh and I'm looking for more testers if anyone is interested. Unfortunately you have to have a vive so I don't expect to find many takers!