Another pass over the worm enemy. To give it more of that classic platformer behaviour, I'm now storing a path history for the head, which each body part samples based on it's initial distance from the head. It still needs a bit of work (smoothing, initializing the path history), but it's getting there!
Felix made a minor update to the hazard warning UI (the addition of a vignette), I think it really pulls the whole thing together and makes it feel much more... hazardous?
I'm currently working on a basic waypoint system for the worms (instead of the random behaviour seen above). It's more predictable and should allow for more interesting level designs.
Felix and I also gave the spike ball enemies a bit of a makeover: new sprite, more animation, more detailed transitions, plus some long overdue SFX.
You might want to prepend a warning about flashing lights, given that, well, you have flashing lights in your video (and right at the start, too).
Thanks! And fair point, I will add something like that in the next edit/version. It does make me wonder, though: would somebody with a (known) photosensitivity watch game trailers, and one for a survival horror game no less? (not trying to be insensitive, I'm genuinely curious)
As to looking back... It can be quite strange, I find, to look back over the course of a long-running project; to see where it came from, what it was back then, and compare that to where it has reached, what it has become. It's an interesting thing, looking back like that, I feel. ^_^
I don't particularly love having a project so long-running that I can look back years, but hey, at least it's moving forward!
And finally, here's something resembling a trailer!
I wasn't able to capture everything I wanted to (among other things, it's missing: multiple weapon and beacon types, rats, toxic mutants) but hopefully I can use some screenshots to supplement this stuff. I do think it does a decent job at representing the ambience, which was my main priority, and it certainly won't be the last trailer I make so there will be other opportunities.
<nostalgic>Taking a little stroll down memory lane in preparation for an upcoming dev interview with Dragon Blogger in which I'll speak quite a bit about TOXICANT, as well as my process in general. Stay tuned for more details on that!</nostalgic>
In the meantime, I'm just plugging away at preparing a new trailer that highlights the work from the past few months (...years?). It's mostly just the usual capture footage -> find bugs -> fix bugs -> capture footage loop. Once I've got enough decent footage compiled, I'll start cutting the trailer in Davinci Resolve. I might actually do part of that on stream, if not one night this week then Saturday morning.
I'm looking for a marketing/community manager and brand ambassador to help grow and maintain the community for my games (particularly, Discord), as well as to assist with social media and online presence.
Responsibilities
Attracting new members to the Discord and social media channels
Actively keeping members engaged
Proofreading social media posts, newsletters, etc.
Suggesting and assisting with marketing campaigns
Note that this is largely a self-managed role; I'll be looking to you to identify the best ways to grow and maintain the community.
Requirements
Very strong written communication
Actively involved with the indie game community
Active online presence/persona, including some level of influence (whether social media, streaming, active in other communities, etc.)
I can pay $20 CAD/hour, plus "fringe benefits" (free copies of my games, swag, etc.). I'd like to start off at a few hours per month and go from there.
Prior experience I'm looking for somebody who's done something similar before and can clearly demonstrate the growth and retention. Please also include a reference; somebody who you have worked for (or with) to grow a community.
Feel free to reply with any questions, or get in touch via DM or adam at cosmocatgames dot com.
@snugsound: I know that you said that you were holding off on climbing feedback until the next version of the demo, but would you mind expanding on one point in particular please? It's something that I don't currently have a change addressing (as far as I'm aware), and I'm unclear on quite what you mean and thus quite what to approach.
The most obvious cause of confusion is that you're supposed to climb the sides of the stones, yet you can simply walk up the front faces of some early on, kind of giving the wrong impression.
Could you elaborate, please?
To elaborate on what I mean by "front" vs "side":
Most of the climbing seems to be based on climbing the sides of blocks, but it's also possible to walk up the front of some. I remember this causing some grief for me initially because I was expecting the same towards the top, but instead was knocked off the pyramid if I even went near front faces.
It's kind of hard to put this stuff into words sometimes so I'll try to record a video of my first attempt in the next version. (if possible, it would be good to get a first-time player to do this as well)
One that might be worth briefly mentioning is that I've brightened the sunlight. Here's a comparison of old vs. new, with the older, dimmer lighting on the left
Looking better. I'd still say it's far too dark given the lighting conditions, so if you're set on having such a dark look it might be worth tweaking the sun and clouds to match? (i.e. sun position and/or overcast clouds)
A short video showing some of the recent changes in combat, in particular in its audio!
I'd like to request feedback, please: does this sound better than what was shown in the demo?
In addition, the "blood" particles used for enemies have been made a bit bigger, and in one case I think more numerous. An improvement, do you think?
Definitely an improvement, though the SFX are still very "light" sounding, like hitting wood or cardboard. (if you wanted to send them to me I'd be happy to take a stab at beefing them up)
In other news, you'll be happy to know I made it a little bit further, though I'm once again stuck! I'm at a point where I can't fully decode something, and can't seem to find anything to interact with in any useful way. I'll give it another go, but honestly, there's been quite a bit that I'd have Googled by now so I'm hoping somebody makes a guide at some point, heh.
Here are the results of a recent experiment: creating a procedural background with Shader Forge. Basically, multiple layers of panned clouds, blended, posterized and down-sampled.
It's the deepest I've gone with shader creation and node-based shader editors. I learned a lot, and I'm pretty happy with the initial results. It may also come in handy for some VFX for TOXICANT.
Time-permitting, I may do a rundown of this on today's stream.
In other news, the Steam store page is now live! This means we can finally move to Keymailer for review/streamer key requests. It also means it's time to start adding some achievements!
I do see the possibility that lacking a large named object in the room might leave the room seeming empty...
Hum. I wonder: perhaps re-instate the rubble-pile's description, but keep the new placement of the ceramic shard?
On the other hand, that might leave players not bothering to look behind the pile, and thus missing the key... :/
You could always try to "cue" the player somehow? For example, the rubble pile description could allude to there being some useful items nearby, and/or you could add some additional "decoy" items that might prompt the player to look harder?
The thing is, as noted above, if I'm not much mistaken both of you reacted to the pile in similar manners: seeing the pile, finding it non-interactive, and moving on, returning to look more closely only when you found nothing else...
That's not necessarily a problem, assuming all players eventually come to the same conclusion. But of course that design philosophy also carries the risk of frustrating new players.
And second, the rubble-pile is examinable, but not interactive, while the ceramic shard is both. This means that when the player moves the cursor from the rubble-pile to the ceramic shard, a "grasping hand" icon should appear beneath the cursor.
Well, I've now both removed the "examinability" of the rubble-pile and placed the shard a little more distant from it. Hopefully that should make it more distinct!
(The wooden key is still where it was--but it's quite distinctly shaped, I think, and should also benefit from the rubble pile being non-examinable.)
I could not remember how it looked in the game. In fact, I think that you should have been fine with the old state. I was able to find the item. Making the pile not interactable will not help here IMHO as the player will then just ignore the whole pile.
Interesting... I was about to say that I think Thaumaturge's solution would solve the problem! But I was also going to say that this only one person's opinion/experience, so probably best to hear from a few other people on the matter.
I think it looks pretty spooky, like those ghastly camera artifacts you see sometimes. (and then the person claims it's because they caught a ghost on camera...)
Bonus: these images are being handled through a particle system texture sheet, so it should be easy enough to add a basic animation (i.e. a jerky kind of flickering between different variations of the ripple, and maybe some subtle noise/visual artifact differences.).
That's fair but I can honestly say that my first impression was one of "fighting a cardboard robot with a wooden sword".
I have had feedback like that before--but I do wonder how much if it comes from the sound-effects, sound design being a weakness of mine. Some of those sounds do, I fear, sound a little cardboard-y.
(I may have another shot at reworking those...)
That's definitely part of. A rework is probably worthwhile and I'm always happy to weigh in on this, I'm all about the sound design, as you know
I don't know--I feel like when half the point of the game is nosing around and finding things, highlighting them just undermines the experience.
As to precedent, SOMA doesn't seem to have that sort of highlighting (I had a video-link, but the forum tried to embed it, breaking the paragraph o_0). It does have that "wave of light" effect that highlights items when hovering over them (an effect that I'm not a huge fan of, myself)--but both games provide an on-screen icon when hovering over interactive items anyway, so that seems superfluous to me.
I know where you're coming from, but there is a subtle difference: (as I recall) in SOMA the main quest items were quite obvious, and not "needle in a haystack" kind of things. I would make the argument that if the required items look like rubble, and are in a pile of rubble, some players may simply see the "Rubble" interact option and stop looking beyond that. (I can vouch for this first hand, heh.) But this is very much first impression stuff, and of course if that is the norm in the game then I may become more accustomed to it.
So I finally got around to implementing proper multi-surface footsteps. I'm pretty happy with the results. Hear for yourself!
While I was at it, I also added the same support for the "landing" sound.
The logic is based on performing a downward raycast and mapping the physics material name to a corresponding "index" in the FMOD event. Currently I support the following material types: dirt, concrete/rock, metal, wood, mud (will probably be used mostly for "gore"), and water, though the latter is a special case that doesn't actually use the physics material and simply looks at whether or not the player's feet are underwater.
Of course this will require adding a physics material to all meshes that have a distinct surface (so far I've only done this in a test scene) but I can figure I can just pick away at this over the next little while. At some point I'll need to do something similar for the mutant miners, but this is pretty minor as you really only hear their footsteps when you're quite close.
I'm debating whether I implement the same for the "power slide" SFX (currently, it's a rocky/gravely kind of sliding sound), but this is primarily meant to be used when entering tunnels and as of now they are all the same surface anyway. (Though there's nothing stopping the player from executing a power slide it on any surface.)
I may do a rundown of the implementation on Saturday's stream for anyone who's interested.
Gripe: dying during the tutorial completely restarts the game (vs restarting the tutorial area).
Did you not get the option on the death-menu to reload a save? There should, I think, be an autosave just before entering the lower part of the pyramid...
There are some visual artifacts in the tutorial (shadow map, I believe). (I can screenshot or video if it's not something you're seeing on your end)
Yeah, that's something that's on my list to potentially attend to. It's difficult: as a solo developer, I'm not sure of whether I should be putting too much time into something like that--something that will likely only be a problem in a few cases. On the other hand, it is unsightly, and has been pointed out before... :/
Yeah I can totally relate. If it's something that requires considerable dev effort then probably not worth it. In my case, this kind of stuff is usually just a matter of tuning some engine settings, but obviously not the case for everyone.
I like the concept for the combat, it has a kind of classic RPG feel to it. It could use with some more "oomph" overall (particles, screen shake, faster anims, heftier SFX, etc.), but it's a great start for sure!
I'm really glad that you so enjoy it! :D
As to "oomph"... I really, really don't want to over-egg it. I really don't like the very-flashy effects used in some games (especially "stylish action" games), and I want this a little more grounded, at least.
That's fair but I can honestly say that my first impression was one of "fighting a cardboard robot with a wooden sword". I also think there's risk in underestimating the importance of "game feel"; it's often one of the primary ways in which players connect with your game.
Side note: there's a great talk from one of the Vlambeer guys about this. While it won't entirely apply to your game, it really drove the point home for me.
I have actually made some revisions to the prologue's traversal challenges based on feedback from another player and my own experience--see the upcoming blog-post for a bit more detail! That said, based on your feedback, I might well end up making more!
Will cover all the climbing stuff in a subsequent post, possibly with video. I may wait until the next version as it sounds like the revisions may address some of my feedback.
In my second attempt I ended up in a state where my attacks were doing no damage to the enemy, nor was he attacking me. It eventually passed though. Does this sound familiar?
Were you perhaps low on stamina? When stamina is very low, you do no damage; as your stamina recovers, you should start doing damage again.
Hmm, could be, I'll keep an eye on this and let you know if it happens again. Does the enemy not attack when you're out of stamina, then?
At this stage it's unclear what the book actually does ("updated lexicon"). There was no indication in the inventory at all.
Hmm, yeah--I should perhaps give that a better label. Another player did correctly infer what it did--but then they'd interacted with the relevant puzzle in the prologue and thus had a basis on which to infer. And it's perhaps not ideal to ask so much inference when there's little on hand to confirm it, especially when the puzzle in the prologue that might give a basis for inference is optional...
Perhaps if I instead labelled it "Translation lexicon updated"? Does that make its purpose clearer, do you think?
Not really, but it might once I've gotten a bit further? For my benefit: is this what allows me to read the text above the doors? If so, then I would suggest having an occurrence of such text prior to finding the book, so there's a clear before/after.
Maybe I'm impatient but I'd really love to be able to move faster
You're not the first to want that! And indeed, as mentioned in the next blog post, I've actually added a "run" button. It doesn't make you Doom-Marine fast, but a little bit faster, at least!
Good to hear, and yeah, doesn't need to be anything crazy, just enough to avoid the traversal feeling tedious.
I've had to make the rounds a few times, and I still haven't found <something>. (Feel free to DM me a hint, heh; I've found the key, cup and ceramic shard)
I've actually added a bit more player-direction for this just recently, as it seems that players aren't considering the intended direction to progress here.
As a quick hint: Look for something to climb.
I found one thing to climb and it doesn't seem to go anywhere? I'll keep looking
IMO the items might blend into the environment a tad too much. I missed several of them on my first round. Maybe some interaction hint? A subtle illumination or something?
Hmm... Again, that's something that I'm wary of. I don't want too artificial a feeling for such things... :/
I want... I suppose that I want players to have that feeling of spotting something, of discovering things for themselves; of searching, exploring, finding. Too much hand-holding undermines that, I think; it becomes less "I discovered something" and more "the game indicates to do this to progress", I fear.
I hear that, but if the items are blended into the environment so much that they just look like props, it could lead to some frustrating moments. And there's a pretty strong precedent of having such "quality of life" thing in games these days--in fact, I can't think of any that don't?
The colour values of the vegetation are quite dark compared to the actual lighting conditions. See below for a recommendation. ...
Honestly, that second picture looks horribly neon to my eye. ^^;
And your screenshot is looking at the shadowed side of the mound...
See the shadowed side of this mound, for example (just drawn from a quick image-search):
Still, I can perhaps brighten the lighting of the grass a little bit.
When's the last time you went outside? The lighting conditions in that scene, as well as my reference pic, are basically mid-day sun, which is quite harsh. And everything to the left of the mound is in direct sunlight, so it should be horrible neon.
Judging by the sky, your reference has different lighting conditions; the sun looks lower in the sky, which is generally much warmer and agreeable to the eyes.
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I'm at a point where I can't fully decode something, and can't seem to find anything to interact with in any useful way. I'll give it another go, but honestly, there's been quite a bit that I'd have Googled by now so I'm hoping somebody makes a guide at some point, heh.
