I wanted to make sure I couldn't back out of it!

It's official then!

I also like the idea of the tension of slightly randomised off screen time for the enemy, so you know she's coming but you're sort of anticipating it.

That's a good idea.  Even a few seconds can give raise the "uncertainty level" of not knowing what is about to happen.  In some games, certain bosses leave before their health runs out and you have to fight them later on.  As long as the boss health bar is on screen, players can expect the boss to return.  If you want to add a little extra surprise, you could hide the boss health bar to pretend that the boss is gone and then show it again with the boss returning.

Did you write the all code yourself or are there some libraries/assets that help with finding intersection between meshes?

I wrote it myself. To get the segments of a mesh I just loop over all the triangles and save their sides into a list of structs I defined. And for the intersection between line and plane I adapted the algorithm from here to be called with said segments.

Thanks for the link. That's a good start.  I've done 2d slicing before and it seems similar.  But I especially like the tests for the various possibilities.  Those should help with preventing strange looking issues or mysterious bugs.

Most likely I will only be making this single species. It's going to be a ton of work to get it to where I want it, and the only reason I can justify all the time I'll end up spending on it is because it's the only thing I really have to put that time into. I have some plans for aesthetic modifiers based on genes, but I dunno how far I'll take it into the physical realm. Like you mention, any structural changes will require new fine-tuning, so varying that stuff too much is tricky.

Would the current code allow at least size variation?  If variables can be adjusted linearly than that could work but I'm guessing some calculations are not linear so even that might not be that simple?

Looks interesting.

About the game title being too long: perhaps  Remnants of [...]  could work.
e.g.
Remnants of Nae
Remnants of Zith
Remnants of Zie
Remnants of Nar
etc

This is purely for my immersion. (Yes i know its a game) But he looks very naked, and being able to drop towards the ground like that underwater, shouldnt he be wearing weights?

Hahaha no worries! I know exactly what you mean, I also frequently look for things in games, that explain mechanics and behaviors in a ludic way which contributes to my immersion. So the thing about this character is we wanted him to take as few pixels as possible. He's actually wearing one of those old iron diving suits. But with the mockups we have been doing, there has been a lot of debate on updating his model into being a bit more complex and closer to the rest of the art. Your feedback actually pushes us a bit more in that direction Thanks!

I'll give you another reason.  My first impression was:  "What is a caveman doing at the bottom of the sea?" 








Even after quickly realizing that the character is (probably) wearing a diving suit, the graphics still remind me of a caveman.  As you mentioned, I was also thinking that adding more details would help it look more like a diver. 

Looks good.   From an entertainment perspective it looks amusing, from a developer point of view it looks intriguing.

Today I played around with the boys some more.

When I saw those, the song "Who let the dogs" came to mind. 

And then I made them dislike having stuff on their backs. They'll buck to try and get whatever's there off.

Polishing that up a bit more also gave them the ability to untangle themselves after getting stuck in piles.

I really like these little bucks and I'm super excited to get in a few more layered behaviors like this.

Those behaviours look really good.


As for the graphics, you'll probably have a better idea once the coding is done.  If you want to keep the gameplay comical then the current cartoony, colorful style would fit well.  If you want to go in a more serious direction,


Have you seen the following robot videos?  They seem to have some resemblance in terms of movement.
MIT cheetah robot lands the running jump 


Boston Dynamics All Prototypes 


The "balance kick test" at 1:45 is interesting. 

Current state of mind . . .

For some reason that picture reminds me of a very focused state of mind.

Felt like I could do with a break from staring at a computer screen . . . So I went ahead a made a little paper cube fella. Happy hobby crafts!

Looks good!  It reminds me of a similar animation character made real and photographed in various places: https://www.facebook.com/Mr.Carton/    
Here's the cg animation:





Sometimes I also prefer to use pencil and paper to make sketches to take a break from working on the computer.

On the other hand, while I've done certain frame by frame animations by hand in the past when computers weren't around, at this point I definitely prefer the power of automation and wouldn't do something like this by hand:  https://vimeo.com/90603521    

Basically I'm calculating the intersection points between the edges of the mesh and the water plane and then finding the barycenter of them all. Once I have the center I determine the direction from each point to it, and push out by an arbitrary amount that corresponds to the width of the foam. Then when I have all the points I just generate a mesh.

I'll be writing a more detailed post about the whole process behind the water when it's been explored more, I'm still just experimenting for now.

Here are some more recent tests on animated water:

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the explanation.

Did you write the all code yourself or are there some libraries/assets that help with finding intersection between meshes?

But then I wanted to amp things up for the last bit of her health bar. I'm not sure whether to just increase the frequency or introduce a new pattern in - does anyone have any thoughts on that?

Good question.  Possibly after some gameplay it might be easier to answer that question.  It may depend on the length of the fight, the overall difficulty rating of the boss, etc.


Looks like the Kickstarter date is set! 

if u think that 12 cm avg being the only difference between man and woman is not a slight difference, you are missing the big picture.

If you think that height difference is the only difference between the men and women (on average) ... than read Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus or any other books that talk about differences between the sexes.  Plus, to add one very obvious difference:  how many men can give birth to children?

Is not at 0%, but it isn't at 10% either.

Right now we have most of the obstacles and decoration of the cavern environment done. The character randomization works (without skills yet), and we have some enemies but only one of them implemented and working on line. Everything we have from the second environment is assets and art only yet. We also standart ranged weapons and standart melee weapons working. The main UI is also to be implemented.

Currently I'm working on enemy assets and I'll begin with new weapon projectiles soon while the programmer is working on a system to add dynamic objects in any layer of the map using Tiled (destructible objects, animated platforms...).

When the object loading system is done and working on line we'll have reach about 10% of the game :D, but considering this kind of game has to have unlockables, achievements and such I believe there's still plenty to be done.

Thanks for the explanation. 

I know progress can be measured in many different ways but to me 0% means the game is mostly at the conceptual or very early stage.  10% would be when the game is still early in development but some work has already been done. Since, you've already created many assets, that's why 0% seems low.  But that's just me.

From a market perspective, most game projects are in the range that @gmicek mentioned (tens of thousands).   So when people look at your project and see that the amount is a lot higher than most, there'll be considering it more carefully.

I think this is probably the most cogent take away that I need and needs more work and reflection on the page ; if people's assessment is a risk based assessment based on my track record then I have more footwork to prove that I'm worth the investment.

Thanks for phrasing it that way - helps see it through a different perspective!

Actually, you already have one of the major issues covered.   The main idea behind Kickstarter is to help projects get started.  However, nowadays (as mentioned, due to a lot of failed projects over the years) for computer games there's an expectation that there's already some work been put into the project and people can get a good idea of what the game looks like.  Sure, there are a few projects that start essentially from scratch and are funded but (again as mentioned) those are done by people with a reasonably good track record and a large fan base.  So, for your game you already have a good amount of gameplay footage that helps significantly. 

Another thing that could help is: at the end of the video you mention the type of work you've done on games but ... you haven't mentioned those games.  If you want to add more credibility, list (at least some) of the games and show their cover/poster image.  Also, include that in the project description.  If the games are well known, that can help more but even if the games are  less-known, there's at least some increase in credibility that you know what you're doing.

Looking good!

As a side note: is the development progress really at 0% (as seen next to the title under Devlogs)?

I know this is hard to understand at first time. But really there are no certain behaviours that are more common for each gender. They vary with culture.

Your observation is just the observation of the place you live. On the whole world things aren't the same. In some tribes woman rule. In some places people eat human meat or dog meat and is fine. In some places woman put rings on their neck until it grows 4x or 5x the size of a normal neck. Do you think these woman would be able to run like this?

The character running is similar to your reference of how a woman run, but it doesn't mean that all woman run like this, or that there is a female way of running.

I agree, that my observation is based on my experience and is not typical of every women.  However, my experience is actually based on living in a few metropolitan locations with multiple cultures and after noticing it the first time, I was surprised to see many times after many times.  Also, the other aspect is that I haven't seen any men run with moving their lower arms horizontally like that.  If you can show me a reference video, I'd be interested to see.

So, that type of running reminds of how I saw some women run and therefore (to me) is feminine. 

Similarly, there is another project on this board: Irkalla, where someone commented that the main character's movement (in a mech suit) seemed feminine.  Later the developer revealed that the main character is indeed a woman.

As for how players of the game will perceive the running ...  After releasing the game, player feedback (may) tell how people percieve it.

The very only thing you could say about gender diferantiation is some slight difference in physical size when taking the average data. And thats pretty much it. But its is not true for every case (just a tendency, not a rule), so you really can't assume anything.

The height difference isn't just my assumption nor is it a slight difference.  If you look at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Average_height_around_the_world  the average difference between men and women is about 12cm (~5 inches) and is consistent that men (on average) are taller.  Lots of men would be happier if their "manliness" was that "slightly" longer. 



And now back to the game.  The martian nihilist looks great! 

In reality 400k is *not* a lot of money to produce a game. I'm completely flabbergasted that people think this is a huge amount. The only reason I can think that is the general public's consensus is that they have no idea what it takes to pay a software engineer nevermind producer, artists, sound engineers, level designers, and all the reward product.

Of course, you're right about asking for the amount that you think you need. There have been projects that asked for less than what they needed and eventually failed when they ran out of money.

On the other hand, there are a few other issues that need to be considered.  People don't look at it as a cost of paying for a game but more as an investment and consider the risks involved.  The higher the amount, the more risk they need to take. Especially with lesser or not known developers they'll wonder if they can deliver.  Added to the risk issue is that a few years ago after more and more larger projects failed to deliver (even some well known people with lots of experience), Kickstarter has added the Risks and Challenges section to the bottom of the project page.  Those experiences have made many people more cautious when supporting projects. 

From a market perspective, most game projects are in the range that @gmicek mentioned (tens of thousands).   So when people look at your project and see that the amount is a lot higher than most, there'll be considering it more carefully.

That was fast!

The only thing I noticed is that I couldn't make out the game title at the end.  It just blended in with the surrounding artwork.  It does seem better in this image:


Maybe because the background is dark.   Or you could just fade out the surrounding artwork and have the game title remain on screen a bit longer.  Also, might be better if it was larger as well.

I also like the style.  The main character reminds me of the old game "Dizzy" (the egg) in a good way.  Interestingly, the game in the videos looks a lot better because certain movement details just don't come across in the screenshots.

What does  "35% of the way to the top 100" mean?  If there were a thousand games, then there were 350 games before yours?

Haven't done it myself, so I'm just basing the following on what I've seen from projects that got greenlit.  Yes, you'll get some organic traffic from Steam, but often you'll also have to do your part.  Unless you have a good following base, you may need to promote it - e.g. online games related website can write an article, YouTubers can show some gameplay, other developers can give a shout out on twitter - just to name a few.

I wish I'd picked something with less legs to be the boss for the demo...

Looks good!

As for having less legs, you could easily have 6 instead of 8.  If someone starts to complain in a fairy tale type game that things are not realistic ...   

Most of my ideas were covered by @gmicek, so I'll just focus on things that weren't mentioned.

For beginning the trailer: I would almost prefer an actually animated logo of the "Inferno Hawk" at the beginning.  Even a simple flame effect here and there could make it pop.  Also, instead of immediately showing the logo, have the logo fade in or it starts with being blurred and comes into focus.

I like that there is a lot of gameplay already.  That shows that you have already put work into the game.
The part I'm wondering is about the following.  I remember "back in the days" seeing similar games but preferred mainly action types so I'm not that familiar with these types of games.  As mentioned there's a lot of gameplay in the video and it seems like that player movement is "limited" compared to other types of games where you can move freely.  At the beginning, it might be better to show only how the character moves around when no enemies are around.  About 5-6 seconds should be good to give viewers a good idea about the type of movement during later parts.

Maybe just my preference, but I'd prefer  "Avoid deadly traps, discover secrets and solve puzzles"  shown one line and relevant footage at a time rather than all at once.   Similarly, when the reference games are listed, I'd prefer them one line at a time.

I would add a few different types of damage graphics.  It seemed like every types of damage is show with a grey "X"-ish graphics.  Even when the person fell down below and wasn't hit by an enemy.

There was also one scene where a skeleton was facing you and was "walking on ice"  i.e. wanted to walk toward you but wasn't able to.  I would remove that scene or fix it so that the skeleton is standing still.


Keeping the "main" portion of the trailer at about 1 minute or a minute and half is a good idea.  Again, I agree with @gmicek to keep the talking portion shorter.  I especially like the enthusiasm about why you want to make the game and that's probably the most important thing to have in there since that can't be communicated that well in writing.  I'd keep the financials in the description unless you have something very special that needs to be emphasized.

I've been looking at some Kickstarter campaigns here and there in case I have one of my own one day.  As for the total amount: I agree with @gmicek that the amount you're asking for is on the large side.  A similar campaign: CONSORTIUM: The Tower - An RPG world shaped by YOUR choices!  by Interdimensional Games Inc  hasn't been able to reach that amount and that campaign is for their game sequel.  Also, many first timer developers have difficulty raising amounts in the tens of thousands.  Unless you have a lot of followers, can generate a lot of buzz or people really become interested in the game, that number might be hard to reach.  Of course, this is just a guess and you may get lucky but only time will tell.

You mentioned stretch goals but I don't see any listed.   It's a good idea to list some to get people excited about them.

If you are looking for ideas, another current Kickstarter Joking Hazard by Cyanide And Happiness has a number of interesting ideas that combines social media activity.

Hope something helps and regardless of the direction, good luck with the Kickstarter campaign!

Remembered a few more things after reading @saluk's post:
-Powerups getting stuck on top cars.  In one of the videos I remember seeing a jetpack scene and thought that might help to get those types of power-ups but my guess is that won't be always be available.
-Mouse sensitivity.  To me the mouse felt too sensitive but I'm assuming there will be an option in the final game to adjust sensitivity.
-Why is there a second crosshair?  I was thinking maybe to help aim but it didn't seem alinged with the direction (at least what I was expecting).