I heard Far Cry 2 had a really good bus system. Any public transit was fast travel, which makes a lot of sense since you can zone out when someone else is driving.

Personally, I liked the Golden Sun series' approach to this best. Without too many spoilers, I'll say that you went from basic walking-on-overworld to vehicle to evolved vehicle, where each step had its limitations from the environment, but slowly you became able to explore the whole world, and a *lot* faster too (at least 2x the speed by the end of the game, for the whole world)

Make it for dual controllers. Heck, Meat Boy advertised how much better it was with a controller every time you booted the game. I think it's common enough that you can expect fellow devs to have a wired 360 controller or two, but if you're really worried, find out how hard it is to set up PS3 controllers with BlueTooth too.

All you really need is to make a game good enough to convince people to be interested in it, then you can pitch it to a console dev where you *know* they have dual stick.

- Make a Star Fox style rail shooter

If you would like any help with this, I have made

before, and might be able to give some insight. I definitely recommend making squadrons fly in formation with changing patterns/paths - easiest thing to code (stick a sin on rotation based on time or something) with the best results ("Feels like a real shooter!") of any level in there.

Personally... still trying to finish my 2012 resolutions. xD Will let you know by midnight if I'm ready for 2013 yet. Just got out of college, so job hunting is my #1 resolution for 2013.

The trailer is 1:15, including the text at the end, so you should be good And yes, I will post it here soon - but I'm going to release it in increments (like Google) so that if there's a bug, I can address it before too many people see it. You guys are pretty early on my list though, just Facebook before r/IndieGames and TIGsource!

Because I can't stand having all my posts here resolved. xD So here's a fun topic that I love discussing.

Materials! A texture or surface color in game, and how that influences gameplay. I was first introduced to the idea by real life game Lava Monster, a variant on tag for playgrounds where tanbark is considered lava, and cannot be walked on by anyone but the lava monster himself (the tagger). It creates a whole new way to explore a familiar space/world.

Video games do this every now and then, in a couple different ways, with wonderful results. Ocarina of Time did it for me first with the Hookshot, where any wood became instantly accessible. I am halfway through Shadow of the Colossus, where fur does equal wonders by allowing you to grab onto it for climbing. Portal does some of this, but more an inverse - you can portal anything *except* metal surfaces. Personally, I prefer when the world exists and then you learn you can access even more of it through material use, rather than less of it (eg. Portal 2 minor spoilers, but one of the last paints you find in game does some of this).

So what is this called, and how can we do more of it (and well!)? I like that OoT took a world you knew and flipped it on its head, especially since it was in an unobvious way like "Oh, now I need to make note of where all generic wood is!" so none of it was predictable (sorry Wii Zeldas, this was not your strong point). Are there any other games I should play to see this in effect? And... do any others implement it with animation too, like SotC?

All good suggestions! I redid the trailer after watching the talk too, and it turned out really well! I also compared it to a few other trailers, and found a three act trend (whaaa?) where the first section was different from the second was (climax here!) different from the third, followed by technical details. Launching head first into the action really helped, and I moved some of my most exciting stuff to the front (but not all the cool stuff!). Really happy about this one, now I just need to figure out a way to put "Demo Available Now" into two words, and I'll be satisfied ;P

Thanks guys!

Please move this if it's in the wrong place, but I feel Art has a visual focus, while trailer pacing is closer to level design in terms of layout.

I'm finally nearing a public demo! The time has come for a trailer, since it's a download link/exe/app, and I want to convince people it's worth playing. In fact, I even made a trailer already - I'm just very unsatisfied with it!

The problem is, I don't know what kind of pacing to give it. It's a 3D platformer, so I'm looking to Super Mario 3D Land's

as reference for pacing now too (earlier I learned from it to change your background and gameplay mechanic in every new shot, and average shot lengths around 6 seconds... worked great too!). Previously, I had just mashed the theme song down into a cool 50 second thing... but the song has a long buildup, and I kept that as a big part of it, and now the trailer is just a lot of buildup (too dramatic).

So, do you guys have any suggestions for trailer pacing? Specifically, for my case, I'm also looking for more (go figure) 3D platformer debut trailers. The last game trailer I did turned out really well (an old

from 2007) but that was an on-rails shooter, and I'm guessing a 3D platformer should have a hint slower pacing than that.

Any and all knowledge on trailer pacing for games is welcome though!

Personally, I loved having to stop to aim in Resident Evil 4 and the original Metroid Prime. Putting those features in made you take in the environment more, it wasn't a motion-blurry mess that you ran by. If you can make the player see things in a different light by putting on things that are otherwise just considered restrictions, do it! It's like, the basis of game design - putting in unnecessary challenges to create an interesting interaction/world. So try it, see how the bad thing feels, and sometimes it might feel really good (see: no jumping in Bionic Commando).

Momentum is currently stored in capped variables for every dimension (X/Y/Z), so pressing any direction will apply a constant change to that momentum... meaning it should already slow down if you press the opposite direction of where you're going. My animations are all based on what your momentum is rather than what you are trying to do though, so I will definitely fix that so they give immediate feedback rather than representing what we already know about the world (that you are still going forwards, for example).

So animation will definitely be fixed, and I'll play with friction rates if that still doesn't work, but what about this whole air vs ground thing? Does anyone have any experience with that? I feel like (unrealistic as it may be) if I applied friction in mid air after the player stopped pressing a direction, it would fit the player's mental model better. Perhaps this is only an assumption though, as most of the complaints have come after trying to land a jump on a not-too-large platform.

Will definitely try these out though and let you guys know the results!

Hey guys! More platformer questions here. Between Super Meat Boy, DKCR, Super Mario Land and Sonic, there are all kinds of ways to handle momentum in games. Super Meat Boy definitely has momentum, but I've never heard someone call it slippery. Donkey Kong Country Returns on the other hand, while having tons of momentum, has been called slippery by a nongamer I know (and a masterpiece by gamers, go figure). Super Mario Land was critiqued in Game Grumps for having zero momentum, but boy were the controls not slippery, and the Sonic games do a great job of having good yet momentum based controls.

So, how does this all work!? I'm trying to have a momentum system in my own platformer right now, and I keep having people think it's slippery. My system is that when telling the player to move, no friction is applied, and on letting go of the joystick then (if the player is on the ground) some amount of friction is applied to the momentum until it hits zero. So, there is some movement after letting go, but only for a short while on the ground. I also have a top speed that exceeds what you initially reach upon moving, but can be built up to. The friction is a flat rate, so it will take longer to slow down if you have been moving for a while in one direction (read: built up to top speed, about 2.5x the initial speed), but I really don't know which aspect might be causing slipperiness. Any ideas?

I hate it when the solution to a boss battle is to lose it. That is how *not* to do it.

Haha, I had a bad experience with this once. I can't remember what game it was, but I think it was some JRPG where you could basically stay alive forever in a boss fight you had to lose to continue with the story.

After 30 minutes I just gave up and started attacking my own guys out of spite, and got pretty pissed when I found out this what was I was supposed to do all along haha.

It was Tales of Symphonia that did it for me. Admittedly, I later played Chrono Trigger, which does the same thing in a very classy manner - but if you're interested in how to address boss battles where you don't know if/when they will end, definitely look to how Chrono Trigger and Earthbound do it. Oh SNES RPGs...

I hate it when the solution to a boss battle is to lose it. That is how *not* to do it.

Whatever it is the re-deads have in Ocarina, that's what you want. Taking away a sense of empowerment from the player, grabbing them, limiting their controls, that stuff is terrifying and doesn't need 3D at all.

I have found that this convenience factor is also the reason tablets work so well. They're just easier to use for casual applications.

Majesty and Great Big War Game act a lot more like Angry Birds, the camera is independent of any character. Definitely on the right track though - but their camera to what I'm seeking is like Warhammer to D&D. I'm looking for something where the camera is locked to one character for the whole game, and scrolling moves not only the camera but the character as well.

Maybe I'll have to make a rough prototype or something to explain it better. For now though: Imagine the Diablo camera with the Majesty/Angry Birds/Great Big War Game camera controls... so camera is always centered on player, but scrolling moves the camera (and as such, the player)

In Zenonia, virtual joystick. In Sword & Sworcery, it's a point and click adventure. In Angry Birds, only the camera moves this way.

So my thoughts are, take the Angry Birds camera, lock it to the player in Zenonia, and move by dragging the ground underneath you. I have not seen this in touch/mobile games yet, just a lot of virtual buttons, joysticks, and d-pads.

Today I finally played with one of these really nice, kindle sized, Samsung Android tablets. Navigating a webpage has never felt better, and the sense of space and freedom was amazing. Eventually, I want to bring my current game, a wip 3d platformer, over to these devices - and now I'm considering a style like this where you move the ground under the character as if it's the earth in Google maps, only it would translate to directional movement commands for the player really (but it would feel like you were moving the ground). I'd love to try examples first though if anyone knows of any. Have you guys seen something like this before in touch screen games?

That's awesome looking! Do you guys have controller support, and any automatic stuff for the camera? Like, camera-ai?

Loving the mixed fish-organic/barcode-scientific style, show me some gameplay!

We need Metroidvanias in which backtracking is an entertaining affair. There should be an advantage to having been through an area once, but it should not make the experience feel dull, as if often already does. This issue is the biggest one I have with the genre.

I've always thought backtracking is just traveling for a new time in an old place, and the best way to make that entertaining is to make the traveling different (and often faster). OoT has Epona and Warps, Super Metroid has the Speed Booster/Grappling Hook and tons of new shortcuts, Shadow Complex gave you ridiculous mobility as I recall (jetback at one point even, or something?) so as long as you can make the world smaller by making travel faster, or more interesting with a new technique, it shouldn't be a problem. I think it's just that this rarely happens at the degree necessary. I'm playing Skyward Sword right now and air travel is pretty quick, but once you're on the ground from one of only a few drop points, you have the same mobility as the first time you played the level.

Is there any reason putting an "s" on, to make "lock when action starts" would be a bad phrasing of it? xD And why "always" instead of continuous? Maybe it's just me, but I like to think that options can be rearranged with their category to make sense as sentences.

Eg.
Color: Blue

becomes

He has a blue color.

Whereas you can't say "It's an always movement relative to camera" but you can say "It's a continuous movement relative to camera". Use of adjectives I guess as the options themselves?