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[Matthew]

We just released a public alpha of our next game, Jetpack Brontosaurus:

http://jetpackbrontosaurus.com/alpha/

It's pretty sparse on content, but there's enough in place to get a sense of what we're reaching for.  We'd love feedback!  Reply here or use the handy feedback from on the alpha page...

[Melly]

Yay! My videocard does not support your damn shaders!

 

[Zaphos]

Neat!

Comments:
* It's very pretty, but it's hard to control and the objectives I've seen are boring and they require a finessed control which fights against the fun part of the experience for me, which is just the feeling of flying and zooming about.  I wish I could control the jets to fly downward.  When I use the mouse to look around while flying, I get especially disoriented.

* When I first started playing, it took me a second to realize that the obnoxious floating tag corresponded to a place I could go to accept a mission, and was not in itself instructions for a current goal.

* Also I went through a hoop which I think was not a part of the mission first, and then was confused looking for the next one, until I realized I was going through the wrong kind of hoop.

* There's no feedback on what the collectibles do, or why I should fly through rings.

* Overall my impression is that I just want to explore the gorgeous world, and when you start introducing jarring "there's a mission here" HUD elements and cliches like 'fly through the rings' or collectible I-don't-even-know-what-that-is things, it just cheapens it and makes it feel like an n64-era Rare platformer or something.

[Saladan0]

DIS! I think Zaphos just compared a game to superman64. 

[Melly]

[ichi]

As Zaphos said, the missions are pretty boring, but I had alot of fun just flying around! it has a nice feel to it and I love the dream-like graphics and the fact you can randomly see the skeleton through the skin.
I also dig the quake effect of landing on something, I love little touches like this.

I think it would be cool if it was more about exploration than missions 

[Matthew]

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

The next step is to build out the content for the game; it is awfully sparse right now.  Many aspects of the foundation aren't exposed very well (like the two parallel dimensions), which we'll work at.

Keep the comments coming...

[Seth]

Yeah, I think it's a mistake to center the game around timed challenges when Brontosaurus is so slow.  It makes the prospect of repeatedly retrying missions painful to think about.  Also, I wish I could walk around on mah feet.  It is rather enjoyable to fly around, though, nice work so far 

[Steve Swink]

I have a sort of a follow up question.

We're getting a lot of feedback about how everyone likes exploring and flying around(on the main)and how that seems preferable to doing missions.  I'm interested: what specific mechanics or systems would you implement in lieu of missions in order to further emphasize the parts of the game you like? 

We have our own ideas (which will address much of the feedback - most of it is stuff we totally agree with and have observed ourselves) and I've seen a lot of suggestions in various places, but I'm interested in what folks will say to that. 

In other words, if this were your game, what would you do to it from this point? 

Thanks again!

[Hideous]

I would add a mode for people with crappy computers. Like me.

Oddly enough, it lags less than Velociraptor Safari for me.

[Zaphos]

We're getting a lot of feedback about how everyone likes exploring and flying around(on the main)and how that seems preferable to doing missions.  I'm interested: what specific mechanics or systems would you implement in lieu of missions in order to further emphasize the parts of the game you like? 

I know you're asking for specifics and this is pretty vague, but isn't this game supposed to portray a dinosaur's dream?  I'd be really interested to see you guys flesh out that idea.  How do you convey the dream world in the game mechanics?
A lot of cactus's games capture the drifting illogic of dreams quite well, so you could look to those for inspiration, but his worlds tend to be a lot more threatening and violent than I'd expect this one to be.

One thing to think about with the dream is, what is the dream about?  What troubles or brightens a dinosaur's sleep?

In terms of specific mechanics, one thing to try is shifting the movement mechanic with the situation.  Areas of empowerment, where the jetpacks give strong precise control and a great sense of flight.  Areas of fear, where the jetpack sputters pathetically and only weights our hero down in to a terrifying fall.  Areas of nudity, where suddenly there is no jetpack at all.  And so on, in that fashion.


... hmm, I expect none of this will be usable in the slightest  :D

[Alex May]

Opera crashed when I tried to make a new account. When I retried, it worked fine (I couldn't create an account in the end because the game uses the same accounts as velociraptor safari).

I am still getting stuck keys with this unity framework. After a while it stops recognising when my keys have been released, so it just holds them down.

The camera is quite annoying, and I guess there isn't really a way to fix that besides streamlining the mission design and environment so that the camera doesn't need to be so versatile. This would make the game very much more dull. One thing that would be nice is if the camera were moved away from the brontosaurus a little.

I'm sure you'll add more stuff so i won't go into the sparseness or lack of things to do.

Everything else worked fine. I found the xray filter to be mildly annoying, but it does look cool.

[Movius]

I love the look and the music. Also, travelling through the portal when it was unlocked blew my fucking mind.

The controls take a long time to get used to (it took me over a minute to get through the first hoop,) and are a bit awkward in general. But once you get used to them it's a fun just flying around and watching Brontosaurus bounce off of things, though you should be able to walk around when Brontosaurus lands.

The missions are ok, but a bit boring as they are and it can be a bit hard to work out where you are going thanks to the perspective of the camera. The Tunnel mission in particular never seemed to put the camera in a place that wasn't behind a wall. It was particularly confusing when the dino would end up stuck behind a stalagmite i couldn't see.

The daily/all-time rank display also seems to have little to do with where you end up on the leaderboard. and they  are possibly backward (ie. i'll be 9th best in the day, but #1 for all time).

[Farbs]

I think my biggest concern with this is that the controls are, well... dull. I want to swoop! I want to soar! I want to loop-the-loop and fly upside down! I want to twist and spin through all three dimensions. I want to fly a jetpack, not a dirigible.

[Lazer]

I mostly agree with everything said here, especially Farb's comment of swooping and such.

The tunnel is also a bit glitchy and troublesome to fly through.

I loved the overall style and presentation though. Watching the apatosaurus land on an edge is especially awesome. My favorite part so far are the sound effects. The puttering of the jetpack is just perfect.

[Steve Swink]

One thing to think about with the dream is, what is the dream about?  What troubles or brightens a dinosaur's sleep?

There is a list on a whiteboard from months ago with just this heading . 

In terms of specific mechanics, one thing to try is shifting the movement mechanic with the situation.  Areas of empowerment, where the jetpacks give strong precise control and a great sense of flight.  Areas of fear, where the jetpack sputters pathetically and only weights our hero down in to a terrifying fall.  Areas of nudity, where suddenly there is no jetpack at all.  And so on, in that fashion.

Actually, those are some great ideas. Thanks!

[Noyb]

I like the mission system as a way of guiding the player through the areas as well as building up the necessary skills to navigate. What I'd like to see is a way to instantly restart missions if there isn't already, and a way to determine the altitude of an object relative to your position from the minimap. Love the aesthetics and gameplay, although the camera doesn't always behave the way I want. Oh, and maybe taking the portal to the other world could change the missions into harder versions to match the harsher feeling.

[Matthew]

We're going to do much more with the death world.  I don't think many people are discovering the portal in the alpha build (but rightfully so, as there isn't any mission content that pushes you there).  Post people think it's just a filter; that's our fault.

I want to speak a little on the controls, since I did most of the setup and tuning on it.  We had two basic options in the game:  make controls relative, flight-sim style, which would allow for all kinds of craziness, or make controls absolute, 2.5D style, so holding Up results in full forward motion.

I opted for the latter because of accessibility and stability reasons.  In the current system you can view thrust as a way to modulate height, with the arrow keys themselves moving you on a 2D plane.  I still think quite a bit about how to enable more expressive motions, or a way to actually angle up or down (so you could dive, for instance).  I worry about sacrificing the simplicity of the controls, though, and there are a lot of artificial constraints in place to make the rig workable.  Try holding down Z to play without the primary upwards constraint.

But it may be that Jetpack Bronto will be more about exploring content with simple controls--and there is a lot of content in the pipeline--than some of our other projects...

That said, there is another pass for controls in the schedule (including a stun system), so if anyone has specific ideas I'll give them a try!

[the_depraved]

I've been through that. It flash and rests my hud.

[SeiferTim]

Okay, first off:
I LOVE the design and artwork that I've seen so far.  I wish I could have art half as awesome for my games.

The first thing I noticed is the requirement to download the unity plugin - or whatever it's called.  I know I downloaded and installed it before for Raptor Safari, but I've reformatted my HD since then, so I had to install it again.  Not a huge problem, but this might put some people off.

The next thing I noticed is that the game seems really large, and took a long time to load on the menu screen.  It might be nice to give the player some interactivity while waiting for it to load - like a story or something to read.  I'm on a T1 at work, so I'm not sure what made it take so long.

Next, I realized that the interface was really laggy on the menu screen.  I would roll over/click a button, but it would not register for a second or two.  I closed out of all my open programs and things and noticed only a small improvement.  I can't tell where the lag is coming from.  I wouldn't say that the video card on this computer is amazing, but it's not too bad...

I clicked "play", and got another Loading screen with Brontosaurus's head sticking out of the bottom right.  A few seconds later, a circular map or something popped up over that image, but it's still sitting at "Loading".  It's been a few minutes now, so I think it's dead now.  I reloaded my browser, and went back to the site, but the same thing happened.  I'm going to give up trying to play this until I get home.

Now, I know that browser games are tons of fun, and it seems like most of the time they work just fine, but is there a reason why you wanted to make this game as a browser game, and not a downloadable game?  I understand you want to give the player access to high-score boards, and things like that, but I think it would be better, at least for a game of this type, to have a version that can be downloaded and played straight from the user's computer, outside of the browser.  Maybe it's just me, but, specifically with 3-d games, I've found that if they can be played in the browser, but have an option to download and install it, the downloaded version runs smoother, faster, and has less problems (I can't even count the number of times FireFox has crashed on me while playing a game on some website for no reason).  Just something to think about...

Anyway, my home computer is a little faster, has a better graphics card, and is running windows XP (I have Vista here at work), so I might be able to actually play the game when I get home.  I might have more for you then.  Like I said, I love the artwork I've seen, love the concept (jetpacks + dinosaurs = win), and really look forward to playing this.

One last thing - the biggest complaint I had with Raptor Safari was the way that the time-limit was implemented.  I never got see more than a very small piece of the world, and (partly because of lag, or whatever) I never got to do very much in the game, so I hope you move away from the time-limit game mechanic, or at least offer some way to stay in the game longer... perhaps make a 'timed mode' which is an optional, bonus, or unlockable mode which offers greater benefits to people who complete certain achievements while in that mode, but the default mode is something more open to exploration.