next »

[panthus]

FINAL VERSIONS:

WEB (maybe slightly jerky):
http://www.dallsop.com/ultimateSports/WebVersion/WebPlayer.html

STAND ALONE (8.5mb zip):
http://www.dallsop.com/ultimateSports/ultimateSportsFinal.zip

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi. So I wanted to give this a go but am still very new to the code side and wasn't sure I could make anything work. It kind of looks like it might make it to being a small game now so I am blurting the last couple of weeks up here.

The game is taken from a fan's perspective and involves getting down stadium steps to your seat. Most of the art is in, animations are first pass and might get some love with time and I think it needs a crowd. Ragdoll mostly works but I want to find a nicer way of determining a rest point (atm it basically checks if the pelvis is still translating and if it isn't switches it all off). And, yeah, mainly the game bit isn't in yet - player input and all that jazz... which might be backwards but I'm from an art background so...

Using Unity free, Maya and Photoshop. All art and scripting by me. Some game sequence and maya screengrabs below. Made a pretty quick segmented character so I didn't have to go through rigging and skinning. He has swappable eye and mouth pieces for some emotions. I don't do much animation so that's doing my head in a bit. There is just the 9 different stair pieces(well, the same model with different UVs for seat patterns) which can be cycled around infinitely and an entrance/end piece.

Gameplay is probably going to be frantically spamming a key in time with the steps. I think the fail is more fun than the win so it may end up being very hard. If something more complex occurs to me during implementation it may get bolder but this is my first go at making a game and the Unity is being learned on the way so I will be happy if the simple concept works out.

The link to game still has the ragdoll set to trigger on any key and only 18 steps just for trying things out so don't expect much game from it. Just download if you want to see it move.







game in progress (8mb zip file):
http://www.dallsop.com/ultimateSports/ultimateSportsWIP01.zip

[louroboros]

  Fantastic art. If stair dismount was any indication, this is going to be hilarious and fun.

[Mallus]

I love ragdolls. This looks promising.

[panthus]

Thanks for the comments.

Have put in my first pass on player controls. Sort of a circle meter and needle arrangement where the player pushes the needle left and right in time with the character's steps. The meter lights up yellow on the side the player has to move to and goes green when the foot touches down and the player can move on. Basically a 'win' is if the needle is in the yellow when the foot lands.

Finding it a little tricky to tune though. Each step is on 0.5 seconds so the needle has to go very fast and still stop fairly accurately.

I have a full speed and deceleration factor and a bit of rounding off after that. So the needle is at max speed at 0 and 180 degrees on the meter and has a deceleration to hopefully be reasonably placeable around 90 and 270 degrees.

I made a build with live debug keys for the variables involved so that I can pass it around and get some feedback on best tuning settings for different people. I think my reaction times are a bit slower than normal now (getting older) and would really appreciate if anyone has a few mins to download and tinker.

U changes the animation speed. Probably want to tune everything so this is playable at 1 but have included 0.1 to 1.5 just so people can see how it works at lower speeds and such.
I changes needle max speed which it will hit at the top and bottom of the circle.
J changes the deceleration which is -90 off the speed per unit. So if you set (this * 90) higher than the speed then it won't be able to move.
N changes the rounding in 5 degree steps.
M changes the key sensitivity. I'm using Unity's (Input.GetAxis > this = right) and turning it up seems to make the initial response from the key quite delayed but the release more accurate.
A/D or cursor keys work for left/right.
The build has infinite stairs and just text for good or bad hits on the meter so anyone can keep tinkering while it just chugs away.

Thanks in advance to anyone who tries it out and any other advice or criticism of the mechanic is appreciated too.

TUNING BUILD (8mb zip):
http://www.dallsop.com/ultimateSports/ultimateSportsWIP02.zip

[Gorman]

Well, this looks really cool, and animates really cool. But I find the controls and HUD a bit abstract and confusing. I was hoping for something more intuitive. Probably sounds a bit wishy washy, but hopefully you know what i mean. 

[panthus]

Hmm ok.. maybe back to the drawing board.

[panthus]

So I dropped the meter and have gone for a left right dodging obstacles thing. Widened the stairs and put sodas on them (hopefully textured and more mesh varieties later on). Added a stair count and a highscore. The highscore deliberately scrubs between sessions and the stairs are infinite while testing.

Plans are to include tougher arrangements of obstacles further down and maybe a rail to slide, time and animation skills permitting. Another idea being thrown around is a sit down button which would be the only way to record your highscore unless you get to the end. If I get a chance to include crowd it could be interesting/frustrating if you wanted out but all the seats were full.

Cursor keys or A/D to move left/right.

DODGING BUILD (8mb zip):
www.dallsop.com/ultimateSports/ultimateSportsWIP03.zip

[Gorman]

Haha, that is definitely more fun and rather fucking amusing. I enjoy the trivial obstacles of empty soda bottles that trip him. Nice touch on the flashing red light and twitching man when you bail.

Ummm whats the score counted in? Meters or steps or just some random unit? Could be thematically appropriate if it was counted in seat rows. Starting with AA or something. You made it to row C1!

Also, I think the score should keep ticking until you reach your final resting place.

Anyway this is highly amusing to me.

[panthus]

Thanks Gorman.

Going to call it done. Spent too long texturing little obstacles and didn't get as many as I intended. The functionality for putting in larger ones further down is in but the content got the better of me. As it is, the arrangement of smaller obstacles gets denser and harder so hopefully that's enough challenge.

These are what got into the final.


Added a few more tweaks, most notably a challenge system so you get to win every now and again... even though it's endless. And some ropey sound. Highscores and challenge level are remembered between sessions and if anyone tries it out I'm keen to know scores.

Made a webbuild for those who don't want to download. It seems a bit jerky to me so I recommend the hardcore player grab the zip.

WEB:
http://www.dallsop.com/ultimateSports/WebVersion/WebPlayer.html

STAND ALONE (8.5mb zip):
http://www.dallsop.com/ultimateSports/ultimateSportsFinal.zip

[goshki]

Looks like "Stair dismount" with a purpose. Which is a good thing.

[felipezille]

Excellent! Very hilarious! 

[emacs]

Haha, this is fantastic!

[lukke]

hehe, nice one
It's a bit hard sometimes to dodge the objects but I had to reach that goal !
I would love to see where you could go with the gameplay.

[lowpoly]

This is pretty fun, I especially like the guy's expressions when he reaches his seat. Seems genuinely enthralled with the event.

Something that may be help the challenge a bit would be to increase your speed the longer you go. Along the same lines, I also wish the initial impact had a little more force so the fall felt more violent/exaggerated. Round it out with some snapped-celery sound fx as you tumble down.

Good stuff, glad to see some unity in here too 

[Fifth]

I pretty much agree with what lowpoly said.  Fun, simple game.  I love the expressions when he reaches his seat.  The tripping would benefit from some more exaggeration.

Overall, amusing entry.  And I like the take on the sports theme.

[Dr. Cooldude]

I always laugh when I fall.
Oh god someone stop me...

Anyways, great game! (even though it's kind of hard but meh) I really love the graphics in it!

[whilefun]

This was pretty funny. Definitely an original take on the theme

[Oddball]

Some of the best art in the compo, and great attention to detail. I felt on a couple of occasions that the obsticles put me in an impossible situation, but as it only takes a few seconds to play I didn't mind. Liked the event names too. How many are there? I didn't want to try and get them all as I've still got a couple more compo entries to try. Good stuff

[panthus]

Thanks for the great comments guys.

A little about the inner workings. The object arrangements are established in little text files for each block of 6 steps such as:
xxxxxxxxx
xoxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxx
xxxxxoxxx
xxxxxxoxx
xxxxxxxxx
I wanted the patterns to be learnable and never impossible. There are a few occasions when the next tile picked does make it impossible but I ran out of time to finesse it. Also which object is picked is purely random and some being taller than others makes some runs through easier or harder. For instance a low obstacle on a step the guy bounds over can be cleared running straight at it. The widely open burger box may be the most annoying one on there.

There are 10 tiles for steps 0-30 and 10 for 30-60 and 10 for 60+. They get denser and were supposed to have larger obstacles on them. I didn't spend as much time testing steps after 60 as I never got around to making the large obstacles, so I can't really vouch for their playability. Also I think the hook has probably worn off before then anyway.

The guy doesn't actually move off 0,0,0; the environment treadmills around him, so when the ragdoll kicks in he does tend to collapse rather than look like he has tripped. Since the comp finished I have played around with giving him an artificial kick and it does look much better.

The event names are pulled out of 3 text files and with a bit of thesaurusing I got to over 100 entries in each. So no, I wouldn't expect anyone to see all the combinations. With a bit of array swapping it discards used ones so you would never see the same one crop up per session unless you played over 100 times. It refreshes on load though because I didn't think it was that important to save out.

One thing I have noticed since finishing is the CPU use tends to creep up to alarming levels on extended play and it gets jittery. I think this may be using mainTextureOffset so much for the facial animation and unity creating a new material instance every time, but I don't really know. Or maybe something to do with sleeping and waking physics a lot. Not really in a position to buy unity pro at the moment so no access to profiling.

I uploaded 1 final final version that has some post comp tweaks. Not sure of competition etiquette for posting updates after the whistle blow so I will just drop it here and leave the first post linked to the version I got done in time. I rounded out the small obstacles with a few more and got a couple of large ones in. Made a contact effect and a better fall. Probably some other little tweaks and there is an easter egg [g]ore mode for if you press a certain key to play...

I learned a tonne of stuff making this and am glad people got a laugh out of it. Cheers all. Btw my highscore is 66... just throwing that out there if you need the competition.

DIRECTOR'S CUT (8.6mb zip):
http://www.dallsop.com/ultimateSports/ultimateSportsDirectorsCut.zip

[capn.lee]

had loads of fun with this, the screen does seem to not be its intended bounds though
also not sure how i did it, but at one point i restarted and this occurred



this was on the post-compo build.

the newer builds fall is greatly improved with the leap, is there any way you could also encourage him to tumble as well?