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Author Topic: Zarvot  (Read 9395 times)
SnowHydra
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« on: August 09, 2014, 12:32:56 PM »


Zarvot is a voxelike local multiplayer arena.


I've been developing this baby for about a month now, and out of all the games I've ever worked on, this is so far my favorite.
When playing it, there was something special about dying - it wasn't frustrating. Everyone is a glass cannon, killing and dying in one shot.

And that's awesome!
One of the main goals was to make the game as delicious as possible to play, in a frustration-free competitive environment.

Anyways, Zarvot is actually somewhat far into development, but I'll be updating this thread with the progress I've saved in the past for screenshot saturdays.




I'll start by just showcasing the two core attacks.


I first implemented the laser.
It's the most fun - with satisfying recoil and particles, it feels chunky to charge and shoot. It leaves you vulnerable while it's charging, and afterwards there is a very small cooldown period where your movement and actions are locked.

Then, I implemented the dash attack.
It's a very deadly, fast moving insta-kill melee, but it leaves you very vulnerable afterwards.

Here's one of my oldest gifs showcasing a missed laser leading to a dead player.
Purple tries to shoot blue, but is a tad too late, so blue rolls right on up and smashes purple in the face.

http://zippy.gfycat.com/AdvancedImpishFanworms.gif

Some newer gameplay:




Old trailer:






More to come later.



You can see more stuff at http://zarvot.com
Or follow me on twitter at https://twitter.com/SnowHydra

Thanks for your attention!

« Last Edit: January 04, 2015, 06:51:43 PM by SnowHydra » Logged

SnowHydra
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« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2014, 07:26:26 PM »

Right now I'm still posting up old stuff, but I want to store my progress for you guys to see.

Past the Laser and the Dash, there's also something unique - the CircleLaser. Or as playtesters like to call it, just the Circle.

It works a bit like the active reload mechanic, or in sports games when choosing "power" of a shot.
When you hold down the Dash button while stationary, a circle emanates around you, and then starts expanding.
At any time, when you release the button, the Circle will explode - anything caught on the circumference (the line) of the circle gets obliterated.


Here we see Red try to hit Green who dashes past the laser.
Red then tries to creep up on Green, who is definitely pinned down.
But Green has a CircleLaser, which can go through walls! So... BOOM!



I've been told so far that it's ridiculously delicious and fun to use.
Although I still need to do some minor balancing (presently working on such), the Circle is so awesome.


Technical stuff:

The way I'm checking if an enemy is on the Circle circumference is that I'm just storing all destructible objects into an array and checking the distance between the Circle origin and each destructible. When fired, the Circle iterates through the array, checks all distances, and if it's within a certain error factor of the radius, it sends a hit message to the destructible. I found this method to be the most accurate, not to mention fast!

(More side technical stuff: I actually used the GL class in Unity to draw the lines. That was a really fun thing to implement! It's super fast, too! At least when compared to the LineRenderer)
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matriax
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« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2014, 11:39:01 PM »

The game looks interesting and the particle effects are great. good work Wink
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SnowHydra
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« Reply #3 on: August 12, 2014, 10:39:46 AM »

Thanks man!


After the circle (and extensive playtesting with just Dash, Circle, Laser) - I implemented DESTRUCTIBLE WALLS!
Woo! And a shield pickup!



Technical:
I basically have a Destructible class that can take damage - weapons when hitting something will see if the thing it's hitting is Destructible and then send a Damage message to the object. The Destructible handles damage and destructing. When the wall gets hit by Laser, it frees its parts (it's just a bunch of tiny cubes stuck together) by setting all of their rigidbodies IsKinematic to false and adding an explosive force at the hit position.
The shield is also literally a shield! It blocks the raycast that the Laser uses and will block one CircleAttack.

Side note: Does anybody know if/how to embed Gfycat into these posts?
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ndke
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« Reply #4 on: August 12, 2014, 11:31:49 AM »

I like the way this looks and it's really interesting...
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Hypnotron
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« Reply #5 on: August 12, 2014, 12:45:18 PM »

Looks good.  The movement and behaviors of these robotic creatures seems very organic. 
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SnowHydra
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« Reply #6 on: August 12, 2014, 07:42:12 PM »

Thanks guys! Your words mean a lot to me.


So I also wanted to add LIGHTNING effects to my game - so I spent an entire day working on procedural mesh generation for lightning!
It was terrible! And a ton of fun!
What I used was the midpoint algorithm where you recursively displace the midpoint of a line to form a lightning-like bunch of lines.
Then I took that array of points and created quads for each segment - this was the hard part. I had to assign UVs and triangles for the textures as well - and it didn't even end up looking that good up close.
Luckily, they're very tiny in game and look freakin' awesome!

Here's some lightning up close - weird texture problems Sad



BUT when it's ingame, it looks totally fine since it's much smaller.
I'll post an in-game gif again tomorrow. Playtesting today took a lot out of me - way too much fun.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2014, 07:50:58 PM by SnowHydra » Logged

SnowHydra
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« Reply #7 on: August 14, 2014, 10:04:45 AM »

Now getting really close to the newer stuff.

The lightning was added to the laser - it looks totally ace!
In this gif I demonstrate further the destructible walls, the subtle lightning on the laser, and the shield pickup.
And a Circle to finish it off, naturally. (It's still so incredibly satisfying to hit with)

Of course, the Navy player didn't need to Laser the wall and Green's shield only to use Circle, but I thought I'd show a bit of variety.
In a real game, Navy should've just Circled the shield away and then use the Laser.



Technical:
The way the lightning works is I pass it start and end point when rendering - that's why it works so well with the laser.
I am considering adding a perlin noise jitter, to make it look even more awesome, but perhaps later, after more gameplay additions.
The destructible walls here were also overhauled from the last gif. I made each fragment take an explosive force, and the impact of the Laser to use OverlapSphere to affect fragments nearby. It makes a huge difference in the explosive feel!

Anyways, tonight is playtest night, I also added a lot more - I'll eventually reach there in my updates.
Thanks for reading!
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SnowHydra
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« Reply #8 on: August 15, 2014, 10:14:43 AM »

Unfortunately when recording gameplay footage last night, TECHNICAL ISSUES CAME UP.
The footage I recorded had no sound. Very saddening...

But this just means the real trailer will be twice as good - since the next playtest night will be in a while.


Anyway, some more progress - showing the new destructible walls. This is new progress now.
Overhauled how the fragments work. Now they don't impede player movement.





Going to work now on a level editor.


Thanks for reading!
« Last Edit: August 15, 2014, 09:23:57 PM by SnowHydra » Logged

SnowHydra
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« Reply #9 on: August 15, 2014, 09:22:31 PM »

Just wanted to show off a full game of Zarvot - the first game of the night on Thursday actually.
Unfortunately when I was recording there was no sound. I'm sad, but oh well, right?

In this video I am the light green player - the South spawn.





Technical: I messed up Tongue


Thanks for reading/watching!
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SnowHydra
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« Reply #10 on: August 17, 2014, 11:13:22 AM »

Map system!

Looks like I kept my promise. It literally took me all of yesterday, but I finally have a custom map system!
First I did the whole serialization thing, and then I realized that was a little silly, so I made a parser.

Maps just become simple text files with a character legend.
The r, J, L, 7 characters represent corners, while a . is an empty space. @'s are player spawns.

For example, a map would be a text file exactly like:
Code:
The Walls
.................
.................
..r-----------7..
..|...........|..
..|.....@.....|..
..|....-.-....|..
..|...........|..
..|..|.r-7.|..|..
..|.@..|O|..@.|..
..|..|.L-J.|..|..
..|...........|..
..|....-.-....|..
..|.....@.....|..
..|...........|..
..L-----------J..
.................
.................

Then all I'd have to do is slap it into Zarvot's data folder and there it is in my Custom Maps folder!
Awesome stuff.


That map turns out like this:



Yes, I know, it looks almost exactly like the previous map. This is my favorite map, though, so it was the first one I remade.


If anyone wants to make maps for me then feel free to Tongue


Technical:
I essentially have maps just stored as tilemaps, which are 2D arrays of Tiles, which is just an enum.
Relatively simple, I just use my custom FileHandler class that uses File.ReadAllLines to parse my text files into a tilemap by just assigning each character to a different Tile.
I'm very very proud of this despite it being so simple, though.

Now I can get down to making some unique maps!


Thanks for reading!
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SnowHydra
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« Reply #11 on: August 17, 2014, 08:01:24 PM »

Map selector!



Technical:
I'm just using the same camera controller tracker and SmoothDamp I use for tracking the players.
It looks terrific!
To get the blackish opacity I just simply use a cube with a transparent material.

Thanks for reading!
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ndke
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« Reply #12 on: August 18, 2014, 03:13:42 AM »

Map selection looks great, is it the same place where we can select our custom-made maps?
How will we be able to share maps with others, can we just share the file?
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vmenge
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« Reply #13 on: August 18, 2014, 06:47:13 AM »

The gameplay video looks very fluid and fun. Visual effects are great as well. I'll be looking forward to this, local multiplayer is always welcome (I assume this is coming out on PC?)  Grin

Oh yeah, almost forgot... will this have controller support?
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GrahamOfLegend
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« Reply #14 on: August 18, 2014, 07:02:05 AM »

Looks really fun! Can't wait to play it. Loving this new wave of multiplayer focused games.
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candlite
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« Reply #15 on: August 18, 2014, 07:19:21 AM »

Wow! This looks sharp. I really like the weapon and death animations. I immediately thought of a level with reduced friction: you slide instead of coming quickly to a full stop and the laser kickback is extreme.
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SnowHydra
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« Reply #16 on: August 18, 2014, 08:42:20 AM »

Map selection looks great, is it the same place where we can select our custom-made maps?
How will we be able to share maps with others, can we just share the file?
Thanks! I've since then added a Custom Maps menu. This Defaults Map menu are builtin ones (that I'll test and make sure are fun myself)
As for sharing maps, exactly! You literally can just drag the map file into the data folder and it'll appear in my Custom Maps menu!

The gameplay video looks very fluid and fun. Visual effects are great as well. I'll be looking forward to this, local multiplayer is always welcome (I assume this is coming out on PC?)  Grin

Oh yeah, almost forgot... will this have controller support?

Wow, thank you for the compliments. I worked very hard on the polish, so this means a lot to me.
It is coming to PC (I'm hoping for an eventual console release, cross my fingers), and DEFINITELY controller support.
I recently redid my entire input to use InControl (http://www.gallantgames.com/pages/incontrol-introduction) which I would now HIGHLY RECOMMEND!
Actually when testing I'm using 4 USB NES controllers! It has all the buttons I need and it is very wallet-friendly compared to 4 XBox controllers.

Looks really fun! Can't wait to play it. Loving this new wave of multiplayer focused games.
Thanks! They're the best, right?

Wow! This looks sharp. I really like the weapon and death animations. I immediately thought of a level with reduced friction: you slide instead of coming quickly to a full stop and the laser kickback is extreme.

Very grateful for your kind words!
And that's a terrific idea! I will definitely look into that. Variety is the next thing I'm focusing on so your suggestion really helps.

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vmenge
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« Reply #17 on: August 18, 2014, 09:17:22 PM »

Wow, thank you for the compliments. I worked very hard on the polish, so this means a lot to me.
I'll take a free copy as payment when the game launches  Evil
Keep up the good stuff, this game reeks of the musky scent of develop love.

I recently redid my entire input to use InControl (http://www.gallantgames.com/pages/incontrol-introduction) which I would now HIGHLY RECOMMEND!

The kind of stuff that saves you hours of headache! I'll definitely take a look at it!

Actually when testing I'm using 4 USB NES controllers! It has all the buttons I need and it is very wallet-friendly compared to 4 XBox controllers.

That's pretty cool! Do you have a link to the controller you use?
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Kirill
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« Reply #18 on: August 19, 2014, 03:00:11 AM »

Not a fan of the graphics but the gameplay looks fun.
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SnowHydra
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« Reply #19 on: August 19, 2014, 08:27:34 AM »

That's pretty cool! Do you have a link to the controller you use?

I use four of these: http://smile.amazon.com/Classic-USB-NES-Controller-PC/dp/B002YVD3KM
They're awesome! Everyone who playtests loves them as well.

Not a fan of the graphics but the gameplay looks fun.

That's cool—the gameplay is what I'm currently focusing on, so I'm very glad.

I would love to hear more input on the graphics from everyone!
So far I've gotten much mixed feedback. There's the camp that really loves the minimal style and the other side that thinks it's totally boring. My original plan was to add some skins and keep the cubes as a minimalist skin.
But I've actually been complimented on this style, which led me to consider polishing it up a bit and keeping it as is.
Thanks for your input!

I've also added some (toggleable) effects in my newest build.
There is now some subtle bloom and slight chromatic aberration (again, toggleable! don't yell at me!)
For some reason my gif encoder drew a weird circle around Purple - that's not in the game!



Technical:
I'm just using Unity's image effects. Recently just activated my 30-day pro trial to try it out.
Very tempted now to purchase pro (probably will have to, just so I can have my own loading screens and etc)

But the price is so steep for me!
My friends tell me that my game isn't suitable for Kickstarter or Indiegogo, even if I ask for a paltry amount just to cover the pro license.
Does anybody have any input on the matter?
My current plan is to just save up money for the pro license myself, but getting crowdfunded the amount would be amazing...


Thanks for reading!
« Last Edit: August 19, 2014, 08:54:44 AM by SnowHydra » Logged

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