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[Jeddychan]

Hello everyone! This is my first devlog on the TIGSource forums!

Flippin' Table Tennis is a game about tennis + table flipping


(This is an early version of the title. The emoticons will be random every time you visit the main menu.)


(Here's a link to the video the gif was made from:

)


(a very angry player, for a very angry game)


-How it came about-

I was wide-awake laying in bed about a month or two ago, thinking of how frustrated I get at a certain few of my teammates on other game projects. It got me to thinking that I needed my own table flipping game that I could go play to blow off some steam. Then I thought it would be nice to have some multiplayer, and something like Wii Sports tennis came to mind. I thought about it for a few seconds...   and realized that I can call it "Table Tennis".


-What's going on-

• At the moment I've got a basic networked version of the game working, using unity's built in networking. What I want to have is  simple LAN multiplayer, where the player could always just use a VPN or port forwarding to play over the internet.
• The other major part of the game that I had planned was a singleplayer mode. It would work in a similar way to how someone playing ping-pong could fold up half of the table, and bounce the ball off the wall to play against themself.
• And obviously the art is a bit rough at the moment. I'm more a programmer than an artist, so I'll probably focus on art more as the bulk of programming gets smaller and smaller

-What I'm currently working on-

The college I attend has a game program, and every year at PAX East, the game dev department of the school gets a booth there. The purpose is not only to promote the school, but to also promote student work as well. Entries need to be submitted by the 9th in order to be considered. So, yesterday and for the weekend I've been working on a 4-player split-screen demo playable with controllers. I will most likely be streaming on my twitch (http://www.twitch.tv/jeddychan) as I get the demo ready for submission. If I do start streaming, I'll be tweeting it out (@Jeddychan). Because there's still plenty of time until PAX, my focus is on getting the gameplay down solid, and if it's chosen for my school's student gallery, then I will go back and add to, and polish up the artwork in the demo.


I'll be posting some of the pictures I've got of previous progress with some explanations once I get a chance. I don't want to crowd this initial post with a bunch of screenshots, and I'll have more time to post things anyways after the deadline on the 9th.

If anyone has any comments or questions, I greatly appreciate the feedback.


-Jeddy

[crusty]

How do you win?

[Jeddychan]

How do you win?

It will play with the same rules as tennis. The only exception might be that instead of an opponent scoring on the second bounce, I may have to make it work off of a time limit. So, essentially, all the rules of regular tennis, but the scoring might be like hot potato.

[Overman]

Отлично! Very clever and humorous!  

I just love those cute little dongers. I look forward to this. Post more updates ASAP!  

I just thought of something, the name might not be so good, especially if people try to search up your game... maybe try "Table Flip Tennis"?

[crusty]

Ah okay that makes sense scoring-wise. Looks like fun. Have you thought about how you will differentiate the good table tennis players from the great table tennis players?

[Jeddychan]

I'm glad to hear that people like the concept.

maybe try "Table Flip Tennis"?

I see where you're coming from. If the name ends up being something other than just "Table Tennis", I was thinking that including the emoticon in the title MIGHT work, otherwise I may have to call it "Table Flip Tennis".

Have you thought about how you will differentiate the good table tennis players from the great table tennis players?

Are you concerned because of the online multiplayer? because the multiplayer isn't going to have dedicated servers, just LAN multiplayer.

[Mittens]

Lol, nice

[jiitype]

Well I wasn't expecting this when I opened this topic. Fantastic idea.

[Jeddychan]

So, update time!

Just in-case anyone was wondering why I dropped off the face of the planet for a week, I'm a senior in college, so I have classes and homework and whatnot, and I usually don't get a lot of time for gamedev until the weekend.

Last weekend I got a lot done, and did plenty of playtesting:





But in all seriousness, I actually got a lot done. I had that deadline for my college's PAX booth gallery, and I did a bunch of streaming on twitch. I have yet to get three other people to have a full match in the split-screen controller-only build I made for PAX, but I do have a .gif of me showing how it looks so far and how gameplay works. Note: I learned that tennis rules are super complicated, so the rules are now table tennis rules, except scoring happens when the table is on one side too long, like hot potato.





Regarding the Name:
So as many people have suggested, Overman included, that I change the name to something less generic.
-My original thoughts were to just tack a synonym for angry onto the front of "Table Tennis", but I couldn't really think of anything I liked.
-A friend of mine suggested maybe putting a colon after "Table Tennis" with a subtitle or something like that.
-And another friend suggested calling it "Flippin' Table Tennis". I really quite like the last one, because "Flippin'" doesn't really add anything to the name, it's sort of like throwing the F-word in front of it. But what it does do is differentiate it from something generic, and also adds to the pun. My one concern, the same one I had with "Table Flip Tennis", is if it gives away the game before you get presented with the pun. I feel like it doesn't, but I don't truly know because I know what the game is already.


I would love to hear your opinions on anything, especially the name ideas.

And for anyone interested, I'm planning on doing some streaming tonight after dinner, so, 6pm EST is the earliest I would ever start streaming. I'll tweet it out when I start anyways. I've got a little bit of everything to work on, programming, modeling, texturing, you name it. Pretty much everything but music.

[crusty]

What about just "flippin' tables"

[Jeddychan]

What about just "flippin' tables"

While that does solve the problem of making the name more unique, I feel like it get's rid of the pun, and I'm a big fan of puns.

[Jeddychan]

Yet another Friday and yet another update!

I've been working on making the split-screen side of the game prettier before I move back to working on the LAN networked part of Table Tennis.

A few things I've changed

• re-did the court as a mesh (I'm essentially using the mesh as a vector graphic and the texture is two blobs of color)
• re-did the skybox in blender 2-3 times
• 3D modeled a stadium
• 3D modeled stadium chairs
• wrote a script to help with populating the stadium with seating

I was also messing around with some spotlights and getting weird effects with the texture I was using as a cookie, but turns out there's a texture setting in unity for cookies, and changing it to that fixed the issue.


Initial stages of the stadium, finished court and finished skybox



Stadium with seating added



What's Next
I've still got a long list of tasks to do, but the most important next step is to do some playtesting on my old laptop from 4+ years ago. I've got some concerns about performance with all the chairs, and if the game runs smoothly on my old laptop (which has integrated graphics) then it shouldn't be an issue for most players' computers.

[nickgravelyn]

I laughed when I first read this thread a few days ago and it's still amazing. 

My first thought with the latest screenshots is that you'll probably want to look at some kind of cell shading or edge detection shader so that your 3D objects have that same thick lined outline as your skybox and the textures of the characters. Right now it feels like you have two disjointed art styles.

As for the name, I agree the pun is a big part of the appeal so I wouldn't do anything to ruin that. The "emoticon" as a subtitle could be neat, but wouldn't really help people Google your game (google will ignore most of those characters). No real suggestions here other than to reinforce your already existing idea to keep the pun alive.

[Jeddychan]

I laughed when I first read this thread a few days ago and it's still amazing. 

Right now it feels like you have two disjointed art styles.

No real suggestions here other than to reinforce your already existing idea to keep the pun alive.

Glad you like it. As for the art, I've actually been thinking that some cel shading to give the shadows hard edges would help with the cartoony look. I hadn't thought of using a shader for outlines, but you're totally right, so I think I'll mess around with the built-in toon shaders and see if I can't get something more cohesive.

Reading your comment now, I just had the thought of re-doing the outlines on the player to actually be part of the mesh, that way I don't get odd effects when the UV islands aren't all the same size. If you look at the outlines on the feet/shoes of the player, you'll see the issue. It would be sort of like turning the model into one large 3D vector graphic, all except maybe the face. That's actually how I did the court so I would have sharp lines, and the texture is just half green, half white.

As for the name, I'm still sort of partial to "Flippin' Table Tennis", so I'm pretty sure that's what I'm going to go with.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Jeddychan]

Got a ton of work done during a ~6 hour twitch stream.

A lot of the time was dumped into figuring out how to make unity's default toon shader work the way I wanted it to. Thankfully someone in my stream was helping figure out the problem and got it solved.


What got done:

• Added outlines and cel shading to the players
• I faked some outlining on the table, and net poles
• changed the seats to bleachers and added spectators
• changed the net to actually look like a net
• and got some stadium lights in place

As always, thanks for the feedback, and I'm looking forward to getting more done tomorrow.

[TheWing]

Oh I couldn't like the idea more :D

I was wondering if the scoring would work so that for a player to score, the table has to end up face down (legs up) on the opponents side of the net? Maybe different scoring methods that can be changed somewhere?

[Jeddychan]

Oh I couldn't like the idea more :D

I was wondering if the scoring would work so that for a player to score, the table has to end up face down (legs up) on the opponents side of the net? Maybe different scoring methods that can be changed somewhere?

Thanks!

The only issue with that method of scoring, is I have a script that deliberately flips the table so it always ends up upright to make it not impossible to hit. If another ends up being more fun to play though, I can always just turn the script off.

That aside, what did you have in mind with being able to change the scoring method? are you imagining being able to switch to hot-potato style scoring, and then say, legs up scoring, or maybe switch to a number of bounces before scoring, in a menu or something?

[TheWing]

That aside, what did you have in mind with being able to change the scoring method? are you imagining being able to switch to hot-potato style scoring, and then say, legs up scoring, or maybe switch to a number of bounces before scoring, in a menu or something?

Exactly, you could have the timer-based scoring, perhaps the table-upright thingle, number of bounces, things like that. (I'm really not sure a table actually bounces when flipped, but this is a goddamn table-flipping game!!)

I guess I had some kind of a menu in mind yes, but that's kind of boring, don't you think? Thinking about it, it could be a bit, I don't know, funnier if there was like a referee (like there is at a tennis match) and you could go yell at him to change the rules? Or flip a table into his face? who knows :D

Forgot to mention in the first post; Awfully nice graphic style, even though it's "just" cel-shading. Damn good looking cel-shading in my mind!

[Jeddychan]

Exactly, you could have the timer-based scoring, perhaps the table-upright thingle, number of bounces, things like that. (I'm really not sure a table actually bounces when flipped, but this is a goddamn table-flipping game!!)

I guess I had some kind of a menu in mind yes, but that's kind of boring, don't you think? Thinking about it, it could be a bit, I don't know, funnier if there was like a referee (like there is at a tennis match) and you could go yell at him to change the rules? Or flip a table into his face? who knows :D

Forgot to mention in the first post; Awfully nice graphic style, even though it's "just" cel-shading. Damn good looking cel-shading in my mind!

I don't think tables bounce much in real life, but with what the game is, realism isn't really a restriction. The only issue is adding bounciness to the table makes it REALLY hard to play, and not challenging hard, more like not fun hard.

Even if you're not allowed to change scoring in the final version of the game, I really like the idea of having a referee in there. I don't know why I hadn't thought of that before.

Thanks! I've always loved cel shading ever since I played Jet Set Radio Future on my original xbox.

[Jeddychan]

So I've gotten a bunch of art-related things done in the past few days. So this is gonna be a picture-heavy post.

The biggest change to the in-game art is that I added shadows and the crowd got a makeover!


Before:



After:




And now that in-game stuff looks good, I needed to give the main menu a bit of love.


This isn't finished, but looks way better than it did before. Prior to this, the background behind the text was just a solid color.


The background is supposed to move around and whatnot, but I couldn't get a decent gif of it last night. I'm going to try and upload a video to youtube later to show what the menu actually looks like.



So, this menu background is actually just a skybox




The skybox was made by using a script that I wrote that uses Application.CaptureScreenshot() to grab an image from each of the 6 cameras to get all the parts of a cubemap.




The images then got laid out in photoshop (the top and bottom images had to be rotated 180 degrees)




Where I added to the edges with their matching parts so when I went to blur it, it would blur correctly




And this is the finished product. All I did from here was rotate the Top and Bottom images 180 degrees, back to their original rotation, and saved out each square as their own image.




The reason why I had to fake the blurred skybox is because I don't have unity pro, meaning I cant just use camera effects. This fakery ended up having a slight problem, which is okay for now, but I would like to fix. Since the 6 images in photoshop are distorted (it's so they look like a sphere when it's mapped to a cube for the skybox) and the blur isn't also distorted as well, the corner seams of the skybox look odd. The only way to properly do this, is to actually add the blur to the cubemap when it's applied to a skybox. So that pretty much means I need to figure out how to do this in Blender, or POVRay, which someone suggested would work too.


Now that the art side of the game is starting to look good, I might be able to do a bit more work on the LAN portion of the game, as much as I'm not excited about going back to grappling the networking. As obnoxious as it can be, it's definitely fun when I can playtest with my Twitch viewers.