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aldiansolkai
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« on: August 12, 2015, 10:20:25 AM »

Project Dolphin

Project Dolphin is a 2D action platormer with a focus on exploration and Metroidvania gameplay tropes.



My partner and I recently finished and submitted the first iteration of the game as an entry for both the Indie Game Making Contest 2015 and the A Game By It's Cover 2015 game jam.

It's called Dolphin Island 2 and it's based on fake cover art made by the Wario Ware and Rhythm Heaven series' designer, Ko Takeuchi (aka Kokosac).



Now that the Competition and Jam are over, we're looking forward to expanding the game while veering away from Kokosac's Dolphin Island IP, and I thought it was a good idea to document the changes here. I'm planning on writing a post-mortem of the game jam version in the next few days.


Currently it's about 5-20min long (depending on how much you die) and consists of a tutorial and the first area of the game. If you do play it and like, please consider taking the time to vote for it on the IGMC page Smiley

Link to the game page:
http://aldiansolkai.itch.io/dolphin-island-2
Link to the contest page:
http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/726

Until next time!  Waaagh!
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« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2015, 10:38:05 AM »

I downloaded your gameplay gif because I wanted to analyze what made it look so good. Great stuff, I'll check out the whole game later!
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devMidgard
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« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2015, 06:11:47 PM »

Hey, I played it but there's something that makes it really hard, there's no pushback on the enemies or even in you when they or you get hit, and I think for this kind of games a pushback is needed!

Makes it really really hard to not have that, I die a lot Sad

But overall the game is fun to play and I like its visuals, great job!
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aldiansolkai
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« Reply #3 on: September 04, 2015, 08:14:53 AM »

DevLog #1 - On Speed and Pacing

"It's Hard to Slow Down in the Fast-Paced World of Dolphin Island 2"
-indiegames.com article title by Joel Couture

James and I were thinking for a while about the possible issues Dolphin Island 2 had after we released it; the amount of feedback we had during development was pretty limited, but most of the issues players talked to us about after release pointed to a particular 'feeling' we felt the game had. Joel from indiegames.com pretty much nailed it down in a single sentence with it's title: "It's hard to slow down on Dolphin Island 2"

As soon as I read the article everything clicked for me. Instead of feeling like a fast and smooth experience or a slow and steady one, Di2 felt like short bursts of speed that always came to a stop before bursting again. There's this conflict on the game being too fast on some features and too slow on some others: Aisha is frail and agile, and the levels and monsters are tough and make you stop.

When we saw other people play, we noticed a pattern of everyone trying combat on the first 5 mobs before ultimately deciding to just skip combat entirely. The reason being movement is speedy and agile, it feels fast; but when you get to the combat you get bogged down by it, it slows you down: Monsters take too long to kill, you need to stop and wait for the mages to shoot so you can jump over the bullets. Add to this the fact that you can only take one hit before dying and the game feels like it should be fast-paced and fluid, but then it asks for you to slow down. People would tend to just wait out for the shield to regen after every hit, which made waiting the "best" strategy for clearing the level. Some similar offenders were the icicles, which you could bump into and take a hit from (or die) if you were going too fast, while also demanding you to stop and wait for them to fall so you wouldn't take damage.

This lead us to think about what direction should we take the game in: should we make Aisha tougher to compensate for the tough monsters or make battles end quicker so Aisha can do combat without slowing down the overall pace? There's also a factor in that I want the game to be explorable instead of just going from one stage to the other; hence why we added a Metroidvania-like powerup in the end: it was meant to be used in different previously locked paths for players to revisit rather than just be a one-off to access the end cutscene.

Settle down:
-Remove one-hit shield, either making it multihit or just plain adding hp.
-Exploration is intrinsically slow, so this would play in it's favor.
-Make movement slower.

Go fast:
-Make fights shorter and more rewarding. Remove the apparent need for players to skip combat.
-Keep one-hit shield.
-Exploration could slow things down, being fragile and dying while having to backtrack could be bothersome.

We talked about the pros and cons of both, and ultimately decided to keep the Sanic (fast) route. Some of the planned changes are:
-Reducing the health of all regular enemies to only one hit (which feels kinda fair considering that's how many hits you can take)
-Increasing the invulnerability frames a bit since we were a bit too harsh on the current duration.
-Icicles will be reworked into something else that doesn't stop players on it's track, but that they can rather just see and evade more 'on-the-go'.
-Making health/shield a resource that you earn in combat instead of relying on time and having to 'wait it out'.

This should make exploring easier on the player and allow us to have better dynamics during boss fights, which should make for a better experience Smiley

I have been busy these last few weeks, but development is not dead and will be resumed soon!
Until next time! Waaagh!




Quote from: devMidgard
Hey, I played it but there's something that makes it really hard, there's no pushback on the enemies or even in you when they or you get hit, and I think for this kind of games a pushback is needed!

Makes it really really hard to not have that, I die a lot Sad

But overall the game is fun to play and I like its visuals, great job!

Thanks! Hopefully these changes will take care of what you mentioned Smiley
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« Reply #4 on: September 04, 2015, 12:07:53 PM »

Man, that looks gorgeous.
I'll definitely give it a try but I'm in a hurry now.

I love the pixel style, it's close to something that I'm trying with my game, without outlines and very little shading, only when needed.

Maybe you could give me some tips! haha  Smiley

The only thing that I don't like is the yellow damage feedback, to me it looks the monsters are defending the damage with some sort of armor. Maybe the classic white or red blink would look good?
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Jalapenosbud
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« Reply #5 on: September 04, 2015, 02:25:25 PM »

Hey just tried your game and i have some feedback i would like to give.
I also read the whole devlog and i have a few points to comment on.

Firstly, the pacing:
 I feel the speed is very fast, after trying it through and dying first time i just skipped ahead and jumped over all the enemies. I think either you should make Aisha able to take more hits, or make the enemies weaker, because i also did the thing where i waited until the shield was up before i went ahead.

Second, the enemies:
I think the enemies/obstacles are abit boring tbh. They just patrol and you have to stand still to attack them, maybe if they fought back or something, or had less HP so they didnt stop the flow completely. And the shooting enemies are easy to avoid and just jump behind. Also the dropping ice is easy to avoid.

Idk if its cause its early in the game, but i want to be engaged abit, its fine to have a few easy enemies to teach the fundamentals imo, but after that it should get more exciting than run n jump, stop up to hit and then run on.
Maybe have some enemies that engaged you more where you had to jump n dodge or something, i dont know Tongue
Or at the dropping ice, have alot of ice that drops so you have to run for a while, while they drop down behind you.

I know AI can be tricky to implement as im not good to do it myself, in my game you just run jump and shoot, but thats what i guess platformers are about. Maybe make the enemies wait, then charge towards you or fly up in the air or something.

BUT i loved the art, and the controls are nice. I also liked the boss that disappears and smashes its arms out and is invisible for that period of time.
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gimymblert
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« Reply #6 on: September 04, 2015, 04:23:27 PM »

emulator!
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diegzumillo
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« Reply #7 on: September 04, 2015, 06:27:34 PM »

I just played the demo and I love the fast movement and the looks of it. My criticisms were all responded in your devlog #1, it seems like you guys really know what you're doing! This game is very promising.

My personal vote would be on fast and one easier to kill enemies. Not because it's particularly better than the other approach, but it seems less common.
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aldiansolkai
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« Reply #8 on: September 04, 2015, 08:09:25 PM »

Quote from: Jalapenosbud
I know AI can be tricky to implement as im not good to do it myself, in my game you just run jump and shoot, but thats what i guess platformers are about. Maybe make the enemies wait, then charge towards you or fly up in the air or something.

We have some more interesting enemies for the next levels hopefully Smiley I'll try to look into making the ones in the first level better too.

Quote from: Jimym GIMBERT
emulator!

Haha, I know! It's just a temporary name tho Smiley the game will be called different than Dolphin Island 2, but we don't want to dedice on a new name yet.

Quote from: diegzumillo
I just played the demo and I love the fast movement and the looks of it. My criticisms were all responded in your devlog #1, it seems like you guys really know what you're doing! This game is very promising.

My personal vote would be on fast and one easier to kill enemies. Not because it's particularly better than the other approach, but it seems less common.

Thanks! We're hoping it's for the best
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22. Gamedev and pixelart. Computer Science Student || Hit me up for any sort of collab! Is there a character limit on this descri
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