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[wzol]

Ok, so in short I'm afraid because it will affect the gameplay experience really badly, and I see so much work, talent and dedication in this team, that I will feel bad, if I see that this game won't be successful.

I have to note, that I don't know about your future plans, so my feelings and feedback is purely based on what I have already saw.

As I understood you choose the Diablo 3 type level randomization -

- more specifically its dungeons' randomization design. While it is possible to do that in Diablo, with much bigger budget and they have the freedom to create totally different kind of dungeons with different atmospheres and themes, on the other hand you are tied to a smaller budget, and to an Egyptian theme which doesn't give you the freedom to use totally different room sets (lava, ice, crypt, cave, forests etc.).

That means for me that there is a fair chance that you can make enough different rooms for the whole game that it won't become repetitive. I don't know what is the desired or estimated playthrough time, but the brain (and so the players) have exceptional good visual memory, so example seeing the same room even in 30 minutes twice is a note of repetition. Especially if you make rooms decorated in a unique way, they have a joke, or they have a special structure the players will remember that for a really long time. And the more it happens the more you are losing the exploration, the surprise factor of the gameplay which is a key, long term motivation in your game. You lose the "I will go further, to see what will come next", and slowly change it from "yes, this room again, well, ok" to "oh, this room again, a saw this like a *hundred* times, there is nothing new left in this game".

This is why they usually mix the two type of randomization - because a badly implemented simple randomization too can be boring, repetitive, uniform in a long run - so they break the random row of areas, rooms with predesigned, memorable rooms, halls, which acts as a reward for the explorer part of the player. Like when you are wondering in the woods (it can't be more random than that) no matter how beautiful it is, it will became boring after some time, but if you find rivers, lakes, caves, fields you feel rewarded for all the boring wondering, and you will say "it was worth it". The same goes for games: the potential reward gives motivation the player to continue - the bigger it is, the bigger effort he will make, the longer he will play.

This also touches the surprise and curiosity feelings of the player (which are both motivate him to play further): if he feels that there are no more surprises, he'll lost his curiosity. The emphasis here is on *he feels*: there are maybe more surprises later, but when he feels that there isn't any, he will again lose a big part of his motivation to play further.

I also can't skip the part where it was decided - if I understood right - there won't be corridors. Again I feel this will affect the gameplay badly. If you have only rooms then it is like an endless row of arenas: kill everyone, go further. - That can be a great game too, but as I understood, that is not exactly what you want. - Doors and corridors have a great effect on the gamer's experience.

First they give the player a safety feeling (unless its a boss fight where the doors close when you enter), he can go back there, think his strategy through, check his ammo, health, inventory, change weapon or skill etc. - a safe zone which gives him time, energy and power to continue. And the important thing here is not that this place exists, but that the player knows it exists. Like when a movie hero goes behind cover, takes a deep breath, reloads, then roam out with full of energy.

Second, the corridors are a place to relax after and before fight. That's where the pressure and the intensity is low, and rooms are the place where it is high. If you alternate these nicely that will make your game dynamic. Again a movie example: if the movie is only about explosions, shooting, fighting it will look good but you'll get bored after some time. The brain adapts, and you get used to the highly intense action. But if you break it with slow parts, then you get the dynamic feel which you can enjoy.

And third, corridors and doors are both goals and (mental) checkpoints in games. If you see one in a fight you want to get there. I bet there were many games when you died and said "I was sooo close to the door/exit/teleport, let's try again, I can do this". They act as mid-term goals, and once you reach them, and get through that door, get inside the (safe) corridor, after the fight, after dying ten times, you say "Yes! I made it!". That is the reward here, that feeling.

I hope it wasn't boring, I could tell you why I'm afraid, and I could help you to make this a better game

[YaW]

Ok, so in short I'm afraid because it will affect the gameplay experience really badly, and I see so much work, talent and dedication in this team, that I will feel bad, if I see that this game won't be successful.

I have to note, that I don't know about your future plans, so my feelings and feedback is purely based on what I have already saw.

As I understood you choose the Diablo 3 type level randomization -

- more specifically its dungeons' randomization design. While it is possible to do that in Diablo, with much bigger budget and they have the freedom to create totally different kind of dungeons with different atmospheres and themes, on the other hand you are tied to a smaller budget, and to an Egyptian theme which doesn't give you the freedom to use totally different room sets (lava, ice, crypt, cave, forests etc.).

That means for me that there is a fair chance that you can make enough different rooms for the whole game that it won't become repetitive. I don't know what is the desired or estimated playthrough time, but the brain (and so the players) have exceptional good visual memory, so example seeing the same room even in 30 minutes twice is a note of repetition. Especially if you make rooms decorated in a unique way, they have a joke, or they have a special structure the players will remember that for a really long time. And the more it happens the more you are losing the exploration, the surprise factor of the gameplay which is a key, long term motivation in your game. You lose the "I will go further, to see what will come next", and slowly change it from "yes, this room again, well, ok" to "oh, this room again, a saw this like a *hundred* times, there is nothing new left in this game".

This is why they usually mix the two type of randomization - because a badly implemented simple randomization too can be boring, repetitive, uniform in a long run - so they break the random row of areas, rooms with predesigned, memorable rooms, halls, which acts as a reward for the explorer part of the player. Like when you are wondering in the woods (it can't be more random than that) no matter how beautiful it is, it will became boring after some time, but if you find rivers, lakes, caves, fields you feel rewarded for all the boring wondering, and you will say "it was worth it". The same goes for games: the potential reward gives motivation the player to continue - the bigger it is, the bigger effort he will make, the longer he will play.

This also touches the surprise and curiosity feelings of the player (which are both motivate him to play further): if he feels that there are no more surprises, he'll lost his curiosity. The emphasis here is on *he feels*: there are maybe more surprises later, but when he feels that there isn't any, he will again lose a big part of his motivation to play further.

I also can't skip the part where it was decided - if I understood right - there won't be corridors. Again I feel this will affect the gameplay badly. If you have only rooms then it is like an endless row of arenas: kill everyone, go further. - That can be a great game too, but as I understood, that is not exactly what you want. - Doors and corridors have a great effect on the gamer's experience.

First they give the player a safety feeling (unless its a boss fight where the doors close when you enter), he can go back there, think his strategy through, check his ammo, health, inventory, change weapon or skill etc. - a safe zone which gives him time, energy and power to continue. And the important thing here is not that this place exists, but that the player knows it exists. Like when a movie hero goes behind cover, takes a deep breath, reloads, then roam out with full of energy.

Second, the corridors are a place to relax after and before fight. That's where the pressure and the intensity is low, and rooms are the place where it is high. If you alternate these nicely that will make your game dynamic. Again a movie example: if the movie is only about explosions, shooting, fighting it will look good but you'll get bored after some time. The brain adapts, and you get used to the highly intense action. But if you break it with slow parts, then you get the dynamic feel which you can enjoy.

And third, corridors and doors are both goals and (mental) checkpoints in games. If you see one in a fight you want to get there. I bet there were many games when you died and said "I was sooo close to the door/exit/teleport, let's try again, I can do this". They act as mid-term goals, and once you reach them, and get through that door, get inside the (safe) corridor, after the fight, after dying ten times, you say "Yes! I made it!". That is the reward here, that feeling.

I hope it wasn't boring, I could tell you why I'm afraid, and I could help you to make this a better game

Wow, man. Thanks a lot in advance for such a long an detailed comment. Let's see how I can answer you properly!

As you explain, randomization is kind of a tricky solution – no matter the videogame, I think. Whatever is the drop rate of an item in Borderlands or the room layout in The Binding of Isaac. We need the pros and the cons of using it, but it was the only way we could Immortal Redneck given our resources. Yeah, we are not Blizzard xD

About the theme. Yeah, Ancient Egypt is the theme above everything in our game, but we are introducing all kind of inconsistencies in it already. The fact of having guns or even a hillbilly main character are the first ones, so why not going a little further with themed stages in it? If you see some of our concepts, we have rooms plenty of water and vegetation. Lighting will affect the mood of each room, also, so that should help with the reiteration of the scenes, I believe. And I'm not sure yet, but we'll probably have frozen rooms, also other ones in almost total darkness, etc. We intend to make – excuse my language – a shitton of different rooms, haha.

Having a huge amount of them should help the player not getting used to the map nor each individual room. I truly think the algorithm we've built to make them reorganize each time you enter a new level will work really, really well to that end. And you have to add the variety of guns, enemies, classes and drops you'll get. I really think the example of the Binding of Isaac is perfect for this: I don't know if our game is going to be so beloved nor good, but our idea is that even if you end up knowing all the room types, your abilities, guns, enemies, health, ammo and class won't be the same. There's a lot of ways of creating different outcomes in the "same" places!

About the corridors: we hated how cheap the felt, not only when you think about how absurd that constant architecture would be in real life, but also the repetition you mention: every time you have to move on, there's a stupid corridor that steals you a few seconds in your great run. Also, I think players will feel safe enough in the room they just emptied of enemies before going to the next one after getting all the loot they've left behind while fighting for their life. And that the feeling of progress will be easily achieved with the different floors inside each pyramids, the classes and abilities improvement outside them and the general idea that you need all the gold you can get to keep on getting better and better guns, abilities and classes.

Hope you feel satisfied with the answer, even if you don't agree entirely with the way we want to Immortal Redneck to be. And again, thanks a lot for your insight, every critique help us improve in our work :D

[wzol]

Thank you too for the detailed answer, I can say that I feel a little better now It is not that I have problem with randomization, actually I love procedural generated game content, I just feel that you have chosen a risky solution by not including fully randomized rooms beside your unique rooms. But your decision can be done right too, I really hope it will be done right, and I can't wait to see and try it done right

I must react to this:

every time you have to move on, there's a stupid corridor that steals you a few seconds in your great run

I get the concept and I understand your decision, but please be aware that this is again a highly risky area. There was a game which concept was nice from the beginning, and the effects, the visuals were good and still look good.

But it failed at the end in only one area - repetition. Let me quote from the reviews:

"Hallways lead to conspicuous arenas where you fight whatever spawns in, after which you take another hallway to another arena and so on and so forth. ... in terms of gameplay you're just getting harder versions of the fights you're doing normally. So yes, the cardinal sin of this game is that it is 20+ hours of the same damn thing. What you get in the first two hours is what you're going to get times ten, with arguably even less variety as you progress."

"Thought the game would be fun but all it is, is spam the left mouse button and follow the path. It gets boring after 30mins"

"it's a pity it's in the service of arena-shooter gameplay, which gets old very fast. Needed more variety"

"It's just not fun! Stunning visuals and a cool concept, but it's very repetitive. Go down path, a bunch of guys come at you, kill them, that's all I got."

I think you'll see the point. You can read more reviews here http://store.steampowered.com/app/261760/ or buy the game 90%(!) off here: https://www.bundlestars.com/en/game/lichdom-battlemage

I'm not saying that you are in same shoes, in fact I don't even know your shoes , and I didn't even try your game (yet ) - I'm just saying that be careful, because we are very different: some of us can feel that the corridors are useless, and they hold you back, one can say it gives a variety to the game.

Also as a compromise I'd try to create some unique but smaller, longer rooms too, with randomized content, decoration, lightning etc. I think that could work.

I didn't try the game mentioned above, but I think you should to see what the users feel repetitive and boring.

[YaW]

Thanks again, man. Even if we don't agree in everything, I think this comments are the best and help the studio a lot.

I've bought that game to see what you point and try to avoid some of its mistakes, hahaha.

[YaW]

Hi! So this is the twentieth Immortal Redneck’s devlog. This week, I'm showing you one of the

Classes on Immortal Redneck

We have a very clear idea about what Immortal Redneck classes’ have to be. In first place, they are unlockables, so they have to feel like a personal achievement when you earn enough gold to buy them in the Literal Skill Tree. We don’t plan to make it unnatural: you unlock them as if they were new abilities, so you just need to spend some time and play good enough.



In addition to this, you need to know that you won’t be able to play always with the same class. We are not so cruel as to impose one random class with each new run: it's possible to choose between two. This way, the player might use one that’s not his favorite, but that he doesn’t hate as much as the other one.

And as you might have assumed already, these classes are godlike blessings based on different deities. If you offer enough gold at the Sacred Tree of Life and Skills, they’ll give you some of their powers (different stats), one or a few abilities (active and/or passive) and their favorite weapons. Each time you are reborn in your sarcophagus, you’ll have two of those blessings at your disposal.

Classes will have a huge impact in the way the game is players, specially in the first minutes of each run. At this moment, there’s a total of 9 classes, but today I’m only talking about two of them: Redneck and Seth.

The reliable Redneck



Of course the redneck is a class, damn it! It’s the most basic one, of course, and does not have any active nor passive ability. It doesn’t have any interesting stat configuration, either: they all rank in the middle. It’s strong, fast and their guns are also quite good. You know, sometimes the most balanced option is the best one, even if that means not having some special abilities.

You might already know his guns, but we've worked a little more on them, so here they are again:

Grandpa is a handgun and a good balance between damage and range. Mr. Tickles works better in short distances and makes a lot of damage. And Dyna is a explosive that hits really, really hard, on contact with an enemy or in an area after a few seconds.





The electrifying Seth



Seth, or Set, is one of the most well-known gods in the Egyptian Pantheon, and one of the first ones to welcome the redneck’s tributes. After all, he is the god of foreigners. He reigns over chaos and storms, so earning his electrifying blessing is a good idea.

These are the weapons of these class:

In first place, the Thunderstrike. Melee weapons in Immortal Redneck does not require ammo, so that's an advantage in exchange for the additional risk of melee combat.



Since he has no matter with most contemporary weaponry, he also concedes you the Coilgun, a rifle that projects pure lighting bolts that spread through the enemies.



And finally, there’s the Seth’s Breath, a direct hit of mythological, uh, halitosis that works like a flamethrower, but with electricity.



I can’t show you this weapons in action yet – I’m keeping that for a another, really cool devlog –, but I can talk about the ability of the Seth class: the Shock Sphere. And neither that Thunderstrike nor the ability are final, but I had to show something about the Seth in movement!





Every time you use your ability, a bright sphere of pure electricity and magnetism will surround you and expand until it hits a certain distance. At that moment, the sphere will slowly decrease until it disappears. So, for a few seconds the energy of this lighting ball will hit with shock damage all the enemies.

And that’s it for today.

[wzol]

Wow, that looks really cool. I can imagine skills where the enemies have a chance to be stunned when shocked, also another where it chains to multiple enemies. Also the field looks mighty

[YaW]

DEVLOG #21 – EDITOR TOOLS

I think we all consider Editor Tools a great and really useful aspect of Unity. Working with it has allowed us to create prototypes really fast and makes a lot easier to build prototypes, to add new objects easily and to assign variables. It's a huge improvement in our work flow. The thing is, as Immortal Redneck grew bigger, we started to needing our own tools and we could use Unity editor to build them fast.

Here's five tools that have helped us a lot, but we've got more in our devlog. If you find this post interesting, you might want to read the complete version.

Game Design Tool
Immortal Redneck is a big game – at least for us. In addition to the amount of development hours, it would require a lot of balancing: there's guns, enemies and skills, so we wanted this task to be as easy and simple as possible.



That's why we built this tool, to change things almost on the fly. Right now, we can alter:

• Global parameters like drop rates and spawn times between enemies
• Each class statistics (HP, Attack, Defense, etc.)
• Enemies' stats. In the future, we want to change their global behavior and change when they attack, when the hold, at what distance they start moving...
• Weapons' damage, range, spread, ammo, recoil...
• The skill tree's levels, gold rates, statistics it changes...

Room Utils
We want our game to have a lot of rooms, so we needed to have the capacity to create them fast and well. We coded a few tools to this intention.

In first place, we created a menu that looks like ProGrids so we can mix everything. We can duplicate objects in each axys really fast because that's what took us most time in the first days of development. Also, it was excruciatingly boring and repetitive thing for the team to do.



There's another tool that allow us to check each asset we've created on a catalogue, and paste what we want into the scene. It's almost automatic and works really well. We can place the asset in the place we are looking at or select something in the scene and replace it with something from the catalogue. This is a really, really fast way to replace a whole floor or wall.

RoomScene Inspector
Each one of our rooms is a scene due to a optimization requirements. Even though Unity 5.3 has evolved a lot in this matter, it's still kind of hard to work with them in comparison with using prefabs, for example.



We decided to work that way, creating various scenes and using a ScriptableObject as a reference for each room. This ScriptableObject has the data of each scene, but we can also use it to open them, add them to Build Settings and more stuff.

We work constantly with Custom Inspectors in Unity because of this, and that's why we've extended the default editor and added more options. We've even added a room preview because Unity is not allowing that at the moment and it's something that we need to quickly identify what we are changing in the scene.

Object Randomizer
In order to build the three pyramids of Immortal Redneck, our artists made different rock blocks that they would have to pile to create the pyramids sides.

To do this manually would be hard, so we coded a little tool that would take rock lines with little variations. This way, our artists could create as many lines as they wanted and build the pyramid faster without repeating patterns. Later, they made some little changes, but the pyramids were done in a jiffy.



Gizmos
Unity has a very interesting feature: it merges Gizmos with scripts. Gizmos are conceived to show graphics over the scene so some stuff is easily seen on it.



For example, in the room above, we've got gizmos showing spawn positions and interest points for their AI.

Red spheres show the enemies avatar so we can see where they’ll spawn, while red squares do the same with walking creatures.

In a similar fashion, blue spheres represent the flying enemies’ interest points and the orange squares on the floor are interest points for the walking ones.

At first, it might seem crowded and confusing, but it really helps a lot once you get used to it.

[DireLogomachist]

In first place, we created a menu that looks like ProGrids so we can mix everything. We can duplicate objects in each axys really fast because that's what took us most time in the first days of development. Also, it was excruciatingly boring and repetitive thing for the team to do.

Dude that is awesome. I tried out Progrids and was disappointed by it majorly. How difficult was it to do, editor-scripting-wise?  I've done some small editor-scripting but nothing on that scale.

[YaW]

In first place, we created a menu that looks like ProGrids so we can mix everything. We can duplicate objects in each axys really fast because that's what took us most time in the first days of development. Also, it was excruciatingly boring and repetitive thing for the team to do.

Dude that is awesome. I tried out Progrids and was disappointed by it majorly. How difficult was it to do, editor-scripting-wise?  I've done some small editor-scripting but nothing on that scale.

It's really easy. In fact we just take a look at ProGrids source in order to create our menu likewise. There's so much to learn about editor scripting just by looking at other assets.

Here are some links if you want to introduce yourself to editor scripting.

http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ExtendingTheEditor.html

http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-add-your-own-tools-to-unitys-editor--active-10047

http://sassybot.com/blog/tutorial-extending-the-unity3d-editor/

http://www.ryan-meier.com/blog/?p=111

http://blog.theknightsofunity.com/custom-unity-editor-window/

But mostly, looking through the documentation is a general good way to start anything and to learn more. Also, download some free assets and inspect their code. For example:

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/11919

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/24122

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/35439

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/31082

[{VeTeR}]

Awesome project! I like the setting and the gameplay ideas. Definetly following and buying

[viki-johnson]

I really love the style of your game, those textures are gorgeous

[YaW]

We're trying new stuff these week, but we had time to implement some of the new sound effects. What do you think about them? :D

[wzol]

It sounds nice, but don't forget to test them together with the background music in time: the effects seem to contain a lot of high toned parts, which can conflict with the music if it contains many hihats, bells, and other similar percussion instruments. The player should always know if a sound comes from the gameplay (effect, feedback) or from the atmosphere (bg music).

[YaW]

Hi there!

We are back with new improvements on Immortal Redneck, more precisely, on our enemies movement. We had some problems concerning how they moved through different heights and how they reacted to another creature in their path, so we implemented two solutions.

In first place, we built a tool to tell the enemies where they had to jump down a ledge if that helped them pursue you.
His main function is to figure out the exact positions creatures have to jump from.



The tool finds out the edges on each plane or object and determines a initial jumping point and a final one, creating an extra link for the object (enemy) that’s moving vertically. Here’s a comparison between how the warrior fall down without that animation and with it.

OLD ONE





NEW ONE





Another aspect of the enemies’ movement that we improved is their still pose and how they interact with each other.

In the beginning, one archer could block a warrior’s trajectory because it stood still in front of him before shooting you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuypH3oF0bY

We solved this by making a hole in the mesh each time a enemy stopped moving. Sounds silly, but works beautifully. When an enemy ‘notices’ that empty space in the mesh, the creature will figure out a new way to reach you. And since each enemy is programmed to follow you through the shortest path, they will change their course just a little so they can avoid it the empty space in the mesh and charge again towards you. It looks really natural, don’t you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU9oYMgA5tQ

Before implementing this, we considered making different points around the main character so enemies would focus on different points while moving and attacking. It was a little problematic and this other solution we did was just simpler and more effective. We love it when one solution actually solves several potential problems.

We want our game to be silly and funny, but not in a Goat Simulator way, where everything fails around you and you laugh at it. Quality and presentation can be really different depending on the game – Goat Simulator is perfect in its own way and it’s great –, and we chose to build a neat experience that, even if our resources are limited, seems solid and unbreakable to the eye.

Something as silly as an enemy not going after you the way you understand it should can really break your fun.

[YaW]

Hey!

The next devlog is going to be delayed for a bit, so while you're waiting we want to show you one of the weapons in Immortal Redneck we're working on.

Half Life 3 confirmed? :D

[YaW]

Hello developers!

Too long since we posted how our progress is going... right now we are adding weapons, enemies and rooms.

I made a short video with 3 new weapons, the 3 ones I think are the coolest. Hope you find them as cool as I do.





1º - Electric flamethrower
2º - Rocket Launcher (Quake 3 Arena inspired)
3º - Explosive Bow (Gears Of War inspired)

We plan to do at least 50 weapons, and 5 or 6 of them will be inspired on weapons from games we really love, such as Q3A, GoW, Half Life...

[Alternate Craig]

We're trying new stuff these week, but we had time to implement some of the new sound effects. What do you think about them? :D

The sound is very tasty. I especially like the spacialisation. Sigh, I slightly miss Unity, when it worked.

On reflection though - birds in the desert?

[YaW]

The sound is very tasty. I especially like the spacialisation. Sigh, I slightly miss Unity, when it worked.

On reflection though - birds in the desert?

Thank you very much!

And yeah, you're right: in our newest version we deleted the birds sound. It just didn't make any sense!

[YaW]

After the successful first public test of our demo (we took the feedback and now we're making an even better game), we bring you new images ingame of 'Immortal redneck' (and our new logo). What do you think? Do you like where this is going?









If you want to see the pictures in HD, you can go here: http://imgur.com/a/WNmFK

[bitbeast]

Just skipped through your devlog and I have to say you did very well, especially on the lighting and the atmosphere. Personally, because of the setting, I would have sneaked in slow passages of exploration, but of course you did the right thing here with Serious Sam in mind. When do you plan to release the game? Great work so far!