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[thekosmonaut]

I just saw this for the first time and I am in awe. The automatons and character design is exactly what i crave.

And the gameplay looks fresh. Though it is another 2d space game, the melee combat in this stylized crazy world makes it really unique i feel.

If nothing else, just want to say keep it up!

[Batowski]

Thanks everyone for your support!

I'd like to thank LobsterSundew especially, who does a tremendous job at helping crowdfunders with fantastic data analysis and advice. Thanks man, and god bless you for doing this! At this point I would seriously recommend anyone starting a game Kickstarter to to start with your guide and seek your counsel.

Also the folks over at ProjectMQ have been of great help to us. They are building a platform to connect indie devs and indiegame lovers, and they have tons of info and advice on marketing and pr, so don't be shy and connect with them, they even have a great Slack channel where you can talk to other devs and get (and possibly give) some advice and chat in realtime. I'm also there and plan to do so for the future.

I'll be sure to conjure up a post-mortem in the future, because I have a lot to share both from a personal and a "professional" point of view. The amount of help I got from the community makes me want to carry the torch and do the same for any future devs willing to try themselves with crowdfunding, so feel free to hit me up if you're one of them and have any questions! I run the @fabulargame Twitter account and maybe that's the best way of doing that, or you can shoot an e-mail to: contact (at) spiritusgames.com.

Here's us celebrating the no-doubt hardest month of our lives.

[Batowski]

I just saw this for the first time and I am in awe. The automatons and character design is exactly what i crave.

And the gameplay looks fresh. Though it is another 2d space game, the melee combat in this stylized crazy world makes it really unique i feel.

If nothing else, just want to say keep it up!

Hey man, thanks! I've also been following your game which has some fantastic cinematic quality and cool dynamism! I particularly like the helicopter-like low-fov point of view and the smoke effects. I have some ideas about how you could further improve the effects quality, will try and post in your topic about it or hit me up on Twitter maybe...

Also noticed that one of your older web-games was quite similar in concept to Fabular.
And our programmer was quite keen on your article about Monogame stuff, we also do our own engine in that, plus some Farseer phyics, because we are lazier than you.

Cheers!

[thekosmonaut]

back in the day I didn't realize how generic a 2d space shooter with building blocks and an editor actually is.

The thing is basically done/feature complete from a programming standpoint, everything is randomly generated and the world itself is also filled with different factions and stuff, but I had no interest in making content like quests and character art etc. especially when it was clear that this would remain largely unknown because it had no breakout potential.

Just a hobby anyways.

Originally I started out making it very physical, I don't think many others calculate the center of mass and moment of inertia, but I've seen some lately. Thrusters can be assigned individually to keys and they behave correctly as well.
However, stuff like "you only control the acceleration of your rotation and never stop spinning since there is no friction in space" had to be toned down a little so everyone could play and not only me and my friends who study aerospace engineering and crave this stuff haha.

Still an interesting project for me, the whole thing being in HTML5 did me no favors though, apart from compatibility.

Really nice to hear you guys working on Monogame as well, good to see some great new projects using it.

---

I am thinking about going the kickstarter route myself. Obviously I would need to get some more stuff done to make it more of a showcase and then also prepare a nice webpage, trailer and most importantly try to make some PR moves, etc., but I am doubtful right now whether my game would even attact an audience if I were to finish it - maybe going the crowdfunding route would be a good indicator.

That's a bit tricky. How much work do I have to put in the game so it has a chance at kickstarter vs how much work will I waste when there is no demand anyways?

Were you guys at this point as well? Did you know you were going to make this game and people would love to play it and was it a huge relief to see that kickstarter actually confirmed that? How did you go about marketing your KS?

Anyways, next time I'll write a letter or something :D

PS: A friend once told me all my games needs screen shake. Your game needs screen shake.

[Batowski]

@thekosmonaut: talking about your old game inspired a post about how we went about designing physics and controls in Fabular. 

About physics and game feel

While designing the controls and the general feel of the physics system for Fabular, it was obvious from the start that a strict 'Newtonian' or realistic approach to physics might not result in a gameplay experience that is fun. There is sure fun to be had while trying to steer a spacecraft with accurate physics, but in my opinion for it to be a fulfilling experience, you have to build the gameplay around it just like the old classic Lunar Lander (or maybe Asteroids to a degree) did that. For a game like ours with many more gameplay layers, a hard to grasp and "foreign" control method would just frustrate players, that's why we had to find the middle ground regarding our physics system being challenging and fun.

The setting we chose for Fabular helped a lot in that respect, because when you enter a fabulous game world where there are seemingly earth-like conditions in outer space, and everything is obviously out-of-proportion, just like you're inside a dream, it's easier to be forgiving towards other aspects of the game not being realistic, like the physics for instance. Also, if you want the game world to be coherent, your setting has to be in line with the gameplay feel, so basically this is partly why we went for a more natural physics feel instead of a realistic one.



What is a more natural feel of physics?

To simply put we take everyday situations that are very familiar to people (in particular gamers) and apply the characteristics of these to the feel of controls in the game. When we set out to make Fabular, the first thing we knew we had to implement is some kind of playfulness to the control system, to counter-balance the relatively static nature of the top-down view.

The whole concept of the game is quite novel and a bit unfamiliar, so we needed anchors in the gameplay to provide some familiarity to players so they don't get alienated by lots of new stuff happening. The roguelike and action rpg nature of the game are such anchors for example, they are familiar genres and sort of everyone knows what to expect of them. Giving a natural, everyday feel to the physics in the game is such a tool as well, and that's why we have friction and momentum applied to almost every kind of movement in the game.



When we set out to define the natural characteristics of the control system, we defined two very disctinct movement types to base the player ship's movement on: a car on an icy road and a motorboat on water. By mixing these movement characteristics together and applying it to a spaceship we get a control system that is quite familiar in its characteristics but has a lot of depth as well if you want to master it.

How does the physics system tie into game mechanics and controls?

We wanted to introduce the kind of momentum and inertia that an Asteroids game has, but then give options to the players to tweak the behavior of each ship by upgrades and items, so the control systeam is not a static and easy to master layer of the game, but a constantly changing and evolving one that you always have to take into account if you upgrade of equip items. For example putting on lots of armour may give you better protection but will increase the weight of your ship, so if you don't upgrade your speed as well, or equip better thrusters you will be sluggish and your ship will be hard to control. On the other hand, if you want to be quick and agile, you probably can not equip that much armour.



TL;DR: If you design a game with physics-based game controls, it is always a good idea to find everyday movement characteristics that are very familiar to people and mimic those in your control system.

[rodlaiz]

Fabular caught my eye somewhere else a few weeks ago. I really liked the idea of the axed spaceship and the graphics look very slick, keep the good work guys! This game of yours could be huge (I hope so)

[Batowski]

Fabular caught my eye somewhere else a few weeks ago. I really liked the idea of the axed spaceship and the graphics look very slick, keep the good work guys! This game of yours could be huge (I hope so)

Thanks, we certainly plan the game to be 'huge' in a sense that we want to make a long-lasting and memorable experience. Whether it will be huge in popularity is to be seen.