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[Nagnazul]

This was a 5-man, 10 week project as part of my video game development class. It's a short 3rd person puzzle platformer based on magnetics.

Youtube links:


(Level 1 & 2)


(Level 4)

COMPATIBILITY ISSUES:

YOU PROBABLY CANNOT PLAY THIS ON MACS. But please give it a shot!

Try magnite.exe.
If that doesn't work (usually doesn't work in Win7/Vista 64), try magnite-safemode.exe
If that doesn't work, try magnite.bat.
If that doesn't work, try editing magnite.bat to use your native resolution, then run that.
If that doesn't work (or the game runs too slowly) edit magnite.bat to a lower resolution.

Here's a screenshot:


You can download it here: http://www.nagnazul.com

The installer is roughly 150 mb and will install into 800mb.

Try it out. There might be some compatibility issues which we'll fix eventually, but the game is done and playable.

This was made using virtools 4.1, 3ds max and photoshop.

Have fun!

[mr. podunkian]

this is pretty sweet -- a few suggestions/comments.

i really liked the idea of using like poles to launch yourself off surfaces (the first level with the climbable walls was really cool. the camera orientation changing is really nice, but it would help if there was perhaps a compass that would always point towards the ground, so that, while hugging walls, you could tell get a better sense of which way you'll fall once you let go of the magnet buttons.

also, when you're climbing, it would be nice if the jump key would "kick" you off the wall, rather than moving you up relative to the ground, since that's how it would more or less work physically.

the camera feels awfully floaty. also, it might be a smart idea to further constrain the view so that you can't look as high up or low, since it sometimes looks and acts a little funky when that happens.

overall, it's a really smart game mechanic, and it's cool that it seems like the magnetism isn't necessarily perfectly accurate in a physical sense, but that it works very well gameplaywise.

it would be really cool for you to finish this game -- maybe cleaning up the presentation a bit and de-portal-izing the game as well.

[Nagnazul]

I installed this on Vista 64-bit, but I get an error message when I try running it.

Nevertheless, this looks like a great game and I sure hope you get those compatibility issues fixed soon.

Did you try running the "Magnite-safemode.exe" and the "magnite.bat" files? It's the same game, but with slightly different parameters. It should be a good temporary fix to some compatibility problems.

it would help if there was perhaps a compass that would always point towards the ground, so that, while hugging walls, you could tell get a better sense of which way you'll fall once you let go of the magnet buttons.

Not a bad idea - we tried to have fairly distinct floor textures to help with that, but it might not be enough.

also, when you're climbing, it would be nice if the jump key would "kick" you off the wall, rather than moving you up relative to the ground, since that's how it would more or less work physically.

Also not a bad idea - this never ever came up during development, probably since if you want to kick yourself off a wall then you activate the opposite magnetic field and you get pushed off extra-hard.

This does worry me, however. How long did it take to figure out that you could boost off of walls? I don't think you can get through level 3 without using that mechanic, but I hope no one tries to clear the game without figuring it out...

the camera feels awfully floaty. also, it might be a smart idea to further constrain the view so that you can't look as high up or low, since it sometimes looks and acts a little funky when that happens.

The camera used to follow your mouse 1:1 without any "floatiness" - this was changed fairly late in development so that it would lag behind a bit to make it move more smoothly. Personally I like it this way.

Camera view also used to be pretty constrained so that it wouldn't move the camera under the floor - but it kind of sucked when you wanted to look where you were going when sticking to a wall and about to boost off of it. We figured the player would appreciate the extra control and fix it manually if it went somewhere it wasn't supposed to.

overall, it's a really smart game mechanic, and it's cool that it seems like the magnetism isn't necessarily perfectly accurate in a physical sense, but that it works very well gameplaywise.

Thanks  

it would be really cool for you to finish this game -- maybe cleaning up the presentation a bit and de-portal-izing the game as well.

As with any game project there are hundreds of things we wanted to do with this game and didn't have time to do. I could give you a very long list of cool game mechanics which we never implemented. We may end up going back to fix a few things later on, and we might add a few things.

I wouldn't mind making a few more levels for it, personally.

[starsrift]

At home tonight, went to check this out. Installed fine.
Upon running:
System.BadImageFormatException: is not a valid Win32 application. (Exception from HRESULT:<some hex memaddress>)
at WindowsFormsApplication1.Form1.ctor()
at WindowsFormsApplication1.Program.Main()

I run WinXP-64 with a pair of NVidia 7600 cards in SLI mode and a 64-bit AMD processor.

Hope that helps.

[Nagnazul]

I installed this on Vista 64-bit, but I get an error message when I try running it.

Nevertheless, this looks like a great game and I sure hope you get those compatibility issues fixed soon.

At home tonight, went to check this out. Installed fine.
Upon running:
System.BadImageFormatException: is not a valid Win32 application. (Exception from HRESULT:<some hex memaddress>)
at WindowsFormsApplication1.Form1.ctor()
at WindowsFormsApplication1.Program.Main()

I run WinXP-64 with a pair of NVidia 7600 cards in SLI mode and a 64-bit AMD processor.

Hope that helps.

to both of you, open the folder where you installed the game and run "magnite-safemode.exe". It should work fine.

[starsrift]

I tried the .bat file and it worked.

The pros - I thought the idea was pretty neat and pretty well exploited.
I especially liked the first (tutorial) room - it was completely immersive and still a tutorial, it seemed really well done, from the pictures on the walls to the rapid education on the magnetism with the loose objects.
The boosting off of walls was really intuitive and needed no explanation, not to mention the best part!
The level design was great for the puzzle aspect and seemed to be pretty well paced.
The ending was a delightful surprise. The expression on the guy's face made it, for me.

The cons - there were a number of physics and collision detection issues.
The effect to indicate which polarization was active was frequently the wrong color, and to further complicate things, sometimes even if the correct button was pressed and effect displayed, for whatever reason, the actual physics effect didn't seem to be triggered (I suspect more of a collision detection issue) - as a result, even though I finished the game, I'm still utterly confused as to which button does which polarization!
As far as aesthetics go, the levels were flat and uninspiring.

Suggestions - an ability to restart the level would've been nice! Instead when I got clipped into the floor and immovably stuck on the third level, I had to restart the game.
I also agree with Podunkian - I was looking at the screen you posted and I thought the floor/ceiling textures were pretty different, but once I played the game, I found it nearly impossible to tell which was which, notably except in the level in the posted screenshot! - so some greater variance would be good, or a little compass on the top of the robot's head or brighter lighting at the ceiling, or something!  
Some kind of scoring or measure of progress beyond what level you're on would've been neat too - again, variance in textures or lighting could've done this. Sadly, I well know that you never have enough time in student projects to get everything done, or even to a 'good enough' done.

Looking forward to see what you come up with next semester! (Yes? Right? Please?)

[Nagnazul]

I tried the .bat file and it worked.

The pros - I thought the idea was pretty neat and pretty well exploited.
I especially liked the first (tutorial) room - it was completely immersive and still a tutorial, it seemed really well done, from the pictures on the walls to the rapid education on the magnetism with the loose objects.
The boosting off of walls was really intuitive and needed no explanation, not to mention the best part!
The level design was great for the puzzle aspect and seemed to be pretty well paced.
The ending was a delightful surprise. The expression on the guy's face made it, for me.

Thanks  

You're the first person, I believe, to ever mention something about the ending. I was getting worried we had forgotten to actually put it in there. Glad to see someone noticed it.

There's actually a story in this game, and most of it is told subtly through the game's various elements - I think someone who tried would have no problem piecing it together, though I could be completely wrong on that.

The cons - there were a number of physics and collision detection issues.
The effect to indicate which polarization was active was frequently the wrong color, and to further complicate things, sometimes even if the correct button was pressed and effect displayed, for whatever reason, the actual physics effect didn't seem to be triggered (I suspect more of a collision detection issue) - as a result, even though I finished the game, I'm still utterly confused as to which button does which polarization!
As far as aesthetics go, the levels were flat and uninspiring.

One thing we learned from this project is that relying on Havok for gameplay is a dangerous proposition - Havok isn't 100% reliable and can be very temperamental depending on the computer it's running on.

The magnetic sphere color bug is something that was introduced extremely late into the project - something like 24 hours before release - as we were trying to fix bugs caused by pressing both mouse buttons at the same time.

As far as art goes - it's all programmer art. Our team included exactly zero artists, so what you see is the best we could do with our resources.

Suggestions - an ability to restart the level would've been nice! Instead when I got clipped into the floor and immovably stuck on the third level, I had to restart the game.
I also agree with Podunkian - I was looking at the screen you posted and I thought the floor/ceiling textures were pretty different, but once I played the game, I found it nearly impossible to tell which was which, notably except in the level in the posted screenshot! - so some greater variance would be good, or a little compass on the top of the robot's head or brighter lighting at the ceiling, or something!  
Some kind of scoring or measure of progress beyond what level you're on would've been neat too - again, variance in textures or lighting could've done this. Sadly, I well know that you never have enough time in student projects to get everything done, or even to a 'good enough' done.

Interestingly enough, I've had dozens of report of "clipping through the floor and getting stuck" after release and yet we never encountered that problem a single time during development. I'd probably chalk this one up to Havok.

Looking forward to see what you come up with next semester! (Yes? Right? Please?)

We do have another game project lined up, though without a class and deadlines to motivate force us to crunch for three days straight we might not get it completely done.

[Nagnazul]

I know more than three people have downloaded it - any more feedback?

[Nagnazul]

For those who can't run the game, one of my team mates made these youtube videos;



(Level 1 & 2)


(Level 4)

[Nagnazul]

By the way, we've recently received the news that this game won a $2000 award.

[deathtotheweird]

Wow, congrats! Downloading this now, I must have missed it awhile ago.

[Cheater‽]

I downloaded the game and ran it without issues on Vista 64-bit.

Unlike Podunkian I found the camera to be too sensitive, and at one point the inclined-plane magnetism push stopped working correctly (it pushed me around 3/4 if the way as it did before) so I couldn't finish.

I agree with the comments about the difficulty in distinguishing floors from walls, and some rooms seemed overly large for the puzzles. I quite liked the concept though, and it was fun while it wasn't broken!

[Nagnazul]

Unlike Podunkian I found the camera to be too sensitive, and at one point the inclined-plane magnetism push stopped working correctly (it pushed me around 3/4 if the way as it did before) so I couldn't finish.

Was this accompanied by a framerate drop or any other issues?

[Nagnazul]

I think we got the feedback we wanted - thanks for posting, everyone.

[Nagnazul]

We just got nominated for another prize! Go us!