YEAR 3 - BA3b - NIGD feedback

I took the game to the Norwich Independent Game Developers meetup and this was the feedback I got.

    - Problem - Feedback (UI) difficult to focus on

    - Solution - I'll redesign the ui so it 'sticks' to the character. This way the player doesn't have to pull their eyes away to see how many mid-air jumps they have left. I'll try to tie it in to the design of the character; which I read in THIS ARTICLE is called 'Diegetic UI'.


    - Problem - The game needs more texture (like the concept art)

    - Solution - The concept art has a subtle gradient that gives it more depth. Because of the resolution of the game it's difficult to replicate this in-game so I'm going to create depth through moving background elements and I'm going to try creating more of a gradient with some kind of home-brew lighting system.


     - Problem - People sometimes run off an edge before realising the round has started.

    - Solution - Make a countdown timer before the round starts. Design less 1 hit kill pits into the levels. Create a vertical screen wrap?

    - Problem - Feels like the sword should be able to be used as a weapon but can't (currently just used to reflect bullets)
    - Solution - For mechanical reasons I prefer the 'squashing' opponents 'melee' attack because it system where the high ground becomes beneficial and encourages movement around the stage which is makes the game more fun. Therefor I think it's better to redesign the characters into creatures without swords and come up with another contextual reason why the characters can reflect bullets.

BUGS:
- fix fullscreen page
- Jump on head is a bit buggy

OTHER FEEDBACK:
- Could be interesting if double jumps and hover time charge up on the ground rather than reset immediately (strategy around using jumps and exploiting players without)
- Change the shooting and reflecting sounds to something less jarring
- People generally prefer the right bumper as a shoot button
- People do generally enjoy playing and especially like jumping on peoples heads
- Animations will make the game feel more polished
- Retaining charged shots could be interesting

YEAR 3 - BA3b - Environmental Concept Art

Rather than changing genre again I figured I could work on the visual aspect of the game to at least make the most out of the current game's theme.

My game already has flat colors to represent the ground and after looking through some work by FireWatch artist 'Olly Moss' I figured I could apply a similar technique to my background too in the hopes that the game will look less flat as a result.

Here you can see a quick analysis of one of his pieces. Essentially, the further back a layer is, the lower the value and saturation of the colour. He also shifts the hue slightly between each layer.


This concept piece is my attempt at applying the same technique to the caves location in my game and I'm really really happy with the result. It keeps the same feel of the original game but adds so much more depth to the scene.

Above is a comparison image between my attempt at replicating the artwork in game (left) and the concept piece I made (right). I even resized the room so I could create the same level layout. I think I've done a pretty good job but I can't help but feel it still looks a bit flat in comparison. I think this could be in part due to the UI overlay. The original had subtle shading too that helps to add depth but is difficult to make smooth in game due to the low resolution.

YEAR 3 - BA3b - Trying to find a theme/ creative direction - DUELETTE

I've been trying to figure out the theme of the game and how I'm going to overcome the issue of people trying to use the sword as a weapon. It got me thinking about how music notation essentially has set heights like the game does and whether or not that could work as the theme for the game. The players would move up and down and fire notes at different pitches to cooperatively create tunes, whilst also defeating enemies of some kind in different locations and music styles. The player could unlock new instrument types as they progress.

I developed this version of the game in a couple of days and whilst, interesting I realized quite quickly that it was far too big of a jump to make from the previous design. I also learned that GameMaker: Studio doesn't handle overlaying SFX particularly well, so I'll have to keep that in mind whilst working on the regular version of the game. The experiment does allow the player to create tunes though and I quite like it because of that.

I also developed a slightly different version where you play as treble clefs and you can reflect notes back as well as SHIFT into a sharp note. You use WASD and the ARROW KEYS to control the two characters.

I'll include DUELETTE in the hand in. Press 'P' twice on the main menu to see the 2 versions of the game.

I'd like to include some variation of this as a specific stage in the game maybe or as a boss in the single player version of the game because with all the extra stuff the regular game contains on top of this, it could be quite enjoyable.


I'm aware from testing that players think of the sword as a weapon that they can attack with, which isn't what it's for. I've developed another character that might explain how the character can hover, shoot and reflect and it's a cave/dragon creature that looks a bit like a bat.

These are the original concepts. The skinny legs on number 2/4 I liked because they look easy to animate. I also like the two colors on 2/4.

This image shows what unlock-able colors and cosmetic items might look like on the character. It seems to fit the theme and mood of the game and I like how the different colors feel like they're from different areas in the world and the cosmetic items could be things they;ve picked up on hteir travels. It helps to add a feeling of depth to the game world.


This is what the character looks like in game. I had to simplify it a bit for the lower resolution. I like the flapping wings; I think they improve the feeling of floating but as a character I don't think this guy is particularly likable or iconic and I know how important that is for a marketable game so I'm going to keep trying things out.

YEAR 3 - BA3b - Arrays; edits and settings

I've finally made a start on the settings screen for the game. It felt necessary for a polished game to have one if I'm going to sell the game to a variety of people.

I also wanted a way to adjust the game volume so I could test out music playing in the background. This is so I can see what kind of music I'd like the game to have without having to change too much in-game.




I'm also testing out 3 different methods for automatically switching between rooms within worlds after a round because it's currently vague when somebody wins and it just restarts the current room.

I taught myself a new special type of array called a ds_list because it has more functions attached to it than normal arrays allowing me to check what number the current room is in the list for example. 

Caves: Finds the current room in the array of cave levels, removes it from the array, shuffles the array, and picks the first room in the new list. Then refills the array once it's empty.

MoltenCore: saves the current room in a variable, chooses a new room randomly from the array and checks if it's the same one. If it is, it chooses another one.

Peaks: Just cycles through the rooms one by one

I like he caves method the best because it should theoretically lead to the player experiencing all the rooms before playing the same one again. In practice this does not work though because there's something wrong with how I've programmed it.

The Molten Core method seems  to work consistently and with enough rounds the player experiences all the available rooms. I quite like how some rooms appear less frequently than others too because it makes them feel more special when you get them.