Prototype number 1
March 15, 2006 | Dev Diary #1
I’ve been very busy recently so the dev diary has been the thing that takes a back seat (again). Also I have never liked releasing things this early in case people aren’t impressed/ interested, or simply because I don’t want negative feedback. I have to keep reminding myself that this is the whole point of doing the development publicly. So let’s get it over with…
Prototype 1
Ok - Prototypes. I’ve never bothered prototyping games before, and to tell the truth am not going to start now. The idea behind prototypes is to get all of the hard work (i.e. making the game fun) out of the way. Basically if the game isn’t fun as a quick and dirty demo, then it won’t be fun when it has all the graphics done, it’ll just look better.
In the commercial world, if the game isn’t fun at the prototype stage then it can be dropped before too much money is spent on it.
I won’t be doing that.
I’ll just keep working until people say they think the game is ok.
So I’m now making my “prototypes”.
Because it’s a prototype you’ll have to use your imagination. There are no graphics whatsoever, everything is done with simple shapes which will be replaced with proper models once this stage is complete. This means that currently you, the game player, are represented by a box (the player character) inside a semi transparent sphere (your collision radius or, in gameplay terms, your shield). All of the bad guys are spheres.
Get it here
I actually kept delaying this post. Whenever I’ve been working on games I have only ever put out demos when I felt there was something worth playing, a significant game that was suitably polished. However, in the end, I remembered the whole point of this dev diary is to get feedback as the game progresses moulding it into the ultimate in electronic entertainment. That said please remember that their currently isn’t much to play. Hopefully this will be resolved in future revisions of the prototype.
Controls
- Keyboard : Arrows to move, Space to shoot
- Joystick/ Joypad : Control stick/pad to move, button 1 to shoot
- Mouse : Move mouse to move, left mouse button to shoot (the mouse sucks - don’t bother)
What do I think?
To tell the truth, in my opinion (please give yours too), it’s not very good. At the moment the enemies totally lack any type of character. Obviously they’re just spheres, but they don’t react to the players actions at all and just move in very rigid patterns. Also the controls are very rough around the edges and need tweaking or enhancing.
Something I think is quite cool, and want to develop more, is to make everything react to everything else (physics based). At the moment bullets collide with players pushing them around, and when the characters bump into each other they move in the correct way. I’m not sure how much fun this will be but I’m going to try it out anyway and can always change things later (the beauty of a prototype).
Next Up…
Over the next few weeks I want to sort out the controls so that all entry methods work in an enjoyable way (keyboard, joystick and mouse) and also to play with the enemies making them easier to create (from a code point of view) and more enjoyable to play against.
Looking forward (and slightly concerned) to hearing what you think.
Bubble Blitz
ExGen
Gun Wing
Bubble Bomb
Comments »
March 16, 2006
I think it’s a great start, especially seeing as there’s some rudimentary physics in action here. If you could follow that physics touch, and make it involved with the gameplay, I’m sure you could come up with something innovative and fun.
As an example, with controls made tighter and all of course, you could have it where objects fly around, trying to push you into the holes (we’ll assume we’re in outerspace) and these holes are black holes, and the flying objects are flying saucers with no weapons. Your job is to shoot them before they push you into the blackholes, or at least avoids the blackholes.
Just an example, I’m sure you could come up with something much better.
March 16, 2006
I should have linked to the other dev diaries so that people who don’t know what’s going on can catch up
I intend for the game to be a straight forward shoot em up, but there will be obstacles to avoid (eg the big grey enemies will actually be mines that explode on contact). I’ve also thought about making debris from exploding enemies physics based so that can push you (and the bad guys) around.
The controls will be tweaked, the mouse ones are the worst IMO. There will also be a store that let’s you upgrade your jetpack, and that will improve the controls also.
Thanks for the comments though
March 19, 2006
Looking good! I enjoyed playing through the levels (once I switched from mouse to keyboard
and look forward very much to seeing more variety in the levels. It’s a great premise so far and, IMO, worth pursuing further development on!
March 29, 2006
How very interesting… May I ask what technologies (language etc.) you are using? Is that Torque?
You definately need to build more physics into the game. The actors in a game need to have character, even if the actors are just blobs. I bet you could have fun mixing in some sticky ones, Some with positive and some with negative magnetic fields. Could be neat. Maybe there are certain ground effects like updrafts… I only played a few levels into it, so my comments are just based upon the first 4 or so level. It is a very nice clean look as is
March 30, 2006
Jason - thanks
Brian - I used Blitz3D to create what you see at the moment. I hadn’t really considered implementing physics beyond all objects colliding and interacting with each other, but now you’re suggesting this I’m thinking it could be interesting. I’m a little wary of feature creep though as I don’t have much time to work on it anyway.
BTW the levels you see at the moment are just for testing things. Once I have better enemies and a complete game system I will be creating a level editor so that I can create levels that are actually fun
March 30, 2006
Ah, I was just looking at their website. I saw the reference to it on your ExGen page. I’m learning Torque right now, but I like the results from Blitz. I’ll have so see if I can find some code samples on their site….
And yes, test programs whether you call them prototypes are not are a good thing! How else can you get the ball rolling - so to speak…