Last night I attended Gamecamp Edmonton – an excellent opportunity for industry networking (and similar interests) that I full intend to be a big part of in the future. Until then though, it also gave me a fairly good test session on Disc Game – stretching beyond the friends and family and actually getting into the hands of people who hadn’t even heard of the project.
This was a great test opportunity, and while I’m burning with excitement to continue working on it (I have had a busy morning so this is the first I’m back at my laptop) I figured I’d try to collect some thoughts I had from watching people play last night:
General Observations:
- There is absolutely a game here. The weird 3d navigation was clearly a joy on people’s face, and several actually came back and picked up the controls without prompting. I know I’m still only in the beginning of this project, but this gives me a lot of encouragement!
- The controls actually work pretty well! I’m still not sold about the right joystick tilt (I understand its purpose though) but the strafe / drive / turn navigation seems to work quite well.
- Weird 3d geometry and action gameplay does get people lost though… I think the current arena map works well for this in that you’re really not navigating a maze but rather sticking to two sides of a fairly simple coin; which watching people play seems to work fairly well. For more multiplayer type scenarios, the playable area (even if it shifts over a couple of rounds) needs to stay simple enough that people can get “lost” without too much pain (thus keeping the focus on the high energy / trippy distortion thing I have going)
- The aesthetics were very well received, especially the alternate world. I only heard one complaint that things are a little too bloomy (thus making it hard to keep track of what’s going on) but for the most part I think there is a style here that works to my needs and is enjoyable by the end users. (the bendy lasers were also a big hit)
- The 2 minute pitch of the game seems to resonate fairly well – and I agree 100% with the one fellow who called it “3d air hockey with lasers”
Negative Points:
- My speed-based camera pan broke down a little with the speed at which people were playing the game (flashing white as the camera intersected with the overhead “moons”). Easy enough fix, but I cringed every time!
- People seemed to drive the game a lot harder and faster than I or my testers do… which is interesting in that about 8 times people “broke” off the surface and started drifting out into space. While I am aware that this can possibly happen, hours of testing on the physics system has shown it to be nearly impossible – which means that I need to tweak the controls or figure out what people are doing differently. (that said, the couple of failures due to high speed boost around the sharp lip got cheers and a very positive reaction – I think I just need to ensure that the system is consistent there)
- The player avatar was a little (to my surprise) confusing to people! The way the 4 quadrants change colors had people thinking it was a radar or it showed where you were taking damage. The aesthetics (i.e. the lack of photorealistic little spaceships or such) were fine, but the player avatar needs work.
Power / Health:
- Again, this fundamental component seems to break down… the inverted ring scale I think works well but the ammo == health system was completely missing
- One person pointed out that rapid fire and otherwise sloppy weapons don’t work to well when you’re sacrificing your life force – where every shot should count
- I’m not sure if the randomly spawned coins are working too well… perhaps coins should all be based on enemy destruction or otherwise spawned a little more forcefully.
Regarding the Power / Health observations, I’m considering separating the two – making the ring describe perhaps your weapon power and keeping the health something a little more modern (the basic take damage and recharge when out of danger convention). Perhaps (this needs testing) the result will be two rings – so shooting separates your weapon from your general health – this works on paper, but I’m not sure if the visual information will be too much to the player.
Weapons:
- Other than the ammo / health connection, the basic weapon and aiming seemed to work quite well. Players had no trouble hitting enemies with a fairly solid accuracy – though one point is that the enemies tended to take about 75% damage then escape – repair, and repeat the process.
- Boost-head butting was a huge hit, and while it is a touch over powered it was probably the most “fun” component of the game so far. The penalty for boost in terms of control and coasting seemed to be dead on, but despite a significant power drain people never noticed (and suggested a few times that boost should drain power… ). Boost also became problematic in that people were single-shot-killing (or close to) the more interesting enemies I added – including the ones that actually shoot back! (meaning the players who favored boost quickly pushed through the waves until things got too difficult). I think I need to selectively tone this system down, without losing too much of the potential fun...
- Jonathon and Dave apparently hyped up the rocket launcher I wanted to have in… (which didn’t make it due to time constraints) but I think I’m on the right track for weapons. I’m not sure (watching people navigate) if pickup based weapons are the key – perhaps it may be more pickups / powerups modify an archetypical set.
Alt World:
Just in time for the demo I added simple support for the red alt world, allowing the user to switch world stages at the push of a button. I originally had a timer /delay type thing but that just didn’t work for people. Watching people play, the alt world was an aesthetic hit but had some major issues in the current implementation:
- Until the later waves, there were no red coins… thus no health in the red alt world. With weapons burning health, people would go into this essentially empty world, navigate around, shoot, burn power… and then return to the main world to get their ass kicked.
- Until the later waves as well, the red world is actually pretty boring. This says that either special enemies or objects need to be spawned upon entry (or the start of the game) OR the ability to enter the alternate world is limited (perhaps with some sort of pickup or the like).
- By becoming invulnerable to enemies (or at least the basic enemies in the root world) the red alt world became a viable place to escape too when combat got a little too heated. Only a few players picked up on this, but there is definite potential here. (that said, it may become too easy to avoid combat)
Enemies:
- The behavior of the basic first enemy was a big hit – especially the “AI” where it tended to make a J shaped past around the player and “kick them in the ass” (all a simple balance of attraction and repulsion forces!).
- The second enemy, which shoots back, was also a hit… when people stopped long enough to notice it shooting back. The enemy’s use of the weapon worked quite well, but the avatar itself (despite by best efforts) was not visually distinct enough. Also, the susceptibility to boost didn’t help much.
- Most people seemed to understand (after a very quick introduction to the concept) how the red enemies and red coins worked in relation to the red alt world.
- People suggested using alternate colors and potentially having a set of 4 colored worlds… but I did get a word of caution that relying on color to differentiate core gameplay pieces becomes an accessibility issue on people who are even partially color blind. I honestly hadn’t thought of this before, but its an interesting problem (and quite manageable if I consider it in advance)
- Enemies were most successful in groups of 1-3. I tried having the later waves get a little more crazy but this just ramped the difficulty to almost guaranteed failure. Also, the more enemies, the more the player tended to get confused and frustrated. I think the balance is that this game needs to focus more on distinct battles – 1 gold enemy, 1 gold enemy with lasers, 2 gold enemies and 1 with a laser, 1 red enemy, etc. The waves could better communicate this as well, and if I do implement some sort of compass (which I will discuss momentarily) a smaller number is easier to manage.
The biggest issue with enemies was that there were distinct moments of dead air, where the enemy was stuck in some corner on the other side of the world and people were trying to find it. Several times a simple compass or radar was suggested (though I can say from my own thoughts on the topic that this gets extremely weird with the type of world geometry I’m dealing with). I think that improving the AI will help, but even with the tendency of the enemies to wander back into the playable area, I think this is a significant problem. The ideas I have to solve this issue are either some form of rotating 3d compass (simple little wireframe mesh of the world), some form of 3d guide (say lines penetrating through the player avatar pointing to where the enemies are) or perhaps some sort of shader trick (where enemies are visible through the world mesh). I’ll do some testing and see what works out the best.
I think that pretty much covers up my thoughts… I want to try my hand at implementing some of the ideas and adjustments while they are still fresh, and as soon as I’m done that I’ll capture another view. Until then, cheers!
