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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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 Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2011 2:21 pm |
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| RobotRocker wrote: |
| Talbain wrote: |
I give up. |
The absolutely insane stuff hackers have been doing with it justifies its existence.
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I'm happy for it to exist, I just don't want it to become the dominant paradigm for game development. Don't these mainstream consumers realize that they're having a bad time playing these games??? (only half-joking...) |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 6:23 pm |
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| I feel like it's ok to advertise my game when it's free, so: QWOP for iPhone is free for the next 48 hours. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 6:50 pm |
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| Thanks! Did you get the recent iPhone update? We improved it a lot. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 5:12 pm |
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| Mr. Toups wrote: |
| I think some kind of eye-tracking device that sync your eyes' focus with simulated depth of field would be way more immersive than dumb old 3D effects |
This is a good idea, and it would be a lot more practical to implement than good 3D, given that accurate eye-trackers are now available for $$$ and could easily be brought cheaply to the mass market if there was demand. Of course, it's even more expensive atm if you don't require users to put their head in a vise to keep it still, since then you need accurate head tracking too.
There's so many things you could do with good eye and head tracking. One of the things you can do is that kind of faux 3D that they demoed on the Wii - where you can peek around the corners of things. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 6:33 pm |
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| I think if you require people to wear an LED headband for head tracking, you're getting one of the biggest drawbacks of 3D glasses. A faster and more accurate Kinect-style IR camera could theoretically do it glasses-free. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 3:40 pm |
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| luvcraft wrote: |
also available: "Become a prison bitch for a day", and "spend a day in the tank of a chemical toilet". |
There would be takers for all three of these things, at high price points. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 1:08 pm |
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| I wonder if you guys would like my new game. I'd be interested in the SBDN critique. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 2:24 pm |
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| Isfet wrote: |
| blocked at work :\ |
Those killjoy IT managers. :\
| Loki Laufeyson wrote: |
it isn't hilarious like qwop, but it is much more playable |
Oh good! That was the intention. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 3:22 pm |
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| luvcraft wrote: |
| ...by which I mean "it's a lot of fun, and more accessible than QWOP, but it hurts my hands, and I wish I could "flex" with the spacebar instead of the mouse button because I'm not playing it on a laptop, and I got to a point over on the right side where I couldn't progress any further and had to go back down a little bit and then I noticed that the water level steadily rises and it suddenly turned from a very laid-back game to a RACE AGAINST TIME but that's not really a bad thing". :) |
I wish you could flex with the spacebar too! But I determined that most keyboards won't accept space+letter+otherletter. Cheaper laptop keyboards also won't accept all combinations of two letters with shift or control, which is why I let people use the mouse button.
This is the reason why you can't control the guy's legs, incidentally - the first prototype allowed you to use every limb. (It was also way too hard that way, though)
If only everyone would buy expensive gaming keyboards with n-key rollover, it would be so much better, especially for two-player games.
Once you get a bit better at the game, the water rises so slowly that it should be insignificant. I just wanted to mildly discourage people from taking too much time. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:51 pm |
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| Thanks! Yeah, you are *more or less* required to do a swing jump just at the end. And if you take too long to make the final ascent to the gift box, the bird will steal it away (doesn't seem to be happening to many players though, so maybe I need to de-nerf the bird a bit) |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:38 pm |
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| TXTSWORD wrote: |
| I really like the graphics, except for the DUDE. Where everything is kind of a classic look, the dude is like a little flash/vector thing. |
I was shooting for the Prince of Persia 1 (on the Amiga) look. I could have painted him with more detail, but a) he wouldn't have stood out well against the rocks, which I had already finished drawing, and b) I would have had to paint and shade 32 different rotations of twelve different bodyparts, and I wasn't up for that. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:38 am |
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| negativedge wrote: |
| Bennett you might be the only guy doing interesting things with controls in video games, and I really appreciate that. |
Thanks, I am trying anyway. I don't think I have really nailed what I'm trying to do yet, but at least this one taught me a lot about what it means for controls to be 'analog'.
720 degrees and marble madness have analog controls. GIRP has analog controls. Even Peanut Butter Panic has analog controls. But Halo does not have analog controls, even though it uses analog sticks. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:10 pm |
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| boojiboy7 wrote: |
| Bennett wrote: |
| 720 degrees and marble madness have analog controls. GIRP has analog controls. Even Peanut Butter Panic has analog controls. But Halo does not have analog controls, even though it uses analog sticks. |
i'm curious as to how you are defining "analog controls". Not saying I agree or disagree, but I want to hear more. |
Analog controls make the controls a direct analogue of the action performed in the game. In GIRP, you're holding onto the letters on your keyboard just as the guy is holding on to the letters on the cliff. In Marble Madness, you roll a real ball to rotate a virtual ball in the same direction. Things can be analog in this sense to a greater or lesser extent.
I think buttons are a reasonable analog of a trigger, which is probably a major reason why so many games involve shooting. But pressing a button is not a whole lot like jumping, accelerating, swinging a sword, etc.
In console FPS games like Halo, you tilt a stick to accelerate the panning of a camera, and you tilt another stick to accelerate your planar movement forward and backward and side to side. I suppose there is a high-level analogy in play... when you want to 'look up' you push a stick up. But I think of this as a indirect, symbolic relationship compared to the one in Marble Madness.
Wii Sports Tennis, to take another example, shoots for perfectly analog controls... swinging an object to swing another object in the game. The high input latency and weak correspondence between the real and virtual 'racquet', though, undermines this quite a bit.
I certainly wouldn't want to say that analog controls are essential in good games, but I think it does aid your sense of embodiment in the character.
Least-analog controls of all time? Typing of the Dead, maybe. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:29 pm |
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I know it's not how the word is usually used - that's why I thought it was worth making the point. Analog is now a kind of shorthand for the opposite of binary or digital controls.
It's true, perhaps 'analogous' controls gets closer at what I'm trying to convey. But if you think about it, this is what is supposed to be conveyed when we say 'analog stick' as well. Analog controllers (such as joysticks, dials, mice, wheels) are called that because there is an analogy between the size and speed of your movements and the size and speed of the movement in the character/cursor/etc.
I'm just suggesting two things:
1) that depending on the actions conveyed in the game, this analogy can be comparatively weak or strong.
2) if the motion in the game is characteristically digital, a digital controller can be strongly analogous in this sense.
Internisus: Hmm, Halo is not the cleanest example... But really you don't exert any extra effort to hold the left stick in place, while your on-screen character labors away climbing hills and running forever. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:48 pm |
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| boojiboy7 wrote: |
| Actually, the term analog when used is anolog stick is meant specifically to refer to the analog technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_electronics (couldn't get the link working properly)) of the original versions of this kind of stick. I think you are confusing "analog technology" with the word "analogy", when actually they are two completely separate terms. |
Yeah this is what I mean, although I expressed it badly. More accurately, an analog stick is analog because the degree of displacement in the stick corresponds to the resistance of the electrical component. This correspondence is a kind of analogy. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:16 pm |
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| Whatever, I'm not hung up on terminology. I was trying to suggest that I think there is a default assumption that analog controls are analogous, which is not always the case; that analogousness is desirable as a conduit to embodiment; and that I think developing GIRP gave me a new insight into these relationships. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:27 pm |
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Do you ever feel embodied in strategy games? It seems like kind of a weird idea since usually you are controlling multiple entities.
I like embodiment in action games. I'm not sure I've experienced it in any other type of game. Maybe I was a bit embodied playing Deadly Rooms of Death. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 3:02 pm |
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| boojiboy7 wrote: |
well, I guess it depends on what you mean by embodiment. If you mean the sense of physically having a body, no, i don't feel that in strategy games. If you mean embodied in the sense of fulfilling a specific role in a game, then yes, i do feel embodied as a general/commander in certain games, and the lack of direct analogy to the specifics of commanding an army (verbal orders, waiting for reports and such) can actually make a player feel more embodied in the game.
I get the sense you are talking more about the first than the later, though, but I still would disagree, with games like Devil May Cry as a decent example, though also 2d Shmups. |
I mean something that encompasses both of those things. When you play certain games, the screen disappears and you feel embodied in the videogame world. I think in action games (especially FPS games) that can mean feeling like you ARE your player avatar. But I guess it could mean feeling embodied in a functional role, too. I hadn't thought about it that way before.
There are good games that don't elicit this feeling at all. Like chess, for example. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 12:32 pm |
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| Interstellar Dinghy wrote: |
btw Bennett, serious criticism: I don't know if you'd actually consider readjusting the wall at all, but the currently difficulty slope is kind of bad
It starts out pretty easy, then proceeds to what is usually the second most difficult bit of the game at around 15-20m, then then next like 50m are easy street, until the very end where you have to do something you don't have to do at all anywhere else in the game.
It was fun getting to the end the first time, but at this point it's just a really really easy climb up to what is essentially a dice roll, and it's kind of annoying.
Really enjoyable otherwise, though. |
I appreciate this. I never did level design in any of my games before, so this was a stab in the dark, and I think you are definitely right that the curve could have been better. I probably won't readjust this one, at least not soon, but I will take what I've learned to the next game.
The idea of the pacing from 17-70 metres is something like this: the handholds get gradually further apart, and there are a couple of setpieces. One is an emotional setpiece where your legs dangle in the open air for the first time, and the other one is where you have to chose between an easy climb with a frightening drop, or a tough vertical ascent. I don't think the last jump is a dice roll, since I've never missed it. But I definitely could have crammed in some more ideas to make the difficulty curve better.
At the end, the bird is supposed to make a play for the gift box, but I must have left a bug in that bit of code since nobody has complained yet that the bird stole their prize. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 5:02 pm |
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| internisus wrote: |
| I tried again with more patience in my heart and eventually reached 72.2. The very last two moves before the box appear to require jumps, which I never ever used to get to that point, and that's a problem for me. I'm completely unwilling to spend the time it takes to get back there again and again to try and fail a jump maneuver. It's simply unfair. |
As luvcraft has pointed out, you can do it without jumping if you work to get a grip on the left side of the ring. But the idea is that you should learn to make reliable jumps. It's not simply random, there is a proper technique so you should never miss a small jump (hint: don't use the flex key)
It's also not true that there is only one advanced technique. I count at least four:
- reach and flex at the same time, letting go of flex shortly after, to maximize vertical movement
- jump safely left and right
- switch hands on the same ring with timing
- use both hands to flex, launching yourself up fast
Actually I'm pretty happy with the number of emergent techniques that are there.
I fixed the bird-stealing-your-box bug. Now it's really properly unfair! |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:23 pm |
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| Tulpa wrote: |
| Bennett wrote: |
- jump safely left and right
- switch hands on the same ring with timing |
Can you describe/post a video of how to do any of the middle two? I managed to get to the top without them. |
To jump safely left and right, pump the flex button and a letter to build up a swing, then hold the target letter, and simply let go of the other hand at the right moment without flexing. You can't jump far this way, but then again the game never requires you to jump more than about 30cm.
To switch hands on the same ring, you need to reach for a handhold far above you, then get a swing going and when you're hanging sideways, let go of all letters, let yourself fall just slightly and then press the letter again. It's hard to get right, but definitely possible.
I didn't want these techniques to be required to get to the top. The game is for everyone, not just for people like you and me. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2011 10:14 am |
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| username wrote: |
| Bennett not to bother you too much but for whatever reason the games on foddy.net simply will never load for me on any browser, leaving me with just a blank black window in the middle of the screen. Flash seems to work everywhere else for me so I was wondering if this has come up before and if you know how to fix it? |
Some IT managers rudely block my site. But if you're able to see the rest of the site, it's probably not that. A very small percentage of people have reported that my site loads really, really slowly, which seems to be a DNS issue. Not sure what to do about it, TBH! |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 9:45 am |
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| The thing is that Virtua Tennis has a perennial, billion-dollar advertising campaign (it's called ACTUAL TENNIS) |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:46 am |
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| Can someone explain to me in simple terms what is wrong with that Sonic trailer? I haven't played a Sonic game since Sonic 3, but it's my understanding that all the 3D games have been bad, I guess? |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 4:25 pm |
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Is anyone else completely let down that some of the concept art consists of incredibly detailed drawings of guns? |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 4:44 pm |
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| GrimmSweeper wrote: |
| Those incredibly detailed drawings are spaceships rather than guns. Check 15. They have two people standing underneath it for size comparison. |
Ahh, good spotting. Ok, I'll suspend judgment. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 11:43 am |
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So I guess Ocarina of Time 3D is being done by an external developer. Pilotwings Resort was done by an external developer. The new Kid Icarus is being made by an external developer (albeit one founded by Nintendo).
Secondly, there are hardly any first-party Nintendo games coming out this year on the Wii.
So I think the question is: what the hell is Nintendo's software division actually working on??? |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 2:36 pm |
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| Texican Rude wrote: |
| Skyward Sword? |
Man, imagine if that game turns out to be good! |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 7:13 pm |
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Don't make fan-games, guys. We all want to do it, but it's not good for you, it's not good for the IP holder, and it's not good for the form.
/edit at least, if you're going to make a fan-game, make sure you spend like four hours on it, not four years. Like my pac-man fan-game, for example. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 7:34 pm |
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| Broco wrote: |
| I don't see how it's bad for any of those parties, except to the extent that our retrograde copyright law makes it bad. |
It's the retrograde copyright law I'm thinking of, on the first two points. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 7:55 pm |
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| Broco wrote: |
| As for "the form", I find it hard to see how the sheer passion and joy often seen in fangames could possibly be bad. |
Passion and joy isn't bad at all, but you've set that up as though the same devs couldn't bring their passion and joy to an original game. The skillset is the same, after all. And as everyone has said, you can still reference your favourite work in your own original titles. |
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Bennett
Joined: 03 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 8:31 am |
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| Last Guardian delayed to 2012. On the plus side, Ueda says it's for quality reasons, rather than because of the tsunami. |
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