Need feedback on a game concept for school please

Syngyne · May 2008

I got permission from CardboardTube to post this.

Hey all,

I would appreciate it if I could get some feedback on a project of mine. I don't know if anyone remembers, but for school I'm working on a multiplayer Flash game called Project: GunBug. I've knocked together a single player demo to show some of the concepts I want to implement, and I need to get some feedback on it.

If you have the time, please go here and take it for a spin. Please note that it's a really early product, and as a result is not really that exciting. There is a single target on the field that doesn't react or move. It's just there so that you have something to try the attack mechanic on. The goal is to eventually have the other unit controlled by another player with the same type of interface, and have each player taking turns doing a move+attack.

A screenie:

Also, if you have a chance, please leave me feedback on the forum I've set up for the project. You'll need to register to post on the forum, but I currently have activation turned off so you should be able to post immediately after registering. You can also leave feedback here, but it would be more beneficial for me if it were on the forum so I could point my instructors to one place.

Edit: You need to register before you can see the forums at all. The first time you hit the forum it will just be a login page saying there are no forums to show.

Known issues:

You can sometimes score a hit in the red zone and it will register as a miss. I think I borked the hit boundaries for some of the reticle types. Also, on an old version it seemed to do that if you sat still and shot for some reason, so it may be a lingering bug from that.
There is not much of a difference in the target pip speeds. I actually noticed this when I ran the demo for the first time in a browser. It runs MUCH faster when I run it directly from Flash, and there's a noticable difference in speeds. At long ranges it's really, really hard to score a hit if you burn all 6 MPs. I think this is a consequence of me using setInterval to move the target pip. I'm going to have to try another method as I develop the game more.
It may take a bit to fully load. The demo is pulling map layouts from .xml files, so it takes a second to load up. Future versions will have some sort of loading progress monitor.
There isn't currently an undo button for the movement. It'll give you MP back if you turn one direction and then immediately turn back the other direction, but you can't step backwards. An undo of some sort will be added for user-friendliness in the future.
Range is currently being determined by a kludge and doesn't quite accurately count the hexes between you and the target, resulting in some oddness with the target reticle at close range. When I get A* wrangled into the game this will change.
Terrain currently only effects movement, not weapons fire. Again, when I get pathfinding into the game it will resolve this.
Facing doesn't currently make any difference. Another issue that pathfinding should take care of.
There is no multiplayer. Actually, there is, if you consider a chat lobby a game, but it's not part of this demo. >_>

I appreciate any feedback I get on this.

jackal · May 2008

I like it. This is a minor thing, but it would help the pace of the game if you overlapped the firing, and under fire animations. Maybe start the under fire animation after the first two shots are fired in the firing animation.

Syngyne · May 2008

jackal wrote: »

I like it. This is a minor thing, but it would help the pace of the game if you overlapped the firing, and under fire animations. Maybe start the under fire animation after the first two shots are fired in the firing animation.

That's something to consider. The firing animation is also a bit long as it is... the Murphy fires 10 shots, but only five are ever seen in the target portrait.

Any other suggestions/observations? Do you think alternating move+attack turns of this nature would work well for multiplayer? Does the combat mechanic seem fun or unnecessary?

jackal · May 2008

Based on what I saw I think it could work well for multiplayer. I could see the strategy getting pretty deep especially if you did things like vary damage based on direction of fire. For example make attack from directly in front do the least damage and damage increases toward the back. You could also vary accuracy based on the direction the attacking robot is firing.

Syngyne · May 2008

Currently, what's happening for accuracy is that the farther away from your target you are, the smaller your hit areas on the reticle are. The target reticle is a single graphic with 11 frames, starting from a wide area with a relatively large red zone to a tiny hit area with no red zone at frame 10. Frame 11 is for out of range. The range between you and the target determines what frame of the reticle is displayed. Terrain effects, when implemented, will bump the frame up for each hex of terrain your LOS passes through, with heavy woods bumping by two frames. I am up in the air whether or not to cap it at the smallest hit area, or allow a lot of terrain to make it impossible to shoot at someone. I am also thinking for ballistic weapons to have each hex of terrain soak a little (like 10%) damage for each hex between you and the target. I also imagine that the hex you are sitting in will not count against you, so it will give you an incentive to fire from inside cover.

I also do want to make it so someone has to be in front of you for you to fire at them. Right now, as someone pointed out on another board, it seems like all that's going to happen is two people will get up in each others' faces and just shoot until one of them goes down. I'd like positioning to be a little more important and involved than that.

jackal · May 2008

Have you thought about doing a gradient instead of two distinct zones? The thing that concerns me is that there isn't much of a practical difference between a fairly narrow yellow zone and a very wide yellow zone. Unless the yellow zone is very narrow it is pretty much a sure thing, so once you get it a little wider than the minimum width there isn't a benefit to getting closer until you get the red zone./

Syngyne · May 2008

Well, the damage is scaled according to where you land in the yellow zone. If you stop the pip right near the left side, you'll do maybe 5-10% total damage, whereas if you stop it at the right edge it will do 90%. The red zone is 100% all the way through.

It was brought up elsewhere that the 10% extra damage isn't really that noticeable, so that will be changed. At the moment I'm thinking of capping the yellow zone at 80% base weapon damage, and having the red zone do 100% damage and give a 15% or so chance of doing 1.5x base damage.

Frem · May 2008

It might make sense to move the red zone a little bit into the yellow zone. I kept barely missing it by like a fraction of a millimeter and missing completely.

Syngyne · May 2008

That may actually be due to the glitch mentioned in the op... there are some instances where you can land right in the middle of the red and you'll still miss. I need to take a look at the values I have set up for each reticle frame, I might have gotten some mixed up as this was a result of yet another no-sleep coding session.

It may also have something to do with setInterval again.

Thanks for the feedback so far, and keep it coming.

Penny Arcade

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Need feedback on a game concept for school please

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