snipera 2017-12-04 10:30
itch.io link - https://snipera.itch.io/dont-get-hangry
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Don't Get Hangry
By snipera
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 592 | 2.86 | 27 | |
| Fun | 498 | 2.94 | 27 | |
| Innovation | 637 | 2.29 | 27 | |
| Theme | 345 | 3.44 | 27 | |
| Graphics | 624 | 2.27 | 27 | |
| Audio | 442 | 2.52 | 24 | |
| Humor | 301 | 2.80 | 25 | |
| Mood | 578 | 2.41 | 26 |
itch.io link - https://snipera.itch.io/dont-get-hangry
I would love to check this out........ If there were a Mac version! >_<
@tuism Oh man, I'll try to upload a mac version tonight, I didn't install the OSX package on Unity since I just started programming :). I tried making a WebGL, but have no idea how to do that. I'll try checking that out tonight too :)
The game idea is okay, and the game is easy to play. I love the music in this game. I would have liked a bit more polished game play, but overall a fine LD game.
@jk5000 Thank you! - Yeah honestly, I would love more polish too :(, but given the time constraints, and because its the first game I ever made, there are some things I just could not achieve in terms of programming :) - Am glad you loved the music! :D
Got often stuck at the edges. I wish I could shoot in different angles. When horde got too big they started to use their bodies to climb up - it was funny to watch and then deadly :)
It is okay that the game is not super polished. And welcome to LD, I hope also to see you in some more LD's in the future.
@dusho Yeah! I don't know how to make it for you not to get stuck! Still need to look into that hahaha, but I thought it made an interesting mechanic, so I didn't spend the time to learn to fix that.
@jk5000 Thanks! Looking forward to it :). I'll definitely participate every time.
I didn't think to consider food and fatness, but it fits the theme, kind of reminds me of that sonic the hedgehog mod where the gold rings are replaced with onion rings
Nice game! Just a suggestion: the player sprite could also get scaled as you get more food (if it already gets, I'm sorry but I didn't notice it). Congratulations!
@thiagofr - Actually no, he doesn't get taller, but he does get wider the more you eat! :D - I'm glad you enjoyed it.
@scott-r-howell Oh yeah! I didn't even remember that haha. I don't remember how I thought about the idea, but it fit the theme! :D
Got kind of hectic at the end there.
hangry.png
I liked that taking damage was healed by food which made you slower, and the longer you went after the burger the more enemies piled up.
Cool little game, a funny thing that happend to me is that I could infinite jump when touching a ceiling so I cheesed the enemies :^) Good job!
@skibisky Haha you reached maximum fatness! :D
@strelly Thanks! Yeah I know that hahaha, I didn't know how to code those areas properly so you can technically climb infinitely :P
It's simple, but fun. Very innovative concept. One of the red guys fell on top of my head, so I just walked around for a while wearing him as a hat. Personally, I think the weight gain happens too quickly, but that's just a matter of taste.
@belowparralel-ian Hey! Thanks :). Yeah actually I had made the weight gain slower, but there is also a hidden mechanic, where getting hit by enemies reduces your weight gain. I made the weight gain this way as I assumed that players wouldn't dedicate more than 2-5 minutes to this game :P, so I just tried to make the fun mechanics happen as quick as possible :\.
Its pretty fun I guess. The platforms definetely needed to be jump through, as it gives way too large of an advantage for the enemies. But otherwise, a cute game
Hey, not bad! A little glitchy, but incorporates the theme none the less :)
@gaminbru Hey! Thanks :D, yeah, I started programming recently (less than 2 months ago), and I had no idea how to make the platforms only have a collider on one side :(, that was the original intent though!
@mr-chocolatesalmon Thanks! Yeah it is a bit glitchy, as I started coding very recently, and had no idea how to do some things haha.
I take it this is your first Ludum Dare? This is a good attempt but obviously I think you already know the bugs. All of which that I found and more I'm gonna say below.
* Platforms. We both know this. You can get stuck on the side and use that as an adavantage to get up. You also hit the roof. (but that's not a suprise... to any of us.) I am judging you're going for a one-way platform but fail to do so in time. That's fine. I suggest studying in platformers more before the next Ludum Dare, just in case you're ending up with another platformer. * Wow! A secondary bullet. That's new to my critiques. Anyway, the hitbox. I know you used square tiles. It's really subtle to anyone but for everyone with a keen eye, you don't curve on the roof edges. Usually people remove detection on them or compensate detection with the roof edges. * That moment when enemies pile up is actually pretty funny in sight but they're always on the ground. So it was easy to avoid. If only they could jump after you then it would be more tense. * Nice take on the theme as well. You executed it nicely, but not perfect. I only realised I slowed down when the sprite changed. There was burgers on the roof and it was impossible for me to get there. Would be great if you have springs to help you but that's not what the theme asks for, isn't it? * This actually reminds me of Sonic 2 XL, a mod of Sonic 2 where Sonic gets fatter the more you get rings cause in reality, those are onion rings. * You also did good on pacing the bullets. I was hoping to spam it but that would make it too easy. Though, the enemies are tanky enough (even though it's 3 hits...) to be trouble later on and the bullet pacing is not helping, which helps the theme. I only noticed you can just hold the shoot button later on in my second run. * Give me a choice to restart right away next time, alright? * Something with your title can have more gameplay to it, actually. "The angrier you get, the worse it is until you get your next burger but that also makes you worse, too." I wonder how creative can you get with that alone?
Sorry if I hit hard. I did try to give it all I can to make that better. Sadly, I don't know much of Unity to begin with so I could give more help. Good work nonetheless and I hope you do better in the next one!
Here's a tip: Get all the functionality down first. Once you're good with the basics, only then start working on the graphics cause sometimes, simplicity in style is fine but the gameplay could get really fun.
Also, I think you should opt out in Audio. You don't have audio.
@fiakaiera Oh man! Thank you for the awesome review! All of that really helps :D. Yes, this was my first Ludum Dare, and I only started programming less than 2 months ago :D.
Also, I noticed you said I should opt out in Audio! Omg.. the game has such good Audio! I'll have to check if that did not get ported to the Web version!
I'll see if I can continue working on this game with the suggestions you made :), the jumping enemies is something I thought about, but did not end up implementing.
@snipera I assure you, that did not get ported in HTML5.
@fiakaiera Fixed!
Pretty much @fiakaiera said it all - the concepts are solid, the game works, but many little details add up to the game feeling like it doesn't play very well, and those are details that you'll learn over time. Tiny little things like the way the player character moves - having a tiny bit of acceleration as you start to move it, and a tiny bit of slide at the end - but absolutely controllable. The speed of the jump and movement right now feels quite drifty. The "feel" for movement is something you can learn to convey even with a completely unanimated square sprite.
The same goes for the enemies too. They move slowly and sort of monotonously, they would feel much more alive if there were more variation how they move, either moment to moment or diversity between different types.
Cool for a first LD! You'll get better! :)
@tuism Thank you! That's great feedback :D, yeah I tried using using real velocity rather than simply making the movement as a transform x. Thought it added a better "feel" to it. And yeah the monsters were something that I didn't even know how I was going to implement, that was literally last couple of hours haha.
I kinda really wanted to get the design and animation right, since I had never done that before, and wanted to learn it. Probably took too long doing all the animation compared to how long it took to create the rest.
LoL! I was greatly amused after I ate one too many burgers :) Though, I almost wish I could then play the game as the enemy I turned into!
@fiakaiera did a great job summing up all the little things that could be improved in the game. But, I just want to reiterate that you make one heck of a game for only starting programming 2 months ago. I'd say most people wouldn't have even ventured an attempt at LD so quickly. Kudos to jumping into the deep end!
@fussenkuh Thanks! Yeah, I wanted to follow the theme. I actually messed up the triggers for the animation a little bit, because if you eat too many burgers in 1 go, you immediately swap to full fat (Fat level 4 - that's what I called it). But the animation doesn't work the way I expected it to, as it is meant to go from 1 to the other.
Thanks for the words! I will definitely continue participating in this, and continue working on programming and keep it up :).
Since you left amazing feedback on my game I will leave a ton on yours as well!
I don't have much talent for art in Unity and I started out with simple pixel art like yours (though yours is much better than what I could pull off). The biggest tip I can give you about your sprite art is to draw big. When you load up your game, look at how the sprites are blurred and fuzzy (except for the bullet, it looks a lot like on I have seen used in a lot of game dev courses). This is because you drew them small and did not upscale them in the actual drawing program. It is totally fine to draw in small resolutions like 16x16 but you need to resize them to higher resolutions like 256x256 to preserve detail. Unity does a poor job of upscaling on the fly (pretty sure the blur has to do with MSAA) so it often looks much better if you bring your assets to a higher resolution in the drawing program.
It definitely takes a lot of time and practice to get the hang of making decent enough looking art assets (honestly if this was your first try, I'm impressed). My recommendation is to find a friend who is an artist, find a good source of assets, learn how to use various filters and such like in programs like Gimp, Photoshop and paint.net to change random images from the internet into pretty good looking pixel art, and learn as much as you can about shaders and lighting. Shaders and lighting are your best friends, when properly used they can make a 4x4 sprite look awesome.
Learning as much as you can about visual design will help your games look awesome. Constant style is another big point I wanted to bring up. Basically, make the assets look like they were made by the same person, through editing or such like.
Ok, on to the gameplay. Overall, it is a solid platformer, movement is strong (you already know about the platform issues so I am not going to cover it), and has a good minimum viable product. However, there are a few key issues. First of all, there is a lack of enemy diversity. I assume it had more to do with the art side of things than the programming side, but at the very least the enemies should have different attack patterns. For example, maybe the blue ones can fly or something. You get the point. Spawning was an issues for me. I feel that I shouldn't have enemies spawning right next to me (trigger around spawnpoint maybe that stops spawn script when player is in a certain radius). Also, I didn't really like watching the enemies pop into existence, perhaps use a sprite to signify a spawn point or have them drop in from outside of the player view. I like the food idea that was good. The lack of a goal kinda hurt the experience for me. I felt like I should be going right to a endpoint but there was just another wall. Probably having the player start in the middle would set a more survival/exploration type mindset.
Ok, time for some wonderful resources to help you learn more about Unity. Be sure to check these people out as they will bring your code, art, sound and gameplay to a whole new level.
Brackeys - https://www.youtube.com/user/Brackeys
All around great dude. He has pretty good programming tutorials, but I mostly rely on him for the art and music aspects.
Quill - https://www.youtube.com/user/quill18creates
Want to bring your programming skills to another level? He's your dude. Seriously, he covers how to program a ton of different and difficult game types that foil many beginner Unity users (I should know. 4 attempts trying to make an RTS failed, then I found him. Got one done in 3 days).
Extra Credits - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCODtTcd5M1JavPCOr_Uydg
Watch them. They are awesome. Extra Credits is run by a bunch of insiders on the gaming industry, artists, animators, programmers ect. They also have a ton of different side shows like Extra History, Extra SciFi, and a couple others. The Extra Credits people are amazing. Gameplay is their thing. Just watch all of their videos. You will learn so much about what actually makes a game good and such like.
I just hit the word limit. Dang. That's crazy.
Continued:
Plugins to use:
TextMeshPro
Fixes the crap text in Unity
Post Processing Stack
Makes everything look great if you use it right
Resources:
Do the tutorials on Unity's site.
Read all of Patrick Felicia's books and follow along.
If you would like me to look over your actual source code and see if I can give any tips or tricks (I don't really know, you might be a lot better than me), I would be happy to!
If you couldn't tell, I liked the game! Nice work, it reminds me a lot of my first!
@turbulentwinds Oh wow! Such an awesome review :D, and so much feedback haha. I had to go back and see what awesome feedback I gave, because I only remembered about the colliders! But yeah, this was my first time actually making sprites for a game, as I only started programming a couple of months ago, and have a full time job, so I only get the evenings to learn.
I have actually fixed the platform issue and will post it up post LD review phase. Basically I set up 1 way colliders for the platforms, which I didnt actually know existed :3.
Ive been doing some Tutorials, but I feel that I dont learn that much from them, and actually learn a lot more by looking at the ideas that I want to create and directly create them - which was why the LD was actually really good for me in terms of all that I learnt from the amazing feedback I got from everyone. I'll definitely use these assets that you mentioned to learn more about this. And I have no plugins at all for Unity, so I'll definitely check them out and add them.
Also, I'm really stoked that you liked the game haha. Regarding the enemies, I made the AI for them around 3 hours before the Jam ended, and prior to the jam, I had no idea how to do that.
Also, initially I really wanted to have an end goal, but given my lack of skill in this, I just wanted to get a project done, and did not have any time to even think about creating an end goal. I wanted to make it a sidescroller, which was why you started in the left corner of the map rather than the center, I simply forgot to move the player back to the center when I finished creating it :D. And about the design, oh man I didnt even think about upscaling in Photoshop itself, because usually when I upscale things from 16x16 to 256 or higher, it ends up looking really shitty, but I tried it out and its actually much better than what Unity does. I did notice the blurriness but didn't even think I could do anything about it, since I'm not a designer at all.
Again, thanks for the great feedback! It is going to be rly rly helpful in my next Jam. By then I'll definitely have improved my skills in unity and programming in general, and will be able to create this a lot better. I also had no experience in animation or the animator in unity, which is why it fucks up sometimes (when you eat too many burgers at once).
A very cool game. I like the mechanics and it was a lot of fun playing
@savinvadim Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it :)