[WIP] Broke Back Biker (working title)

edited in Projects
Hiya,

So I have recently started a new project and would appreciate your feedback (*ducks*)...

A Windows 8 game coded in MonoGame and it uses the Farseer physics engine.
The prototype currently runs on an ASUS Transformer Book T100 tablet (Windows 8.1)

This is a physics based motorbike game (inspired by Kickstart 2 for the Commodore C64) that will have various stages within varying biome's.

The player needs to complete each stage under a pre-defined time and performing tricks will deduct time while taking damage will add penalty time to the overall time it takes to complete a stage. It's still very rough, but this video should give you an idea...

Broke Back Biker

Comments

  • @konman, I can't say much about the game. From the video it looks like a lot of other games like it.

    One problem I do want to mention though is that the camera started making me sea sick. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it was because of the up down motion being extremely snappy and jarring. I'm not sure if this is a problem while playing though.

    Other than that can't say a lot more without actually playing it.
  • Okay, I hope I don't sound harsh here, but in a world that has Trials HD in it, you need to figure out a reason for this game to want players. At the moment the camera means you can't see much of the level at all, so there's no pre-planning. At best you get to crash into something, restart at a checkpoint and then know what's coming so that you don't have to crash the same way.

    What can you do with this to make it stand out? Shrink everything down, make it a 1-screen time completion puzzle like 10 Second Ninja? Make the bike break apart and you still have to cross the finish line somehow, instead of having discrete checkpoints? Other ideas?
  • edited
    @Rigormortis Mmmh, interesting, thanks. The camera does indeed scale according to velocity of its target, so this might be a problem during actual gameplay for people who tend to have motion sickness. I'll monitor it and switch it off if the problem persists. I use it as a means to generate more screen real-estate in-front of the rider as they speed-up to make prediction of navigating obstacles a bit easier... (problem could be solved by dislekcia's suggestion) Edit: Just watched video again and agree with up down movement is very jarring... mhhh, time for new shocks.

    Regarding there being lot of similar games like it. Agreed. As a new indie dev, I am not yet trying to do something radically different per se. Learning how to create a game is still my main objective. Many games out there imitate one another, the trick is to get a gimmick or 2 that sets ones own game apart. (Battlefield/COD/Minecraft clones and MOBA tower defense clones are aplenty)

    @dislekcia I agree the scale needs to be smaller to help prediction. Currently it means one has to slam into objects and feel your way through the stage. Could be frustrating. As the designer I "know" which obstacles are coming so its not as obvious as when someone else plays it. LOL. I am not trying to knock Trials HD off its pedestal ;) But thanks for mentioning that game. I've never heard of it, but it looks fantastic. I also want to do a breakout, sokoban and gravitar clone to hone the skills before I develop a game that shakes it's fists and shows the world what is wrong with society :-) I'll look into 10 Second Ninja to see what you're referring to re 1 screen time completion.

    Thanks a mill for the feedback and critique guys. If anyone has any ideas for that special gimmick to improve it further, I am all ears. :-)

    Cheers!
    Edit: Maybe a stage progression minimap in the form of a line could help with obstacle prediction. (Or a co-driver doing a "left 2" as in Colin Mcrea)

    Another edit: (I sound like Jonathan Blo - "I wish") Receiving feedback like this is just awesome. I am guilty of lurking these forums too much and not providing such stunning feedback to other developers. Note to self. Have to do better.
  • The point isn't to try and knock Trials off its pedastal, the point is that if there is something existing that what you're making is VERY similar to, you either should learn from it completely, learn why it made the decisions it did in its design, in its juice in its controls, etc, and learn learn learn from it (partially by copying, but intelligent copying, like building it and understanding why those decisions were made), OR,

    try and learn from it, then decide why you're different from it - NOT BETTER, just different. Different design decisions lead to more different design decisions. If you try and change one thing about it (like @dislekcia said if you made it one screen), it'll lead to an entirely different game with different decisions and different results/learnings. Now I'm not saying you should take @dislekcia's idea and implement and it's the only way, but think about it and make it something different.

    At the end of the day, knowing what's out there in the same space as you lets you see what already has been tried, what works and doesn't, and accelerates your learning - as long as you learn from it instead of just copying without thought OR deciding to just ignore everything else so you wouldn't "be influenced by it". So many people think that they should lock themselves away from the world so that they won't get "influenced", but I don't think that's the right way to go about it.

    Knowing is half the battle! :) Learning from others is a good shortcut! :)
  • edited
    @Tuism Nice post, I found the bit about some peoples strategy to lock themselves away "to not be influenced" quite funny, but insightful. A log cabin in the woods came to mind. I think to build something totally unique in todays indie game scene is very very hard especially for a new dev since it just *feels* like most things have already been done. Therefore I have resigned myself to imitate rather than innovate while still learning the ropes for now :) I'd love to make that motor bike game different from the others, so I am open to suggestion.

    I want to add obstacles that are interactive and consist of many moving parts for instance, and add items that will hinder or improve the players progress. I even thought of a power-ups like a "heart-attack" moto-x move, that displays a full-screen black-and-white image that obscures the players view for a second or 2. While it provides an advantage (deducts seconds), it also has a disadvantage of obscuring ones view. Not sure if this would be a fun feature or not.

    Thanks for the input :)
  • edited
    I just happened to come across this article that queries the difference between a blatant clone and building a proven game.
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