D: Super Hexapinball

So I figure it's about time I enter one of these things again. It's been far too long since I made and released something of my own, so it's a refreshing endeavour. This time it was partly so I could mess around with things I'd never done before, but mostly it was an excuse to make a physics toy game, something that's been a long time coming.

I've only put about two short nights of work into it, and I'm afraid I spent an embarrassingly significant proportion of that time just trying to remember how to bend Blender to my will - I haven't had a reason to use anything like it in years! So the game isn't quite as developed as I would have liked, but I think it's far enough along that I can overcome my perfectionist tendencies and share it.

So that game is Super Hexapinball.

image

Objective:
  • Match colours. (I apologise in advance to any colourblind players. I'm sorry.)
  • Don't fail to match colours. (Seriously, I'm sorry)
  • Maintain a positive score (shown horrendously in the top-right for now) for as long as possible.
Controls
Left: You spin me round,
Right: ...baby right round.
Left+Right: Super Hexapinball attraction field. (Costs 3 score)

Play it here. (~750kb. Requires Unity Web Player)
Competition version maintained at this link, for posterity.
Full Unity 4.0 source

A special mention to @Gazza_N, who provided the voice tracks. Everything else is mine.

Comments

  • Those are the best game and control instructions I've read in forever.

    I love the idea, and especially enjoy how it starts off slow and simple but gets crazy-go-nuts once the spawn rate increases and the table thingums start reconfiguring. It's exactly what it says it is! It's Super Hexagon Pinball!

    Prompts that let the player know to rotate to start would be great, as I spent a good few seconds waiting for something to happen until I tried pressing buttons. An input dead-zone on game over would be cool too, as I ended up insta-restarting right at the moment that I failed with only that charming voice (who is that?) to indicate that I'd borked my score at all. There's flow there, sure, and it's good that they player doesn't have to wait for an elaborate death cutscene before they can begin again, but I think they should know that they done terminally screwed up. :P

    Some sort of visual indication of the attractor field's duration (and range, if relevant) would be cool too, to allow better panicked movement planning. :P
  • All your UI and flow-related points are valid. They're primarily an artifact of me implementing all of it in literally 5 minutes at 1:30am, when I kind of just wanted to sleep. I may get some time to wrangle it into a not-crap state over the weekend, perhaps. There is much to be done, time permitting.
  • It's a very cool and simple idea :)
  • Yo! It gets completely nuts!! UI and flow things notwithstanding, here are some feedback bits:

    >> I find it difficult to understand whether the objects are just hanging around the centre according to distance or according to time.

    >> When the different shapes started appearing I expected them to do different things, do they?

    >> I had a hard time understanding gravity from the get-go - the fact that everything is designed to radiate outwards made me immediately think that gravity "falls" outwards from the centre. So in this case I think the theme is distracting from the mechanic. Maybe if a background "landscape" is placed it would more immediate that there is downward gravity? Just some visual cues that matches the intention of the mechanic.

    Cool game! :D
  • edited
    I find it difficult to understand whether the objects are just hanging around the centre according to distance or according to time.
    A good point - I intend to make the object's outline express this state a little more clearly right now, but what it ACTUALLY does is perhaps not immediately clear either:

    The black center does NOT dampen the current motion, and doesn't exert any physical forces on the shapes at all. Any objects touching the center are simply affected by normal gravity at 10% strength, which gives you one of a few ways to 'sort' objects (the other major one being the green sticky paddles), by manipulating other objects around it while keeping some suspended inside. Basically as it stands, if you can't see a full outline, the object's experiencing weak gravity. Objects can re-enter the center to return to this state too, which is something else you can exploit to help get your shit in order!

    It's also a handy way to give you a way to prepare for what's coming next.
    When the different shapes started appearing I expected them to do different things, do they?
    Technically, no, they have the same mass, are worth the same amount of points, and otherwise behave identically. Spheres are always the most common, followed by cubes and then tetrahedrons.

    However, their physical behaviour is INFORMED by the shape, and as such they do act differently by virtue of having that different shape. Spheres are easier to control, and their bounces more predictable. Pyramids and cubes, however, roll less, and by having a larger surface area on their faces means friction is more likely to prevent them from sliding (and they're more likely to stick for longer against the sticky paddles, since they have more to grip on)
    I had a hard time understanding gravity from the get-go - the fact that everything is designed to radiate outwards made me immediately think that gravity "falls" outwards from the centre. So in this case I think the theme is distracting from the mechanic. Maybe if a background "landscape" is placed it would more immediate that there is downward gravity? Just some visual cues that matches the intention of the mechanic.
    Gravity goes down, yo. Whatchoo smokin'? :P

    In seriousness, though, I can understand this perception. I don't think it's aided by the (hideous) score area effect which pulses in a regular sort of way, and might give you that misleading idea. Another problem here is that objects have a fairly high inertia, so they don't immediately appear to react to the changed gravity (so you can sling them). I'll think about how to address this. I'm very much against putting any sort of static imagery in the background. I want the whole screen to be in motion at all times.

    Thanks for the feedback, 'tis appreciated. Glad you enjoyed it :D
  • This is rather cool! I'm terrible at it, but it's cool!

    For what it's worth, I don't think that I had any trouble with the gravity (although I'd confessedly read about it in the thread, I believe). The only thing that I didn't manage to glean after a few attempts was the condition for losing -- perhaps it's in the UI somewhere, but my concentration was held by the pace of the game itself, and so I didn't give the UI much time...

    And hey, mine was going to take the prize for "hacked together at the last moment", and then you just had to swoop in and steal it from me! :P
  • I liked this, 41seconds which makes me feel more superiour to that -other- hexagon super-game, youknowhatimean.
  • Really addictive little game. Things I like: simple, colourful, challenging, having to hold myself back from bragging that I beat DukeOFprunes' scoreoops! >:> I hope you develop this further and bring in some different pinballs with god-knows-what consequences, that would be cool :)
  • Thanks for playing!

    I do hope to get some time to expand it a little; unfortunately I didn't get around to it before the competition ended, but it looks like something that I'd be happy to just drop somewhere for free once I've smoothed it out a bit. Perhaps I shall do that.
  • Make sure Gazza gets royalties for vocal licensing and stuff.
  • Of course. He deserves at least 60%. The game would be nothing without the voice talent.
  • Very generous of you. That should cover the production costs quite nicely. The hospital bills from people associating my voice with horrible failure, not so much. :(
  • edited
    So I put down a few more hours and I've made what will likely be the last update to the game, featuring a whole bunch of new changes to pretty much everything. The game is faster, a bit prettier, with proper UI and better game flow, and a couple of design changes made in the process. The link's been updated in the first post (as well as a link to where the old competition version will live).

    Importantly, I spent most of that time cleaning up the source files for readability so I could share those. I've posted a link to all the project and source files for the game, released with the usual disclaimer of 'it probably won't break your computer, but if it does, well. Sorry.' The state management is as sloppy as you'd expect for a 12 hour project, but I hope it's still useful to someone! Do whatever you want with it!

    I should also point out that, while it SHOULD work (I was careful not to use any pro features), I did not actually test this in the free version of Unity. If someone gives it a shot and finds it doesn't, please do let me know and I'll see what I can do to amend the project.
    Thanked by 2Tuism Gazza_N
  • So as the colourblind guy, I just played this. Erm, ya - the purple and blue was totally lost on me. I assume it was purple at least. A good way around that would have been to associate shapes with colours. If I could learn say, purple was triangle and blue was square that would have helped. And then some kind of shape indicator for the which side you're on. Maybe the hexagon in the middle could change with the colour? It's the kind of thing that I think would help regular players as well when their brains are under pressure...

    Of course this isn't something you've worked on for very long and all of that qualifies as extra work. Mentioning here just for informative purposes. (We've also chatted about this on twitter)
    Thanked by 1Chippit
  • Thanks for giving the game a try!

    Did you have any trouble distinguishing the score and timers from the backgrounds, between all three colours? I was careful, when calculating those colours for contrast, to vary only saturation and value and not touch the hue. So I expected that they should be clearly visible for all types of colourblindness, but it's difficult to be certain without asking!

    I really like the idea of changing the shape of the middle. I hadn't considered doing that at all, and it's a really great plan. Right now, the shapes actually do have different properties (squares fall faster, triangles are less affected by the center-block's dampening), and it would mean changing the design further to accommodate the prospect of having them represent colours, though it's not a bad idea at all.

    All that said, I think I'd always sort of written this game off as something I wouldn't be able to salvage for colourblind folks, I'm afraid. I didn't give it much thought, I mostly just wanted to make something quickly!

    But again, thanks for playing. I appreciate that you gave it a shot despite the disclaimer and the fact that it was clearly not taking colourblindness into much consideration at all.
  • @Chippit UI stuff is solid. Unless-of-course-there-is-something-ninja-i-didn't-even-see ;) I think you got it right though.

    Possibly useful to note colour identification is hard (this colour is x), but color comparison (colour x looks different to y) is usually much easier, especially if they are right next to each other. Colour equality however is quite hard, because that falls in the the first category (both these colors are x).
  • edited
    Yeah, I think that's where I got it wrong. I would've thought that matching colours would be a bit easier than identifying them. But then, I recognise now that that must surely be difficult if they're not adjacent (and not in an action-packed scenario!).

    Also, of course, that's not going to work if you can't tell the difference between the blue and the purple at all.

    Things to think about! Thanks!
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