E: Chronoland - Trading Time

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CURRENT VERSION

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http://raxterworks.blogspot.com/p/chronoland.html


Controls:
- Mouse: Look and fire
- Space: Slow time (sell time)
- LShift or Right Mouse: Fast time (buy time)

State of this version/what's new:
- v0.05
- Probably the last version for this compo. I do really want to work on it more, but I have a lot on my plate atm so this is it!
- Controls with 3 discrete time manipulation options
- Now with sounds and music (and of course they speed up and slow done with time!)
- Start with pistol, every 30s get a new weapon
- Game lasts 3 minutes
- You can die and you can also now win the game!

Requested feedback for this version:
- Anything really :p
- Is it too easy, too hard?

Known Issues:
- monsters and player walk over the text (trying to fix this, doesn't happen in the editor >.<) ... tho I do kinda like it now

(What would have been) Coming next:
- No annoying mouse cursor
- Explosions
- Blood splatters
- Death sounds for aliens and player
- Incorporation of time storage into win/lose condition (like goal is to get 1 min time stored or something)
- More polished UI (fading text, tweening here and there)


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Original post:

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So, I haven't actually started this yet, but my idea is thus:

Essentially the actual game this could be based in is any game in which bullet time is appropriate. My choice is a Crimsonland/Phobia clone, top-down, you has gun, monsters coming at you from all sides, weapons to pick up, gore, etc, survive pls. The game lasts 5 minutes (real human time) long and you can spend 'time' to go into slowed (bullet) time if you so wish, however this means you have less actual time which means you cannot kill as many monsters (I'm thinking of ramping up the rewards and available weapons per 'game minute' as an incentive to not just bullet time the whole thing). You can buy time by speeding up the game but then you must survive in fast-motion.

Donno if this'll work out but it's a short concept that ought to be easy to implement, plus I've always wanted to make a crimsonland clone

also a special mention to competion D, ALL I SAW WAS UPSIDE-DOWN OF ": D" UBER-SAD EMOTICON FACE "D :"

Now I just see is person with odd grin and big jutting tooth face "E:"

anyway, ideas n' such always welcome. Will post progress as I get to it :)

btw:
http://www.crimsonland.com/

Comments

  • edited
    Ha! I love the idea of using time as a resource in a time-limited highscore game. Very cool! :D

    Maximising the rewarding feeling of the high score would be the best thing, I feel, like unlocks at score thresholds, I think :)

    And I like the Crimsonland name wordplay :P

    COOOOL :D
  • That's a really cool idea in terms of the time manipulation, and I think a Crimsonland kinda game would work very well with that. In some weird way, getting those time bonuses are a bad thing if you're not ready to play really fast, but once you get better at the game, you'll possibly get better at playing super fast. You could ramp up your own difficulty by grabbing extra time boosts... more risk, but more monsters killed.

    Awesome!
  • So ... can I somehow pick how slow my bullet time is? Cause that would be interesting *and* strategic!
  • @Aequitas yes! that's the plan, I'm just thinking what would be a good control scheme to do that... as soon as I get TrailRenderers to play nice with NGUI >.<
  • sweet :D Maybe control timescale with the mousewheel, and the hold a button to 'engage'?
  • *bump, updated with a web build, just a WIP still much to do
  • @raxter - cool Idea. For some reason I wanted the mousewheel the other way around (reverse the slow and fast sides), but that could totally just be me. controls felt real smooth. The bit of drift after releasing a key was spot on. Think it would be cool if you slightly increase the cone radius of the bullets the faster you set the speed (hope that makes sense). Most importantly I think is that this was Fun to play. This can only get better from here.
  • bumpidy bump, added some graphics and a touch of juice, lemme know if it's any sweeter now ;p
  • Hmmmm, the juice is cool :)

    Mechanically...

    > I feel like it'd be better to give the players less degree of control over the time/speed thing - right now scrolling up and down is a bit too much micro for the outcome - I feel like maybe 3 levels of time setting is good enough - and it's more satisfying to jump into bullet time with 1 button or one click or one whatever.

    > is there an end game? The timer got to 0 and it went to -10... -20... etc.

    > is there a score? I'm not feeling like I accomplished anything in the time of shooting.

    > And I got this gun, it sprayed death like crazy death. Like crazy. But it doesn't work like it should, or at least how I think it should... If I had the game at any speed other than really really really slow, the bullets basically went right out the screen - I'm not even sure if it hits anything.

    > And then LAG. The bugs swarming doesn't lag that much, but when I was spraying that gun it just DIED.

    > Feels like the time trading concept needs to be more obvious. With a clear score/time thing, I guess, so people can tell the implication of the time shift.
  • To be honest - I prefered yesterday's prototype weapon to all of the ones I played with now. Weapons felt really unresponsive. Felt like bullets were going over the enemies, or just bumping them back. Also felt a bit too slow, which was weird since I was in control of the speed setting. I agree with @Tuism that maybe just 3 time setting would be better. although I like that you control it with the mouse wheel. I did like the new art. Nice.
  • cool, yeah I agree the mousewheel is a little klunky. Experiment over! Will put in 2 keys, one to speed/buy time, one to slow/sell time :)

    @Tuism:
    - yeah, still have to put an end game condition in :p
    - The last gun is the overkill crazy gun (proly gonna nerf that a bit ;) ), was it just not hitting anyone at the faster speeds? What computer do you have, maybe it was a framerate thing :/ Strange
    - agreed that the time thing is not obvious, I think I'll have a more graphical representation of time bought. Also maybe that you can't slow down unless you've already bought some time

    @FanieG: hmm, I made it such that it required multiple hits per kill, added bullet penetration and made it such that there is knockback. Also the enemies stay alive a fraction of a second before actually dying, this was because I was going to add a dying animation as they were hit, I see this is probably what is making it feel unresponsive?

    ...

    Ok so I actually went and changed some things up again, hopefully more responsive, only 3 time options now, and no overkill gattling gun :p

    thanks for the feedback! I do understand that this is a bit experimental so I really appreciate the comments! Hopefully this can turn out good, lemme know if I'm on the right track
  • oh, and yes, going to add a score system soon ^_^
  • The game is coming along nicely. The idea is pretty cool, but it feels pointless after a while.

    Have you played Dead Ops Arcade in Black Ops? Here is just a quick clip I got from Youtube
  • edited
    double post -____-
  • Dude I really like your game! Found another epic epic example - http://dubwarsgame.com/
  • Love this idea, I think it's the cleverest use of the competition constraint in actual gameplay. :) Looking forward to further versions!
  • Hello all!

    Ok so between looking for a new place to stay and wanting to move on with my other projects, development of Chronoland is bowing down for Comp E. However! I didn't just leave it as you last saw it! Please try out V0.05 (latest version in main post) ^_^ , now with sound effects and music and an actual end to the game thus bringing it into line with the comp rules! I think the sound and music adds a hell of a lot to the game and I hope that you get 3 minutes of enjoyment out of it :) (oh yeah, it's 3 minutes now, could make it longer but the shorter time frame is a bit snappier - thx @Nandrew for the idea)

    So I still would love to hear people's thoughts, even though I don't feel I'm going to work on this much more other than a small bug fix or two. If there is like the most overwhelming request evrawr to add something I'll consider it :p but I doubt there will be, it is what it is, I learned a fair bit, and I kinda like how it turned out (even if I didn't take it to the n-th degree and polish it like I would have liked to)

    With that, part of the curtail is that I want to get working on my other projects now (Gamepad plugin for Unity and 6x Mass Production!)

    Peace, love, and happiness to y'all
  • Just played this for a couple of mins. One thing I would say is that the main resource in these kind of games is actually reload time rather than accuracy when you have such a big swarm. Thus I think it would be interesting if your gun remained at normal time scale when you slow down time. That way you "speed up your gun fire" as it were.

    Also, this game could be called osmoland ;)
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