Fling Fu

edited in Projects
If Torybash and Teenage Mutant Ninja Puppets met in a bar, got drunk and then got busy, Fling Fu would be born nine minutes later. If we lived in a world where spastic ragdolls were trying to take over the world, Fling Fu would be the meaning of life. If the question is " mid air teabagging? " then Fling Fu would be the answer.

If you have any questions, preferably about Fling Fu, I'd be glad to spew out some cryptic answers.

If you want to get involved in testing/flinging ninja-feet into ninja-faces, just ask and I'll try to get a copy of the game to you or you to a copy of the game.

If you played the game and think you can do better art or programming/game design than me, id be glad to hire you to make the game for me. If you don't count sexual favors as a form of payment, you won't be payed. <-JOKE (just the payment part)

If you just want to write silly Fling Fu catch phrases you are welcome to do that to.

Here is the link to the game builds /https://www.dropbox.com/sh/i80d5kfevhytz76/9WFSAKRj8E

Comments

  • VIDEO!!! or demo. pls. :D
  • I may put a video on youtube later. For now the screenshot will have to do :)
  • Dang nabbit! Copypasta from the other thread, makes more sense here:

    @notsimon207 Was great to get a look at Fling Ninja last night I'll drop you a message with my email so I can get a test on device for you as discussed.

    Outside of that, I thought a bit more about the "what it needs to be launchable" thing:
    * Content: So you have a great gameplay demo now, and you've made it clear you don't want to do levels that need to be progressed through, but you'd at least need some varied arenas to give your players some reason to keep playing. You did mention obstacles and traps, once those are in you're talking more of a real game.
    * Motivation/Progression: Again, as a gameplay demo it's fun, but other than killing all the enemies there's no real reason to play. So it's kill all the enemies, play once again maybe to kill all enemies, probably delete from device. So some kind of endless spawning of enemies perhaps? Starting with just a couple and ramping up to crazy. Maybe the enemies get bigger and tougher somehow?
    * Scoring: Builds on the motivation, score per hit perhaps? With higher score for certain hits? Perhaps this could be tied to the energy recharge, giving a bump in energy for high quality hits. How about a combo counter with energy recharge rewards based on chained hits? Ditto for varied hits.
    * Leaderboards: Once scoring is figured out, adding something like OpenFeint would be essential for devices.
    *Visual Juice (yay for talk reference ): Simple blood particles or other effect on impact, swipe trails. As discussed your minimal monochrome look is AWESOME, so need to be careful to not detract from it, but splashes of colour from effects over the generally monochrome world and characters would stand out beautifully IMO.
    *Audio Juice: Was there audio? Need impact sounds at least and music.
    *Menu and UI: @Elyaradine had a good suggestion about UI inspired by Japanese paintings (Okami Jono?), I could see something simple like that looking great. Simple brush strokes behind a clean font for score, etc. Menu wise, again simple could be perfect, and trust me after spending couple of weeks on menus, you want to keep it simple

    I know you said you'd rather be watching TV (seriously!?) but if you are one of the few people that actually have the luxury of spending a full 6-8 hours a day on this, you could probably get it launch ready in under two months.

    Oh, and sadly the name Fling Ninja is taken: http://goo.gl/LXLYt
  • @mattbenic Wow, thank's for taking the time to the think of and write such a detailed list. It really helped to make that sketchy road to "launchable game" a bit more clear.

    *Content: I agree, varied arenas and obstacles are essential. I was thinking to have the different arenas connected to the score or time somehow. Say after getting 100 points or 5 min the arena changes eg: traps added to the sides; this could even hapen without loading a new area, just lowering the traps into the current arena or make them come out of the ground (like a theater stage floor).
    If that seems a bit tricky to do without disrupting the game I could always load a new area/scene and just keep the persons current score.
    *Motivation/Progression: Definitely going to do the spawning enemies that become tougher, bigger and smarter further on.
    *Scoring: A score system with combos sounds best. That should also eliminate complete risk-free playing (kick once run away and recharge energy repeat). As for having the score system linked to the energy: I was thinking of adding food or something that spawns randomly in the arena, eating these then replenish energy. This mechanic should keep people from standing in a corner and waiting for approaching enemies.
    *Visuals: If I do decide to stay with the monochrome, and from what people are saying it seems likely, I could to the in game art myself; and blood particles will look awesome!
    *Audio: I haven't even touched on audio yet. It will be easy to implement hit sounds, I can even adjust the sound volume according to the impact velocity. Thinking of making super hard hits trigger a bone breaking sound. As for music: I'm not sure how to go about music. Any ideas on the stile of music to use? And what to do for the slow-motion sound?
    *Menu and UI: I have little to no experience with menu and GUI design. But simple and clean sounds good. Totally digging the Japanese Paintings idea!

    I was'n serious about rather watching TV :) and I look forward to working on the game!

  • And we look forward to seeing you finish it. ;)

    Best of luck, once again.
  • And, at the risk of chastisement for double posting, but damn, these emoticons are hideous. Can we make them optional, at the very least?

    Eugh.
  • "Any ideas on the stile of music to use? And what to do for the slow-motion sound?"
    Something with an oriental element to it could work nicely with @Elyaradine's UI suggestion. Think cheesy kung-fu movies.
  • When I saw this I thought it was brilliant, I'd be happy to test for you
  • @mattbenic I don't think that stile of music goes very well with the slow-motion stile of the game play and pace of the game... I'll just keep looking for inspiration.
    @aodendaal Glad you like it :) at the moment only some people at the previous game meet played it, but I could probably get you a demo through Dropbox. I'm going to get a group of people (mainly people I meet at the community session each month) to test the game.
  • @notsimon207 I've seen your game in action and I really love the core mechanic!

    In terms of where to go from here, I think it would be cool if the character killed the enemy ninjas in one hit. From what I've seen, pacing might be a problem if it is too difficult to kill enemies. So perhaps the challenge of earlier levels could come from the sheer number of enemies a player must battle . I mean, you want the player to feel all powerful - not so weak that he has to kick a guy in the head multiple times for him to fall.

    This setup would also lend itself better to the real-time playback of the mission, that @aodenhaal suggested the first time you showed it. This game would be cool on touch screen devices, but only if the missions are relatively short and sweet (as people play mobile games for only a couple minutes at a time).
  • @Bensonance I agree that it should be easier to kill the enemies at the beginning of the game, but the whole point of the game is that the damage is calculated according to how hard you punch the enemy. If the player could just kill the enemies in one shot there is no reason for them to try and land better, harder and more precise blows. In the demo I showed last night it is very much possible to knock an enemy out with one well placed blow to the head. You should also take in consideration that hitting an enemy into another enemy will cause extra damage to the colliding enemies, If every hit was a kill hit you would be able to kill hordes of enemies with a single pansy punch ;) (which could be pretty cool as a special enemy type actually) <- thanks for inspiring that idea tho :)
  • Hi everybody, as @mattbenic said earlier the name Fling Ninja is already in use, thus I am on the lookout for a new name. So far the best I can come up with is "Swing Ninja". Someone else said "Pirate Ninja"
  • edited
    Easiest thing to do for testing is just upload the game somewhere and link it here. You'll get much more feedback that way. Plus I'm interesting in playing the game and I'm not going to make it to the JHB meetups, seeing as I'm on the other side of the country...

    If you're going for a slow-time sort of feel, what about traditional chinese instrumental music for the game? Think the rain fight scene from Hero, where Nameless fights Sky (if I remember the character name correctly, the dude played by Donnie Yuen). Bonus points for making the music tie into the action.

    Names:
    Swing Swing Ninja
    Swish Flick Ninja
    Throw Star Ninja
    Flinja
    Fling Fu
    Fling Jitsu
  • @notsimon207 yes, I was at the first meeting where you demo'ed the game. I was the one who suggested putting a time limit on completing a stage and replaying the level at normal speed to show off your Kung Fu. I was also the one who suggested the traps and obstacles. I'll try make it to the next meeting with a memory stick it tow ;)

    @dislekcia, I vote for the name Fling Fu!
  • Fleet Kune do
    Ninjachucks
    Poresu flinging
  • @notsimon207 Ah I remember you saying that the first time.It doesn't really come across that harder and precise blows cause more damage - at least when watching. Perhaps you need to emphasize that somehow? Harder/more precise hits make the enemies flash a different color perhaps?

    As for the chain reaction - it would be pretty awesome :D. But if you don't want that you can just specify that only collisions with the player avatar cause damage? Either way, you seem to have good ideas about where to go from here :).
  • edited
    @Dislekcia Fling Fu! Awesomeness! As for the music; tempting but not tempting enough... It's A tad slow. But I like the one Instrument thing.
  • edited
    @ aodendaal I totally remember you man! I was actually looking for you at the meet. The replay thing seems much easier. @mattbenic told me about a ready made kit for unity that tracks the location, rotation and scale of all the objects in the game and the replays it like that. Seems simple enough. I could get you a demo even before the next meet. I just want to keep testing to a small group of people at first :)
  • @Bensonance You're right! It it's not emphasized at all. The quick flash trick might do the trick. I'm also hoping that adding the blood and sound effects will give it that extra punch.
  • I put forward Flippin' Ninjas as a name.
  • @ Karuji Neato double meaning!
  • Hi everyone. I wan't to change the games name to "Fling Fu" as suggested @Dislekcia. So if anyone has any more awesome names now is the time. ;)
  • Flip flung fu?
  • Hey everyone here is the new logo for the game!
    Thanks @Dislekcia
    Fling Fu_logo wb.png
    1080 x 720 - 46K
  • edited
    "@mattbenic told me about a ready made kit for unity that tracks the location, rotation and scale of all the objects in the game and the replays it like that."

    And here it is, not cheap, but if you have the cash to spend on it probably totally worthwhile:
    http://u3d.as/content/soft-rare/ez-replay-manager/1QY

    Edit: And "Fling Fu" is a brilliant name! Go register flingfugame.com NOW :)
  • That's like the only time I've ever come up with a non-crap name. Usually everything I build has to be named be other people, otherwise it sounds stupid... QCF used to be called Squirrel Cube for crying out loud.
  • [quote = dislekcia]Fling Jitsu[/quote]
    Instant win.
  • mattbenic said:
    And here it is, not cheap, but if you have the cash to spend on it probably totally worthwhile
    Im sure Im not alone in that I would not mind helping "kickstart" the buying of that AND the domain :D
  • @mattbanic Thanks for referring me to the package. Correct me if I'm wrong but judging from the two demos they have, it records and plays back frames not the scene in an animation like way. For example: in the demo replay function you can slow the replay down;slowing the repay to half speed pretty much halves the frame rate but speeding up the replay to double speed keeps the frame rate high, thus I think it merely records frames, kinda like Fraps. Also the demo offers no camera or any other control during the play back, which would have demonstrated that it actually records position, rotation and scale of all the objects.

    If anyone has used this software, please share your experience/knowledge.
  • I haven't fiddled with the toolkit, but i get the impression from their site and demo it stores keyframed data consisting of transform and possibly other data, not a video or anything like that. Wat data would you have expected?

    http://www.softrare.eu/ez-replay-manager-demo-1.html#.Tw_9E2OonRM
  • I expected key framed data, just like the documentation said. But if that is the case what is the reason for the low frame rate when replaying in half the speed? That, to me at-least, points to it being based on a sort of video capture, unless the stuttering is because no keys are available for the in between frames. I wan't to be able to move the camera while the scene replays at normal speed.
  • Perhaps their slowdown just adjusts Unity's global time, and their framer ate counter is using that timer as well?
  • Hi everyone. I have a bit of a problem in the game, only realized it's a problem when I saw people playing the game. I'm using a modified "DragRigidbody.js" that comes standard with unity to drag the ninja around. To limit the amount of force the player can exert on the ninja I just put the spring variable really low (23). This does limit the amount of force the player can drag with, but it also makes the dragging unresponsive (you have to drag super hard to perform a move). If I increase the "spring" value to around 50 it is way awesomely responsive but you can kick through walls an one hit kill anything with a mere punch to the knee.
    Is there any way to limit (or even measure ) the force applied to the ninja by the dragging mouse?

    Any ideas are totally welcome :).
  • @mattbenic Sorry I wasn't very clear. The movement becomes choppy, I'm not actually looking at a frame counter.
  • You could try making a note of when the drag begins, and then when it ends calculate the force? (It should already have handlers in the code, you would just need to tweak it to store values) You could use some fixed scale for distance to force?
  • @edg3 After reading up on handlers I'm still not quite sure what they are, could you maybe give me an example of a handler in the code? As for the idea of measuring the distance; I already have a way of measuring drag distance to calculate the energy usage, and I just made a dragdistance limit and it worked! :D But it is kinda unpredictable and makes the game feel funny to play. Maybe knowing what the handlers are might help. Thanks anyway :).
  • Ok, so in the Update() part of the script, it does one main thing, it checks that you arent already dragging something, and if you arent, it starts a new drag. Specifically the braces starting with the "if" on line 26:
    if (!springJoint) { ... }

    This attaches to the object you clicked on to drag, you could add 2 vectors 3's to the script at the top, and the "start position" vector you can set in this brace.

    Similarly in DragObject() there is a loop, as long as the mouse button is held down it will continue dragging, so after the braces started with the "while" on line 61:
    while (Input.GetMouseButton (0)) { ... }

    Here you can set the "final position" vector, and you can then work out the distance between them.

    Alternatively, you might be able to just normalise (and work with directly) the drag and angularDrag values (make sure they do not exceed the expression absolute_value(drag OR angularDrag) > X (where you will need to fiddle a bit for the X to get the right feel.
  • @edg3 Tweaking the angular drag values did the trick!Game is so much more responsive now, thank's man. The way you would go about measuring the drag distance also seems way better than the method I currently use, I'll try it out some time.
    Would you like a demo of the game so far?
  • Im sure everyone would like a demo! :D
  • @edg3 I'll start giving a demo to a small test group, like 20 or so people. I don't really want my very early game all over the internet. Later I'll release a public demo.
  • I'm adding some effects to Fling Fu, blood and smokey trails. Check out the screen shots and tell me what you guys think. Personally I'm not sold on the blood, but maybe its cause I have been staring at it for way too long.
    FlingFun Blood1.png
    1440 x 900 - 276K
    FlingFun Blood 2.png
    1440 x 900 - 303K
    FlingFun Blood3.png
    1440 x 900 - 272K
    FlingFun Blood4.png
    1440 x 900 - 279K
  • edited
    Particles and fx are things you have to see moving, otherwise you miss most of what's going on, making it hard to crit. How does it move? How do the shapes change? What are the timings? etc.

    From what I remember seeing (I'm on my phone now, can't see image attachments), you probably want to turn up the random rotation in the particles.
  • Cool, so I got to play it for a little bit tonight. :)

    Regarding the blood effect itself, I think it could use quite a few tweaks. The splatter texture's pretty cool, but imo it needs to grow and rotate. You might want to layer a second set of particles in there too, that are much smaller, like droplets, whose angle you control based on how you hit an enemy. It's... kind of hard to explain in text.

    Aside from that, I feel that there needs to be _some_ kind of effect that gets fired on every successful hit. That kind of feedback would be really satisfying, as well as helping me not to be confused as to whether I've hit an opponent. If it's not going to be the blood effect, then it should be something else, perhaps a circular/spherical burst that highlights the fact that a hit occurred. It can be subtle too; it just needs something.

    [edit] Okay, so... it's just one of those things that's much easier to show than to type about. :P

    https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9847316/UnityBloodSpatterExample.mov
  • @Elyaradine Thank you for the crit :).

    The sphere burst is a great idea! It seems simple to implement, and judging from the clip will add a lot of PUNCH to landing a blow. I'll try out the sizing and rotation over time. I'm not too sure what you mean by the "angle you control based on how you hit an enemy", but the idea of having a set of smaller droplets shooting out seems good.

    Since hits, depending on their velocity, does different amounts of damage, is it a good idea to size the sphere effect according to the damage dealt? And what do you think of the blood falling and not just vanishing in air? I'd like to make it stick to the floor a bit before fading it out, Good or Bad idea? Are the smoke trails good or bad?
    Did you find anyting super annoying while playing the game (difficulty learning to control the ninja or unresponsiveness?)
  • sorry i got no helpful info or ideas for the game jst thought i shud tell u that us is M word F word AWESOME............with mother nt a swear word ryt
  • i mean it nt us
  • Firstly, it is a lot harder than it looks, but it is definitely not a bad thing. Though there is a lot of room for more cool mechanics that fit the style, things like weapons (shurikens, kunai, staffs, though I wouldnt go guns/swords/magic personally), and similarly for levels you can theme them (think ninja bar fight with breakable tables and chairs, a fight in a forest where you can punch down trees, etc). The game has a real cool game play focus already, I think you can enhance the replayability by adding in variance in location and "fight style".

    Furthermore, some things that I noted that could help with the overall feel:
    • You need to have feedback for the player when the player takes a hit, for instance you could do it by having a different colour blood spray when the player is hit each time, or a screen shake, or a red flash around the screen border.
    • For the hits that are made by the player, I realised how you can make them translate into movements, you can look at the direction the limb that hits is going (up = uppercut, down = karate chop, etc), and then where it is in relation to the body (eg. in front, or the side, or behind) you can add that. "Side Uppercut", "Backward Kick", etc. You could take a screenshot each hit, and each hit store the rotation/movement values in a text file, and from this you can work out what regions of values you would like to have inside each "hit type"
    • You might want to experiment with moving the camera the same way you drag the body (starting to drag on the screen anywhere outside the area say 3 times the size of the character rotates the view), then you have fully touch screen control available too.
    I was holding back on posting this, but might as well share it as I update it (.txt file I add notes to :P)
  • edited
    @edg3 Thanks for the crit man :).

    I was actually thinking of adding white blood for the player, and the screen shake is a good idea as well; "with great power comes great personality" ;).

    The "hit type" system seems complex, but certainly doable. Would be cool to print what hits you do on the side of the screen like a combo list?

    I think adding the mouse look control by right clicking is a better idea as clicking is what takes you out of slow mo mode. As for touch devices I think a double finger swipe type camera will do the trick.

    It would be really awesome If you could send me a video, only if it's not too much trouble, of how you play the game as I'm worried that people will just drag the feet around the map hoping to hit something by chance, or just not get the basic concepts of lining up the shot, and adding power at the last second too successfully hit the enemy. Also did you find the drag time (around 0.5 seconds) that you have from when you click to when the drag stops annoying?

    When you say its more difficult than it looks; do yo mean you have too little health and energy, or do you mean difficult to perform awesome moves?

    Again thanks for taking the time to play and crit it :D.

    I'll send you an updated version of the game as I make changes.
  • Look at how fighting games indicate hits and momentum with the way they move particles around and do things like camera loading to make larger motions feel weighty... It's like a seminar in juicyness.
  • @dislekcia Camera loading refers to the small lag in the camera movement when someone does a OMG hard punch or kick?
    If so then totally <insert colorful word> genius! It will work super awesomely in FlingFu! :D Thank you!
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