JW's 30 tricks to make your action game feel better

Tuism

@ridhwaan08 posted this elsewhere but I thought it deserves to be seen, it's on the level of Juice it or Lose it, In my opinion :)

JW of Vlambeer made a presentation where he takes you through juicing a game in different ways to make it feel better, and it's interactive! It's so cool to see how little bits add up to something far far greater than the sum of its parts.

Article:
http://indiestatik.com/2013/11/21/game-teaches-30-tricks-make-action-game-feel-better/

Download the interactive presentation (it's a game)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/c0i6jidrvk6r2io/controlconf.rar

On a related note, I feel like we should have an archive section where all these good and almost essential lessons can be accessed in one place where we can point people at or browse ourselves. Should it be part of the wiki? Except of course noone bothers with the wiki. Any suggestions?

Fengol

We definitely need a better CMS than wikimedia but I don't have a solution. I need to investigate how to make a Google Drive (a better CMS IMHO) available to the public.

Squidcor

Whilst the interactive examples are nice, I felt like quite a few of these "tricks" actually detracted from the experience for me. There's a point where it becomes too much and is distracting. It's the more subtle ones that make the biggest difference in my opinion.

dammit

Why not have another page on this site?

Tuism

@squidcor I don't think it's always universal, and I don't think it should always be all-in like that, but it *is* Vlambeer we're talking about there :P

End of the day each game needs its own judgement, I think :)

ridhwaan08

@Tuism I love how such tiny changes can change a game from its basic prototype form to a fun and playable game.

DarkCarnivour

Yeah, that was pretty cool.

'Sleep', I'm figuring that was a joke... or did I miss something? Most of those end ones were just jokes though.

I was actually pleasantly surprised to see how many of these we had actually just intuitively been using for years.
We always called it 'solidness' and began consciously building this into our stuff back when we were still doing UT2k4 mods.
It was very important for everything ro 'feel' really awesome. It's something we build into just about every aspect of the game including model design, animations, sounds, attack rates & damage values and of course, effects.
I guess I'm glad someone else out there thinks this matters - and they've presented it really nicely.

It always annoys me when things in games don't feel right, especially in games with lots of combat.
All these effects are a big part of how the players read the game.

A couple random thoughts to add:
-The speed or 'violence' of the effects makes a difference (think of how fast the spark particles move)
-Matching the proportions of things (big bullet should never make a tiny impact effect, likewise a too huge effect for a wimpy weapon will water down the whole scene)
-More small sounds (shell casings hitting the floor, enemy footsteps, weapon handling, debris collision, creatures bumping into things, etc)
-Gore. Yeah, very effective. Even if the enemy is a robot, have lots of sparks and bits of scrap metal falling off them.
-Hit animations and impact effects are how the world acknowledges that bullet and tells the player it is a thing that matters.
-Sound balancing. Often in games, a sound that should be quiet is too loud and distracts from ones that should be the most prominent. Miniguns in FPSs always seem to be a recurring culprit.
-The right sound. I might be heading off at a tangent, but aside from just the right amount of punch in the sound, the nuances of each sound will impart a different feel for each event and the whole game. (think of the HalfLife crowbar or the Doom arachnotron or the Quake grenade bounce)

I remember there was a bit of criticism for the amount of screenshake we had in RooksKeep at one point so there is a limit to how much all these tricks can be scaled.
...and I look forward to adding the option to disable the camera bumps that make our latest prototype feel awesome, but will inevitably annoy some people with motion sickness :p

ridhwaan08

I remember there was a bit of criticism for the amount of screenshake we had in RooksKeep at one point so there is a limit to how much all these tricks can be scaled.

+1

Nandrew

I absolutely love the incremental nature of the additions and improvements. Comparing the before and after of something like that is so much more *intimidating* before you understand that it's just a series of tiny tweaks all working together.