[Prototype] Cutting Edge

loet

Hi

So I made an early prototype of a game thats been on my mind since 2011.

The goal is to stack the pieces as high as you can. The new pieces falling from the top have angled edges and you have to cut (click and swipe) the bottom piece so the angles match. Try to keep the stack as upright as possible and prevent it from tumbling.

Let me know what you guys think :)

http://www.rawrcreations.com/CuttingEdge/

dislekcia

Sounds like an interesting game, but the implementation was pretty confusing... I would cut and then the resulting block would teleport downwards somehow? Except it didn't seem to be the "original" block I was cutting at all - sometimes if the tower was leaning, I'd get a HUGE plank magically appearing after a cut with a very strange angle and the original piece would still be falling? That was weird.

I'd suggest making the game slow down while you were cutting and improving the cut animation so that it was obvious where and how you'd cut.

PowerCat

Love the mechanic, very cool. Keep going!

Tuism

Yeah the mechanic is cool, the idea is pretty immediate to explain to people, so that's always a plus. You need some feedback (YOU NEED MECHANICAL PROTO JUICE!) and a sense of "fairness" - it's difficult to tell when you'll live or die - the Grow game Vanilla that I showed you has a defined death state - touch the sides - so you won't feel like you're being cheated out of a victory, for example.

Otherwise coooool good start :)

Pomb

I got a height of 28! I thought this was pretty cool, I didn't get any of the mentioned weirdness but did expect some swaying when I was stacking higher. Also maybe draw lines in the drag direction so that you can more easily line up cut lines with the incoming logs.

EDIT: height of 32 noticed weirdness in cutting right to left the log seems to flip along the horizontal.

loet

Cool thanks for the replies.

The cutting is a bit weird at this stage. If the piece is at an angle the cut doesn't go where you intend it to. I am working on sorting that out.

On feedback I am going to put in a trail renderer so you can see the cut movement you made. This will probably also show that my cutting calculations are a bit off :P

So show the whole stack is a bit of a problem because you obviously want to see that but then you have to be zoomed in to cut. I have to figure that one out.

@Tuism do you feel cheated at the losing condition? If any piece falls you lose. Do you mean because you can't see the full stack that if somewhere below it buckles you feel cheated because you couldn't see it?

Tuism

Well I don't even know if it's possible for the rest of the stack to fall. So it seems like the entire thing is only resting on the last cut. That's how it feels, I don't know if it's how it is... And like @Pomb said, I expect the tower to be a tower, but it doesn't feel like a tower. Maybe you need camera sway, maybe you need a visual indicator, something, to show that you're playing the whole thing rather than just the last thing.

loet

Oh I see. Yeah I have to find a way to show that.

Side note I got the cutting working a lot better so I will be updating soon.

dislekcia

Tuism said:

Well I don't even know if it's possible for the rest of the stack to fall. So it seems like the entire thing is only resting on the last cut. That's how it feels, I don't know if it's how it is... And like @Pomb said, I expect the tower to be a tower, but it doesn't feel like a tower. Maybe you need camera sway, maybe you need a visual indicator, something, to show that you're playing the whole thing rather than just the last thing.

Background image that parallaxes upwards as your tower grows. A camera that doesn't teleport after a cut (mine teleported, I dunno if that's how it's supposed to work... Everything felt very teleport-y, pieces didn't LAND).

loet

So I made a little update. Improved the cutting, added a slash trail and added a background so the height might be more visible.