SAM - What If STUDIOS - 3D platformer game we are working on

DavidKuun

Hey guys, me and my team at What If STUDIOS are currently developing our very first game we are a group of students from the university of Pretoria and have recently published a trailer for our game:
We would love to know what you guys think, we also have a website where an alpha version can be downloaded: http://www.whatifstudios.net/SAM/
Any feedback would be much appreciated

loet

Glad to see you guys came to the site. Get yourself a focused feedback slot for tomorrow night if you want a proper discussion around your game.

loet

Also barrier to entry. Put up a web build. Host it through Dropbox if you must.

DavidKuun

Hey guys our website has kinda changed a little just head to http://www.whatifstudios.net there is a demo version for you to download well its an installer actually, we are currently in the process of making a web build, and we loved all the feedback we got tonight at the talk, you will definitely be seeing us there again. Dont forget to check out our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/samgamebywhatif and twitter page https://twitter.com/WhatIfSTUDIOS

Eduard

Today was fun. You guys gave good feedback. Sometimes it's really hard to get decent feedback, which is why we want to grow our community. I hope you can all follow our Facebook page to see updates.

I tried tonight to build a web version of the game, and I need to make some changes, as it has an error with a plugin I used to do the Xbox controller's vibration. It shouldn't be that hard, but I'll keep you posted.

Elyaradine

What are you aiming to do with this game? Is it meant to be a portfolio piece just showing off your various skills, or are you aiming to make it a commercial venture?

I ask because one of my biggest criticisms was that the communication that is conveyed to the player isn't well-layered. Things that are in the background should behave as things in the background: they should in general have lower contrast, be less saturated, and be less noisy than the parts of the game that convey vital information. Currently it feels as if more than half of the screen wants attention. If you have artists on the team that are looking to use this project to enter the game industry as professional artists, I think this is something that's critical to address. (And along with conveying important information, remember to have that shadow, which is pretty important for 3D platformers.)

Eduard

Currently the game is the University's property since we made it for last year's Multimedia game expo. We got first place at the University and decided we will be entering the Microsoft Imagine Cup. We are still finding out if we can use the game for commercial purposes, but if we're not allowed then that's fine.

A month ago we found out we are top 12 in SA where there are 6 Innovation programs, 3 World Citizenship apps and 3 games (Including ours). If we get top 3 in South Africa we have a chance of competing in the World Cup. If we get top 3 in SA we will win a couple of prizes such as R5 000 per group member as well as hard drives and phones. At the world cup you can win $50 000 as well as meet Bill Gates.

To us the prizes will help us make better games but we're not primarily doing it for that reason. Whether we win the Nationals or win the Internationals, it's something you can put on your CV. We already got first place at the University of Pretoria for the best game. We'll be receiving a certificate for it this year.

Eduard

What you're saying makes sense. The reason we made the invisible platforms at the stage was we had a problem with the camera going through the walls. At first I used raycasting and linecasting in Unity to try and fix it, but it didn't work correctly. This is why the platforms are invisible, and since we used a certain material to do it, it doesn't show the shadow. We'll try to give the platforms another material do add the shadow.

I would love to play with shadows and post processing like blur and things like that but those features are quite limited in the free version of Unity. Maybe if we can make enough money from donations or something we can buy Unity.

Do you have any tips on how to make the background look like it's actually in the background? Is there an easy way to change the contrast and saturation dynamically as you move through the world?

Elyaradine said:

I ask because one of my biggest criticisms was that the communication that is conveyed to the player isn't well-layered. Things that are in the background should behave as things in the background: they should in general have lower contrast, be less saturated, and be less noisy than the parts of the game that convey vital information. Currently it feels as if more than half of the screen wants attention. If you have artists on the team that are looking to use this project to enter the game industry as professional artists, I think this is something that's critical to address. (And along with conveying important information, remember to have that shadow, which is pretty important for 3D platformers.)

Elyaradine

The free version of Unity should still give you shadows for a directional light. It's not particularly pretty, but at least the information is there. Alternatively, you could use some kind of blurred circle texture and raycast it down (since pretty much all of your surfaces appear to be flat?), and perhaps scale it down a little when SAM is in the air.

Otherwise, this is mainly an art problem rather than a technological one. I think it's more to do with balancing the contrast in your textures and designing your lighting. Having an artist (who's skilled at colour and light) loosely paint over selected screenshots of the game is likely to reveal areas of improvement quite quickly. (I'd offer to help, but I can't commit to anything at this point because of already being strapped for time with some of my other projects.)

DavidKuun

I'll see what I can do about it. Did you play the game?