[LD] BOOST

Tuism

This is the game I made for LD34, with the theme Two Buttons :) (we had that theme for one of our own comps so long ago!)

Post-compo version here! --> http://twoplusgames.itch.io/booost-post-compo




Original 48 (more like 34) hour version here --> http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=35114







I'm hoping that it doesn't need instructions, but here are some simple ones:
> A and D, boosts your ship left and right as well as shoots from boosters.
> Both together pushes you up and does a short frontal attack.
> Get far away enough from the rising inferno to beat a level.
> Don't get hit
> There is an ending, and I've reached it :P

Please let me know what you think of it :) I already see a bunch of shortcomings myself, but I'd like to hear what your feelings are on them first :)

----------------- story time ------------------

What a drama llama LD it's been this time! I started with another concept for a game, Yes No Mayor, where you're a mayor who wonders around town, and everyone asks you for stuff, and you have to say yes and no.
The concept was interesting but I realised that creating an economic engine that was interesting in 48 hours along with all the systems and assets was pretty impossible for my own skills. So I canned the first concept at the 12hr mark and went back to the drawing board.



Boost was moving along quite nicely, a lot of my time was spent on making the ship's movement intuitive and fun at the same time, and then ending it all off with some polish in the sound department (thanks BFXR and SoundHelix).

Then NONE of my builds would work. They all complete successfully, but they wouldn't run. OSX, Windows, then I tried WebGL and WebPlayer. Nothing worked, no errors. The error dump from OSX and windows was pretty much gibberish to me. This started at around 2:30am and continued until 6am. I asked everyone for help, Twitter, on LD, etc. Noone knew what the problem was, and I was stumped.

Went to bed because I couldn't even stay awake.

Then I woke up at 10am and continued trying to fix the damn thing, @tbulford called and said I should be breaking the game down bit by bit to see where the offender is. Which was standard debugging behaviour and I totally forgot to do that in my blind panic (OMG UNITY IS FUCKED I'M FUCKED OMG OMG). I tried that and quickly isolated the problem to the Canvas UI system. Which was great. I was going to go and replace the whole Canvas thing with other stuff, then I found this on google:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/950569/game-runs-in-editor-crashes-on-startup-after-build.html

The problem is SUPER OBSCURE. Everything works in Editor but all builds will fail. Read that in case it happens to you. The Unity guys got in touch with me on Twitter after Joon pinged them on Monday. They are planning a patch for it, thankfully.

Anyway, glad that's done :) Now on to rating more stuff :)

Nandrew

Really sweet. I've made it to about level 4, I think? Super satisfying control, the focus on polishing dat feel really shows through!

Would it break things if you afforded players a small mercy and made the walls harmless and hyper-bouncy? Replacing that lethality with a more pinball-esque vibe could be fun. Bouncy entities that fall down on you, maybe? Bouncy everywhere!

Glad you got your problems sorted though, looks like you have a solid LD entry on your hands.

Tuism

Hmmmm bouncy walls... I've had another call for non-damaging walls previous, and I didn't think much of because I thought the game was too easy, but of course, dev easy is not the same as actual easy :P I'll experiment with bouncy walls and see.

What do you think about the core mechanics? I feel like the game's focus are off, the shots fire downwards, but you should be watching upwards, and the game gives you space to look downwards, but not upwards. If I give the player more room to look up, that would give more room to dodging, but that removes the point of the shooting downwards.

And the balance between the rise of the flames against what it takes (how much you need to push against the top) to escape seems wrong - the fire's creep upwards seems too slow until it's way too late and then it's way too late, and you're basically screwed...

And taking all those into account, I feel like then the core gameplay can't be extended, and thus I should take the flying mechanic and do something else with it :/

What do you think? Beyond the bouncy walls? :P

francoisvn

I like it, but I can see how it seems like the player's attention is split. What if you always have the melee attack going upwards, and that's how you destroy and get the pickups? That way you spend more of your time looking upwards. You can add some asteroids or other invulnerable obstacles so there's still something to dodge, but you'll spend less time looking downwards. Or maybe just remove the bullet part, so it's just two engines and their fuel? That way you don't care about things once they're past you, it's just about manoeuvring upwards as fast as possible. I guess I think the twin gun/engine thing is fun and maybe you should focus more on emphasising that, perhaps at the expense of combat. Although, having a schmup that's about shooting backwards could be interesting. What if it was a Cthulu monster chasing you and you shot at the tentacles? Sorry about the ramble. Will try find more time to play and see if anything jumps out :)

Nandrew

Jah, removing the shots backwards may be a good call. I felt the primary fun of the game lay with how the ship controls felt. And then you can move the camera upwards -- quite a bit, too. I think the game would rapidly open up to interesting set pieces, too: like a row of falling blocks immediately followed by a bonus/score/something block. Picking up the bonus would be an interesting dexterity challenge mebbe.

Bonus points if the walls are highly bouncy and allow you to pull "trick shots" like that. :3 Immediate momentum reversal to do a back/forth swing that's otherwise impossible? Yummy.

If you are worried that the game will be made easier, I think you could look at making bounces quite dangerous. Take a pinball-esque approach where your bounce force is INTENSE even if you only brush against the wall, and suddenly spamming bounce / bouncing at the wrong time will leave you helplessly thrown across at least half the width of the arena. If the player controls their ship poorly, maybe they'll land on the other side and get flung again immediately. Movement patterns like that mean that chances of smashing into the side of a dangerous obstacle becomes higher.

Another idea: wall features like bounce pads and boost buttons could come up just occasionally. With a more forward-facing camera you'll be able to see them coming more easily.

UberGeoff

Nice one..!

pieter

There is so much potential for this to be a total adrenalin rush. I love the contrast between the careful dodging and then doing high octane boosts. It has an elegance of design that reminds me of Downwell. My suggestions are based on trying to improving that, and obviously personal preference.

1.) I felt that spending resources for normal movement quite constricting. During the normal state of the ship I didn't want anything to limit my movement.
2.) I felt that the entire duration of the boost should make you invincible. You are spending a lot of resources to get it, so the payoff should equivalent. You could limit the amount of charge you get back during boost to ensure the player doesn't boost indefinitely. Also consume an initial amount to stop people from tapping boost.
3.) The high momentum of the craft often made me collide with enemies or the walls when I felt I shouldn't have. Lowering the amount of momentum after a direction is released, and having the craft straighten out quicker when boosting would make it feel more responsive.

Either way, this is a great Jam entry, and an amazing proof of concept.

Tuism

Thanks! :D I'm working on an update with something quite different :D

- The idea of having one boost meter instead of left and right is a great one, now that I think about it. I never even thought of that :) WHY!? :P Thanks for the suggestion!
- I already implemented a initial cost to boosting and that works much better.
- I'm also toying with the walls being bouncy (thanks @Nandrew) instead of damaging, but upping the difficulty on other parts of the game.
- Having to re-balance the values is a bit of a tough one now, but that's how it goes :)

Thanks so much! :D

Tuism

Hey guys, pushing a big update on a post-compo version, way overdue :)

A post about it is on LD:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/2016/01/04/booost-post-compo/
I'm transcribing it below for your convenience :)

You can play it on itch here:
http://twoplusgames.itch.io/booost-post-compo






Booosting the ship

I spent a lot of time tweaking the flight physics again, that being the thing that really defines this experience. It was a real struggle getting it between satisfyingly drifty and satisfyingly responsive. This new version is much more responsive in some ways, but does not let you do everything you want effortlessly. I hope it's a good balance.

A big change was to the fuel system – instead of two bars, there is now one. Left and right flight does not require fuel, but thrusting directly up does. This lets the player manoeuvre when needed without worrying about fuel, but the regeneration and cost is higher than before.

The top of the game field also expanded, affording the player more time to react to incoming ships, if they’re not invincible. You’re not always invincible while flying up – you’ll only be if you have 50% on your fuel meter and continued burning after the initial boost.



Booosting the enemy

The big bad changed from the wall of flame to an actual ship with armour and engines. This gave the player something to focus on besides what’s ahead. In the earlier levels, interacting with the boss isn’t really necessary, but later, the boss’s speed picks up, and your escape would be made easier if you blew up the boss’s engines, slowing it down.

The idea was to have more variety in the boss’s composition and components, but I haven’t gotten that far yet, and balancing the numbers on this has proven to be very, very very hard. I would love some input on how you perceive the difficulty of the game in its current state!

Tuism

Thanks @pieter for the inspiration to change the fuel setup - one bar, no general cost for left & right is so much better :)

Thanks @Nandrew for the boucy walls thing - I think it does work better :)

I'm still not sure about the handling of the ship, and some other bits of balance... Please have a look and let me know how it feels? :)

Karuji

So much funs, though I have one big frustration: I want to move using arrows.

The enemies shooting from below me was a bit annoying, but it's also the only thing that ever really damaged me so it's a bit of a toss up between satisfying difficulty and satisfying gameplay.

I never use the A+D boost mechanic (well not deliberately anyway) the UI element being on the side means that I don't look at it since my focus is on what is coming above me so I have no certainty that I can boost and thus choose not to use it since I don't have knowledge that the use will be reliable.

The movement of the shit itself is pleasant and feels responsive, though I kinda feel like I'm alternating my finger pushes too rapidly for comfort. (Like more than I do in Super Hexagon while playing on Hyper Hexagonest)

Also why aren't there more levels :<

Tuism

Thanks a bunch for giving it a go! :D

@Karuji did you play the original with the blue rising fire, or the enhanced with the big boss ship? :)

And by moving using arrows, you mean left & right arrow, or do you also want up and down movement?

Karuji

I grabbed the latest version off Itch which I believe is the post LD build aka v2.0

Arrows as in left and right.

Actually now that I think about it: is there a reason why the ship can't just move up by itself? Like I know there is the giant thing chasing you, but it's not like it does continual damage when you hit it. And the repeatedly pressing A/D to trying and move in a straight line feels like a good way to get RSI.

Tuism

Well if the ship just moves up by itself then you lose the entire gravity thing. Also you save up on your fuel to be able to boost upwards. If your fuel is over 50% when you boost up (press both buttons) you get a forward shield that you don't if you boost at below 50% fuel. If you always go up then there's no resource system to juggle. The pickups add to your fuel.

So, if you always fly up, then all there is to it is dodge stuff from above, collecting power ups do nothing (or Would have to think of something else for them to do) and a level would essentially be strictly timed barring hitting enemies)

Plus sometimes I do want to go down. It's not as apparent in this build, but I want to make it more apparent with some more varieties of enemies. And different player ships with different attributes, like one that actually retro thrusts when it's slowed down enough, so he player has more control over downward movement (and probably different weapon attributes too)

On the RSI angle.... Would it be better if you could control with two separate hands? A mobile build would be like that. Two thumbs.

Nandrew

Whoops, I missed this update!

I like how things are being handled mechanically, but it's certainly challenging to convey so much information in this tight situation! When I first fired up the game, I was at a point where I'd forgotten a little bit about some of your systems, but could still benefit from previous play sessions in figuring them out rather quickly, so I have a tasty splatter of UI suggestions:

- I think you could still squeeze a little more prominence into the fuel system for learning's sake. It's all good enough once you figure it out but I believe that you could increase the bar's size, maybe give the fuel powerups a slight trail when they're on their way to "fill up", and have some sort of potency indicator on the ship itself when it's ready for a shield boost, so that my eye doesn't have to travel to the bar to check when I'm ready for one (lessens the amount of time I'm not focusing on the playspace, I think).

- Condensing the fuel into one bar actually seems to be for the best, so good stuff! But I think it does make the aspect of teaching players about relative fuel costs for different actions more challenging -- I briefly had the opposite learning problem to Karuji, where I'd excessively double-rocket and take a little longer to figure out the skill of balancing my fuel economy with more sideboosting in difficult situations. I think you could exploit audio more to give additional hints -- I've been trying to listen carefully and it sounds like the cue for firing one rocket and firing both is the same, so you could adjust that perhaps.

- I find it difficult to attach enough meaning to the big ol' number indicating your escape goal, and only really benefit from its feel once I've had enough game experience to know what a good value is. I wonder if a more intuitive way to convey your proximity to success is some sort of visible "safe zone" that you can catch up to and cross over with your ship, teasingly descending/retreating from the top of the screen as you encounter boosts and setbacks. I do not immediately know how to do this in a non-disruptive way, though.

- I'm a big fan of affording players small mercies when something gets them down. Life-loss immunity is always great, but it may be cool to also give some kind of fuel concession -- like setting it at a minimum of 25% if they're currently drained -- to make death spirals a little less drastic for weaker players.

- Yay for wall-bounce, heheh. I certainly still find the game challenging enough. Maybe a more noticeable "boink!" sorta visual could be added in those cases too.

- I'm excited about the possibilities for boss modules and combinations! If you explore this in future builds, I'd like to see the boss challenge evolving more quickly than the environmental ones: in the place where you'd usually introduce the projectile-firing mooks, you could instead treat the player to destructible boss turrets for a few levels. Squeeee!

pieter

Played the latest version, a bit late on the comments :D

The boost now feels super rewarding. Saving up your bar till it's full, and then just punching it for the finish line feels great! And if you're hitting enemies as you boost you get that little extension to your boost giving a nice combo feel to it.

One thing I think is important to look into is when and how boost activates. I like to tap "A" and "D" frantically, which sometimes causes boost to activate for a split second as I go from on button to the next, draining a substantial portion of my boost bar. Could you perhaps add a few frames of grace before boost activates to avoid accidental boosting?

With that said, another suggestion is to have the same grace when deactivating boost, giving you some manoeuvrability while boosting, by letting one button go and quickly pressing it again. This could allow you to aim for upcoming enemies to keep your boost chain going, extending that rush you get from boosting.

Now for the bane of my existence, the enemies that fire at an angle towards you. I don't think you should remove them, maybe just ease them in a little slower and have them at lower spawn rates in stage 4 and 5 so you get use to them. The difficulty curve spikes a bit at these stages.

The boss ship at the bottom adds a nice level of urgency, however destroying it's engines didn't seem to deter it's approach. Maybe destroying an engine could move the boss down a bit before it starts catching up with you again to give a sense that you are slowing it down.

Also I finished it, yeah! Don't know if this is intentional, but at the credits screen pressing "A" and "D" doesn't restart the game.

Tuism

Thanks you guys for playing and giving feedback! Really appreciate it! Let me chew through it slowly and assimilate it, and see if I can come up with improvements and answers! :)