[GGJ] WIBBLE (post jam tweaks + keyboard controls)

Tuism

Wibble is a skipping rope sportsball game made for ggj17. Think pong with each player holding one end of a rope, shooting at goals on the other player's side.

I've made some updates after GGJ:

Wibble on itch.io (Win + OSX)

> keyboard controls so you can play without a controller now.

> I'm experimenting with two "modes" of rope physics, you can toggle between the two modes by pressing V in game. Please gimme some input on this, it would be much appreciated!

Mode A is how it's been, a more "natural" rope. Looks better, IMO.


VS

Mode B is the new tweak, where segments are locked to their x positions, resulting in a less organic shape BUT it moves more predictably and so feels more controlled, and I think this makes the ball manipulation feel more controlled and tight.


Please give it a play and let me know which you think feels better for you?

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Thanks for your time :)

WIBBLE WIBBLE
WIBBLE WIBBLE
DON'T STOP WIBBLIN' BABY DON'T STOP
WIBBLE WIBBLE

karl182

This looks really cool! Haha it feels pretty strange having the "paddles" on the sides, but it could be really interesting.
I will give it a go with my wife later today and let you know what we think.
Well done.

Karl

Tuism

Made an update which tries two different modes of physics on the rope, please see first post for details :)

<3

vince

Had a small play through with my girlfriend. Took us a few goals to realize whether you want the ball to hit their side to score or if you want it to hit your own side.
As you usually score on the opposite side in pong games it was strange that now you wanted the ball to hit your side and I found myself setting up shots at the target only realizing that I was scoring against myself. This is of course not a problem and more of a game design choice. I found it was more challenging this way trying to score.
What I do think might be adding to the confusion is the score displays being opposite. Your score (the label in your color) is on the opposite side of the paddle you control. (*Unless I got this all wrong and you do want to score on the opposite side*)

Other than that we enjoyed the game and we had many close moments and games with Ah no! and Ah yes! being shouted.
Physics mode wise we enjoyed mode B the most. It felt as if you had more control and importantly could more accurately predict where you were going to hit the ball. Also mode A lost us the ball a couple of times, where it glitched through the rope.

Score and skill wise I can't really say but these are the outcomes.
Mode A: 3(Me):2
Mode B: 4(Me):1
Most of the games were close in score with one or two exceptions.

Tuism

@vince thanks for your input!

Re: The scoring on your own side - I'm not sure I understand what you mean - the player on the left, using W and S, should score by hitting the ball to the goals on the right. And the player on the right, with up/down arrows, is vice versa. When the left player scored, the score on the left updated, and again vice versa.

So the colour choices were a bit difficult to decide - I had everything on the left being one colour and everything on the right another colour at first, but a few people pointed out that hitting an orange goal should update the orange score... So I changed that around, resulting in what there is now.

So basically, the player on the left scores the goal to the right, and their score update on the left. And vice versa. I wonder if the colour swap is causing confusion?

And thanks for the physics mode input! I really want to see if I can get something more in-between :)

vince

Yes exactly I believe the color swap is what threw me off then. I believe it is because you (at least I do) usually associate the label's color with what color you are. So say I play with W/S(blue) and the ball hits an orange area, the orange score is being updated and not the blue score. Making me think that orange(Up/Down) had just scored since it is the orange score that is updating. It might just be down to individual preference and assumption though, so getting more people to try it without them know the setup might be good.

Pomb

Keyboard controls aren't working in the build I downloaded, but we played on a joystick fine.
The color swap confused us, playing blue on the left I was expecting to score on the right by getting the ball to hit a yellow thing and see my blue number go up, the score should be on the side of the player and it should be color coded to the player imo. My 2nd player wanted to stop playing after a few goals though because the zooming in and out of the camera was a little uncomfortable. After playing 2 players I tried by myself to see if I could control the ball which in itself I found more fun than the competitive mode. I could totally see this being a single player experience trying to throw the ball through parts of a level almost like a pinball machine.
How did you setup the rope?
It's a neat game and well executed for GGJ. nice one.

Tuism

@Pomb Thanks for giving it a shot! And thanks to your player 2 for enduring some motion sickness!

Which build did you get? What does it say at the bottom of the screen? If it doesn't say "W/S for player 1" etc, then you've got an older version - the latest one on https://twoplusgames.itch.io/wibble will have the keyboard controls and a tweaked physics mode :) (Unless the windows version, which I haven't tested because I'm on a mac, is wrong and I didn't know about it)

I completely overlooked the zooming possibly being uncomfortable for people sensitive to motion sickness! In a related note, I want to look at a different setup where a player would control two nubs instead of the one, and two players faced each other along the long side of the screen, with a different goal/scoring setup that I haven't figured out yet. That way it affords Twice The Control for Twice The Fun :P

The rope took quite a bit of experimentation to get to what it is now - it's 120 separate objects with hinge joints, without colliders. And then another 120 objects with colliders that doesn't collide with their own layer that uses moveposition() to follow the joined objects. I found that without these two separate systems, the rope would keep breaking when there was a bit too much force. This setup has been relatively super reliable :)