[SA Game Jam 2018] Cubic Rhythms
You play as a crunking, twerking, hip-poppin cube who dances their way around, with only a single purpose in mind, to best as many raving cubes as possible. To what heights will your journey take you?
Keep the beat while avoiding bumping into others. Collect juice from surrendered foes. Build up a flow and soar to new heights!
Windows (48hr)
Windows (72hrs) (MADE FOR 1920x1080)
Windows (Includes graphics config for slower pcs)
We didn't produce the audio, this is the creator https://hitrecord.org/records/1378967
SA Game Jam 2018
Cubic Rhythms
Professional
48hr entry (Maybe 72hr if we survive)
Team size: 3 (@Ross, Ridho and @Kelm)
image.png
1113 x 621 - 895K
Comments
Wow...can't wait to get a link!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xfHcDRRnQ7P2q_ax_GwOE9yVAXdZD3Ha
I just seem to get stuck in some places and go only go in one direction ? Can I not move if my timing is off ?
After a while i figured out that enemies have spawn zones, and i would end up in situations with no escape or just losing my progress because a dude just appeared next to me. Im thinking a fix might be having spawn zones spawn enemies based on proximity to the player and then have the player be more active in hunting down these enemies.
we only get a glimpse of the angel form but its super interesting seeing as you can now fly. Im wondering would you have to fly up to the next level to fight the boss you have planned, or how the next levels of juice improve my character.
Overall your game is really cool and im excited that this turned into a 72hour project. All the best and cant wait peeps.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h2VJQzw0x6TczqYO2ovPXL-cCwgSjMIV/view?usp=sharing
Sadly, My Laptop seemed to struggle in terms of resources and performance.
The Unity settings dialogue doesn't appear either, so I couldn't scale it down.
The rhythm mechanic seems to be tied to frame rate?
I'm guessing you do a lot of your timing checks during the Update method then?
In such cases it is more important to make sure that you never exceed hardware limitations.
The environment looked fun and adventurous. and the motion throughout the scenery made the experience VERY lively and fun. the juice is over all nice.
The projectiles were a bit underwhelming though. They also distract from the rythm game. Perhaps it would be more fun to add a projectile mechanic that ties in with the rythm?
Overall it was very entertaining with a nice splash of color, motion and music.
The beat is indeed calculated in Update so I suppose that could lead to some unpredictable results at a low frame rate. What would you recommend (aside from a general performance improvement) Do the calculation in FixedUpdate? A custom audio filter? Agreed. Lots of systems that don't work too well and that's one of them. Hopefully, there is enough worth here to iterate on the game a bit further.
Thanks for the feedback! Lots of good points. Glad you found it entertaining :D
Okay. So, a truly reliable system that assumes a certain framerate isn't possible.
Fixedupdate is for physics and it is called iteratively to make sure it calculates an x amount of time per second. So, if your framerate is larger than two fixed updates, then unity calls FixedUpdate twice. But it doesn't mean than fixedupdate happens every 0.x seconds.
My solution to your rythm problem would take a different approach.
Instead of checking that the key is pressed at a specific point in time...
Rather wait for a key to be pressed and record the time.
Then, compare it to the beat before and after to see which one is closest (in terms of time)
Then see if the difference is small enough to allow action to be taken. Call this allowed amount the "allowance"
Also
Whatever you specify as an allowance, build in a check, so that every update, if the deltatime is bigger than your allowance, then increase your allowance amount for this fame to deltatime instead.
During all of this, the most important thing is to maintain a fast framerate.
For this, look into how you can make some of the content optional or scalable to the player. Perhaps there is a lot of object instantiation going on and this can be replaced by pre-instantiated object pool that sit (disabled) in the background, waiting to be used.
Perhaps there is a lot of excess geometry in the scene. I am not sure what it is that causes the slowed performance. I was able to create a game with large object count and movement, similar in scale to yours... but i used object pooling which is why i recommend it, (if you guys aren't using it already)
Game-play wise I really liked the moving to the beat, even though I completely forgot about it and got stuck when panicking between many enemies.
Something that really bothered me, was that my projectiles seem to fire from a short distance away from the character. This means that if an enemy is right next to you, he is effectively unkillable. On the ground this is not as much of an issue, but for the flying part, I found quite often an enemy would be about half a centimeter away from me, and I had to keep moving in the same direction to avoid him, since I could not actually shoot him at that point.
Another minor thing, was that I couldn't manage to even almost fill the power bar fully. Not sure if I was missing something or just very bad at the game. Also I never managed to defeat the boss, is that possible at the moment?
I also agree with pierre's statement that the projectiles possible detract from the experience. I mostly enjoyed the rhythmic movement, and felt myself just holding mouse click and having it fire whenever. A possible idea could be "combo moves", where you don't fire projectiles but rather your movement executes various attack moves. For example a downward dash into the ground kills enemies in an AoE around you. A chain of four sideways dashes fires projectiles in that direction. A zig-zag pattern could be a different move etc etc.
All in all though I really enjoyed the game and think it is quite well executed given the jam's time frame.
My only suggestion is the snakes........... you have this amazing retro level artwork done............and then the snakes.
Fully undertand the time limitation.
I think if you can work on a consolidated art style then you can take this to the next level!!
however amazing work for 72h!!!
well done
Pooled the major offender (floaty cubes) so there should be fewer GC spikes, Its easier to shoot enemies that are close to you, you can fill up your bar with less hassle, and shooting still sucks. Performance overall still has a way to go. Yes! we actually calculate the movement based on an allowance but failed to think about this edge case. Awesome idea. Awesome idea. I think this is the direction we will go.
I could get my first bar filled pretty easily but couldn't get any others, is that possible? I really wanted to fill the bars....
I played until I got the the huge cube with wings, but wasn't sure how to beat it, so after another few mins of flying around the top just killing winglet cubes I quit, didn't have the patience to figure out the boss kill method.
It's overall a great jam effort that I enjoyed playing.
It moves fantastically! Nice squash and stretch on the characters and environment bringing the cubes to life (and emphasizing the rhythmic nature of the game brilliantly).
And the moment when you first reach level 2 is brilliant. It took us a while to get to that point, and then it came as a really awesome surprise.
Really appreciate that you managed to get in a climax and end to your jam entry. It felt good progressing through the game. I would have loved some further twists, but what you've got here is very solid.