Music Trivia with RPG element

edited in Projects
Hi All,

I am a first tune poster, so if I am in breach of any of the site's rules...apologies...and please correct me. This is a little game i've been working on for the past week or so. I am writing it using visual studio only. There is no tutorial or readme, so i hope you guys can figure the concept out. Basically, buy part that affect stats and cost money. races are basically the music trivia part and then you claim your prize. Any feedback will be welcomed.
zip
zip
Mechanic.zip
299K

Comments

  • sorry, that first time poster. damn i'm off to a great start :)
  • Hey you're not in breach of anything...

    ...yet :D.

    So I tried to give this a play, but I was completely overwhelmed and confused. I would recommend putting each of the headed sections (cooling etc.) onto different screens so they are more manageable. Each of these sections should be accessible from a main screen where you put the track and race sections :).

    I desperately tried to get into an actual race, but I couldn't figure it out. It kept saying I have to select a track, even though I already had :).

    PS: Always have a readme or tutorial in a prototype you send out. Even the mechanics you want to be completely intuitive won't be clear early in development without some explanation. :)
  • @Bensonance - first off thanks for giving the game a try. I will post a readme or tutorial soonest. I also agree that seperate screens for the different sections is a good idea. The only reason I did not do it that way first time round is because i didn't know how :) As stated i'm creating the game in VS2010, as i have a total of 2 weeks coding experience and multiple forms were still out of my scope of knowledge. I have googled this now so that i can research it and give it a go.

    As for the not being able to start a race => just make sure that you actually click on the track you selected in the listbox before hitting the select track button (it should be highlighted in blue). The same will be true if buying any parts for your "Buggy".

    Thanks again for the feedback and for giving the game a go. I will post a tutorial soonest :)
  • Here's a quick tutorial as suggested by Bensonance. Game is still in early stages and I will work a tutorial into the game itself at a later stage, but this should at least give anyone willing to try my game a bit of an idea of it's workings.
    docx
    docx
    Tutorial.docx
    13K
  • Just posting a more stable version of my game. Unfortunately still no tutorial built into the programme but the document posted on the 5th should be enough for now. Any feedback would be much appreciated.
    zip
    zip
    Mechanic.zip
    299K
  • The first version of the game was much easier, since you could do a race multiple times. I just checked the first box in each question to get a small amount of cash consistently and upgraded from there. Second version was not quite as forgiving.

    Firstly, the interface intimidated me, and it took me a while to find out where the track selection was. Then I got confused because I assumed that the visible option was selected, turns out it needs to be clicked. I'd suggest using a dropdown interface so that you don't redundantly have to click on the only visible item to have it selected. Perhaps hide the upgrades behind another level of menu in order to get the interface a little less intimidating.

    Secondly, I know very little about cars, so I had to look through quite a few of the details in order to find out what upgrades what, and even then I was not really sure what everything was. DUR and STA still confuse me. If the game is geared towards people with mechanical and musical knowledge, then this is fine, but if you want to focus on the musical side, I'd suggest simplifying the mechanics. You could also tie the atomicity of the mechanics to difficulty, for instance on "easy", you only choose Cooling, Motor, Exhaust, Brakes, Transmission, Suspension and Tank, with an A, B and C for each, on hard, keep the components the way they are, and for a medium, combine some of the items, like in Motor combine Engine Block, Pistons and Carborator.

    Thirdly, it would be nice of the game let you know the bonuses you get from your stats in one screen.

    Finally, there are some small problems like spelling mistakes, "exchaust" on the main screen should be "exhaust", and there's a random label116 next to the wallet, if you close the questions page before finishing the game is stuck, and being able to check multiple answers only to be warned you can't when you click submit is a bit weird.

    In terms of a music trivia game it seems quite interesting. I googled for some of the answers, which taught me something. In terms of a mechanic type game it's a bit over my head, as I do not know enough about it to understand why some of the things do what they do.
  • @Gingetsuryuu - Thanks for the great feedback. There is a lot to think about there. I really like your ideas, but to be honest i will probably only implement them in a sequel (if i decide to do one), except for the spelling mistakes which i will rectify immediately (its the afrikaaner in me :) ). This is my first game and was a huge learning experience for me. To implement the changes you suggested would involve going through and changing 1000's of lines of C# code. I think it will be easier to redo them in a newer version. I will probably only add sound, a tutorial (video via a button) and a save mechanic to this game, and a little polish to the interface, then shelve it until i have more experience. Want to move over to something new soon, but also wanted to create something that could be seen as a complete game (even if it wasn't a perfect game). See you are using game maker. I downloaded the free version last night and want to run through some of the tutorials tonight. Is this something you will recommend? What is your opinion on Unity? Is anyone still using XNA?
  • I am currently going for Game Maker because it's licences for mobile is cheaper than Unity. But Unity appears pretty good too. I would recommend Game Maker for predominantly 2d and unity for predominantly 3d. Unity has a free version that is a bit more complete than Game Makers free version.
  • I'd also recommend GameMaker Pro (with new parakeet addon to code in) for 2D games. And once it works and is popular game, with demand for more game platforms, you can invest in the master collection and just port or compile (with minor tweaks) to many other platforms...
  • Thanks for the valuable info guys. From what i've seen it looks like most of the devs on this forum is a fan of the GameMaker products, so I think I will look into that for now. Seems that the learning curve is also less steep than Unity's, although i should note that a friend bought me a really cool book on Unity development. I will google the parakeet addon as I would like to continue learning how to code. Only started with C# about a month ago, but i'm completely hooked.
  • Wow. Parakeet looks really interesting!
  • edited
    Mr Joubert had a really interesting column in this month's NAG magazine about showing your prototypes to other people and it made me realize just how wrong I had gotten it with this game. Had no tutorial/read me, wasn't prepared for feedback or how people would react to the mechanic etc. As mentioned above I was about to scrap/shelve this game and move onto something new...bad idea...Think i'm going to take the feedback I got here and work on fixing the problems found by other players. It will take a lot of work and going back a few steps, but I really don't want to see my first game ever as a failure in other people's eyes. See updates soon...Now where did I save that C# tutorial pdf?
Sign In or Register to comment.