[Prototype] Monks: Succession

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Monks: Succession is a small party game for between 2-4 players. It's best played on controllers, though keyboards for two player matches can be used. I created it with the aim of showing it at Playtopia 2019.

The game entails controlling a member of a religious sect of flightless bird people as you participate in the rite of succession.

​Use your jetpack and laser breath to succeed in your ambition to become the next abbot!

I'd been slowly working on Monks over the last half of 2019. There were several personal goals for me for the project:

1. Attempting to create an effective character controller that went beyond just straightforward locomotion
2. Learning how to create original 3D characters and environmental art. Higher poly 3D asset creation is something which at the start of the project I did not have a huge amount of experience in.
2. Experimenting with photo-realistic rendering, particularly seeing if I could leverage the massive amounts of high-fidelity, photo scanned assets available, while still retaining character in the art style/art direction.

I'd appreciate have feedback on the above three aspects in particular.

I have uploaded the build I showed at Playtopia to Itch. The release has a fair amount of jank and bugs, but is playable with a decent computer. There is a quite a lot I'd need to do if I wanted to make this game accessible to a wider audience, beyond just adding more levels/content (such as adding proper settings/menus), but I want to kind of draw a line under the project for now as I'd been working on it for a while, and would like to try building some fresh prototypes.

Download link:
https://ncthbrt.itch.io/monks-succession

Comments

  • Hey Nick, it's Joel from UCT. We were in the same year :)

    Firstly the game runs pretty slowly on my Laptop. The frame rate seems to be about 20. I have 8 GB RAM, a low end but decent graphics card and a strong CPU so if you're planning to continue, I think optimising the game a bit would really help make the game more fun to play.

    I didn't see any instructions so I didn't know what to do. I tried pressing A to contest. I didn't understand that 'contest' means join the game until now because the message didn't go away. Maybe just write "Press A to join the game".
    I think you've got to fix these points before it would be fun to play with a friend.

    I like the animation and movements. They are realistic and responsive. I also liked the 3d environment. It was pretty high quality and contributed to an interesting atmosphere. Flying around with a jetpack was pretty confusing and not intuitive to me but seemed like it could be fun.

    Well I hope this was helpful.
    Thanked by 1NickCuthbert
  • edited
    Hi Joel/ @Plenopterix

    Thanks for the comment!
    Flying around with a jetpack was pretty confusing and not intuitive to me but seemed like it could be fun.
    Would you mind expanding a little on that? What aspect of the controls specifically did you find confusing?
    I didn't see any instructions so I didn't know what to do.
    Tutorialization is definitely something that the game could do a better job of doing in the game. At Playtopia, think it may have been less of a problem because the controllers were already hooked up, and players mostly just pressed buttons until something happened. Outside of that context, you're right in that it is kind of a little impenetrable. I was trying to add a bit of flavour/story with the text, but it probably is worth getting rid of that in favor of clearer instructions.
    Firstly the game runs pretty slowly on my Laptop
    Not surprised. Think there is a lot of low hanging optimizations that could still be done, like reducing the size of the textures, and dropping the quality of the ocean sim. Good to know the specs, I'm actually happy that it even runs at 20 FPS.
  • The jet pack controls are a bit confusing because when you're upside down, pressing up makes you go down. It would be more intuitive if pressing the up arrow makes you go up always and down turns off the jet pack. And led tmakes you go left, etc. It's a different control scheme and maybe it's not what you're going for.
  • Thanks for expanding. :)
    I did at one point try switch to an absolute control scheme, instead of a relative one, to see if it felt better, but found that unless I wanted to go for dual stick gameplay, it's quite hard to aim while flying well at the same time, at least with the morphology of the characters.
  • - So first impression was "whoah so big" - very big file size for a prototype, possibly turns a few people off from trying.
    - The initial prompt of press 'A' to contest, is that the keyboard A or the gamepad A? Either way the message doesn't go away and that's weird. I guess you mean you need another player? I couldn't get two players to spawn, I have a xbox one gamepad and the keyboard and I pressed all the things.
    - The player character is cute, I thought it was a dolphin :) It moves and animates well.
    - The player character is also light blue on a light blue sky... Half the time it looks like it's just the backpack kinda twirling.
    - I first started trying on keyboard, there was some movement but I couldn't really understand some of its logic at first. I think there's too much animation padding and that makes the character feels unresponsive. Let the player move left if they press left, right if they move right, faster. Especially in an action oriented game.
    - Being able to fall off the map without any prompt or dying or something is totally weird. I lost the player character a few times and due to the fact that flying is not straight forward (you have to jump then jump again to jetpack) I spent a lot of time wiggling sticks and not getting the character back. Restarted a few times to figure out how to get it back.
    - MAYBE platforming controls that turn into tank controls when flying could work, but the way it is implemented now is weird. Also I can't shoot so I can't really figure how the shooting would work.
    - The shoot doesn't seem to work at all, I tried the keyboard and the gamepad, pressed everything, pressed spacebar, triggers, nothing.
    - The dash roll duck thing... It feels weird to have it only work on the ground when it feels like the game is centered on jetpacks.
    - The landing animation is cool looking but again it feels like it removes from responsiveness.
  • Thanks for the great feedback @Tuism

    It seems clear that the way the game starts and is introduced needs a lot more work.

    It's Gamepad 'A'. On keyboard, Up and W would be the equivalents for player 1 and 2. You're right that you need two players to start. It's also why you weren't able to shoot. I'm guessing that it may also be why you might've "fallen off" the map, as the camera is largely static until the game begins.

    Perhaps having some kind of a "shield" at start instead of disabling shooting would help to introduce the game a little better.

    - So first impression was "whoah so big" - very big file size for a prototype, possibly turns a few people off from trying.
    Definitely could do more to bring the file size down a bit, assets are probably a bit too high res for the level of detail required.

    > The player character is also light blue on a light blue sky... Half the time it looks like it's just the backpack kinda twirling.
    That's a good point, probably need to choose a better primary colour for Player one. The character interpolates between the primary colour and texture colours depending on zoom level, and I can definitely see how the light blue could be hard to see.

    > due to the fact that flying is not straight forward (you have to jump then jump again to jetpack)
    Do you think that maybe being able to hold jump to start the jetpack would be more intuitive?

    > I think there's too much animation padding and that makes the character feels unresponsive
    Interesting. Can definitely try bumping up the acceleration a lot and seeing if it feels better.

    - The landing animation is cool looking but again it feels like it removes from responsiveness.
    Likewise, could probably drop the animation time a bit.

    > MAYBE platforming controls that turn into tank controls when flying could work, but the way it is implemented now is weird.
    Weird in what way? I've played too much of the game myself, so the scheme feels quite natural to me.
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