Death Lazer (Demo)
Hi
Here is our first demo of Death Lazer. We've already shown it at a previous community night in Joburg, but we've been busy tweaking it for the PC as well as adding local networking support.
Here is the link if you'd like to give it a try:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/104009805/Death Lazer Demo - 2013-05-22.zip
Here is a link to a gameplay video:
PC Controls:
WSAD to move
Mouse to aim
Left Mouse button to shoot
Mouse Wheel/Number Keys to swap weapons
Tab for your score
Esc to pause
XBox 360 Controller:
Left Thumbstick to move
Right Thumbstick to aim
Right Trigger to shoot
Right/Left Bumper to swap weapons
Y Button for your score
Start to pause
Please PM me if you find any bugs.
We're currently in the process of finishing the full version, here are some screenshots of other levels:
Thanks
Here is our first demo of Death Lazer. We've already shown it at a previous community night in Joburg, but we've been busy tweaking it for the PC as well as adding local networking support.
Here is the link if you'd like to give it a try:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/104009805/Death Lazer Demo - 2013-05-22.zip
Here is a link to a gameplay video:
PC Controls:
WSAD to move
Mouse to aim
Left Mouse button to shoot
Mouse Wheel/Number Keys to swap weapons
Tab for your score
Esc to pause
XBox 360 Controller:
Left Thumbstick to move
Right Thumbstick to aim
Right Trigger to shoot
Right/Left Bumper to swap weapons
Y Button for your score
Start to pause
Please PM me if you find any bugs.
We're currently in the process of finishing the full version, here are some screenshots of other levels:
Thanks
Thanked by 1hanli
Comments
A little death match never did any harm.
We're thinking of buying some more death animations for the full version, we'll definitely consider looking for a better walk animation.
The installer felt rather weird, TBH I didn't expect there to even be one. Where did it install the game to? Did I get a choice? Why did it download something? Couldn't that just have been included?
Okay, the L3 animation is pretty neat, when do I get to gameplay though?
That intro sequence had very little reason for existing. Yeah, matrioshka brains and stuff are cool, but the justification for the actual combat part is still not explained: If people are trying to sever their connections for real, then who/what is not letting that happen without the combat part? That's never explained, we just have to accept that this is how shit is done at the end of the intro text. Is there a reason this combat is happening in a real setting instead of a virtual one? ... Why do things from the future misspell "laser"?
The non-3D cyan/magenta split text hurts my eyes, chromatic drift, right? It is all done in a coherent style though, it's just a style that makes with the visual ouch. The menu flip animations are nice, yay multi-line text changing, that's cool. Started in the wrong res, had to change that. No sensitivity options? The menu music loop is quite jarring when it ends.
Solo Match, Skylab, let's do this. 3 bots. Yeah, okay, easy default, what the hell.
Okay, I have a targeting point + circle. Let's up that sensitivity! Menu contains no options at all in-game, weird.
Running around, model feels quite hover-y, like Pomb already said. A dude! Fire! I died. Ah, there's a recharging shield... More firing, less dying. Have picked up arbitrarily rotating floating things. Those are new weapons? Yes, they are. Mousewheel to select stuff, does the gun model change as well, I can't tell? Ammo seems limited, icon is draining colour.
Argh, Skylab has this big invisible blocking thing in the big open area to the bottom middle of the map. What's going on? Have died on it multiple times due to getting stuck running from the bots.
The combat is feeling really shallow... I can't roll or duck or move around at any better speed than this, why? Dodging shots is mostly about being aware of an enemy first, so I always want to be moving upwards towards enemies, means that camping at the southernmost part of the map gives you the most visibility.
Can't get off the score screen. There's no button to click here? Oh, mashed keys to find that it wanted me to push enter. Which I hadn't used at all up to that point... Add a clickable button maybe? Or a prompt at least?
Ah, it seems only 1 of the menu tracks has the short looping time, the longer one still goes silent (the skritchy one... uh) but it doesn't jar as much.
Playing again on the molten map. Seems like ramps are a combat thing as well: I never want to be trying to fight down a ramp because I simply can't hit the lower enemy. Ack. Splash damage weapons are hax when fighting up a ramp too, so much easier to hit people. This is aiming at the ground with rockets in Quake.
Oh dear, more invisible geometry on the large platform to the left of the rocket spawn bridge, down the ramp. Seems to be a tile thing?
Playing against hard bots on Trenches. This map is very strange... At least I can dominate the lower part of it if I stay in the trenches, bots keep trying to come down the ramps and die because they can't hit me. Bots seem to kill each other a lot of the time though, watched it happen like 3 times now with them both firing the starter weapon at each other and both dying to the final shot at the same time.
Oh, I see I can get max visibility range by putting my mouse at the edge of the screen. Hmm... I had a similar visibility issue in Monochrome and ended up shifting the camera center point based on a point 1/3rds of the way toward the mouse cursor from the player's position. That felt pretty good, screen edge scroll I don't like as much.
Ok, done playing now.
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Final thoughts: I think you need to spend more time on your combat. The map height variance causes big issues and the view distance thing compounds the lack of combat options that players have: You're essentially just doing tiny dodges while running backwards shooting at a target that you're holding your mouse cursor over. It feels like there's not that much skill to be gained at this beyond learning weapon spawn points and spotting enemies first. Weapon range isn't really a thing, the long refire weapons feel like you want to fire once at range and then switch to something else... I'm not sure that guns-that-fire-on-only-1-plane are a great place to start a game, unless you base EVERYTHING around that design decision and really go wild with maps that are like "Hah, fuck being 2D, we're 4D!" and players have to be smart and emergent with their horizontal-firing weapons...
What are your plans with this?
Installer does suck, it's unfortunately the one XNA generates when you publish a game. Only benefit is at least it downloads the prerequisites (XNA + .Net 4.0) if you don't have them. I couldn't use the VS installer project as it doesn't copy the contents folder. But I will look for something better for the final version.
We noticed the invisible geometry earlier, I've uploaded a new version with today's date. Seemed to only happen with the shader instancing on ATI gfx cards.
Our plans are basically to create a couple more levels and some kickass gameplay modes and then to release it after we've ironed everything out. We just basically tried to make something similar to Soldat, a quick multi-player game that you can play when you take a break between your other games. We also have it running on the Xbox 360 and I still actually prefer a quick split-screen match between Halo 4!
Thanks
Frankly put: Monochrome was boring. Sure I had all these unique weapons with alternate firing mechanisms and your on-screen size depended on your health and that was kinda neat and meant you could "hide" and be harder to hit as you got closer to dying. But it was still boring to play, especially with a mouse interface: Picking a point on a screen with a mouse really isn't hard, so the most high-damage weapons were simply the most effective all the time. It got silly even trying to play against someone with a long range, high damage weapon. The thing that fixed Monochrome was adding in the ability to leap. But I'd like to talk about WHY that made such a huge difference to the feeling of the game, and that requires a new concept that I've been thinking about for a couple of days now:
Imagine that the fraction of screen space that your player object takes up on a game screen is measured, now compare that to the fractional percentage of the screen a player object can cover in a second. If we divide these two terms, we end up with a ratio: If you have a huge player object and can move across the screen slowly, you have a very high ratio; big player, fast movement it's lower, but still high; small player, slow movement is pretty low; And small player, fast movement is the lowest of all.
I think this is a relevant thing in games where you can see your player and enemy players at the same time because all the really fun ones have very low ratios. That makes it fun to try and guess where people are going to be moving so that your choice of interaction - where to fire and when - becomes more interesting... And yes, I think you can go too high with the ratio, if you had a game with huge player models that zipped around the screen super fast it would be almost impossible to play and incredibly frustrating.
Soldat: Tiny players, able to move fast. Really fast with the jetpack and sliding + gravity. You have to lead other players with your shots depending on your distance and how they're moving. This is made doubly interesting because gravity makes their movements predictable, but faster. The jetpack adds in unpredicatability, but makes players move slower.
Babo Violent: Mid-size players, moving medium speed. Game is less interesting from a straight-up shooting perspective. Has to use terrain re-thinking grenades for variety. I think the later XBLA Babo game adds leaping.
Monochrome: Small players, able to move really fast when leaping, medium speed the rest of the time. Changes up gameplay based on leap timings and strategy around stamina. Added elements like bouncing shots, zone control/traps and firing around corners with certain weapons are all multiplied by the raw fun that moving and shooting with a high ratio gives.
Death Lazer: Large models that move quite slowly, low ratio explains why the general shooting and aiming isn't that much fun. I imagine it feels better to play on a gamepad where you're not as super-accurate, but that still doesn't address the ratio problem.
I hope you guys don't think I'm ripping into you, I just kept thinking about this concept of a screen-coverage to movement-speed ratio and hoped it might help you make the game more fun :)
We actually spoke about it a lot yesterday and threw ideas around and we starting implementing a feature where you can quick sprint/teleport every 3-5 seconds to add some complexity. Hopefully that'll do the trick! We'll also up the gameplay speed and look at the other issues you and Pomb mentioned.
It shouldn't take too long to implement the updates maybe 2 weeks or so. I'll update the post when we've got it up and if you could possibly have another look, we'd appreciate it.
But if you or anyone else has some other ideas or more feedback, please share them and we'll try and integrate them into the next version of the demo.
Thanks
Keen to see what you come up with :)
If you're going to do a teleport, it might make sense to have an energy bar limit that ability. In Monochrome I found that if there was no "cost" to movement options, they'd just mash the dash key all the time because that was the best strategy. So I ended up with a stamina bar that allowed players to dash twice if they wanted/needed to, but regenerated slower the more stamina was missing. So you could always dash again quicker if you didn't do the double-dash right away.