100 Orcs [WIP]

I found it too hard to strike the orcs without getting hit. It was very frustrating.

I also wonder if the black outline of the player and orcs is too small when shrunk that small.

 

Thats fair. I keep going back and forth on whether or not you should be hit by touching them or just by an attack.

 

Most games knock back the bad a guy a little to give you a chance when you attack. Zombieville does this well.

 

I've updated the webplayer again to its latest version. I agree, its a bit difficult to hit the moving ones when you are behind them. However, I almost wonder if that is their challenge since they don't have an attack. The later orcs will stop and face you and have an attack with some anticipation. These orcs that are in the webplayer are the simple enemies.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39578945/100 Orcs Proto/100 Orcs Proto.html

As always, comments are very welcome! I am really trying to finese the combat because that is the point of the game. I really think I had a mental block by trying to think up puzzles as well, when really... the point of the game is to kill orcs so that is what it will be.

 

I'm finding on a mobile screen that the character is just too small and unrecognizable. I've attempted to fix this by changing the proportions of the characters. Let me know what you think.

 

Nice job! I think that new proportions are better and now the character is cuter

 

Thanks! I just got done doing the first Orc enemy as well.



There will be a new webplayer in the next week and a write up about the state of the game.

 

Haha! I love those proportions! Your game is going to be a success in mobile.

Great job, keep it up!

 

Thanks man! I appreciate it.

 

Hey Bridin, The game works well, but when i fell into a pit it only hurt me once. Then i stood there and wasn't dying any more. Also you could always add a bigger line around the character to help them pop out.

 

I've increased the outline on the characters. I will post a picture in context when its ready! I am also thinking of getting rid of the spikes all together. I made a design decision to focus on the fighting aspects rather than the platforming puzzles. You will see soon!

 

Also you should increase the speed of the 'next' button during the intro conversation. i can read way faster then it takes for the button to pop up

 

I think I'm gonna opt to have the next button available at all times. Maybe hidden until an appropriate time in the dialog. We shall see. I'm also looking for solutions for the text to write on instead of just bam all there. Similar to a typewriter effect. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

 

I dont know if your looking for a specific pre-made solution/package, but programmatically, the basics of a typewriter effect is to display a Substring of your line of Dialog who's length is determined by the current game time minus a timestamp of when you started displaying the dialog.

Alternatively, you can write the entire line of Dialog out and mask it with a duplicate of the background GUI, slowly cropping/resizing it over time to reveal the text. Or even by simply increasing the size of the display element containing the text (as long as by default it crops whatever exceed that size). Of course, these 2 methods are very dependant on the style and implementation of your GUI, and won't work in all cases.

 

I'm defiantly more of visual/animation kind of guy. Programming is really quite above me at this point in my life. I dig the masking idea. That I can defiantly understand. Thanks for the tips!

 

The biggest drawback of the masking solution is when it comes to multiple lines of dialog you end up needing multiple masking lines that have to be co-ordinated (2nd line starts revealing after the first finishes) - its a bit inefficient too, especially if ur using the default GUI. The substring system would be more robust, work in almost any situation and isn't as complicated as I made it sound

If you don't mind sharing some code for what your currently doing dialog-wise, I could help you get something working, or even post a small example script you could take a look at.

 

Right now I'm using a combination of Playmaker and Daikon Forge for my GUI and Text stuff. I don't have much dialog so it hasn't been much of a burden to set it up pretty rudimentary.

 

Since your using a custom GUI solution, I'd imagine the GUI objects get batched and drawn as one, so any inefficiency from using the masking methods are probably negligible. As long as the multi-line issue isn't a problem and you aren't planning to cover the screen with walls of text, masking is probably the simplest solution

 

Yup! I think so! I could probably even do it with the new-ish Animation tools. I will give some feedback to what works when I get to this portion. I'm still chugging away at the main game mechanics. I'll worry about the pizazz when its ready.

 

It must be getting late, i read that as 'pizzas' and now i'm hungry...

 

Pizza and some more art production. Sounds like my night is set.

 

Friends! It's been awhile! But I have some exciting stuff to share and I'd love some more feedback on what I've worked up. After I built my first prototype, I hit a very large wall. For what ever reason I couldn't get past myself in designing puzzles and levels. The task just seemed too daunting and I wanted to do it right. I wasn't prepared for the encounter and it was super effective on destroying my momentum. So, I've purged levels and puzzles all together and I went back to what the game was about; fighting orcs. In fact, fighting 100 orcs at a time, hence the name.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39578945/100 Orcs Proto/100 Orcs Proto.html

Instead of levels, I've replaced them with area stages. A set small stage where waves of Orcs come at you from both sides.

I'd love feedback on these three things:

- animations
- the feel of the controls
- the pacing of the attacks

WASD to move and mouse 1 to attack. Press r to restart the level.

 

Theres a small animation bug if you hold down W, seems he gets a bit confused to what animation state he should be in after landing for the jump.

The stage areas seem like a good idea. Are they going to be entirely static? It might be neat to see them change as the combat intensifies (lighting changes, buildings catching fire/collapsing, villagers running about etc)

The new level has so much more charm than the blocky stuff from before

 

@NomadKing I think I've found and fix those animation troubles.

I've also updated the webplayer to continually churn out orcs for you to fight.

I hope at the end of this they don't remain static. I want some nice particle and smoke effects on that broken building like its on fire and I'd like to see the castle on fire in the background. As well as villagers running in terror around the scene. Patrons running out of the inn and stuff. Those are all wishful thinking. Lets just see if I can pull it off!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39578945/100 Orcs Proto/100 Orcs Proto.html

 

I did a test in web version and like a lot.
Some points:

1) Orcs attack anything without check if is near to hit the knight
2) The cam effect its good, but more repetitive
3) The castle in background can move in other "axis" or lazy (something like that)
4) No toon particles yet !
5) Maybe some kind of animations to the knight (like blinking or open/close his mouth)
6) Think about put some kind of animated objects in scene (the plate "IN" for example can be animated).

 

The game looks awesome but after the intro im getting like 1 fps.

 

It's good to see you have plans for it, looking forward to seeing how it turns out

Kind of agree with this. Maybe you could add a more subtle shake for the regular attacks and keep the current one for bigger hits like the stabbing one or the downward thrusting one (after you jump).

 

@mcunha98 Thanks for the thoughts. I wonder why the orcs are doing that... I will put it on the check list to investigate.

@Barry_Evans Are you sure you are using the right webplayer? The current one is only a level without the intro I made a few months back. Let me make sure I've updated the first post of this thread and try again.

@NomadKing Good suggestion. I agree with both you and mcunha98. Needs some more finesse. I can defiantly do this with the thrust down sword attack. It would be a bit trickery for the other three animations because currently I've got them set up as random animations.

Look for a new build soon. I seem to be picking up some solid momentum!

 

Love the style and where this is going.

Feedback:

- The cam shake is a bit heavy.
- I don't like that I have to stop when swinging the sword. Kills the momentum
- I feel like I have to get really close to the orcs. I have no sense how close is safe still.

 

@der_r Thanks man! I wonder if an axe swinging swoosh sprite would help determine the safe distance. Another thing added to the list to try.

I've updated the first post of this thread so it reflects the game now and I added what I think i am going with for a title graphic!

 

Very nice looking

 

Thank you! I spent a lunch prepping the next demo. The main link should update as well. I've added the actual orc acting logic so the player can be hit and die.

Press "r" to restart the level.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39578945/100 Orcs Proto/100 Orcs Proto.html

Here's the feedback I'm looking for now:

- One hit kills challenging enough?
- Is the red flashing noticeable enough to let you know you've been hit?
- Should you be able to run through the orcs?

 

- For the current orcs, yes 1 hit seems fine. Although some 'bigger' stuff that takes a few hits / more strategy in how you fight it would work nice later in the fight.

- Yup, easily noticeable. Should be fine once you have some sound in there too. Might be nice to be knocked back a small amount when hit to stop you taking multiple hits at once from 'stacked' orcs.

- Tricky one to decide. Traditionally, you wouldn't be able to and you'd take damage for it, but I kind of like how it feels in your game being able to tactically dash thru and hit an enemy from behind. Maybe you could leave it as is, but add some slow moving orcs that have big shields that need to be jumped over instead of just walking through.


Do you plan on breaking your enemies down into Waves? Or just streaming all the enemies out in a big chain? I think waves would work well in a lot of ways for this sort of game: Player reward (Yay I made it to wave 3!), Player restart (Die and you start the wave again. Die X times and you start the stage again), and even designed pacing for you enemies (wave 1 - 20 Orcs, wave 2 - 25 orcs, wave 3 - 15 orcs and 5 archers, etc.)

Extra things: Restarting only gave me 2 health. not 3 like the first go. My thumb would love spacebar as an alt Jump - it's getting bored!




Disclaimer: I do type a lot of random ideas in my posts, but don't take them as criticisms, just enthusiastic energy

 

It feels right, like really responsive!
An idea, you could make waves of 100 orcs making them bigger and stronger every time.

 

@cdosrun Good deal! I'm glad you feel that way.

@NomadKing I hadn't really thought about waves. My thoughts were that as the number of Orcs increases more of them come at a time. And harder orcs too. I think you are right about the stacked orcs. I need to figure out a way to fix that.

 

You could just go with the old flash-and-immune-after-being-hit approach. Its a classic!

 

Game looks great! If I may ask, how do you parent weapons/accessories with a character made with a sprite sheet or as you've done in blender? Blenders tools are much better than Unity's for animations but I want to be able to parent my weapons to my players hand and cannot figure it out with using a bunch of separate sprites in unity.

 

@Lazdude17 I am using Unity's animation tools this time and it's actually as easy as you described it. You literally parent the weapon to the sprite you want it to follow. Each piece of my sprite is a separate part of the body.

 

Yeah that's what I'm doing right now but I really want IK rigging for the feet because I hate counter-animating. I downloaded Sprites & Bones package and it's great but has some bugs that bother me and I was hoping I could do it another way...You come from the art side and I prefer coding to art and we still run into the same problems haha I think that means it does just come down to dedication Good luck with your project, I'll be coming back to check on the progress for sure!

 

If you want IK, blender is a good choice. I decided to go with the unity 2d because my drawcalls were not being batched do to how my character moved right and left. I scaled it on the x axis by -1 and so i would see a spike in drawcalls when I had lots of orcs on the screen. I could have gotten away with the blender characters if I had built them mirrored on the backside but I thought this would be a better approach.

 

Yeah I thought about using blender but I didn't like the doubling-up plan either.

 

When I did a few experiments, it really wasn't so bad. The largest issue for me was my characters face. The eyes had to be hidden between to the two heads and then everytime I needed to switch the eyes I would have to animate four bones instead of just two which I didn't feel like doing.

 

My character's eyes don't move or change so that at least wouldn't be an issue. May-hap, may-hap, but I think I'm going to let other people decide for me when I start the work in progress thread for it. Just not sure if I should yet since I don't have hardly an art just a bunch of the mechanics. Most things are placeholder blocks and sprites. Thanks for the tips btw

 

Almost done with this guys animations! His logic will be very similar to the first Orc but he will be a bit harder to kill!

 

Nice

 

what will this be available on?

 

I'm shooting for mobile. I'll make a desktop version available as well. We will see after that!

 

What program you used to create your characters?

 

I use illustrator for the characters. Just some easy spline work and solid colors.

 

I've started a tumblr dedicated to 100 Orcs where I'll be posting more frequent art updates.

http://100orcs.tumblr.com/