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Griffork

16
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A member registered Jul 23, 2020

Recent community posts

Why can't I use this on mobile? 

Finished it in like 2 hours :/ And since I've discovered all letters (and #) new words don't seem super exciting...


I wonder if there is a way to increase the longevity of this game?

SPOILERS!!!!


S is reflected Z through a bender.

Nice work!

Look up how loops are done in houdini. Afaik best node loops I've seen to date.

Any chance on getting backgrounds for the combat? Currently it looks like it's set in tron, which begs the question of why the territory is important (it doesn't appear to provide resources or luxury).

It's usually a good idea to explain your game if you're looking for feedback so people don't have to go searching for that information.

I guess I've seen two versions of the random person kicking something. The first is the "I don't want to get hurt" (which I don't get the impression from the rest of the way your character acts, she walks too confident with bare feet to worry about hurting them when she kicks) or the "I don't know what I'm doing but I'm going to try anyway!" which usually ends up with people spinning out or falling over (neither of which is really good for the game).

Maybe add a bit of wobble or arm flapping/windmilling (to keep her balance) to make it more obvious she doesn't know what she's doing?

Very nice!

The kicks are a little weightless... For a good kick the whole body should move to increase the damage being done. At the moment it's like she's afraid of stubbing her toes when she kicks something.

You could do both, have a benefit and a negative, then people could choose what they want to specialise in.

I'd also recommend mixing and matching, so for example increasing charisma in one circumstance increases laziness and in another circumstance increases materialistic. That would cause players to be able to choose what they'd like to excel in, and where they don't mind taking penalties. I also think that you should either get an equivalent positive bonus to negative penalty for an action, or a better positive bonus than negative penalty.

Finally I'd say you'll probably want to make it so that each choice either has a lot of different options so people don't have to choose things they don't like, or a choice where they can avoid stat changes completely. 

Unfortunately all of this relegates the stat system to  a very secondary/minor role in the game, meaning that interesting interactions coming out of being obese or something else will likely be missed by most players as the different negative stats are deemed to be a bad things and players will try to optimise away from it. 

If instead you'd rather the stat system be rather forefront in the game but you also don't want people to feel rather annoyed every time they get hit with a new penalty two alternatives I have are:

 *  having 'skill bundles' where you get a new skill or abililty but it's bundled with a negative trait, and rather than having a slow slider (obesity from 1-100) you just have 'mildly obese' 'obese' 'very obese' stacking skills, each with their own stats. This gives tangible reward at the same time as the penalty, rather than just having 'some numbers go up' and 'some numbers go down', making the whole thing feel a bit more meaningful. 

 * Turning the whole system on it's head and have the negative traits actually be good things, e.g. if you're lazy maybe people pay you more to do stuff because they know you don't want to do it? But instead of having it be an outright boon have it be reflected in world interactions (e.g. talking to characters) and make it very obvious that those bonuses (e.g. extra dialogue options) are a result of having a high penalty skill.

For the last option you'll also need to teach the player really early on about the in-world bonuses, for example having a player start with the lazy stat and show in the first area that they can take a nap in a random bed (only because they have the lazy stat) and give them a bonus (e.g. a new npc pops up) because they did it.

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Be careful, players don't generally like it if you take away capabilities/make them worse, particularly if they can't see it coming. This is why this sort of thing isn't generally done. 

There's a IGDC talk somewhat related to this by a guy who worked on magic the gathering for 20 years called something like 20 lessons from 20 years. 

When I think of my talents, what I am naturally skilled at, I often come up short on a definite answer.

I hear this quite a lot from people who have never been in the industry, and that's usually because when people think about jobs in game development they often think only of the stereotypical 3:

  • Artist
  • Programmer
  • Composer/Sound designer

When actually there's a huge swathe of different skills needed to make a game, and based on what you've written in this post I'd initially think you were a narrative writer. 

Jobs I hear from other industry professionals:

  • Character Designer
  • Narrative Writer
  • Level Designer
  • Designer-scriptwriter (a designer who can do basic programming but can also interface with other designers or make their own design calls much better than pure programmers can). There's probably a better name for this one but I can't think of it right now. 
  • Engine programmer
  • Gameplay programmer
  • Sculpter & Character modeller
  • General modeller
  • Animator
  • VFX artist
  • Technical artist (like designer-scriptwriter but for art). 
  • Sound artist
  • Composer. 

There's probably more that have currently slipped my mind. Sidenote: it's rare for a person to do only one of these jobs outside of very large companies. 

Anyway, my point is that you shouldn't measure your skills based on some perceived required skills in the industry, you should instead look at the skills you do have (even if they seem unrelated) and say "how can I use these skills to make my game better"?