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AGDG DEMO DAY 49

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A jam submission

Untitled Space Station Rat Fetching Experience [DEMO]View game page

A quick demo of a WIP game idea, uploaded to collect feedback.
Submitted by bokoyoss (@bokoyoss) — 2 days, 6 hours before the deadline
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Untitled Space Station Rat Fetching Experience [DEMO]'s itch.io page

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Comments

NOTHSubmitted1 year ago

Love the style - There's some issues when I try to play on browser, some crazy camera drift. I've tried unplugging my mouse, messing with the track pad. I'm sot sure what's causing it right now. Learning curve left me a little lost at first so a (super simple) tutorial down the line would be a nice touch.

I wouldn't mind an environment that's a little darker/less saturated- but i understand you have a strong aesthetic right now. The potential for writing and goofy characters means you have a good project on your hands. I saw you posting some of the character work in an old thread, keep at it this is one of my fav projects visually!

Submitted
TAGLINE
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Tomodev1 year ago

Disposition doesn't seem to do anything yet. UI is bad, but thats Placeholder. 

Why can I grab/interact/attack while I'm being stunned and pinned down? It breaks everything completely obviously.

Venting myself into Space was dumb. But nice that it works.

Same with breaking the Window. But now I'm stuck at half height, and trying to crouch/uncrouch did nothing.

Other NPCs also all sunk into the Floor a bit. 

Lockpicking is incredibly hard.

Unscrewing doesn't work, its treated as interacting instead. When you get put into the Brig, basically everything breaks all the Time for me. 

Could maybe be a decent puzzle-y Game? But needs work.

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Shrine Dynamics1 year ago (2 edits)

Just some thoughts while playing:

- Immediately cool concept and mechanics prototype. Awkward controls right now, but I like this kind of shit.

- Holding an apple, it seems strange I can't eat it, but rather force others to eat.

- You can grab static interactable objects like the windows (or, obviously, the ladders) to climb. I think this should actually be a feature - being able to climb on everything would be great. Could modulate it by a stat or something, if you're adding those. Also, I actually kinda like the left click, then right click, etc. climbing system.

- A quick note about the graphics: if you're going to go for the pixelated art style (which I personally really enjoy), you'll want to attempt to make your nearby mipmapping on textures 'linear' or 'nearest' filtered. This will make distant shit look crispier, often times noisy even - which can be mitigated a few other ways while retaining the 'sharp' feel.

- Kinda feels weird that pressing 1,2,3 goes "interact, grab, attack" when the buttons aren't in that order.

- I'm not 100% sure you would need to use both hands for a majority of tasks, especially setting both hands to separate modes, but I suppose it is nice to have the option in an imsim like this.

- I think you've found a good system here with each grabbable item having a single 'special' function. Works pretty well for most things. An inventory would help but I'm not sure how you would integrate it with your current interaction system.

- Aside from many bits of jank, the AI is amazing. The fact that I can ask for what they're holding or give them shit, ask questions about any of the topics I know, fuck with disposition, etc. And that they react to everything, like calling security on you or saying "Are you here to grab me again, creep?", moving stuff around like a broken vent (to presumably repair it?), amazing shit in general, and the foundations for a really good sim game.

- "Airlocking" people or breaking windows is an awesome feature. Wondering if there's going to be some atmospheric simulation like SS13. At the very least, being able to vent specific rooms by hacking into or destroying an O2 control system would be very cool.

- The AI has trouble with stuff like repairing the vent I broke up on the ladder area. Poor bot is having a crisis - he can't figure out how to fix it because he can't climb. Security also doesn't really like stunning me even after telling me I'm going to the brig over and over. After he's already dragged me to the brig, he just keeps telling me that I'm going to the brig over and over, and eventually lets me go.

- Got the rat by luring patti away with a terminal, lockpicking the door to the supply closet (difficult-ass minigame, by the way - probably a good thing), getting the screwdriver, moving the boxes from the pile and unscrewing the panel behind them (I actually love that you have to unscrew each individual screw) without the robot getting too curious, climbed the ladder, grabbed the rat fucker and threw him at patti.

Overall: My favorite game of DD49 so far - I love a good immersive sim and these mechanics are a great basis for a potentially amazing game.

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Blue9FairySubmitted1 year ago

for some reason the camera would keep slowly rotating to theright which made this pretty hard to play ,i couldnt  figure out any way to get to the rat, i did figure out how to use the npcs as meat shields tho and also this:

game looks good, i dig the aesthetic

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QwottSubmitted1 year ago(+1)
  • Please upload downloadable versions. The web player tends to run like shit and the game window is tiny.
  • The arm stretching feels unnececssary. It just makes the game feel unresponsive. Also, hand collisions don't register if you're too close to something.
  • Don't stop the game when interacting with everything. Things like the description for the windows can just show up as a subtitle (although it's not necessary in the first place; I can tell it's a window just by looking at it), and have the lockpick difficulty show up by just looking at a door.
  • Security guard dragged me off to some corridor and got stuck in a loop of telling me he was going to take me to the brig.
  • Air control is too high.
  • Climbing the ladder is incredibly unintuitive. Don't know how long it would've taken me to figure it out if I hadn't seen the comment below while writing. As a rule of thumb, actions in games shouldn't require more conscious effort than they do in real life (same reason why the arm stretching is bad). When you climb a ladder in real life, it's just muscle memory. You don't have to actively think about grabbing the ladder with your right hand, pulling up, grabbing it with your left hand, letting go with your right hand, pulling up, and so on.
  • The interaction system in general just doesn't feel good and I think you should abstract it away and make actions context sensitive. You don't have to put any conscious thought into whether you should look at or pick up an apple in real life.
  • I never would have thought that you could somehow climb along fluorescent tubes if the game weren't so barebones.
  • Couldn't bring myself to try to get past those horizontal ladders again after getting caught while unscrewing the grate.
Submitted
FPMV
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bokoyossDeveloper1 year ago

Thanks for playing and the detailed feedback.

  • Yeah, I had hubris about the performance of the web version. There's a windows download now. I was hoping that by having a web build people would be more likely to play it.
  • It definitely needs a lot of tweaking, the collisions are wonky as you said. I'm not sure about getting rid of it completely- but I will play around with it and see what feels better.
  • That's really good advice- I opted for "the whole world pauses" approach to dialogue but it doesn't need to be that way.
  • I've (hopefully) fixed this bug, thanks for reporting.
  • Hm- I could try tweaking air control a bit. I think locking you into momentum while in air should probably work. You're right that it is odd you can move around like that in mid air, I didn't even notice while testing these last few weeks since I started.
  • I want to find a balance between "hit a button to mount a ladder and slide up and down" and freeform BotW style climbing. The reason I'm not just locking the player to a ladder rail is because I want climbing to be somewhat difficult and skill-based- but maybe only for climbing something you're not supposed to climb. Ideally, people would be a little stressed about falling off a sideways ladder. That's a tough balance to strike so I'll keep tweaking.
  • I think there could be more context sensitive actions- like how an adventure game will sometimes allow right clicks to be the most likely/common action. But I don't want to scrap the intent system entirely, as I plan on adding a lot more complex systems where it will come in handy.
  • I was hoping people would try this in lieu of any other way of crossing that gap.
  • Totally fair- thanks for playing.

Appreciate your notes, I will play through your game shortly and provide feedback.

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Captain DreamcastSubmitted1 year ago

After destroying Maynard, the guard and finally Patti, I started getting spammed with "security wants to grab zapper but cannot find it" messages and the game started slowing down to a crawl.

Also for some reason I can't seem to figure out how to climb ladders yet, might just be me being retarded here though.

Ok, now I think I got it, you grab left and right and left and right AND hold jump at the same time.

Hmm, now I seem to be stuck on the floor and my center of looking around seems to be off. Happened after security was trying to take me to the brig, could it be related to that? Either way, seems like I'm softlocked now.

On this try I got the rat! Maynard was in the screwdriver room so I asked him to come to the terminal, used that to get into the screwdriver room, got the screwdriver, threw it around so Maynard comes back from the terminal, use that to get out, unscrew the vent behind the boxes, and climb up the ladder to get to the rat.

Grabbing, using tools etc really lends itself to puzzles like this well. Feels like there is a lot of stuff to do in here and I like that.

Submitted
Dream Team
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bokoyossDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

Thanks for playing. Good find on that bug- stupidly I had NPCs still able to create new goals after they die. I've fixed that and reuploaded.

The bug you encountered with the camera being tilted I think can happen when you get brigged twice in a row. I need to dig into it further. There's a lot of wonkiness around the security stunning and dragging the player.

And I'm really glad to hear you reached the rat! With limited playtesting going into this weekend I was a bit worried the jankiness would prevent anyone from getting that far. I appreciate you putting in the time.

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ManusC1 year ago

Intriguing game. Nice ambience, maybe could use some more sound effects, has a style.

Reply
stomygameSubmitted1 year ago

Yes! I only just saw this in the thread the other day and really wanted to try it.

  • I like the morrowind dialog system. I get the feeling the compliments/bribery system would actually work better in a smaller game without stats
  • Please don't make the game browser only, even just a windows version that I can use proton with would be better so I can fullscreen it
  • The scrollwheel could also change the interaction mode, it doesn't seem to do anything else
  • Climbing the ladders is unreasonably difficult having to switch hands all the time, the alternate hand has a really hard time registering as you go up, and then automatically letting go when you extend too high just makes it useless. It would probably work better if the collision was more reliable but as it is it really sucks. I'm also really not a fan of the minecraft-style of using space to climb a ladder instead of locking to it and pressing forward.
  • Holding Ctrl causes the tab to crash, at least in Firefox on Linux anyway
  • Dragging stuff around on the other hand I think works great, nice and simple
  • The GUI is really simple and effective, I like it

I gave up after it crashed a third time but this is really promising for a little game. Looking forward to seeing more of it.

Submitted
Ctesiphon
Reply
bokoyossDeveloper1 year ago(+2)

Thanks for playing!

  • Right now the compliment "system" is as bare bones as possible- definitely looking forward to fleshing that out. Not using stats means I have to come up with a compelling way to pass/fail these kinds of checks- should be a fun problem to solve. Right now the plan is to not have any numerical stats / skill checks, and only have equipment available to make things easier, i.e. some kind of lockpicking tool to lower the lockpick difficulty, but no lockpicking "stat".
  • Definitely not going to be browser only- I was glad to see it ran in the browser since I figured that would mean more people would be likely to play it. But the size of the game I ultimately want to make (something like a space station the size of a larger Deus Ex level) won't be browser friendly.
  • That's a great idea- I will add that.
  • Yeah, it is super clunky right now. I will play around with different control options for mounting and climbing ladders- I wanted it to be more freeform than on-rails since you can climb boxes, light fixtures, sideways ladders etc. But I agree right now it does not feel good.
  • I'm an idiot. crtl+w is a common hotkey for "close tab" in most browsers. aka "crouching and walking forward". The perils of testing way more on windows than html5, I guess. I will fix.

Again, thanks for playing, I really appreciate it. I'm planning on continuing to update the game and participate in more Demo Days to come

Reply
stomygameSubmitted1 year ago
I'm an idiot. crtl+w is a common hotkey for "close tab" in most browsers. aka "crouching and walking forward". The perils of testing way more on windows than html5, I guess. I will fix.

I did not know that. Yeah, that's what was happening. Maybe change the crouch key to c for now, lol.

Reply
bokoyossDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

Yep- I just changed it to toggle crouch on c. A good teaching moment.

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