Thanks for noticing the mannequin responses. I worked really hard getting those to look smooth and realistic because of how cool I think it is when the animations are life-like. A big inspiration was Call of Duty: Black Ops, Zombie Minigame. I really like the idea of knocking an enemy back with bullets. Your suggestion about the ceiling is great. I had already thought a little about ceiling based games (mostly because they promote good neck posture relative to ground games) but I never considered inverting a ground based game and putting it on the ceiling. The beautiful thing is, that would probably be really easy to implement. It might only take one new line of code that flips the game when it's placed on a roof plane rather than a floor. Now I'm wondering if you could play it on a wall. (Edit: Dude, I'm totally doing to do this. There's no reason not to. I'm going to detect wall and ceiling planes and orient the game to those planes as well. Mannequin Madness on ALL SURFACES NOW! Once I publish this update, you'll be an official game designer. What name would you like associated with you in the credits?) Also, it can be played from 2nd or 3rd story balconies in life-size mode. That's pretty fun too. If you make it max small and set the game on a desk, it can be played in portrait while resting your wrist on the table. Also, 5x damage for headshots. I'm going to implement multi-player eventually. The technology to do that is recently available. I also want to add giant enemies that are like 3x taller than you because I think that would look awesome in life-size. It'd be like a 20ft giant coming at you!
By all means, thank you! It truly is a brilliantly-designed game. It doesn’t get old. I found the Halo-looking weaponry today and played with that, and some of the more novel weapons in the editor. I was also impressed with the inventory; perfectly identifiable M249, FAL, P90, FS2000-looking guns. You have quite a knack for replicating in this platform. I love seeing the shells eject- masterful. I require no formal acknowledgement in credits for an update, as it is quite pleasurable to simply exchange ideas with a talented developer; but if you insist, please just use my gaming handle ‘fatefulday’.
I am so stoked about this update it’s unusual - I am going to begin sharing this game with friends because it really deserves more attention. If I didn’t despise social media I would do a much better job for you, but it’s just not something I subscribe to. Hold onto this design and code because it’s really something!
I really like seeing things fly through the air and the smoke trails do a great job emphasizing the movement. The rifles have projectiles that travel at 200 m/s (when in life size mode) but it's really cool because the smoke lets you visualize a 200 m/s projectile that would otherwise be a blur. 1800's muskets had about that muzzle velocity. I would actually browse the internet looking for cool gun models to relax after a hard day's development. It reminded me of a fashionista shoe-shopping online. It was hilarious because I eventually had 60 gun models (essentially every gun I ever though was cool or saw in a movie/game, western and eastern block, almost all the NATO rifles) and this incurred a huge overhead because I had to design the properties for 60 weapons (sort of like having too many shoes in your closet). The majority of the guns were actually made by amateur artists who post their work online for free. I sometimes changed the colors or form a little so there was a coherent aesthetic. You can check out creative-commons modes I used here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U1QNcLbOzmagvtLWFlD_qdd4dkFQf_JQtzA8Vva3...
These are some of my favorites
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/apsmg-4549b93ce4704e79aefb7fbd4c9dc481
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/triple-barrel-shotgun-54c82c65b15d47a3a3a43c46d17f679b
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/supershorty-4207137c47c74c5e92904ea37121a0c0
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/magpul-fmg-9-vang-choi-loa-b30c1940f8904460987e47b46f33efea
This update also includes a better explanation of the controls which I hope will help new players get oriented without help. The best way I've found to introduce someone to the game is playing it in front of them, then demo-ing the controls while explaining, then putting it in their hand. I actually sometimes sit on main street just doing demos while enjoying the weather.
Here you are in the credits:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T-5LHkIv000s3avR9rheZvdYMmXQOH-lGZj4sCNWEUU/edit#gid=0
I hope it's okay if I reach out to you again for feedback. You're actually the first organic fan of the game I've made contact with. Understanding your experience and perceptions is going to be very valuable to me.
You’re always welcome to reach out and I will keep up the periodic feedback. I like being an organic fan, its authentic 😎. My usual 8-5 is upon me this week, so if you don’t hear from me as much, that’s why. I will try this demo method with friends, and yes, I could see how the gun shopping is similar to picking up shoes. I hope you’re able to keep up the charisma and joy of developing games - I look forward to seeing what you come up with. When I’m not playing yours I like the old Metal Slug series and I’m trying “Bendy”. If you’re ready for something beyond AR try RV tournament. It’s unconventional but you might surprise yourself. It does take patience and focus. Thanks so much for the cred - very cool of you!
Hey Fateful. Metal Slug is the most iconic side-scrolling shooter in my opinion. It defiantly was a precursor to Madness Interactive which was a big inspiration for this game. My design goal was to put a side-scrolling top-down shooter on a table-top. I also downloaded RV tournament. I'm playing my first round now.
I've decided to break the update into two or three parts so I can get your fixes to you quicker. The next update will have blue-tooth support and the improved instructions. I will probably have the new surfaces support also, but that might come in the second update. I took some short-cuts to get the game out faster and because I want to continue developing it I need to go back and re-write some of the poorly architected parts.
If you're available to answer some questions about your experience, that would really help me understand how players interact with the game. Just answer whatever you want, skip anything that's not interesting.
What kind of gamer are you? When did you start? How often do you play? Which platforms? What are your favorite genres and titles? Previous AR experience?
How did you find the game? When did you make the decision to download? What made you decide to download?
How approachable was the game for you? How was the AR set-up process? Did you get stuck or feel confused at any point? How did you learn the controls? Were the controls approachable or were they difficult to understand?
How do you play the game? Where do you play it? How does it fit into your life? Do you play it during short work breaks? When you have free time? Is the game still novel or interesting to you? How long before you got tired of the game? (No need to exaggerate. I don't play the game myself because it's not very compelling to me. Probably because I did so much testing during development. Most people probably just give it a single play. I'm just interested in how you interact with the game.)
Have you beaten the challenge mode? (I tried to designed it so that an average player could win with only a little practice. I wanted people to be able to easily experience all the content.)
I think you said you're on a 6S. Have you had any performance problems? (Like stuttering frame rate, Performance changes with low battery conditions, or excessive heating, poor battery life. The game freezes for me on about 1 out of 6 games and requires a restart. Does that ever happen do you? This is a very difficult bug to diagnose. The game kills the battery on my device. Sometimes just 10 minutes will take me from 50% to 10%. I tried to make it so a player could play though the whole challenge mode on an older device without noticeable performance problems - I couldn't really avoid battery problems though)
I included a short-cut where you can do a 2 finger tap on the left side to open/close the editor. Sometimes I activate this by mistake. Do you ever activate this by mistake? I'm probably going to remove that feature in the update.
Do you play in landscape or portrait orientation?
Have you used the time-slider to alter the speed of time? If so when? Have you ever paused the game and looked at the scene?
Was anything about the game unclear, confusing, or frustrating to you at any point?
How do you interact with the various scale options? Did you understand the scaling options from the beginning? What did you size it to? What surface do you usually play it on, table or floor?
What stands out to you? What's the first thing that comes to your memory when you think about the game?
Feel free to answer any of the questions that seem interesting to you. To give you context, I'm a very amateur developer. I've only published 2 amateur games. My goal is to keep practicing until I can make really compelling games with viral appeal. I want to make games that are totally novel and break away from prior convention. There's also amazing technology coming out that's accessible to people like me. Tech like this AR stuff as well as tech that can allow for thousands of animated characters on screen and 1,000 - 10,000 players in a shared universe.
Hey fateful. Just wanted to give you an update. I started to do some updates to the game, but I hadn't designed the game very well on the first pass so making the updates was hard. I've learned a lot about how to make programs that are easy to fix and modify recently, so I'm in the process of re-writing the internals of the game so that changes in the future are easy and fast. This will allow me to quickly fix bugs and add new features like new game-modes very easily. I'm going to add the modifications we talked about as soon as I rewrite the internals. It's sort of hard for me to estimate the timeline on that. This is the biggest program I've ever written and now it's the biggest program I've ever re-written, so I'm sort of in new waters here. I'll keep you updated on the progress. Hope you're doing well.