Post by properlydecent in Ballsy! World Cup 2020 comments

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1-2 passes is a great idea!

a question about team individuality; I did try that; for example, japan has great ball control but are very slow, most african teams are more the opposite, south-american teams have generally higher agility etc. is this not what you mean? or do you mean more extreme differences?

I fully agree on the presentation part. I made it a bit too generic. My original idea was to make it look like an MSX game - very barebones - but with modern gameplay. I guess maybe I should have gone for that, to stand out :) The idea for street football is also fun; I can still consider making other types of fantasy stadiums, but at this point I just want to release soon, and then update it later - or start a new footy game with better presentation/other graphics to start with.

(In fact, I started a few years ago with an isometric style game, with a bit larger scope; but it was a bit too big so then I made this as a way of just having a game in the market, to get some experience with that. I may continue working on that other game later.. not sure yet. The idea was to have 5-7 completely different teams, with themed stadiums. I made one so far: https://www dot youtube.com/watch?v=W0tvdekv_nk (replace the 'dot'; if I paste the full link, it'll embed the video and I don't want that :) ))

pmanacas4 years ago(+1)

For team individuality i meant more extreme even. And I wouldn't use countries to avoid xenophobic connotations with the skills etc (sigh... you never know these days....) I meant like really imaginary 5 a side teams, like a trickster team, a slow but powerful team, you know, almost like Mario Tennis balance if you know what I mean. (If you don't know Mario Tennis I highly recommend you analyze the control scheme in that series. It uses only 2 button, and with those 2 buttons by combining double tap or tap in sequence or tap together it achieves a really deep control scheme.

The "stadium" in the video looks awesome, so atmospheric!

I had a look in your yt channel, I cannot believe you are the author of that game that google was using for the machine learning project!

And you made your own 3d engine! Serious level of skill.

Also incredible that you experimented with a top down racer! One of my favorite games ever is Turbosliders.

I'm just an amateur programmer, but for years I had these 3 games on my todo list one day:

A karting game inspired in turbosliders. With no collisions but with semi-realistic kart handling physics.
A football game mixing sensi top down perspective with some elements of classic PES. (exactly what you have here!)
A tennis game with a control scheme inspired by Mario Tennis but with online multiplayer.

properlydecent4 years ago (1 edit)

Ohh Turbosliders looks very similar to my game! I swear I had never heard of it before now :D Seems a lot of fun!

Thanks for your kind words on my other projects! I did make a lot of stuff over the years, though it annoys me that I never finished anything; which is why I want to just finish this game so bad, without enlarging the scope all too much :)

Btw, a tennis game (in some abstract interpretation) is also on my todo wishlist, ballgames are fun! Also, some pinball game would be fun!

I acknowledge that your idea about very different teams, it may work well, but I have to keep that for a future project; I don't want to change too much anymore for this one. One of my future football games ideas is to also have very individualistic differences between the players; this would be denoted using hats. So if you put a hard-hat on a player, they become very strong in defense, or you can put a wizard hat on em, they get some weird tricks, etc. But yeah ideas for a future game ;)

Oh and a good point about the xenophobic connotations, didn't really realize that possibility.. but I'm not going to have my behavior changed by some woke dicks, so I'm gonna keep it in :P

Btw what language/engine do you program in?

pmanacas4 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

You just gave me an idea, what about a game that mixes tennis with pinball! Where you it and aim with a racket like tennis but have pinball mechanics to achieve goals and targets. The concept of mixing pinball with other genres has been proven by the excellent "Yoku's Island Express".

I totally get and support you wanting to finish the game and that all these wacky ideas are totally out of scope. (love the hats idea by the way)

That said I still have to ask: Please add a net bulge + sound effect when the ball hits the net!

It makes scoring a goal so much more satisfying. It can really complete the experience. Trust me, even if its just a simple shake of the goal frame with a simple "thwack" sound it will make a huuuuuuuuuuge difference.

I mainly program in python for work and fun, and I tried to do a couple of game prototypes using Godot Engine. I tried to build some tutorial level stuff in Unity and always found it really clunky and not fun to learn. Godot on the other hand uses a scripting language that is almost the same as python and the UI and engine concepts are so much easier to grasp for an amateur. And it just runs from a standalone exe that is like 50 Mb! The Godot IDE itself is a Godot application! Amazing tool really.

properlydecent4 years ago

I like the pinball-tennis idea :D I've considered various pinball-mixed-with-other-genres too, there's a lot of fun possibilities when you throw in ball mechanics :P Maybe I can make a prototype of such a concept after this game :)

I'm really not looking forward to making net bulge mechanics, sounds hard :P BUT I agree some effect is needed! How about fireworks/confetti coming from the goal when you score?

Cool that you like Godot, I hear more people being positive about it! I'm coming from C++ so C# is probably better for me; I'm always fighting with Python :P But I guess it really depends where you are coming from and what you are used to :)

pmanacas4 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Yeah, by "bulge" was probably the wrong word. I didn't mean it needs proper physics. A shake animation for the whole goal + a nice sound effect is probably good enough and more fitting with the rest of the graphics. Definitely not fireworks or confetti for each goal (that's something that would be fitting when you win the world-cup or something).

Regarding Tennis+OtherMechanics - the Virtua Tennis series had some great mini-games mixing Tennis with many other mechanics along it's various iterations. Question is to find one that is fun for longer than just a "mini-game".

properlydecent4 years ago

Shaky goal + sound sounds like a good idea, I'm on it!

properlydecent4 years ago

I've added some goal shake (may need some tweaking) and a goooooool sample :) see end of this video: https://youtu.be/Fkw6_PVChHQ

pmanacas4 years ago(+1)

The "gooooooal" is perfect! The goal shake is way too much though =) I guess shaking the goals a few pixels backwards and quickly back to position should be enough.

Another small detail I would change would be: the "GOAL FRANCE!" text should only come up when the announcer starts screaming "goooooooooalllllllll" (Because the shout, correctly, only comes a fraction of a second after the ball enters the goal) The text should come in sync with the shout and not in the same frame the goal crosses the line like it is now.

I would also add a second "thwack" sound at the moment the ball hits the net. That way the feeling of scoring is enhanced... like : Shoot > "Thwack" > "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOALLLLLLLL" (is like a three step satisfying sequence with its own rythm)

Another bit of polish would be when you shoot and hit the post or very close to the goal, there should be a "AHHHH!" crowd sound.

properlydecent4 years ago

thanks! i'll make the shake a little less extreme and try the thwack->goooal thing :) I don't want to put too much more time in this for now, so I'll leave it at that :P

properlydecent4 years ago

uploaded new version with 1-2 passes, better sidestep dribbles, soundtrack, and some more fixes :)

pmanacas4 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Wow, loving the improvements!

The music is awesome, scoring feels much more satisfying with the new effects and the 1-2 is great, really possible to create some fwd movement with the team mates now (and it also creates more chance for opponent counter attack) so I think its a great addition. The sidestep definitely feels better now (previously it didn't really feel worth it to execute as it was quite muted).

You decide if you want to keep going, but I cant help to keep suggesting fixes =)

I actually had a friend over to play some matches, both Vs and Co-Op. Both were really fun!

But specially in co-op we noticed a flaw with the camera. When you are near the side lines the camera is showing a lot of empty space around the pitch instead of keeping the most of the pitch possible in view. This makes it really hard to aim a pass into the box because you cant see your team mates! You could maybe:

not allow the camera to go so much to the side when the ball is near the edges of the pitch
also allow even more zoom out in the camera options

Here is a screenshot of what I mean: https://imgur.com/a/qez397q

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