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Soft Fishing (desert golfing + soft landscapes)

A topic by Joon created Oct 25, 2016 Views: 1,036 Replies: 15
Viewing posts 1 to 11
(4 edits) (+1)

I'm making a mobile game as a tribute to Desert Golfing (mobile game) and Soft Landscapes (Twitter art bot).
Desert Golfing: http://desertgolfing.captain-games.com/
Soft Landscapes: https://twitter.com/softlandscapes

I created this sketch on Oct. 17

I started working on it on Oct. 19, and wanted to test out rope physics and buoyancy. Was super happy with the results, and have been obsessing over the wave generator since. It's an interesting problem, especially since I need to be able to deterministically load any level, but I don't want it to be repetitive.

I really want to do something small, but very polished.

Here's what it looks like after a week of after-hours-ing:


Big todos:

- soft landscape background
- similar but less invasive water background
- UI (pretty minimal but still)
- persistence (should also be easy)
- polish effects: boat rocking during transition, waves behind boat, ...
- sound & music

Some ideas I have:

- everything besides the core game should be somewhat hidden
- 2 player mode (2 boats opposite, left/right hand of screen controls player, there's 1 fish...)
- Secret fishes/jellyfishes/objects that are collectible and will show as little icons in the border, but can also be missed and will never return ;)
- Game Center/high scores at 1000 (like desert golfing)

Submitted(+2)

This is looking really cool! Great set of tributes there, I've played a couple thousand holes in Desert Golfing as it's so relaxing

yeah, this game for me is all about nailing that sweetspot of 'a game I can play while watching TV without getting too distracted', and at the same time not just re-making Desert Golfing.

I'm looking for a name btw...

Woaw ! Physics !
This look neat : ).

Submitted

the line being affected by the sea physics = <3

Submitted

Woah this looks fantastic, your controller looks beautifully intuitive and it looks like its going to be so relaxing to play!

I'm really excited to see more updates on it, please keep posting progress if you get the chance! :o

Been working on the background generation. It's impossible to get the exact "Soft landscapes" effect with paralax, but I think I can come close.

It will take several passes/reworks to get the feel that I want, but here's how it looks after the first try.

The mountains are deterministic, meaning that I can go from level 1 to 100, take a screenshot, kill the app/stop playing and it will load up level 100 looking the same (not based on any save data other than the number 100). That took a while to wrap my head around (especially with paralax, guuuuh) but it's in now.

Current issue is that the random functions aren't cross platform deterministic. Trying to find a way around that.

It's so simple and so beautiful at the same time, everything blends perfectly, from the boat to the fishing line. Even the control is perfect. I really love this minimalist experiences, have you thought about a slowly moving fish? Maybe for later in the game?

the fish is still placeholder. The fisher is a free 3d animated model that I found somewhere, with a free fishing animation, and I hope to find a free (or cheap) 3D fish that I can use in the same way.

I have a list of easter eggs in my mind, like level 3254 there would be 20 fishes (but as soon as you get one you advance), and in another level the fish could swing around violently...

Submitted

Are you planning to have the color palette slowly morph over the span of many levels, like Desert Golfing?

Submitted

This is looking great, and I can't wait to try it. It looks like the current goes through the floor sometimes, though — is that the intention or work in progress?

Haven't really decided. will rewrite the current system. I think I might make a 'wavy bottom floor' so that it doesn't always just look like a rectangular field

(1 edit)

I finally cracked the Soft Landscapes color code.

It was tricky to combine paralax, color blending, gradual color change, deterministic randomness... but I did it this morning.

Since the change is gradual, I make a quick hack that can skip 100 levels at a time, this is the result of that

next step I want to add some fog. I did this small experiment last night when I had completely given up on color (couldn't get them to work)

Fog and maybe an overall very light gradient, as well as prevention from too dark colors, are next up.

The water will either be it's own version of this algorithm, or a continuation.. I'm not sure yet

I intend to completely ignore deadlines and keep working on this, hope that's cool. If you people prefer me to stop posting just let me know ;)

Submitted

I plan on continuing work and posting too ;) though I think I'll submit a WIP build before the deadline. Your game is looking really good, the color stuff is great and is one of the things I really liked about Desert Golfing once I realised it was happening.