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PerfectHumanInterface
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A member registered Apr 30, 2017
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Oh yeah sorry for goofing the link. 😅 And thanks for sharing the info
Windows does (and should) have vsync by default. All games should have an Exclusive Full Screen option! Not only does it bypass OS vsync but it avoids other issues with having to share drawing between other windows, basically just maximizes frame stability. Obviously, some people prefer the borderless window option too.
Regarding the damage avoidance issue, my recommendation is to create some levels or level segments that are more challenging, and playtest those thoroughly (especially with people who don't have preexisting knowledge of all the subtleties of the mechanics). Putting players up against more challenging scenarios will do more to reveal weaknesses in the design that are easier to overlook when the player isn't in much danger of dying. This is the core of the game so critical to get it right (the rest of the game feel is already feeling great).
As I said in the video, I found it easier to critique the various details of the implementation than to give meaningful input on the overall concept, so I wanted to take some time "offline" to think properly about it and write up a response since you had asked for my input. This is a bit of a challenging concept.
The actions you're performing in the core gameplay are quite mundane, but I think perhaps that sort of thing can work well when you have something going on over the top of it, if that makes sense. It seems like you've left a lot of room for thematic or narrative elements here with the themes you started from. If you can deliver thematically interesting things to the player over time as they go about their more mundane tasks, maybe in a way that "justifies" the tasks and provides a drive for players to want to continue doing them and progressing. I'm being intentionally vague about how exactly you could do that because of course there's a lot of ways. It could be as simple as delivering a story bit by bit, or it could involve events that affect gameplay, or it could take the form of more formal mechanics always present in the game.
I think the concept of being able to deliver thematic elements over time is stronger than the idea of a constant race against the clock, so perhaps it would work better to tone down the time pressure considerably, to the point of it being less of a challenge to beat the clock and more of a "regular obligation." You might even do some subtle things like make the feds forcibly take the money from you if you have it but didn't get to the point of paying yet when you run out of time, or let the player go into debt once or twice on their rent before being taken away, just to put some padding around the point of running out of time so it's less of an instant lose situation.
It does leave open the question of what to do with the multiplayer.
As I mentioned in the video, I really want to see the fact that you move between the VR and real worlds have some gameplay significance. That's an interesting puzzle to consider. I think you would need to have some kind of connection between the two, such that things in the real world could somehow affect things in the VR world and vice versa. Maybe if you go too long without eating IRL the fatigue would start to affect your ability to function in VR. Maybe if something breaks down in your IRL apartment you have to do something specific in VR in order to get the resources you need to fix that. Things like that.
Putting these two things together, the idea of getting "interrupted" out of VR by an emergent event IRL that you have to deal with is really cool. In the current demo, hearing the knocking on the door while in VR subtly hints at that kind of thing. Imagine suddenly something scary starts happening right outside your window. The amount of tension you can create just with audio, suddenly yanking you out of the colorful world you were absorbed with and forcing you to reconnect with the gray, oppressive reality you were doing your best to escape from, that can straight up spike your adrenaline. On an emotional level there's great potential there.
By the way, I'm not trying to encourage you towards scope explosion. This seems like something that would easily go in that direction if you weren't very careful. But what I shared here is what makes sense to me for this concept.
I'm glad to know I was close 😄
I would be very careful about relying on players being able to make deductions based on things like nicknames, like you mentioned. There's a lot of ways things can go wrong, but in particular, I would be worried about how much cultural experience differs between players and how that affects things. Another example that occurred to me was, you used the word "cunt" to describe someone, and for Americans that would more often be a word used to describe a female, but for Australians, for example, that isn't the case. And you can imagine how easily people from other cultures around the world could be lost on the implications of certain things that we might take for granted. If I were you I would be vigilant about using culturally bound details as gameplay critical as opposed to more universally understandable things.
Regarding the "I don't know what my goal is" thing, when I looked back at the start of the video I noticed that the game did present me with a goal right at the start and I proceeded to immediately forget it. I think it's a really good idea to put the current objective in writing inside of a menu somewhere where people can easily see it. This is something that's important in many games (open-ended ones) but people often take it for granted. I've seen a lot of amateur devs miss how important this kind of thing is.
I like this kind of thing and it's nice to see people representing more cerebral types of gameplay. Interested to see how this shapes up.
Fairmount’s Dutch Vacation [DEMO] jam comments · Posted in Fairmount’s Dutch Vacation [DEMO] jam comments
In addition to the video just thought I'd mention I thought it might be helpful for navigation to have a Super Metroid-style minimap (not full map, minimap) always present on screen. Since the level design is quite chaotic and even rotating the whole world periodically I hardly have a sense of where I am or where I'm going, which is a bit troublesome for a metroidvania, so maybe that helps a bit?
AGE OF BRASS (prototype) jam comments · Replied to Rezydent in AGE OF BRASS (prototype) jam comments
Regarding the jumping delay, I did notice a delay but I'm sure it was just normal input latency due to vsync. I'm used to playing games with vsync disabled to reduce latency as much as possible. It became noticeable because you have a timing based mechanic.
I never actually knew there was a tutorial going on except for the text I had read at the start lol.
I gathered from comments and such that there's a lot more to the mechanics than I was able to uncover in my blind session. It looks pretty interesting. Hope I can try out a more polished version in the future.