8 ms·
Not sure if you're looking for critique, and giving critique has sometimes been discouraged on HN, but: It's pretty good for a week of work. Though there's a
by sillysaurus3 13y ago
Not sure if you're looking for critique, and giving critique has sometimes been discouraged on HN, but:
It's pretty good for a week of work. Though there's a difference between being challenging and being annoying. Many of the level design elements could be classified as a "dick move." An example would be not making it clear the goal is to collect all the coins until after the player has bypassed some of them and reached the end.
In general the controls are too sluggish. It's as if triple buffering is enabled, or maybe quad buffering. If you're at a university, you should try to borrow a high speed camera and measure the time difference between when someone presses the spacebar vs when the character starts to jump. I don't know if it's a Chrome thing or what, but I fell off cliffs several times due to the input delay.
The gravity could be better. I'd recommend spending some time with Cave Story to get a feel for how to make gravity really work in the player's favor, rather than against them. In general it's a bad idea to make velocity strictly linear. Some acceleration adds to the experience and precision.
A checkpointing system would be good. I can see how most players will give up after getting mostly to the end and then dying. I think you should just restart players from the last point that they were on the ground without dying, that is, the most recent ledge that they were standing on.
It shows promise. If you're looking for feedback about how to advance as a game developer, one step would be to make sure you're not rewriting your entire game engine from scratch for each game. It's excellent that you're writing your own engines rather than trying to use other people's, so be sure to keep doing that. It's important for gamedevs to have an idea of the underlying principles and limitations, and the best way to do that is to write your own engines. I got the feeling that most of the week was spent on the engine rather than iterating on the gameplay or level design though. Teaming up with an artist or a level designer might be a good match.
- yukichan 13y ago> In general the controls are too sluggish... other stuff He made this in a week. It's a demo of what you can do in a week. You're reviewing it like it was a serious game. > giving critique has sometimes been discouraged on HN Bad critiques are. Yours is not a bad critique, I just think you're critiquing the wrong thing.
- baddox 13y agoI don't see why having made the game in a week is relevant. Presumably this guy's goal isn't to never spend more than a week on a game. I interpret this criticism as "if you were to spend more time on this game, or if you ever make another similar game, think about these issues."
- sillysaurus3 13y agoActually, input is fundamental to a game, because there's no way to make a game without input. It's one of the most important aspects of any game. Making HTML 5 a serious gamedev competitor is one of the most important tasks facing the future gamedev industry, which means lessmilk is doing important work. It's important to call out the roadblocks so that the roadblocks get solved. It would be extremely valuable if someone were to do an analysis as to why the input is laggy so that future gamedevs can avoid that pitfall or that Mozilla/Chrome can fix their issue.
- sid6376 13y agoNot only is it fundamental to a game. Its fundamental to becoming better as a developer as well. So I appreciate you critiquing it the way you did.
- amartya916 13y agoRegardless of whether he made it in a week or not, the criticism by the OP was constructive. Just being nice and saying that "this is fantastic", wouldn't help the developer learn either. *Input lag is something Carmack et al. keep hammering home for game developers.
- stonemetal 13y agoTo me it depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to learn the programming side of things, then fixing up the controls / adding touch is a good goal because it would highlight figuring out how to get those things right even if it meant next week's game was this week's game + touch controls. If the goal is to explore gameplay ideas then input being a little sloppy is only as bad as its effect on playability.
- 13y ago
- dhimes 13y agoCoins? Levels? I can't jump out of the first hole.
- lessmilk 13y agoJump first on the left, then from there jump on the right. And you'll discover the hole game!
- dhimes 13y agoI tried that. I fall. :-( Google Chrome Version 33.0.1750.149 Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon EDIT: Update- It does work, at least sometimes. I guess it's just my clumsiness.
- jeroen 13y agoOn Safari 6.1.2 the second jump in the first level only works 50% of the time. The other 50% the jump only registers by the time the thingy has hit the ground.
- knotty66 13y agoThe first jump was flat out impossible for me on Chrome Version 31.0.1650.26 beta, even in incognito mode. Tried in Firefox and made it easily ...
- stevewilhelm 13y agoOnce on the ledge to the left, need to press up and right arrow at the same time to jump to the higher ledge on the right.
- Kiro 13y agoI don't think the controls are sluggish at all. Do you have an example of non-sluggish controls?
- lessmilk 13y agoThanks, I love feedback! You make some interesting points. About input lag, I'm a bit surprised. On my computer the input is super responsive. Maybe it depends on the OS/browser? I'll have to look into this. Gravity could definitely be better. I'll look at Cave Story then. I have only 5 short levels, so adding checkpoint will make the game too easy I think.
- mojowo11 13y agoI also found the hardest thing about the game to be figuring out the lag in timing between pressing jump and my character actually leaving the ground. Windows 7, Chrome.
- zheshishei 13y agoI'm not a game developer, but I found the jump key to be slightly inconsistent, specifically pressing jump while running towards a ledge. Whether or not the jump registers seems to depend on how close to the edge you are. The closer you are, the less likely the jump is to register. I guess depending on what you want out of the game mechanics, you could leave it as is or extend the "range" of a valid jump to slightly beyond the edge (perhaps half the width of the character). I guess some good questions that you could ask are: - Is it a faster paced game where jumping from platform to platform quickly matters? - Do you want to focus more on fluid movement and the ability of the player to think about their moves ahead of time? - Are there any gaps in any level where the jump is nigh impossible without performing a "perfect" jump. If so, is that a feature? (maybe it's supposed to be that difficult?) EDIT: I've been looking at the source and I'm pretty sure it has to do with how Phaser checks whether the character is on solid ground or not (body.blocked.down). I'm not too sure how it calculates it (I couldn't understand the SAT.testPolygonPolygon function[1]. If anyone wants to help me with that, I'd appreciate it). I think the tilt of the character when it's running potentially makes it worse too. [1]http://docs.phaser.io/SAT.js.html http://docs.phaser.io/SAT.js.html line 605
- egeozcan 13y agoI think it tends to not register especially if you've just started going right or left.
- baddox 13y ago> An example would be not making it clear the goal is to collect all the coins until after the player has bypassed some of them and reached the end. The first time you see coins, the caption reads "coins are good, take them." Then at the end of the first level, it says "collect all coins to finish the level." I'm not sure how he could be more clear than that, and even if someone misses the captions, it's immediately clear after one failure. I agree with your other recommendations.
- elwell 13y ago> "collect all coins to finish the level." put that in place of: > "coins are good, take them."
- baddox 13y agoBoth are direct instructions to take the coins.
- freehunter 13y agoBut one of them doesn't say it's required. I can finish a level in Sonic without collecting all the rings, even though rings are a good thing.
- baddox 13y agoThe "coins are good" part doesn't imply that it's required, but the "take them" part does.
- twelvechairs 13y agonot to the rest of us.
- baddox 13y agoI don't understand how it could be interpreted as anything other than a direct imperative.
- RobotCaleb 13y agoSpacebars have a lot of "throw" to engage. I prefer not using spacebar for twitchy movements.
- dereferenced 13y agoSpacebars have the same amount of throw as any key on your keyboard. Additionally, the force required to press the spacebar is less than other keys because the keycap for the spacebar is heavier.
- elwell 13y agoDepends on if you are using a dell quietkey or a macbook pro.
- kenbellows 13y agoOh, not on my HP. Any of the arrow keys (specifically in this case the up key) has way less push to it than the spacebar.
- RobotCaleb 13y agoNo, not really. Also, no other key suffers from not being pressed from the center of the key.
- dereferenced 13y agoThe "coins are mandatory" message appears two screens after the first two coins. If you missed those, it takes about 5-10 seconds to go back. It's no biggie and certainly not a "dick move".
- mikeleeorg 13y agoTo me, this is an example of the value HN can offer - getting constructive criticism from people with experience. I for one definitely encourage this.