sneaky Sneaky update incomming!

Alright, today a spent about half an hour to fix a couple of problems and bugs from the last sneaky version and tried make it overall a little more polished. Here is the full list:

Sneaky Update 30.3.14

-fixed jumping bug
-added brightness option (ugly hack at the moment. But since I don't have direct access to the rendering path from Unity Indie there is not much I can do about that otherwhise. If it's still to dark you just have to cramp up the gamma manually on your monitor I guess...)
-made html site background black for less contrast, making it easier to the eye
-added little controlls description to html site


>>>play it here<<<

Me like sis funky music!

If you code you need lots and lots of free music to bridge all that dead time you spend staring at your screen trying to figure out what you just did and why it's not working. 

As such, this music doesn’t necessary need to be any good, in fact you probably don't even need to like it, but you just need it to not go totally insane after 2 hours of tedious bug fixing.

This being said, I do like my music mix and I think it's pretty darn awesome!

 So beware the inko music mix 2014:

BAM!!!111

more to come...

How to play (and be) Sneaky

Sneaky shares a problem with every prototype every made. It's about as accessible as a brick wall. So to clear things up I'll explain the basic concepts and mechanics as well as the overall map layout a little. Here we go!

How to start a game:

The first thing you need to do in order to play the game is either open a port on your modem to your pc at 25565 or know a friend who can do that for your. Keep in mind that if your are playing this with friends only one of you needs to open the port. If you don't know how to do that, there are plenty of tutorials on the internet on how it works. It's usually a bit of a hassle for the first time but it really pays off once you understand it.

Once you got your port open you can just open the game link and click on Start if you want to host a server, or Join if you want to join a friends game.

Starting a server is as easy as clicking on the start button. The game does the rest for you and drops you right into the player lobby which we'll get to in a second. If you click on Join Game you'll see a list of all currently running games(this list is usually very short, i.e. empty so finding the right game should be easy enough).

The player lobby:

Once you got your game running and your friends have connected to your server you'll see 4 buttons and, if you are the server, a big button at the very bottom to start the game. Now each player can pick a team in the game. Each game has 2 teams and two spots per team. There is the Hiding Team and the Seeking Team. Once you click on one of the buttons it will set it to ON, meaning you are logged into the game and will spawn once the Server hits the start game button. Now let's get into some gameplay!

The teams – Hiders:

In Sneaky there are two different teams that play fundamentally different. The hiding team is equipped with a stun gun that has 3 darts in it. Once they are all fired he is out of primary attacks for the rest of the game so try not to waste them. If you hit an enemy seeker he will be stunned for 10 entire seconds in which he will be unable to move or see at all. Keep in mind he can still shoot though. As a hider you don't want to get into actual combat though and instead should try to sneak past and outplay the enemy seeking team. As a hider you can jump with space and use that to get to areas you'd otherwise wouldn't be able to get to. You can also use this to jump through windows and escape your persuers. With left shift you can crouch in order to hide behind cover and sneak past your enemies. Crouching you also make less noise while moving.

Your goal as a hider is to hack a database which you can access from 3 different consoles around the map. These consoles are the green glowing cubes spread around the map. Step in front of them and press E to start hacking. On the top of your screen you see a counter which will go up the more data you have hacked. Once this counter is full the game ends and the hiding team wins.

The teams – Seekers:

The seekers play a much more fast paced role. As a seeker it's your goal to find and take out all hiders in the enemy team. (fun fact: This is the reason why the the game instantly ends when you try to start the game alone as a seeker. The game will detect that there are no enemy hiders left and instantly sets the win condition to true).

As a hider you don't have all the fancy movement controls that your enemies have. Instead you have a gun, and you will need it! Your gun has a mag of 45 bullets and once that runs out you can walk to any ammo crate and press E to grab a new mag. You also don't need to worry about death as a seeker. The stun darts of the hiders only paralyse you for a short time, but don't do any actual damage.

Listen out for sounds and try to predict the enemies next move. You sure can't catch up with the speedy hiders but you bullets definitely can.

The map:

This is the map from a birds eye perspective with the shadows toned down. You can see the two spawn points of the teams, the consoles the hiders want to hack, and the ammo boxes for the seekers to refill their ammo. There are plenty of ways through the map with lots of verticality and options for your enemy to jump on you, so stay focused!

SNEAKY - post mortem

Over the last 2 days I've made a stealth fps pvp game based on the classic kids game of good ol' hide and seek. It can't get much more basic then that, can it?

>>>play it here<<<

I really enjoy the overall premiss. As a hider you really feel like being hunted by an overpowered enemy. You need to predict his movement and his actions, trick him, juke him, outplay him.

The map is designed with a two layer system. Almost any area in the map has a second layer to it that is usually only accessible by the hiding players. From these spots they can stalk their enemies and plan their moves. Giving players the opportunity to slow down and think about their actions was very important for me. As much es the fps component feels fast paced and action packed the game play itself lends itself much more for slower and precise play. Just running around the level until you randomly find your enemy usually gets you nowhere and and as a hider more often then not killed.
Sound is another important aspect. Every move you make creates sound. If its firing your gun or even just walking, everything can give away your position even if you are in full cover. The hider has the ability to duck down which also softens his footsteps and making it harder to be detected by sound.
The final tricks to eliminate any chance for stalemates are changing the bounds of limitations. Many games force players into certain actions with a timer. Once the timer runs out the favoured team wins. This rewards quick thinking and reflexes more then careful planing. By removing the timer the games pace is entirely up the the hiding team as they spawn in an area inaccessible for the searchers. They can take all their time to observe and strategize they want until they strike. At the same time they need to put themselves into dangerous situations if they want awareness over the searching team. Here I remove an often used boundary and give the players more freedom in their play style. In order to prevent any kinds of stalemates in which the players ignore the objective and turn the game into a straight up death-match there is no way for the hiding team to actually frag a searcher. I also gave them a very limited supply of ammo for their stun gun to provoke careful usage of their ammo. Once a hider has fired all his 3 stun shots he has no ability to fight back in a conflict. But the usefulness of each of these shots makes them all the more important and relevant for the core game play instead of just becoming a gimmick.

All in all I'm extremely pleased with how this project turned out. And even though I haven't played much of it yet and really enjoy the dark and scary atmosphere as a hider, and the action packed hunting as a seeker.
There are many problems and systems that could be done better I'm sure.
The overall art style with the hard shadows is, while essential for the game play, very jarring and sometimes even abstract to the eye which is not intentional by any means. The weapons don't handle too well, the firing feels weak and unimpactful. And a very annoying bug in the ground detection causes the game to ignore a jump input every now and then which can create awkward situations. Since the footsteps are such an essential game play aspect they are overly loud and can get kinda annoying when all you hear is your tap-tap-tap for several minutes. And the slow pacing can create plenty of downtime for the seaker, depending on the willingness of the hider to go in or not. This aspect also makes the entire game concept extremely griefable.
Also, since the game doesn’t feature any kind of input prediction at all and instead handles movement calculations directly on the client it's extremely easy to hack and break by any kind of hack software.

But still, I think for a 2 day prototype these drawbacks are mostly minor and the game stays playable and enjoyable for the most part.

-file closed-

It's that time again...

I remembered why I always cancel my zombie games. Because making them is freakin boring!
I still want to finish the survive prototype before going back to Geroll, but I got even more side-tracked by a little idea I had the other day while watching the podcast from the guys over at http://podcasts.uselessopinions.com/ .

And as always when I get an idea I just couln'd stop thinking how I would execute that. Thinking became tinkering. Tinkering became coding. Coding became magic and BAM! Suddenly I got a new unfinished prototype.

I'm not going to reveal what this new prototype is about but you'll probably manage to figure it out if you watch the latest episode of the podcast. Anyway, here is a little leaky screenshot:

[EDIT: Harch... I just notices the typo in the title. Dough! I'll fix it, don't worry... ]

Survive - fifth update

I didn't feel too well today so I mostly added small stuff to Geroll and Survive which doesn't require much thinking.
I have narrowed down a  critical memory leak problem in Survive but wasn't able to find exactly whats causing it. I also added a couple new features to the ui and improved some behaviour background code to be more percice while still beeing fairly efficient.

I've also finally added the stamina system which is going to be a fairly big part of the managment aspect of the game. Keeping the stamina of your heroes at a decent value in dangerous situations is going to be a key mechanic and it's cool to see it taking shape. Right now the stamina bar has no actual effect though. The plan is slow down exhausted players, making them easier pray for the undead horde.

Another little feature is the double click detector. Double clicking on the ground makes your character run there instead of taking there time. Running also diminishes your stamina faster and makes more noise, alerting zombies further away.

The last new feature is barely implemented but I started adding communication from the character class to objects. In other words is now possible clicking on an object to tell your character to move there and interact with it. But again, very early mechanic and still loads of stuff to do with that.

More to come soon - ish.