Comments on: speedball P3: aggressive shark

By: Matt Giannelli

Matt Giannelli — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 14:16:31 +0000

I really enjoyed this! The shark model and the underwater environment were very well put together. The controls were very intuitive and it was very easy to navigate the world. I particularly liked the way the screen turned red and the shark sped up whenever forward movement occurred (although it’s hard to think of a shark charging backwards). I also liked how the shark would destroy parts of the environment when it was charging.

One improvement I would suggest would be with the jumping mechanic. It seemed really floaty and had a max jump height…where I picture sharks being able to move freely up and down. The floaty-ness of the jumps really helped make it seem like water, but it seemed like the shark wasn’t very buoyant and kept sinking to the bottom. Great job though!

By: Some Guy

Some Guy — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 01:13:29 +0000

The model and animations of the shark were really good! It was very natural and looked and felt just like a shark swimming. The aggression mode of the shark was good too and did well to convey an angry feeling. The environment helped the aggressive feeling and I liked the interaction with the coral, which gave something to do within the game.

By: k5mhcak

k5mhcak — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 20:58:19 +0000

I really like the animation of the shark. The tail moves faster in the aggressive mode. The red vision and the speed of the shark in the aggressive mode conveys aggression. I don’t know if it was intentionally, but the shark keeps moving forward even if I don’t press a key. It is good because I heard that sharks cannot stop 🙂
The textures (sharks, coral, sand…) also give a very good feel of its atmosphere.
The sounds are also appealing. In aggressive mode, the music gave me a scary feel. The sound when the shark destroys a coral is also very good to show an aggressive shark!

By: Caleb Kirksey

Caleb Kirksey — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 15:14:52 +0000

The animation of the shark model was really cool! Since it was constantly moving it’s tail and body, I got a sense of the aggression and speed. The red tint conveyed strong sense of anger and urgency. I like having the coral to destroy too. It gave me a sense of purpose as I was playing and worked nicely into the overall feel of aggression. I thought maybe the music volume could have been adjusted to pair better with the other sound effects in the game.

By: fl11630 McVGDev

fl11630 McVGDev — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 18:51:38 +0000

Minor typo in your blog instructions: pressing W (rather than A) causes the aggressive mode, but no sweat since it’s pretty quickly discoverable by context. I found that having the shark swim forward automatically went a long way in helping convey its sharkness rather than controlling like some other type of animal, and overloading the forward movement key to go intro aggressive mode was a good idea for a natural mapping. The S key or down arrow still sends it backward though, and I think disabling or at least severely dampening backward movement is another thing that could have reinforced the swimming-ness of the character.

Nice job on the programmatic shark animation! It really looks like it’s swimming.

Red tint for aggression mode and its ability to explode coral (nice pop animations!) do a good job of distinguishing that mode and its meaning. Another thing to possibly play with is to adjust the field of view on the main camera while in faster or more aggressive modes – it’s something racing games and driving movies do to create a more exaggerated sense of speed and/or focus and I think could complement your other effects here.

The music is definitely fitting, though a bit on the quiet side. I had to turn up my volume all the way to hear it, and might not have noticed to do so if you hadn’t mentioned it in the blog post. That kind of thing can vary by speakers though (I’m on a laptop too, so tiny speakers), but I find I’m most likely to get my volume levels off when I work with headphones on since they tend to amplify a lot while reducing background noise.