Comments on: Z-Fighter’s Game Feel Assignment P1

By: mulletman

mulletman — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 06:27:58 +0000

I liked your use of textures and background audio to convey game feel. I also liked how the objects changed from brick to cardboard boxes and were able to be moved depending on the strength of the player.

The speed of the character didn’t seem to change between game feels. Personally, I think it would be easier to tell that a character was stronger if he moved faster. Also, I don’t know how but somehow I was able to fall through the floor of the level after switching from strong/aggressive to weak/scared.

By: ragnar

ragnar — Fri, 17 Oct 2014 03:53:02 +0000

I like that the wall is made up of a bunch of physics objects that can be pushed around, breaking through the wall is fun. I think the weak avatar feels good to control because it is able to move and jump pretty easily which makes navigating the environment feel good. By comparison, the strong character seems to move a bit too slow and jumps a bit too low compared to its size to feel like I would want to use it much. I like how the strong character can push through the walls though, and the camera shake when landing seems to last longer for the strong character which adds weight to its fall. You don’t use any character textures or animation, so it is a bit difficult to make the avatar appear aggressive or scared. The music for the scared mode is eerie which can help the player get the scared feel, but I don’t think the aggressive music feels very aggressive but feels more fun or exciting. I think the weak and strong feels are conveyed well, but it would take some animation and polish to better convey scared and aggressive.

By: cubs2bears

cubs2bears — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 23:58:09 +0000

My Favorite Part of Your Game:

It was really cool that the walls were made up entirely of physics-based boxes, which made them fun to collide with and destroy.

Possible Improvements:

A few times I encountered a bug where the avatar would endlessly fall through the floor when switching between the two behaviors. I also think it would be a good idea to build walls around the map or respawn the avatar when you fall off the map to prevent endless falling. Changing the background to a darker color could help enhance the scared/weak mode as well.

Game Feel Behaviors:

The interactions with cardboard walls helped reinforce the feeling of being strong, as well as the interactions with the brick walls in weak mode. The avatar doesn’t seem to move like he’s scared or aggressive though in their respective behaviors. The camera shake is a nice subtle touch for jumping in strong mode, but you should consider toggling it off when in weak mode to further differentiate the behaviors. Jumping in strong mode feels heavier than in weak mode like it should.

Controls/Movement, Interactions and Polish:

The avatar felt pretty good to control and move around the map. I would’ve liked to have seen the avatar push the boxes with a bit more force in strong mode, so it’s not slowed down too much by boxes in the way. I think adding some sound effects to reinforce actions like jumping and collisions with the boxes could help the overall feel of the game.

Textures, Sound, Etc. :
The textures and sounds are helping the overall feel of the prototype. The background music and the textures for the ground and boxes were great choices and appropriate for both behaviors.

By: starlord

starlord — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 17:43:05 +0000

I really liked the physics for breaking the walls, it was a lot of fun knocking them down. I liked the difference in collisions between the two. It made the strong/aggressive character feel a lot stronger in comparison as you knock whole walls down with ease. I think adding collision sounds in both would have helped reinforce these differences. I think the weak/scared character feels too fast and the strong/aggressive one feels too slow, although that may just be because that’s how most of the other games had them. Although the strong/aggressive character does have a good sense of weight, it doesn’t quite feel aggressive to me, and I think that making it faster would help with that. The lighting and music differences are good, although I do think that you could have kept the heavier looking blocks instead of the cardboard boxes to make the strong/aggressive character seem even stronger. You also may want to add more indication of the weak/scared character being scared. The environment seems ominous in that mode, but the character doesn’t seem to do anything that indicates that they are scared of it.

By: livingled

livingled — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 15:24:26 +0000

“what are some things you LIKED about what they did, and why do you like them?”

Smashing the walls was cool – I was surprised to see it was truly brick-by-brick! The background music and lighting changes in the demo were cool and engaging.

“what are some specific things that could be improved, and how might they be accomplished? do the two motions feel like they meet the assigned “feel”?”

I felt the strong aggressive character didn’t move very aggressively. He is large, so I understand that this means that, probably, he is meant not to be very fast – but I didn’t get the aggressiveness element of the character. Increased movement speed, a forward-leaning, faster turn speed – these are some things I’ve seen others use to convey aggression.

I felt similarly about the scared portion of the smaller character. Hitting “g” and moving about – he doesn’t seem scared, really. Shaking, “hesistant” movement, slower movement/turn speed – these are things I’ve seen to improve upon the scared motif.

“do the interaction aspects help create game feel (controls, avatar movement and how it interacts with the world, polish effects used directly to emphasize these interactions)”

The interactions convey perfectly the strong vs. weak dynamic of the two characters.

“are the other parts of the prototype (textures, sounds, etc) helping or hurting?”

The music, textures, and lighting were appropriate for the two feels – I thought they helped. The strong/aggressive character could have had a more “pounding” tune, maybe – but the current one is by no means hurting; it gets the point across, too.