Games W.I.P Thread

[Sjonsson]

Nice going Pampers!

[Pampers]

I need a few plebs with hamachi for testing. PM me

[Pampers]

Vinneri was kind enough to help me do some testing and I now have a long list of stuff to fix but all the basic stuff works, so really happy with that.

 

some pics and video:

 

 

 

 

 

edit: PM me if you want to help test

Edited January 18, 2015 by Pampers

[Pampers]

More testing today, trying out more power-ups

 

a rocket got stuck in the shower

 

we had a cornerflag fight!

 

I lost

[Sjonsson]

Been slacking off to post here recently but here we go!

Devlog Update #10 – Teamwork!

 

This is our tenth Devlog post, ain’t that a thrill! As usual we are working like rabid animals to get more stuff into the game and here goes our latest recap.

The Tenth Steam Concept Video!

 

Gameplay!

The biggest change we did in terms of gameplay is the addition of Teambased Gameplay! That said we now have two game modes for the game, FFA Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. We are not sure how many game modes we will end up with but we are for sure willing to explore the lands of different game modes. As you might have imagined this addition pretty much turned the current balance of the game upside-down, but don’t you worry! We will put big efforts into balancing and testing in the future.

Steam Integration

As our team values playability and availability we decided to finally integrate the game with Steam. Currently it’s very basic and you still have to connect to eachother via the console and shows your steam name. More integration features coming soon!
 

What’s more?

We are closing in on our second run at Ubisoft Massive’s testlab and this time we are going to have external testers and be there as observers, pretty much the most exciting event so far. We are also delving the depths of different grants we are to apply for, everything to keep us going! 


We are going to have a test run this Friday, if anyone is interested to have a go with us, send me a PM!

 

Edited January 20, 2015 by Sjonsson

[Vilham]

My main criticism would be that it doesn't look visceral enough, the pacing seems quite slow which atleast the trailer suggests you don't want it to feel.

[Pampers]

think the characters should pop out of the environment a bit more

[Vilham]

"pop" "visceral" "gritty" buzzwords of the day!

[Sjonsson]

My main criticism would be that it doesn't look visceral enough, the pacing seems quite slow which atleast the trailer suggests you don't want it to feel.

To be honest I dun even know what visceral means in this context! Please elaborate!

And about the pacing, from I spectators view I totally see how the pacing seems slow and maybe some think it would be slow in-game too. The problem is though the game is a lot about dodging and responding to enemy spells and projectile where a part of the problem lies in the movement speed. If the movementspeed would be increased, so would the projectile speeds which then results in a lot smaller timeframes for counter-actions.

I do think we could increase the general speed overall a bit but nonetheless it might be hard to balance.

Another solution we thought about is just upping the playspeed in the trailer, though that is quite dishonest and might upset some players.

 

 

think the characters should pop out of the environment a bit more

You're totally right, I'll give that a mention.

 

 

 

Also, thanks for replying guys!

Edited January 21, 2015 by Sjonsson

[Vilham]

One of the reasons is the lack of gameplay sound, having low levels of gameplay sound in your trailer massively helps, its one of the key aspects of any game, it would be interesting to see a video of it with the actual sound. Another thing is the particle effects appear a bit lackluster, this is reinforced by the height of the camera, the majority of your screen has not much going on. Not sure if it works in your case as you appear to have a camera that can be freely moved but minor screen shake. General things that give feedback to the players.

 

Maybe that isn't what the game is going for. But the high tempo of the music in the trailer sure makes it feel like it's meant to be. Here is an example of something that certain feels like every hit and move has a bit more impact.

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/261180/

Edited January 21, 2015 by Vilham

[Sjonsson]

One of the reasons is the lack of gameplay sound, having low levels of gameplay sound in your trailer massively helps, its one of the key aspects of any game, it would be interesting to see a video of it with the actual sound. Another thing is the particle effects appear a bit lackluster, this is reinforced by the height of the camera, the majority of your screen has not much going on. Not sure if it works in your case as you appear to have a camera that can be freely moved but minor screen shake. General things that give feedback to the players.

 

Maybe that isn't what the game is going for. But the high tempo of the music in the trailer sure makes it feel like it's meant to be. Here is an example of something that certain feels like every hit and move has a bit more impact.

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/261180/

Yepp, I haven't reflected all too much about the trailer but I think you're right. I will see to it that we add in-game sounds for the next trailer. The whole deal with the camera height is very complex and I've been vouching strongly for limiting the camera height to a closer distance, though the team insists that you lose too much gameplay readability if there are things happening off-screen. My side of it is that the problem with things happening off-screen isn't as big as they think it is (as it is not a problem in StarCraft 2, Dota, LoL etc.) I do agree that due to our long range spells there is some problematique, but not big enough to counter-weight the other disadvantages. We're in a state where everyone agrees it's a "personal preference" and thus hard to decide on.

We do have some screenshakes in the game but I think they are only present if you are the player who get's hit by a spell.

Now I've heard the music tempo vs game pacing enough times to actually put some weight into it. The problem is it's really hard to find fitting and royalty free trailer music. We do have a composer but he's really busy as it is right now and we need to put him on sound effects asap so we're not gonna get new music resources some time soon. Doesn't change the point you're making though, we have to do something about it.

 

[Pampers]

Got some updates!

 

Started adding some sounds and stuff. And now you can run with the ball to some extent, rather then just pushing it around

 

 

Added a new type of power-up that changes the soccer field into an ice rink, very early atm and barely working placeholder snow material etc, and apologies for the shit recording

 

[Vilham]

this is still awesome

[Sjonsson]

This is a huge milestone for the project even though we still have a long road to walk to release it.

 

 

Here's the link to our Greenlight page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=385795837/
 

 

We also lunch our offical webpage for Spellsworn: http://www.spellsworn.com/

 

 

As we assembled our alpha version of the game we decided it was time to take aim at Steam Greenlight and just today we have uploaded our game! This is undoubtedly one of our biggest announcements so far and we are so excited!

If you want to support our Spellsworn and get it up on Steam for the whole world to enjoy, give us a thumbs up and add us to your favorites!

 

Reflections

Looking back at the latest three weeks there have been a lot of things going on. Ever since our first official alpha-test of the game we have been reworking a lot of things such as the general pacing of the game as well as fixing balancing issues. These tests have been an eye-opener to us and taught us a lot about the game and our target audience. Now aside these amazing tests we had over the internet we also had the game run through the GamesLab belonging to Massive Entertainment – A Ubisoft Studio. As the first developer to set our foot inside the games lab outside of the corporate group that is Ubisoft we were extremely excited and least to say it lived up to the expectations. We actually tested our game in the same place Massives upcoming game The Division have been tested.

 

The testing facility was divided in three rooms, two with computers for playing and a third room with monitors so we could spectate all players at the same time. (Disaclaimer: I asked if it was fine that I could take this picture.) It started out with two Free-for-All matched and ended with a 2v2v2 with us scribbling down tons of notes, facepalming in despair because things went wrong or players didn’t understand. (We were not allowed to communicate with the players at all.)

After the testing there was a discussion where we sat in the same room without the test pilots knowing we were the developers, listening to their thoughts and opinions. Forty minutes later the veil was removed and we presented ourselves to the testers for an open discussion. The day ended, we went home and the next monday the test report arrived from the Games Lab. A beautifully compiled .PDF document with 19 pages of gold for us to get our hands on.

This testing session has taught us so much and we are forever grateful towards Ubisoft Massive for stretching out a big friendly hand. One extra goes out to the Project Manager of Massive GamesLab, Robert Jansson who was the one who made all of it possible! You’re the best! (Does anyone here know him? Think he's been at Massive for quite a while.)

 

Gameplay Changes

Some of all the things we have changed since last devlog post are shown is this video:

Many things have been changed after all of these testing sessions and in a brief description what we’ve done is; 1. Decreased the movespeed and projectile speeds of all entities in the game. This is to create bigger timeframes for the players to act in. 2. Overall spell damage have been increased.
If you want to read even more about the spells in detail we have created a Spells Balance chart which you can checkout HERE! If you have any thoughts on the spells and all numbers involved, feel free to reply or send a mail. We’d be happy to discuss!

 

Numbers aside we have also rehauled the Spell Shop. This is how it looks right now and later on you will be able to drag and drop spells when buying them, instead of just clicking.

 

The future!

There are a thousand more things we need to add, finetune, and reconsider for the game – sometimes we wish we just had a ‘Make Awesome Game’-button but that’s not the case. Game development is always (like many other things in life) about priorities and we are doing our best to make the right calls and change the things we believe is of most importance right now.

Without going into too much detail, here are some things you can expect in a foreseeable future:

• Final size of the arena will shrink to an even smaller size to tighten up the gameplay.
• An amazing Announcer for killing sprees, Round start et cetera. (Actor to be announced!)
• Sounds for all spells!
• More spells accompanied with spell combinations!
• Custom keybindings.
• More intuitive Spell Shop.

 

If anyone of you Mapcorians read the whole thing or just half or it, or even glanced at it! Thanks for showing interest!

Edited February 13, 2015 by Sjonsson

[Vilham]

Grats. Nice to have some proper none clone games on greenlight.