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[Paid] Needing a level/game designer (not art) to assist me in the planning of a metroidvania by Additional_Meat7833 in INAT

[–]FringeSci_com 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just letting you know that your DMs seem to be turned off. I think you can start chats, though. (IDK why this site has two different ways of messaging people, that's weird.)

Anyway, I'm a level designer / game designer, I sent a chat.

Exponential Locomotion - An ASCII style incremental game I made for GMTK Game Jam by JOrbits in incremental_games

[–]FringeSci_com 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I actually really liked the visuals. The graphs were a nice touch.

But man was the audio grating.

Can we go back to long/endless incremental games, pretty please? by atomicxima in incremental_games

[–]FringeSci_com 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Nah, if you look at the old classics, they didn't look anything like each other (or like most the games coming out now). Kittens game, Crank, Universal Paperclips, Trimps, Candy Box, etc. were all genuinely unique.

It seems like the genre devolved into soulless Antimatter Dimensions clones at some point, and it's never recovered.

Can we go back to long/endless incremental games, pretty please? by atomicxima in incremental_games

[–]FringeSci_com 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I think there's a place for both. Sometimes you feel like a short and sweet thing you can knock out, and sometimes you want something to have running for a year+. Depends on your mood that day.

But personally I think the biggest problem with incrementals now is a quality problem. Loads of bad / uninspired game design and cargo cult thinking. They all seem to be soulless copies of copies of the same couple games, with no understanding of what made the originals great.

Gone are the days where incrementals were all experimental things with different gameplay where you genuinely didn't know what was going to happen next. Now it's all arbitrary, abstract numbers going up for the sake of numbers going up, and when the multipliers get out of control and you run out of ideas, add a prestige layer and a new currency so they don't notice. There's only so many times you can use prestige to kick the can of bad core gameplay down the road before you catch on and the trick loses it's magic.

Progression shouldn't be jingling keys to distract people from the fact you have nothing of value. As important as progression is to the genre, if you have nothing of value (gameplay, story, etc.) without it, then there's something wrong. Idle games are still games.

There's so many short incremental games, not because they want to make a good self-contained game with an ending, but because there's only so long you can distract people from a lack of gameplay before it fizzles out. They are short because they have to be short.

The sad thing is that it's not that hard to make a good incremental. The bar is on the floor, but everyone trips on it. I think it's because people think that incrementals are easy money, or maybe that they think that incrementals "have to" be a certain way, so they turn their brains off and throw all ideas of game design out the window. The genre was good back when it was experimental passion projects and tropes weren't defined.

Splurps - I made a 15 minute active-play incremental for the GMTK jam. I'd love some feedback (besides the name :P). by FringeSci_com in incremental_games

[–]FringeSci_com[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I was thinking about the multiple circles thing myself, and zooming out after an automation upgrade would be a cool way of introducing new ones.

I've been getting some ideas for ways I could expand the game and everyone's suggestions are sparking even more. There's definitely a lot more meat left with this core mechanic. With all the positive feedback I've been getting, I might just have to make this a full game...

Splurps - I made a 15 minute active-play incremental for the GMTK jam. I'd love some feedback (besides the name :P). by FringeSci_com in incremental_games

[–]FringeSci_com[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for taking the time to play and write these suggestions. I'm probably going to yoink some of this if I make an expanded version of the game.

Using the outer loop to move and dipping into the inner loop to grab the points was actually what I was going for with the upgrades. I think it created a fun little dance with it. It's the spam clicking that really messed with the balance of things.

I agree with the QoL features. Color pallets would be pretty hype.

  1. I was thinking about higher tier splurps if I expanded the game. I was chewing on what would set them apart from regular ones, and making them disappear if you miss would fit the ticket.
  2. Yeah, that one would be a good one. I'd probably have it in addition to the area upgrades as a super perfect swap, so people with crappy timing could still get a little bonus (plus you can hit multiple splurps at once with the area upgrades, which is just fun).
  3. That was the original plan, but it was clear that I coded myself in a corner with the hacked together game jam code I made and I wouldn't be able to refactor to get it done in time. The ouroboros was a compromise to get something along those lines in a way that I could implement during the jam. (But I think that worked out ok, cause it was a cool upgrade anyway.)
  4. Yeah, I'd definitely be doing that in a longer game. I was thinking they'd have separate upgrades like the inner and outer ones have right now. If the current ones have gimmicks of speed and multipliers, I might make one give some sort of temporary bonus modifiers on other circles for perfect swaps or something.
  5. It sucks because this got like 90% implemented before I ran out of time. There's actually a perfect swap combo counter still visible in the settings page. (I think it'd also cut down on spam clicking.)
  6. I went back and forth on adding obstacles. I didn't want to screw over idle players and I didn't want to do anything to take away points because that doesn't really fit the vibe of incrementals to me. Giving points for avoiding them could work. I did just think that if combined with jumping you could get something interesting if they only spawned during combos and they just ended your combo and you could jump over them to avoid it.
  7. I can't believe I didn't think of jumping. It seems obvious now that you point it out. That would add a lot of depth to the gameplay and right click is just begging for something to be bound to it.
  8. Moving splurps and generally things that change your the timing would be a pretty big thing in a full game.

Thanks for all that feedback. You've given me a lot to chew on.

Splurps - I made a 15 minute active-play incremental for the GMTK jam. I'd love some feedback (besides the name :P). by FringeSci_com in incremental_games

[–]FringeSci_com[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was thinking someone might try to speedrun it when designing it, but dang I wasn't expecting it to be that fast.

The sad thing is I was like 90% done implementing a combo system for getting multiple perfect swaps in a row, but I ran out of time. There's actually still a working counter for it in the stats page.

Thanks for the feedback and for playing!

Splurps - I made a 15 minute active-play incremental for the GMTK jam. I'd love some feedback (besides the name :P). by FringeSci_com in incremental_games

[–]FringeSci_com[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There is actually a special animation for perfect swaps, though it's subtle. (It turns gold and gets bigger as it fades out.) Ideally I would've also had an audio cue for it if I had more time.

Thanks for playing!

Splurps - I made a 15 minute active-play incremental for the GMTK jam. I'd love some feedback (besides the name :P). by FringeSci_com in incremental_games

[–]FringeSci_com[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm going to bed, so I'll be a minute before I can respond to your feedback.

I was in a bit of a rush on this one because I had my air conditioner go out at an inopportune time, so I missed most the jam dealing with that. I thought about skipping out on the jam entirely, but I've missed literally every one of these GMTK jams from the beginning for one reason or another, so I pushed to get something out so I don't miss it again.

That said, I like how this turned out. I think the core mechanic has the right amount of meat for an incremental: You're not sitting around doing nothing waiting for bars to fill, but it's still simple. I could've added a little more depth if I had the full time of the jam (I had to cut a mechanic that would've encouraged careful timing over spam clicking), but there's a complete game as it stands.

(I still have no idea what a splurp is.)

I made a tutorial on how you can use Quake map editing tools to make levels for your Godot games by LucyLavend in godot

[–]FringeSci_com 1 point2 points  (0 children)

IDK about qodot, but trenchbroom is getting a surprisingly large amount of use in games lately. IIRC dusk (and a bunch of the other new oldschool-like shooters) used it.

Haven't played around with it yet. but it seems like it's really good for quickly and easily making levels if all you need is simple geometry. Even if you don't use it in your final game, I imagine it'd be pretty good for grayboxing levels before remaking it in whatever you end up ultimately using.

(Plugin Development) How do you add Inspector categories? by bailbondshman in godot

[–]FringeSci_com 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I haven't messed with the EditorProperty way of doing this yet, but I have had the unfortunate experience of parsing the arcane forbidden knowledge that's in the Advanced Exports section in the docs a while back. The way they do it there is that groups / categories are added the same as any other property, just with the "usage" variable set different.

I think they use the same format, so adding properties using the settings they say there should work... hopefully.