Emperor Ing Makes a Game! Latest Build: 0.3.21

[Emperor Ing]

Current Build: 0.5.02

Spoiler: Build Notes

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This build uses four looping levels.

Unity Web Player required

Controls:
W - Up
S - Down
A - Left
D - RIght

Mouse - Rotate Shield

Space - Attach/Detach to rails (not applicable to levels where you start on rails)

What is this?

Hypt is a multi-platform top-down arcade-style reflection game being developed by just me, currently, which I am making as an indie developer. I have been working on this for the past three months and I intend to use this thread as a means to solicit critique, feedback, criticism, and hopefully garner interest for any future Steam Greenlight campaigns. The game is entirely self-funded so I will most likely not be running any Kickstarter campaigns.

How do I play?

You have to get to the end of the level while enemies shoot at you. Defend yourself by using your shield to reflect projectiles back at enemies or watch them bounce off of walls. It's like a lethal game of racketball!

What platform is this being made for?

PC, and i'd like to release it to Android and iOS devices.

What platform is this being developed on?

Unity.

Do you have any prior game-making experience?

No, not really

So what, exactly, are you doing?

Actually all my time is spent building levels now. Given that I have other obligations I try to make at least one level a game while adding other content and attempting to fix what bugs I do notice.

Where can I play a demo of the game?

Just beneath the banner at the top of the thread is a link that downloads you the latest build.

When will you release a new demo version?

When I make it. I'm making new levels every day but there's a very high chance you won't see those levels until the final game release. As bugs are fixed and sound is added as well as any other significant change you'd notice, i'll upload a new build.

I want to get involved.

Naturally i'm gonna have a lot of trouble since i'm a relative newbie to game development and C# (the programming language i'm using) so if you think you can help, by all means I am all ears. In the meantime, providing thoughts and feedback is enough.

Does this have any relation to the Hypt Academies in your comic?

If you make that connection, then you're of a supremely elite group, and I congratulate you. To answer your question, no. They are simply cut from the same aesthetic block, and it is this similarity that they share a name.

Spoiler: Bug List

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Ongoing - Bug is still present in game
Fixed - Efforts have been made to remove the bug or reduce its effects. May still be present or may be gone completely
Removed - Bug is gone completely
Ignored - Bug is being ignored and will not be fixed.

Bug	Description	Severity	Status
Corner Sticking	When moving to waypoint to waypoint, the player is stopped at the node.	Moderate	Removed
Shield Ignoring	At some points, projectiles will outright ignore the shield and pass right through.	Severe	Fixed
Honeycomb Vertigo	At full speed, floor particles rotate to face the camera at such an extent as to be disorienting	Minor	Ignored
Epic Undead Projectiles	When a projectile dies, it freezes in midair for a moment. When frozen, the projectile knocks the player around.	Minor	Fixed
Briefly Invulnerable Enemies	If an enemy projectile is reflected back at an enemy at point-blank range, the projectile will bypass the enemy.	Minor	Fixed
Waypoint Warp	Coming in proximity with a node, leaving proximity, and returning, then attaching yourself to the node teleports you to the end node.	Severe	Fixed

Spoiler: Screenshots

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So, Questions? Comments? Critique?

[Starsign]

Just from the screenshots I'd say this is looking promising so far. I'm gonna give it a try at some point and will give you some proper feedback later.

As some advice if this is your first time making a game however: Don't panic too much, first time is always most difficult when it comes to dang near anything.

[Keios]

Great! Now I'm subscribed to TWO threads!

I see some potential here, just a tiny bit. But that's not important, neither in this case of "first time", nor this early stage. All that matters is to go with it and have fun.

[Emperor Ing]

I'm actually a lot farther along then you think, i've been at this for at least three months now. I have 49 functioning levels, including one boss.

If someone could playtest the demo then tell me how the game feels, how movement and moving the character feels, how everything looks and whether or not things are too distracting/not distracting enough, any feedback is appreciated.

[Keios]

Okay, here's a deep and on the fly analysis as I play through it. I will answer your questions, and comment on anything that comes up to mind.

The game "feels" good, as in it reacts fast and predictably to my input. However, despite the top speed being fine, I personally think the acceleration and time to reach it is a bit slow. This might be intended or not, you'll be the judge of that. I also notice that the top speed is greater when moving diagonally, than simply pushing one of the four directions. This can be intentional or a by product of how movement is computed, so I'll just mention it and leave it at that.

The aesthetics are nice. The contrasts are really good, nothing gets mixed or blends with something else. I don't think the core of the character should be black, the same as the floor. Despite of the white aura, I don't think it's a good choice, but again, this is personal preference.
Also, when moving in one direction, the rising hexagonal "aura" from the walls sometimes gives the impression of the whole world tilting downwards towards the direction of movement. I really like the feeling of it, so congrats on that. This might give someone motion sickness, but I wouldn't know. I've never had that feeling playing any video game, so I might be talking out of my behind. I do think it's worth mentioning though.

Things are, indeed, distracting and chaotic when a big enough number of "turrets" can shoot into your area, but I don't say this in a bad way. If this are the easy levels, then it's fine. If they are hard, it needs way more Bullet Hell, if that's what you're going for.

The Corner Sticking bug never happened to me despite looking for it. The Shield Ignoring one did, and I found it very easy to reproduce, but no consistent or easy explanation for it.
Speaking of shield, though, I managed to get some bullets hit it from behind (without hitting the character) and I found it 50-50 to whether it would go through or not, so I'm wondering if the shield is supposed to reflect or not in that direction. Since it would most surely reflect it back into the player, it's probably important.

Something weird happened where a bullet came at me, hit my shield kind of in the corner/side, and bounced me back in the opposite direction of my movement (about one hex distance), but I haven't managed to reproduce the effect.

I'm also finding it takes very little to virtually no effort on my part to destroy the "turrets". Most of the time they die on their own, from a random shot that came out of nowhere and happened to bounce in their direction. Maybe the bullets should die after X bounces, or shouldn't damage the turrets unless bounced from the players shield.

Also, there's a very, very big difference in gameplay from "Fantastic" graphic quality and "Fastest". Actually, there's the same big difference between "Good" and "Simple". I wouldn't know if it's my kinda crappy laptop, so just keep it in mind.

Aaaand I don't have anything else to say. I hope it didn't come across pedantic or in a wrong way, they're just my honest thoughts these last 15 minutes, so do with them what you must.

[Emperor Ing]

The game "feels" good, as in it reacts fast and predictably to my input. However, despite the top speed being fine, I personally think the acceleration and time to reach it is a bit slow. This might be intended or not, you'll be the judge of that. I also notice that the top speed is greater when moving diagonally, than simply pushing one of the four directions. This can be intentional or a by product of how movement is computed, so I'll just mention it and leave it at that.

I think it's a byproduct of how moving occurs. I'm not sure how to fix that, but to be honest I don't expect it to be a big priority.

I wonder how much of what you are mentioning has something to do with how wildly inconsistent the FPS tends to be. I've been in situations in my own playtests where FPS got up to 140. However i'll wait for more peoples' thoughts about player movement before I see to changing acceleration or top-speed.

Also, when moving in one direction, the rising hexagonal "aura" from the walls sometimes gives the impression of the whole world tilting downwards towards the direction of movement. I really like the feeling of it, so congrats on that. This might give someone motion sickness, but I wouldn't know. I've never had that feeling playing any video game, so I might be talking out of my behind. I do think it's worth mentioning though.

I know EXACTLY what you're talking about.

What happens is that the particle effect each level uses with the hexagons rising rotates along with the camera. The camera rotates to give the player a bit of a lead and a sensation of movement, but the particles rotate to face the camera. The effect is similar to vertigo, but yeah. I know what you're talking about. I'll add it as a bug.

Things are, indeed, distracting and chaotic when a big enough number of "turrets" can shoot into your area, but I don't say this in a bad way. If this are the easy levels, then it's fine. If they are hard, it needs way more Bullet Hell, if that's what you're going for.

...i'm astonished Bullet Hell had not crossed my mind before

When the player is killable (which is turning out to be a bigger headache than it should ) I think I can get a better gauge as to how difficult each level is.

The Corner Sticking bug never happened to me despite looking for it. The Shield Ignoring one did, and I found it very easy to reproduce, but no consistent or easy explanation for it.

Corner Sticking only occurs when the player is on a track. No levels in the present demo build are on tracks, so you won't be able to reproduce corner sticking. The next build will feature one.
As for shield ignoring, right now trying to fix it is my #1 priority. The reason it occurs is easier to imagine if you think of object movement as teleportation, and how every frame, the game teleports objects a distance to simulate movement. If this teleport jump allows it to bypass a collider, then colliders are bypassed. Hence, shield ignoring.

Something weird happened where a bullet came at me, hit my shield kind of in the corner/side, and bounced me back in the opposite direction of my movement (about one hex distance), but I haven't managed to reproduce the effect.

I know about this too. Bullets die after a set number of frames pass. Once this death occurs, it'll freeze in midair for a moment before vanishing. While it's frozen, for some unexplained reason the game treats the object as having crazy amounts of mass (ordinarily, they have the minimum amount of mass Unity will let me give an object.) If the player collides with a projectile frozen in midair in such a way, they're knocked back. Apologies that it wasn't in my mind when I initially wrote the bug list. The simplest solution is to have them disappear entirely upon death but I think it looks silly. I'll see to fixing this one, as I can simply turn off their collider when they die.

Also, there's a very, very big difference in gameplay from "Fantastic" graphic quality and "Fastest". Actually, there's the same big difference between "Good" and "Simple". I wouldn't know if it's my kinda crappy laptop, so just keep it in mind.

No effort on my part was put into how the game may look between "Fantastic" and "Fastest" nor would I know how to affect those changes if I wanted

[Keios]

I know EXACTLY what you're talking about.

What happens is that the particle effect each level uses with the hexagons rising rotates along with the camera. The camera rotates to give the player a bit of a lead and a sensation of movement, but the particles rotate to face the camera. The effect is similar to vertigo, but yeah. I know what you're talking about. I'll add it as a bug.

I just wanted to put emphasys in that I, at least, like the effect created. I guess it is a bug, since it's unintended, but I wouldn't try to fix it.

Nothing else to say about that or anything else, so it's up to other people's opinion.

[Domochevsky]

...
As for shield ignoring, right now trying to fix it is my #1 priority. The reason it occurs is easier to imagine if you think of object movement as teleportation, and how every frame, the game teleports objects a distance to simulate movement. If this teleport jump allows it to bypass a collider, then colliders are bypassed. Hence, shield ignoring.
...

Yah, that's a generally known thing. The key there is to do a raytrace of sorts on each movement action, between the current point of the entity and where it'll be the next frame. I think this can be done by sampling shorter hops and see if you collided with anything and at what location, then shorten the next movement distance to that position.

Eg, you got something moving 3 meter per block. It's 1 meter in front of an obstacle. Next frame it'll be 2 meter behind the obstacle, bypassing it without collision. So you sample along the path at a speed of, let's say, 0.1 meter (Bigger steps go faster, of course, since you have to do that each time the projectile moves) until you either reach the point where the projectile would be next frame (= no collision) or you collided with the obstacle (= bam).
If the collider comes back with a number that isn't 0 (a sign for "no collision", let's presume) you can set the projectiles speed to that number, so next frame it'll be where the obstacle is, properly bouncing off. You just gotta make sure you don't decrease the total speed of the projectile, just the move distance for the next frame.

[Emperor Ing]

Update:

Epic Undead Projectiles bug is fixed. From my own tests it looks like projectiles, when they are frozen in midair after they die, no longer collide with the player, so the risk of being knocked around for bumping into one should be gone. However given that this is a relatively new test, I highly suspect there will be other glitches that arise from it.

I'm working on Domochevsky's suggestion, but then I realized...I can't raycast

Though having spent most of yesterday trying to learn, I got the game to create said raycast out in front of the bullets that recognize when the ray is colliding with something. However I can't get it to specifically recognize what it is colliding with. This is especially important since the turrets have colliders that the ray intersects. Nor have I figured out how to get the projectile to slow down just enough so it doesn't bypass the shield. Current code has it either stopping completely or outright ignoring the shield and just maneuvering around it.

Also, not infrequently, collisions have resulted in MASSIVE FPS drops for reasons I cannot explain.

I'll put up a newer demo build later today. This one will feature a level on tracks so you can see what corner sticking looks like.

[Domochevsky]

Hum... I guess debugging that requires a deeper understanding of the code in question there.
Alternatively you can create an invisible mini-projectile, set on the same path as the big projectile, attached to it as a little helper, acting as ray trace. That thing could travel on each movement action between the current position and next position, sampling steps. Ideally that would also give it access to the same collision detection as the projectile, to detect what it collided with. (eg, 10% steps, which would be 10 samples per move action. Ideally you want that net to be as wide as possible, for performance purposes, so 20% or 50% steps, ideally.)

Personally I'd compare the sampler's current position with the list of currently on-screen entities positions (if within bounds...). If you have a match you then automatically also know what entity produced that match. Of course that is assuming 2D entities in 2D space. I can't quite tell if that works for 3D as well. >_>

[Emperor Ing]

I guess my biggest confusion is that I have no clue what you're talking about when you reference sampling.

However I did notice something in my latest testing: I have a debug raytrace that is exactly the distance between where the bullet is and where it will be next frame. The distance is rather tiny. However, in many of my earlier attempts at solving the collision bypass glitch had me increase the size of the paddle's collision box to something...rather large. The collision box is the full size of the paddle and it goes all the way into the player sphere. In order to bypass the collision box, it would have to teleport all the way past the player completely. Even more amazing was that it was caught between the shield and the sphere which, considering how the collision box is shaped, should be even more impossible.

I realized that the 3D colliders both the shield, the player sphere, and the bullet had were being used at a higher priority than the 2D colliders all objects have. Disabling the bullet's 3D collider has all but completely eliminated this problem despite my best efforts to induce penetration (which amounts to an enemy firing at the shield at a high rate of fire.) There is still some unusual activity, sometimes the bullets fly off at odd angles and i'm pretty certain that the player sphere enjoys some protection from the shield's collider box even though the shield shouldn't be protecting it, but overall, I think it's been fixed.

[Emperor Ing]

And... Build 0.2.22 is up.

Sorry for the delay, Smash Bros 3DS happened.

Anyways, the shield bypassing and epic undead projectiles bugs have hopefully been fixed, while this build features a level on rails that demonstrates fairly simply the corner sticking glitch.

[Keios]

So that's Corner Sticking. It is a problem, but honestly, the sudden stop at the checkpoints until you can move again is not that big of a time gap. I find movement in that stage a much bigger concern: The fact that "Up" is the direction you always have to press in order to move "forward", regardless of the apparent direction of the track, is weird.

Also, is this version supposed to be free of "Shield Ignoring"? Because I still managed to replicate and make it happen.

[endoperez]

Here's my two cents.

I launched the game without reading your description, because if this is good enough to go viral (i.e. "look at this cool game") then the recipient won't have any knowledge besides the game itself. I did see enough to know WASD and mouse are the controls, which was a good thing.

Things I noticed:

1) Some red things are shooting, they are probably bad.
1A) There's some white glowing thing connecting me to upper end of the screen, this seems to be some sort of compass beam that shows where I have to go.
2) I can rotate my ship using mouse.
3) I can only move up and down and that's not straight up and down? Weird.
4) Something's shooting at me! I'll try to bounce it with the shield.
5) I think it worked, there's no one shooting at me from that direction.
6) I think I might be moving along this white line here... is it some sort of a repulsor beam?
7) Oh it now looks more like a path. Moving is a bit weird.
8) Finished that level.

B1) Oh, a new level! The controls are much better.
B2) Moving around is much better.
B3) The world looks very different from what I guess might have been the tutorial level.
B4) This is kinda fun now, much better than the tutorial at least.
B5) It's getting a bit chaotic, I think I destroyed some turrets before I could see them.


C1) Okay, starting to get the hang of this.
C2) This level is much bigger than the previous one, I expected I had finished it several times now before finding more turrets.

D1) I've got the hang of this, started screwing around.
D2) Tried figuring out if the shield is using a mesh collider or a cube collider. I think it's a mesh collider.
D3) I think the turrets might have killed themselves (or each other) accidentally while I was messing around with the shield physics, there were fewer of them than I expected.

Back to the beginning.


Some feedback:

Tutorial sucks. The player isn't taught to move, the game isn't on rails as it seemed at first, the turrets shooting at a 45-degree angle can't be seen before you've most probably ricocheted their missiles back at them (so you never see them destroyed, and they might be the first turrets you destroy...), etc. It'd be better to have a simple tunnel/tiny room with one end open (player realizes he can move), then a turret shooting (player tries to find out what he can do against it, probably finds the ricochet shield), then whatever else you want in the tutorial.

It should be clearer to see what happens when a missile hits something. Color changing seems like it might work, you'd probably have to change the material the trail renderer uses (I assume you're using that). Currently, environment is blue, your character is black inside a white ball of light, enemies are red, all hit effects are red.

There are at least three things you want to show very clearly: you were hit by a missile, you blocked the missile, a turret was hit by a missile. White or green particles and/or trail-color might work for a block, red and/or black for you being hit, for turret kills it could be anything but I think a brighter color would send a positive message. You could also spawn small "coins" or "stars" or whatever that home to your ship, which both reward you for successful kills AND tell you that you just destroyed an out-of-screen turret.

The background of the actual levels is kinda nice, but the floor seems a bit "floaty" since you can see the shapes moving down below. Try what it looks like with a single plane just under the floor hexes, blocking the moving stuff from below from the player.

The walls are cool, and the glowing edges show the edges of the moving area quite well.

Particles and the turrets use square-themed particles, but hexes would be more appropriate given the environment.

The missiles seem to disappear instantly whenever they strike a turret, including the trail - it would be cool if you'd be able to stop them until their trails reaches them (possibly by using current velocity to get an approximation for how long it'd take for the trail to reach it, then using Destroy() or whatever with a delay parameter and stopping its velocity ).


EDIT:

A few words about platforms:

Have you thought about mobile controls yet?

For mobile, virtual joysticks aren't a good option for anything precise, ESPECIALLY in your case since you want to control the shield direction with a finger. Tilting while controlling the shield... might work, but maybe not. You'd have to test it. Preferably on as many different devices as you can get your hand on...
Speaking of testing, it's hard to develop for Android without being able to test it outf. There's so much variation - different hardware, different resolutions, different width-height ratios for the screens... do you crop off the extra stuff, or scale the native resolution into something that matches? What about tablet sized stuff, which changes not just the screen but also how the control feels, whether it's touch, virtual joystick or tilt? At least for iPhones there's just a handful of models.


Goals:

Are your goals to:
1) Learn about game creation as a hobby
2) Learn about game development as a profession
3) Learn how to publish a game through a store
5) Have fun
6) Get money
7) Get a portfolio piece (i.e. a bigger chance of a job later)


Name / Logo

Meanings of HYPT
Most languages involving English: nothing, also it's close to terms such as hyper, hyped. Pretty good!
Russian: all-caps НУРТ - lit. NURT, also Nurtai, which seems to be a given name.

The logo though... I don't like it. The H is great, but the P and T look like they lean to the right and will fall over, the Y leans a bit to the left, and the H is symmetrical and balanced. The letters don't fit together, in other words. Also, the H is widest in the middle, while Y and P are widest at the top (and bottom) - you could have easily had them get wider towards the mid, too.

http://www.fontspace.com/blue-vinyl/metal-on-metal
Here's a font that seems to be free for commercial use (didn't read the details of the license, but at least the short description claims so). You can test it out by writing HYPT to the 'customize' field. The P is still kinda ugly, but H has the same design, and Y and T are much better. Giving that font's P a straight leg as well would probably give you a decent base for a logo - each letter incorporates both the hexagon shape, and strong horizontal or vertical line as well.
The logo might not work on the small-hex background, but might work if the hex background was closer to the the letters.

If you want to release the game, you want to have a logo that looks good on its own without a background, without any gradients (because those make resizing much harder), that works good on both dark and light backgrounds (with inverted colors if necessary), and in grayscale, on every size from a business card to a t-shirt. A professional logo design is hard to do on your own, or expensive (because it's so hard), so a HYPT logo based on an existing, well-designed font is a decent option already. Having a small reference to a mirror, a richochet, lasers or whatever might also work... on some sizes and/or colors, at least.


Yet another edit... Sometimes I think double-posting would be the lesser of two evils. :(

I think it's a byproduct of how moving occurs. I'm not sure how to fix that, but to be honest I don't expect it to be a big priority.

This is how I guess it works right now:

(Horizontal movement vector times speed variable ) + (Vertical movement vector times speed variable ) + current velocity

If that's how it is, the fix is:

( (Horizontal movement vector + Vertical movement vector), normalize and multiply by speed variable) + current velocity

[Emperor Ing]

If you don't mind me saying, that's a lot more than just two cents

Seriously though, the feedback is appreciated and i'm looking into a lot of the stuff you talked about right now. I'm working on some changes to the logo (I don't like the metal on metal font, mainly because I want to avoid using vertical lines in the font at all if I can help it) so i'll see to showing off some iterations i've made in a post tomorrow.

Similarly, i'll post a new build tomorrow. This one will feature a change i've made to the rail levels where all WASD buttons are enabled and move you either towards or away from the next waypoint (so if the next waypoint is above you to the left, either W or A will move you to it and no, pressing both at once does NOT increase your speed, I made sure of that) and a new projectile collider that will hopefully kill off the Shield Bypass glitch for good. However now I have the inverse effect occurring where projectiles are hitting the shield too early.

Also, no. It's not the tutorial level. No tutorial levels have been implemented yet.

As for mobile controls, I imagine one finger would, with a tap, move the shield while movement was dictated by a virtual joystick that could be controlled by your thumb at the bottom of the screen. Reducing resolution seems like the simplest way to get the game to fit. With this in mind i'll definitely have to lower projectile speeds. My biggest concern is that when someone taps to move the shield, their finger may block a bouncing projectile from sight. I have access to several iOS devices including an iPad I could test with, and from my cursory research I may find myself not porting to Android due to the overwhelming complexity involved.

In the meantime, in testing I spotted this strange thing where projectiles bounced off would fly off in a wave pattern. Pretty cool (and yes, already fixed.)

Spoiler

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[Emperor Ing]

Anyways for lack of any other posts, here you go.

Here are several iterations of Hypt written in one font and eight custom fonts.

Spoiler

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Let me know what you think.

Also,

Build 0.2.26 is up.

[Keios]

Number 4 is the best font for the logo in my opinion, and here are the reason:

H is perfect like that, as endoperez said.
Y looks the best to me with the upper "prongs" going outward from the center, and of all the choices, the one in 4 looks the best.
P is a no brainer for me: that one is the only P that doesn't look weird AND looks like an acceptable shape for a P.
T, well, there's no much variety here, but number 1 DEFINITELY looks awful, and out of the other two choices, I think having an angled segment instead of vertical ties it all together nicely.

I'll check the build tomorrow. I'LL CHECK THE BUILD NOW!

Here are my nitpicks for this one, and it's short this time:

The effect on the turrets dying is cool and it conveys well what just happened, but that's after you realize what it is. The first time, I thought a new kind of attack was coming my way. I think the color should be changed, since red is ingrained as bad. I think white would do it, since I consider it the player's color (Because of the shield and the aura. Black isn't exclusive to the player).
I also notice the effect travels below the actual level floor and walls on stages 2-4, so it's almost not visible. I can, however, imagine it might be a bit noisy/chaotic to have it in the enclosed space. Not sure what to do there.

Second, there's a strange "bobbin" effect on the nodes in the first stage, specially noticeable in the bottom-left one, where mashing the directional buttons can make you bob around and even leave the whole node/track. I managed to separate myself from the course by about as much as the size of the player, and managed to stay there until it one of my random keypress pulled me back.

[Beacon of Chaos]

You made this.

On your own.

With no prior experience.

Holy cow, dude! I'm impressed! My first game was... well, pretty bad. XD

Man, I have a degree in this stuff and I never did anything with it. Keep it up, man!

[Emperor Ing]

I took classes on game dev as well as C++/C# programming, and at least two classes that used Unity. Honestly in the time i've spent making this game, i've learned a LOT more than I was ever taught.

I'm trying to outsource sound and music, but the guy I was referred to by a friend hasn't contacted me back. At all.

Also, here's Build 0.2.28. This one features a title screen with placeholder text. Obviously i'm going to fix it up sooner rather than later and give it a proper logo and functionality. Furthermore, the effect of when enemies dying is changed. For the record, the circle appearing just below the floor was intentional, but it didn't look as good as I thought it would.

In the meantime here's some inside-baseball: I became aware yesterday that Independent Games Festival has entries open for game submissions. I plan on submitting by the deadline, which is either October 19th or October 22nd, depending on which page you look at. For the sake of caution, i'll assume the former.

I don't expect to place as even a finalist, but I think simple submission would be a great way to get noticed and get my game out there. Nevertheless, I want to think of this as a milestone, since naturally I want to submit the best possible game I can, even in its alpha stage, to the judges. For the record, content-wise the game is a lot larger than the demo version you all have been playing. I have 58 levels including one fully functional boss along with plans for a second boss.

With this in mind let's set some milestone goals.

Spoiler: Milestone Goals (10/19/14)

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Goal	Priority
Proper Title Screen	High
Polished Shield Collisions	High
Fix Corner Sticking/Corner Jumping	Moderate
Level Transitions	Low
Fix Vertigo Particles	Low
Sound Effects	Extreme
Music	Moderate
Second Boss	Moderate
Smooth Difficulty Progression	High
Remove Player Invulnerability	Extreme

[ti'esar]

I'm thinking about giving this a try. What feedback are you looking for, specifically?

[Emperor Ing]

I'm thinking about giving this a try. What feedback are you looking for, specifically?

Nothing specific.

Oh that's REALLY helpful, Ing. How are we supposed to know what to look for?

Well to be honest i'm not really looking at anything specific. If you want topics, here are some I can suggest.

Bug testing. Look at the bug list on the OP and see if you can reproduce them or find new ones. If so, how.
Gameplay feel. How does the game feel to play? Does moving the player around feel good?
Clarity. Are the players and enemies distinguishable from each other? Do you generally know what you're doing?
Fun. Is the game fun?
Tweaks. If you were me, what changes would you make and why?
Other thoughts. Lay it on me, does the font suck? Am I using the wrong colors? All constructive criticism is welcome.

When I post new builds, they're accompanied by a post listing changes to highlight some of the improvements i've made for the purposes of drawing attention to the changes specifically to solicit feedback.

[ti'esar]

That's actually pretty helpful, thanks.

[Emperor Ing]

Speaking of which, guys, check this out!

Hypt: Build 0.2.29 is up!

Now featuring: The Player is no longer invulnerable! Projectiles, when they hit the player sphere, kills the player and opens up a menu to allow you to either restart the level or go back to the main menu.

This game is HARD

Also: Sound effects! Thanks to free sound effects and me mucking about in Audacity, I have some somewhat decent sound effects so the world of Hypt is no longer quite as mute!

This means all of my extreme-priority goals have been met! Yes!

Now let's get a proper title screen and polish shield collisions some more. The Shield Bypass glitch has been identified, but it is far, FAR less frequent and I don't recall ever dying once because of it, strangely enough.

EDIT!!

Due to a glitch where sfx were playing as soon as bullets spawned, I had to re-upload the build.

Play this one.
0.2.29.1

[ti'esar]

So I feel like I'm missing something obvious here, but: what do I do to actually get the game to run? I've downloaded build 0.2.28 (so I can test it without having to worry about actually dying), but am getting an error message when I try clicking on the application.

[Emperor Ing]

For archival purposes I have all builds saved on my computer. I tried 0.2.28 but found no problems launching it.

Are you sure you extracted the zip file properly?

[ti'esar]

Are you sure you extracted the zip file properly?

No, actually. I'm going to try it again.

[Keios]

No, actually. I'm going to try it again.

Also, make sure you have unity installed for you to play the executable.

Let's talk about that build.

The 2 sound effects I could identify, bullet bouncing and turret dying, are perfectly fine. They also are not generic, so it adds to the "unique" atmosphere of the game.

I also really like the new particle effect for turrets dying, much better than the previous one. I do think, however, that it looks kind of weird when it starts disappearing. I kept thinking it would be better if the lines simply traced the "motherboard circuit" pattern (which I think looks great). Like the snake game, it would disappear as it is traced.
That's just what came to my mind when I saw it, not really criticism.

And yes, this game is Hard and unforgiving. It's fine like this for me, but I personally like to suffer in games. You'll need more feedback for that. I will say that I usually die because of a bullet that came out of the field of view and hit my back. For me it's frustrating but compelling, so again, you'll have to ask other people, but it's still true that a lot of the time I died because of something I couldn't foresee.
Speaking of dying, have you though about a life system? It's probably not a good idea to have no penalty for dying other than restarting the level.

Regarding previous bug:
I encountered the Shield Bypass glitch a handful of times, just randomly, but everytime it would also go through the player and cause no harm.

Here's a capture of that "bobbing" thing I mentioned in my previous post:

Spoiler: Image

Show

Just mashing the direction keys on the nodes of the first level (kind of randomly, but there's probably a pattern) I can manage this. And like I said, it's way more reproducible in the bottom left node for some reason, but I can also do it in the other ones.

And finally, a new bugfeature It sometimes happened to me that a bullet would hit me and bounce without the shield being in the proper position. I did not find a way to consistently reproduce this, but It also only happened a handful of times.

Please remember I just comment on everything that comes to mind. I sometimes wonder about how it all comes across.

That's all folks.

[ti'esar]

Also, make sure you have unity installed for you to play the executable.

I'm an idiot. That's probably the issue right there.

[Emperor Ing]

Out of curiosity, anyone know of a way to upload a game build without anyone needing to have the unity player?

[Tvtyrant]

Just played through the demo a few times, and the tracks feel like a totally different game and are much harder than the free levels. Did you intend for the first level to kill you almost instantly?

I should also say that I really like the game. The way it looks and feels is great, it has a geometry wars future-retro feeling that I dig.