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Suggestions and ideas

A topic by FlynnTaggart created Aug 18, 2018 Views: 1,063 Replies: 35
Viewing posts 1 to 14
(1 edit)

whine about things

Give some ideas for the game !

(May be disregarded by Le Capitaine)

I'll start with my idea:

I feel like having individual time trials would be neat, while a open world favours exploration, a more linear level is about pure, unadulterated platforming challenges, and no empty space to slow down the momentum.

Developer

The thought crossed my mind, believe it or not. I floated the idea of a race mode with individual checkpoint tracks spanning the level. I didn't want to put in the work (and still don't :v) and figured anything race-related might get monotonous without a reason to pick anyone but Zin.

Multiplayer?

Developer

Absolutely tried that. The most basic functionality was hell to implement and then the animation didn't work.

Is this a technical limitation, or you just need coding assist?

Developer

No way past it as far as I could tell. A product of the way Unity handles networked animation. The dedicated component can only take up to 32 variables while my animation system is built on a lot more.

you can cram much more that the cookie cutter UNet syncvars 'allow'

source: am developer.

Developer

This is getting into lower-level UNet coding, isn't it? I can't even work my way around a custom Inspector.

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-new types(modes) of challenges

-more hardcore challenges

-unlockable graffity souls/songs or something else

-draw a bigger size graffitys

-the name of the game needs to change. I searched the game on both google play and itch io, there are too many games about butterflies it' not so easy to find.

Developer

Too late for a name change. Bigger (multi-spot) graffiti are definitely a possibility, though. I've made it so that I could override the actual graffiti image on a per-spot basis and it wouldn't be hard to split a piece in multiple spots the way JSR did. I intend to make use of that for E2 with spot-specific pieces.

(6 edits)

-Not 1 but more different types of keisatsu. With different skins and characteristics(similiar to "pac-man"'s ghosts). Like the fastest KS trying to skate on rollerblades very badly(like a joke), knocks you of the ground, causes less damage. Another example, the fatter one(wears heavy armor and the most dangerous), walks very slowly and causes more damage, one hit with his electric stick - zinnie is dead!
-flying enemy drones. More anoying than turrets, but causes far less damage. You can defeat 'em with air tricks.
-Animals. Cats, dogs, pigeons, crows.
-flying planes/helicopters on background.
-pedestrians are standing on the same spot. So lame! Why not to make them go somewhere.
-the warehouse location has no soul in it. No hobos, no rats, no big lizards?
-the game needs secrets/easter eggs, like secret enterable room, alternate outfits(skins, glasses, hats)
-no antenas/conditioners on building roofs?
-text plot about the gameworld, characters needs backstories.
-in Tony Hawk's Underground 1-2 (and other next games in TH series), there was some skating npc's, scripted of course. While you playing as NAT, Jae and Zinnie skating around. Jae - Nat and Zinnie. Zinnie - Nat and Jae.
-Ability to spit on people, especially KS.
-No children pedestrians? That's definitely not a GTA! 
-Implementation of a Cellphone with abilities of entering the First Person Look Mode(you can only stand and look around like in jsrf, not skate), taking selfies and switching music tracks, make playlists. When you using phone the game pauses/goes slow-mo. Basically you can redo the pause menu into cellphone interface.
-New fresh idea based on previous. At this moment the actual game has something like 10 tracks. Let the most music will be locked at the beginning. After the jay/nat joins your crew, you getting new unlockable music + few tracks after completing most tough challenges. Each character has own default playlist,you can switch their playlists with your own custom created playlists. For example, zinnie & jae don't have "power of funk" song in their default playlists, only Nat have it, but you can add it in your own custom created one.
-custom graffity import with easy to use "just place a bunch of png's" in game's special folder.
-ability to switch graffity artwork you want to draw(via cellphone)
-ability to redraw existing graffity from scratch.
-expand limit of each graffity types artworks. From 3 to 10.
-import custom music "like in gta 5"

-french and russian localizations! I can do all russian translation + logo. You just need to:

1)import and test size of new different Cyrillic font, 'cause commodore 64 font don't support Cyrillic letters i guess. 

2)Complain some slang speech moments

3) Is the butterflies' logo design meaning something and you can't touch it or it's just looking cool? Send me in it's original quality.

-while nanashi & anne accessible in free ep0, why not to make 'em playable in ep1 via cheat?

-Make all the hud switchable on/off. I wanted to make kickass trailer/gmv montage long time ago.

-is there any barriers in releasing the game on steam in near future, except 100$ fee for steam direct? If I'll donate this amount of money to you, can steam still choke on your arse too? Just imagining how you can implement episodes on one steam page.

(Episode 0 - free) main game

(Episode 1 - paid dlc) 

(Episode 2 - paid dlc)

(Le capitaine' s ep 1 ost - paid dlc)

(Highraiser's ep 1 ost - paid dlc)

(Le capitaine' s ep 2 ost - paid dlc)

(Highraiser's ep 2 ost - paid dlc)

(additional skins - paid dlc)

Developer (2 edits) (-1)

*deep breath*

Other KS types are in the cards for E2, with different attacks. Maybe even other pedestrian types (the code is there for at least one alternate behaviour). Drones you'll be happy to know are also in. Pedestrians have pathing code implemented, I'm just not using it in E1. Animals will need whole new rigs, so might not turn out worth the work. Antennas probably won't happen (just pretend there's some future tech at play. :v) but you've probably already noticed the conditioners here and there. Plot development, well, can't spoil. Cellphone interface...sounds incredibly cool (Zineth, much?) but way beyond my abilities, like custom graffiti. 3-level graffiti will stay for balance reasons, but redoable graffiti I can look into. Unlockable tracks I can do. Localisation I've looked into, but you've guessed correctly about the font issues (the software I use for making in-game bitmap fonts only supports the base 26 Roman letters and punctuation). The logo I'm keeping because the symmetry is meant to bring to mind a butterfly's wings (plus I'm probably in too deep now to change). Anne and Nanashi I'm purposely keeping for E2. Extra skins I've floated, but decided against because of the work involved. Steam is a complete, total, utter and permanent no. Finally, I'm leaving the OST business in your hands alongside all the profit from it. You absolutely deserve that.

A bunch of these ideas are stuff that sounds cool as hell, but which I couldn't even hope to get done without a proper dev team. Which, well, fingers crossed for the money for that.

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The idea of phone is both Zineth and gta 4 inspired. There was a journalists rumor about the cut feature in pre-release version. You can listen radio on your foot.

What we can expect from the final versions of both ep1 and ep2(except bug fixes)?

Developer

I don't think I'm doing anything but bugfixes for E1. For E2, I haven't yet decided. I'll certainly try and come up with something new.

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muh speed

Seriously, I feel like this game have a small problem about momentum. While it's not as bad as in one of your main inspiration from a certain publisher it's a bit slow and the fun stops when you lose the momentum.

waaaa i can't into dashing also i sent you a mail,hmu when it's on steam so that I actually buy it and not feel bad for it.

Developer (3 edits)

This has frustrated me too. Unlike JSR (and quite like Zineth) the air movement code only allows you to redirect existing velocity, not add any. I did it on purpose so you can't jump your way past your character's top speed; this is a side-effect. I'll try to allow adding velocity at low speeds to mitigate the frustration.

edit: Done (not upped), and you're right, it feels much better. I've put the falloff at exactly one-half of the speed cap.

2dit: Upped.

Developer

Also, sorry I'm late for the key, found you in my spam box. ""\_(ツ)_/""

Add a center camera button, the auto camera can be trash sometimes.

...and skip music on d-pad. Left-Right - track select, up-down - change volume.

Developer (2 edits)

I'm amazed I didn't think of skipping tracks. It'll take an extra button, but I can do it. Volume buttons I probably won't do, since that's two more buttons. Maybe by holding "skip track" and pressing other buttons. Center camera should be easy: tag + dash, zero extra buttons needed.

while we're on the topic of controllers, a easier way to rebind the controllers' buttons wouldn't be awful

Developer (3 edits)

That, however, is probably not going to happen. I floated an in-game keybind menu, only to find Unity's default input system can't change keybinds at runtime, while I haven't found any alternate way to get to analog input. This is also why you can see the Android axes in the launcher.

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1)Mission ranking system(not suitable for all missions), total ripoff from tony hawk's project 8
Comlete the mission in 38 seconds, you get rank c; 35 sec - rank b; 32 sec - rank a, 30 sec - rank S. Also there are some missions you can do without touching a ground but not necessairly. For those types of missions if you touch a ground, you just get lower rating (non S).
2)Ingame achievements.

-Complete 10 missions within rank S

-spray all 126 spots

-spray all cameras

- ride on the vehicle from the mountain

-ride X coloured pipe in the underground/ride all the pipes in the underground

-get to the butterflies's observatory hideout (that's definitely a achievement)

-ride Eifel's tower from the top to the ground

-complete adventure mode 100%

-complete adventure mode 100% under 45 minutes(for example)

-complete challenge mode X spots in X minutes

-complete challenge mode X spots without getting hit by cameras/keisatsu

Developer

These are all good ideas, but way too much work to implement. Mission rankings are a lot more work than they look, since I'd have to implement a timer then personally determine every single rank threshold for every single mission.

I've purposely avoided achievements because they're also a lot of work for not a lot of returns: for a speedrun achievement, I'd have to implement a timer, for X sprayables/X grinds in X way I'd have to implement entire new scripts, and so on. Then I'd need to implement an entire achievement interface to handle them. It's a story for another time, but I also never really liked the "culture" of achievements, so to speak. It might happen, but don't bet on it. I'd rather work on bugfixes and E2.

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A map creator wouldn't be awful.

I need to remake JSR with a good movement system and add a loss meme

community maps sounds really cool and interesting

Developer (1 edit)

Fun fact, the engine can take any Unity scene and make it into a level provided there's a start point. Less fun fact, I have less than no idea how to make that into a proper editor. But in theory, I could try to have the game generate a level on-the-fly from being fed an FBX file (something I already have the Unity editor do via script), and there are in fact model rips of the JSRF levels out there. Still, that's way beyond my skills at the moment.

edit: Just checked, there's no way to get a model file at runtime. Scenes might be another matter entirely, but that takes AssetBundles, which I don't know the first thing about.

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Please add:
1) "126 spots" in challenge mode.
2) Offline leaderboards.
3) Bring back race mode from pilot episode. I know the balance is broken, it's just fun to play and extends game's overall playtime.

Since the spring 2017 I wondered is there'll be your own version of DJ Professor K, but then decided that thats not gonna happen while one person doing all the job. But few weeks ago when ep1 arrived, I look at these surprisingly good cutscenes. They'are definitely better than JSR/JSRF ones, except dancing animations. Face expressions, camera angles - I enjoyed them so much. Excluding the voice acting, I can't even imagine how awesome it can be in your own interpretation. So there's a stupid question, have you ever planned to do something like DJ K narattor in the future?

Developer

I'm not yet fixed on whether there's going to be a DJ figure. I'm taking advantage of the fact that a DJ wouldn't have noticed the Butterflies so early, so wouldn't be heard from throughout E1. I'll see if I can get something together for the end of E2.

All-spot challenge I can do. Leaderboards will take some coding, but might be done. I've removed nearly every trace of race mode, so I'll have to redo that all over again, which might take a while.

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The dashing mechanic could use some more work. If it were up to me (and believe me, I have no idea how to code in unity) I would make it more like JSRF's dashing mechanic. It's really difficult to gain speed, and when you do, it normally goes away moments after you get it. Also, its extremely hard to turn once you gain speed. I'm not saying that the character should corner extremely well, but when I move left or right on my xbox controller I expect to be able to turn that way instead of drift slightly to the direction I was trying to go to. It kind of reminds me of a bad modern Sonic game's controls. (sorry if that sounds a bit mean)

Developer

The wide steering is intentional, an attempt at mirroring JSR's skating physics. It's why I've added a drifting mechanic (tap back, then steer) for tighter turns. I can reduce the steering circle, but I don't want to do that too much.

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I think reducing the steering circle would benefit quite a lot actually.  And about the way to dash, maybe make it activate by holding down the button instead of having to spam the button. It makes my hands cramp a lot. Or i guess maybe make it an easy mode like mario odyssey's assist mode.

Developer (1 edit)

I've made my choice. I've found the THPS-style steering satisfactory, so it'll remain the same, but I'll make dashing easier: press at the right time, then hold for a time-limited auto-boost.

Jet Grind Radio has been my favorite video game ever since I played it as a kid back when it first came out- so I know I'm a little bias but holy shit this game is the best thing I've seen on itch.io. You've done an amazing job and I really can't fathom how 1 person can do all of this. We kind of take it for granted nowadays that 1 indie developer does a bunch of work to make a game but I don't want to take that for granted that's absolutely nuts what you've done is crazy dope and I appreciate it.

Asskissing aside, My suggestion is that I think you stand to benefit a lot just from thinking critically about what you liked about jet grind radio and what you didn't like about it. What did jet grind radio do better than JSRF and vis versa? Get other peoples feedback as well. Personally I enjoyed Jet Grind Radio more than JSRF so your game being closer to that one makes it better. There's a few things you've left out that I'm not sure are left out because this is early access or if you plan on keeping them left out- 

Spray Can collection. I think collecting items in any game is just fun and the cans help give incentive/direction on where to go and they can add more variety to the strength and weaknesses of different characters based on how many they can hold. Also red health cans. I'm shitty at video games and I liked them.

Spraying Graffiti- this is the core of the game and I feel like JSRF dropped the ball by making it too simple. Your game feels like a nice inbetween from how complex it was in jet grind radio and how simple it was in jsrf. I would prefer it to be more complicated but thats just my taste. Adding a few directions you can press while pressing down the graffiti button would be cute. Also the camera angles changing around in jet grind radio as you finished a part of a tag- i felt like that really added a lot and made it more fun and satisfying when stopping to do a piece. 

The amount of graffiti- Get a bunch. Anything you can't do yourself reach out to other people for show them what you got and they should be happy to be a part of it. Also heres an idea- not just choosing 3 graffiti 1 per size, but multiple graffiti for each size just to give more variety. People who do graffiti don't just spray the same tag everywhere they do a bunch of stuff and when I go paint a town i wanna just paint all sorts of shit.

That's all I got for now! I think you're getting a lot thrown at you so I appreciate you taking the time to read peoples suggestions and consider them.

Developer

All noted. I'm keeping out spray cans and directional input to simplify things; you heal by tricking. Camera angles I left out because I couldn't find a way to make them look good. Multiple graffiti per level I can look into, but it'll have to play nice with my save system.

Menus navigation by keyboard.

Developer

I wish. Unity to the rescue with its less-than-stellar menu input system, which only allows one method of input at a time. Although what I could do, now that I think of it, is switch said input method to keyboard when input is detected there, and vice versa for gamepad.