Rbots : work in progress

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#1

Hello there,

I think that i’m in a good step to begin the Rbots wip in the Showcase section.
Still not playable (but Soon !) I’ve made hard work last days to fully change the gameplay, going from Click to move/action type to Gamepad.
Now I control the Rbot with left stick, move camera on right, jump, attack, and target with buttons.
There is still bugs (like I can attack an enemy after selecting even if I’m far away from him …) and I want to clear them before proceed to some alpha testing.

While waiting you can check the last video of a more advanced part of the starting level :

testing version available :

See you soon :wink:

edit : I can attack an enemy after selecting even if I'm far away from him Bug solved xD

1 Like
#2

@Dieedi it looks great!!
Maybe I would add some post-processing effects to make it even more interesting.
It’s a free asset in the store, you can take a look here: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/PostProcessing-Stack.html
Hope it helps :slight_smile:

#3

Yep it’s in my Todo list, but not yet ^^ (focus on gameplay for now)

#4

Progress on lighting, better shadows but still some artefacts on some object.
I’ve change the way the life bars are displayed, now appearing only on selection for enemies or on damages for Rbots.
Water is now damaging Rbots (yes they are not waterproof …)
First sound added on repair pods :slight_smile:

#5

Rbots pre-friends&family test :

#6

Alpha Feedback

Hi Jeremy,

Both Windows and Norton Security went into a frenzy upon trying to launch the executable.

I mention this only because it does make it a little more difficult for those trying to test your game and provide feedback :slight_smile:

Game Start

I like the spawning/pad that the robot starts on and leaves when you first start the game.

Controls / Movement

  • WASD and mouse felt like a natural combination, however…

    • The robot jerks from direction to direction when turning with WASD keys rather than a smooth rotation which I think will look and feel better for the player, this behaviour is afforded when you use the mouse for pointing in the direction you wish the robot to travel to but creates a bit of a divide.

    • Perhaps the A and D keys should only make the robot move sideways, e.g. not turn, that way you have the mouse control for steering which rotates nicely, and the WASD keys for purely forward, backward and sideways movements.

    • The mouse control to look around, when not moving, feels a little bit uncontrolled as if I am battling against the game which wants to change the view of the camera again. I think this may have been exaggerated because I was between some rocks and trees and the camera was trying to avoid those objects.

    • Sometimes the camera zooms in very close to the robot and the textures become quite blurry, I haven’t yet found a reason to be so zoomed in behind the robot.

  • I like that the robot can jump which makes traversing over some of the smaller rocks/obstacles interesting and fun, however;

    • Jumping doesn’t quite feel right from the perspective of a robot, an increased hover height might

    • I was able to climb some very steep slopes by simply jumping constantly, areas which I felt that perhaps I should not be able to get to.

    • When I deliberately fell from the above item, there was no loss of health/life.

    • You can phase through some of the smaller rocks, the effects under the robot get obscured etc.

Combat

  • Left-mouse-button feels like the correct control to make the robot bash with its arms, however;

    • The camera is typically behind the robot which makes attacking the small creatures quite difficult to then see, as such I wasn’t always close enough to attack but couldn’t really tell.

    • Attacking the air-bourne creature was quite impossible. I spotted that the cursor changed when over it, but again I was battling with the camera rotation constantly which made it difficult to perform an attack against it.

    • Appreciating a secondary health bar appears, I think there needs to be a little more affordance that an attack has been successful, either against an enemy, or against the robot. Full appreciate you will probably be adding these kinds of effects and sounds later but I think it will make it a lot more obvious that you are not close enough to attack.

    • Having moved away from an enemy I was trying to attack, it’s health bar remained above the robot.

    • This remaining secondary health bar, specific to the one enemy I had been attacking, didn’t change to reflect the next enemy I attacked, it didn’t update, it still showed the health of the previous enemy.

    • End of level boss guarding the tunnel was a good moment, however;

      • the boss seemed a bit too tough
      • I didn’t feel compelled to move to the nearby health pad
      • there is a mysterious white cube which I couldn’t interact with
      • I could bypass the boss and move straight to/through the tunnel (a nice red glowing/crazy laser force field would look great across that tunnel entrance)

Healing Pad

  • Really like this concept, however;

    • Placement of the robot on the pad seems a bit hit and miss, I started to heal when I wasn’t actually on
      it, and nothing happened when I was.

    • My health bar disappeared completely when I had full health, which struck me as odd, but that was possibly because it had been so visible for so long whilst I had taken damage.

      On that note, perhaps the robot could self-heal (recharge?) but at a slow rate, which would give a reason for still displaying the health bar above the robot whilst not engaged in combat.

      You could employ some rules for this, for example;

      • doesn’t heal whilst in combat
      • doesn’t heal whilst jumping (takes too much energy to jump)
      • heals more slowly if moving

    • There appears to be a small canvas on each pad, looks like it has three buttons but it’s too small to see

Artefacts

  • Near a rock I saw a bright yellow/gold coloured item, my instinct was that perhaps it was something I could collect. It may have just been some added detail around the rock but I wasn’t sure.

Level Design

  • I thoroughly enjoyed the low-poly world, it works well
  • The robot and the enemies don’t appear to be quite the same low-poly style but I think they still work
  • The water as a hazard which causes damage is good
  • Its perhaps a little bit sparse at the moment
  • I didn’t get a sense of story, e.g. the who, what, where, why and how
    For example;
    • who am I as the robot?
    • who are these other aliens?
    • why do they attack me even if I haven’t attacked them?
    • where am I?
    • what is my purpose in this world?
    • how did I get here?
    • can I get back?
    • how do I get back?
    • what do I need to do to get back?

I enjoyed exploring your world and creation Jeremy, I hope the above is of some use to you and hoping I will be able to try out another update soon :slight_smile:

#7

Woah , I didn’t expect so much :smiley: thanks for that.

I’ll take your points and explain some ^^

Game Start
More to come for that pad

Controls / Movement
I take notes for all of that, and try to make something better :wink: (i’ve already had ideas on how to do some points :P)

Combat
Yep there some hard part with combat.
Above the head of the robot there is a health bar in green, the yellow bar is his ‘heat’ considered as energy it’s planed to increase depending on attacks done and disable attack possibility if it’s too warm.
I’ll try to improve view of combat moments.
About the boss, he is not tweak correctly and he will be part of the story with a special action to do before engaging him :wink:

Healing Pad
Health bar disappear once it’s full, I’ve made that to avoid ‘useless’ informations on screen when all is fine. I’ve consider a self regeneration but change it to the healing pad… I’ll see chat I can do later :stuck_out_tongue:

Small canvas, you saw well, I’m currently working on it and I think that once it’s done it will bring more interest than just healing :wink:

Artefacts
It’s only a test of glowing object :smiley: (as is the white cube). I have a lighting work in progress when I’m bored by code.

Level Design
There is some ‘bugs’ in environment I’m focusing on move/combat and try to stay focus on course, so I report correction for later :smiley:
The story is currently in my head, and it will explain a lot about your questions…

Thanks again for that huge feedback.

New version soon (I hope :D)

#8

Some changes on new version of the prototype on https://dieedi.itch.io/rbots

Preview :

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