49 replies to this topic

[SolarLune]

New guy to the forum (maybe; maybe I've signed up before? :S), though I've used GM before for years. I just wanted to inform you, ClassyGoat - I downloaded this through IndieCity (good job on getting your game in there, by the way), and when I run it, it tells me I need a better graphics card. I find that a little hard to believe, as I've run games like DC Universe on my computer and use it myself for 3D game design with GLSL shaders. Is there possibly something wrong with your graphics card checking script? Anyway, thanks for the free game.

Edited by SolarLune, 09 December 2011 - 06:00 PM.

[ClassyGoat]

Hey SolarLune! There's a point in the game where I use lighting effects that use a Game Maker feature called a 'surface.' Surfaces can use up a lot of your video ram, and if your graphics card can't handle it, it'll crash the game. The amount of video ram the game requires is mainly based on the size of the room. Unfortunately, one of the only places I use surfaces is in a really big room. The script that is run at the beginning simulates a large surface and then sees if your graphics card likes it. Otherwise, the game may crash later about half way through playing.

But, if you want to give it a shot anyways, here is the same game with that surface check script removed: DOWNLOAD (Make sure to unzip the EXE!)
But be warned!!! The game might crash on you later.

Also, what type of graphics card are you running? And how much ram does it have?

Maybe try updating your graphics card drivers too (A good idea, regardless!)

[PetzI]

I played through the entire thing in one sitting and it was great, really. It was really short, but not so short that it didn't leave an impression. Its very fun, I like the fighting mechanics a lot, and strafing wasn't as hard to pick up on as I thought it would be. The graphics were very pretty to look at but I did notice that the main character was alternately left-handed and right-handed depending on which side he was turning to. This was just a minor detail, really. Oh, and I really wish it had fullscreen for better immersion.

The zelda sound-effects and music fitted pretty well, but it's really unprofessional to just steal an entire game's audio resources. It might also lead some players to think it's more similar to zelda than it is.

I have a few things in the gameplay to point out:

Spoiler

- It was pretty unclear how I was supposed to attack the crab. I often hit him while he was clawing at me but it didn't seen to do any damage. I tried aiming for his eyes, then his body and finally the legs. I guess the legs were the correct one? It was really frustrating. It was also unclear if his health regenerated whenever I stepped too far from him.
- How was I supposed to defeat my wife? She was so fast I couldn't get any space, and I couldn't really avoid her attacks in any way. I ended up abusing alcohol so she couldn't hit me.
- The kitten was hard to defeat on my first try, you should consider reducing the damage he does. Once you know what to do it's really easy, but on my first try I just wandered about like an idiot and got killed before I could really do much. It's a very climactic fight, so figuring out what to do more or less, getting killed, returning, and doing it super-easily on the second try because you already know what to do breaks the mood a lot. The fight is actually very easy, so it should simply be a thrilling moment rather than an actually difficult fight.

If you're looking to actually expand the game, I recommend a second trip to the Dark Forest (obligatory or optional). It was pretty scary (got out with 1 HP), and the perspective of having to go in there again, even deeper this time, would make me kind of terrified.

The story was great! I loved the development, all the twists and turns, and it's really funny how the characters act so wrong against each other. The main character is kind of cynic and doesn't seem to have any regard for some of his peers. Overall it's a great game and I'm glad to have played it!

Edited by PetzI, 27 May 2012 - 01:19 PM.

[ClassyGoat]

Thanks for the thorough feedback, PetzI! It is greatly appreciated. I'm happy to hear you enjoyed the game.

This game was more than anything, a huge learning experience for me. It was the first "real" game I've ever completed. The first one I've truly been proud of. I decided to keep it relatively short in favor of it getting repetitious and stale.

I really wish I could have used original music and sound effects. Unfortunately, neither of those things are my forte. Sure, it's unprofessional, but I would never attempt to sell a game without 100% original content anyways.

I have begun production on a sequel to this game, which will be a lot longer. I'm hoping to improve all aspects of the game play and mechanics all around. I'm also looking into finding someone to come up with an original soundtrack as well.

In response to your 'Spoiler' comments, all I'm gonna say is this: I wanted there to be a little bit of trial and error here and there. Some instances where you're not really sure what to do. Times where maybe you have to try different approaches to figure it out. And you got through the whole game without giving up, so it must not have been too terribly difficult to figure out.

Thanks again for your feedback and criticisms. I'm adding your suggestions to my list of improvements to be seen in the sequel!

[J_B]

Hey man,

Just finished your game, took about 1 and 1/2 hours and really enjoyed it!

Graphics are simple but made quite beautiful by the animations (the cut scene looking into the rocket and the take off were really nice). I'd love to see this same style refined for the next one, my main complaint would be some parts look a little cheap (like the beach) but it's no big deal really.

Gameplay is good, again, simple but this really opens up a whole array of tactics. Found the enemies kind of annoying after a while and ended up just running past most of them, especially in the dark forest where those moth things keep respawning anyway. It would be cool if there was some kind of incentive in the next game to kill the random creatures (perhaps a currency system which you could use to buy new items or costumes?) I think the difficulty was just right, your wife was hard to beat, ended u getting her stuck in the table and shooting her to death. This fight should be hard but at the moment i felt it was hard in a bad way since I could only manage to kill her by cheapness.

Sounds were good, well placed. Music was ok, if you don't use original songs perhaps tracks that are less identifiable would be good? I loved the voice over at the start! Really wish this carried on, made it like playing a story book. That is really what kept me playing, the story was great, original and unexpected. Would be cool if some of your actions had consequences / alternate ways things would happen.

Looking forward to the sequal!

[ClassyGoat]

Thanks for checking out my game J_B!

And thanks for the feedback! I've taken your suggestions into consideration. The game play mechanics in the sequel are going to be quite different from the first one. It'll be more of an Action-RPG with level ups, magic, and more weapons / items.

[PetzI]

I actually thought this while I was playing, but it slipped my mind in the first post and only now did I remember to post it. You should look into giving the player the option to play with a controller instead of a keyboard. I know at least one GM game that has this (AnUntitledStory), so it's definitely possible. I think it would be a pretty interesting feature.

[greep]

Heh, this is going to make for an interesting conversation if you ever get married classy goat

[ClassyGoat]

PetzI, that's a really good idea! This sort of game would be probably a lot easier to play using a game controller. I will definitely look into implementing that in the sequel.

[ZacharyKrodel]

This is a fantastic game! I really love the art style. It's very stylized. The story could have been more polished, but it had a lot of charm. I played through all the way to the end in one sitting, so that really tells how addicting the game is. And that part near the end, when you fight "her" (I don't want to spoil it for people reading) was absolutely the most unexpected plot twist I have ever seen. It was crazy.

I do have one question: Does killing Benny in the meadow effect the storyline? After I killed him on accident, I just reloaded my save, but now I am curious what would have happened if I continued?

[ClassyGoat]

Thanks for the feedback, ZacharyKrodel! Glad to hear you enjoyed the game.

Originally, I was actually going to have the game's story line split depending on whether or not Benny died. If he survived, it would play out normally, but if he died it, was going to be way different and involve Benny's ghost haunting you and your relationship with your wife improving, etc.

But pretty early on in the development of the game, I realized that taking this approach was going to be a hell of a lot more complicated than I expected. So instead, I decided to just make it linear and focus my efforts on making other aspects of the game better.

So in the final version, if Benny "dies", on your way back to your house, he'll come running along and tell you that he was "just taking a nap."
That Benny is such a jokester.

Edited by ClassyGoat, 09 April 2012 - 05:22 PM.

[pikmin4000]

This game was fun and good music/sound selection! Anyways, can you explain to me the methods you used to have the mouse animate? Like how his tail and arm was moving and how you can have different items in his hands? Just briefly explaining it would be nice, or point me to a tutorial where you learned it from. Thanks.

[Spyro Conspiracy Theorist]

This game was really enjoyable. The story was, for the most part, excellent; I liked the decision to make the characters animals, as it made their often outrageous (while typical of adventure games) actions more believable. The gameplay was solid, if not especially compelling. I was surprised at how much I liked the graphics as well; even though they're a little crude, they go with the game really well and I think they really added to the experience overall.

First, the negative:
aka, nitpick time! =D
-Most of the bosses (the crab and the one in the dark woods in particular, as well as you-know-who) were frustrating due to the lack of feedback. You had to just keep whacking at them and whacking at them until the went down, with no indication of whether you were getting close to killing it or not. The Dark Woods boss was especially susceptible to this, since hurting it isn't so straightforward as whacking it. Just a vague indicator as to how much progress you're making would be really nice for the long-ish bosses.
-I also had a bit of a problem with the music. First, the tracks were too recognizable. When I was immersed in this creative mouse-world, hearing the Hyrule Field theme threw me out of the experience and into the street, whereupon a car drove by and splashed mud on my clothes. Second, it doesn't fit with the excellent visuals and story you have, which work towards a very story-book fairy-tale theme. The tone of the Zelda games is fairly different from the tone of these game, so it worked against the experience quite a bit.
-Why was weapon-switching mapped to 'S'? It was a pain to reach, and a hindrance in the Dark Forest boss where the idea was to switch between weapons as fast as possible.
-The combat wasn't fun in itself. It wasn't unfun, perse; the combat just did nothing for me good or bad.
-Did you really have to whack all the trees to get that scarf? I started out trying to get it, even though the game's easy enough that there's really no need for it, but I was holding my shovel in the dark forest and figured it wasn't worth the trouble to go back through after I'd returned the rocket ship part to the doctor.

Now, going into spoiler territory...

Spoiler

I didn't like how *****y the wife was, and didn't really buy that she would KILL me just for going behind her back and trying to take the kids to the moon. ...I mean, smack me around, sure, but murder??
I also didn't really get why my friend had to die at the end. It was really odd... We had escaped from my she-devil wife, navigated the treacherous ocean, and finally made it to the moon. Then BOOM! he's dead, quick funeral scene, and then it's happy again, "oh yay, a robot, can we keep it?" It just felt like you were throwing away a character so that he wouldn't be lying around taking up space.
The loose ties were also frustrating. I know you intend to do a sequel, but this game should've done something with the whole my wife cheating with neil mousestrong subplot. It was interesting, and it seemed like there was this whole buildup, right up to the end, and then we discover he's dead. There wasn't any payoff for that subplot, when I think it had a lot of potential.

I did like the story a lot though, overall. Especially memorable would be getting drunk in my other friend's house. It was a fun mix of original and depressing and funny and a little bit scary (I admit, I was a little concerned about what mouse-me and mouse-girl getting drunk in her bedroom would lead to).

That's basically everything that bugged me about the game. Now, the positive! =D
-I really do love the setting, the use of anthropomorphic characters, and the wry humor. The story overall was well above average for a game, and definitely the main attraction.
-The collision checking was surprisingly excellent. Most Game Maker games I've played of this genre have terribly inaccurate hitboxes, often making combat feel cheap or giving an invisible shield around objects, but that was nowhere to be found in this game. Good job on that!
-The graphics are great, despite being almost "ms-paint"-y, and really go perfectly with the game.
-The humor was funny, without being overbearing. Its contrast with a lot of the more child-friendly elements of the game made it all the more hilarious.
-Along that same line, I like how the whole story was sort of a more sardonic take on a fairly familiar story ("mouse leaves family to go on an adventure and gain wealth--or cheese")

Overall, I think this was a great game, well-worth the time spent playing it. It succeeded on most fronts, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

[ClassyGoat]

pikmin4000: It's a little bit hard to explain, but I'll try my best! To start, each part of the mouse has it's own sprite: The body, the tail, the legs, and each arm. There is just one object for the mouse and in its draw event, all the different parts are drawn from there. So for example, when you start walking, the animation for the legs begins (and is independent of all the other sprites.)
I hope that made sense. Let me know if you have anymore questions about it.

Spyro Conspiracy Theorist: Thanks for the very thorough and thought out feedback! I really appreciate it!

[pikmin4000]

pikmin4000: It's a little bit hard to explain, but I'll try my best! To start, each part of the mouse has it's own sprite: The body, the tail, the legs, and each arm. There is just one object for the mouse and in its draw event, all the different parts are drawn from there. So for example, when you start walking, the animation for the legs begins (and is independent of all the other sprites.)
I hope that made sense. Let me know if you have anymore questions about it.

Spyro Conspiracy Theorist: Thanks for the very thorough and thought out feedback! I really appreciate it!

Yay, I've been waiting for this reply .

When you use the draw event, do you just attach the different sprites by relative position? Do you set the origin in a specific place depending on sprite? And when you animate each sprite, do you use Game Maker's sprite editor?

[ClassyGoat]

I first drew and animated all the sprites using Flash. Certain sprites that just rotated, like the tail, could be animated in game, so they just use a non-animated sprite.

In the draw event, the sprites are drawn relative to the object. Most of them do have an origins specific to what part of the body it is. For example, each arm's origin in at the base of the arm.

Edited by ClassyGoat, 06 July 2012 - 05:32 PM.

[pikmin4000]

I first drew and animated all the sprites using Flash. Certain sprites that just rotated, like the tail, could be animated in game, so they just use a non-animated sprite.

In the draw event, the sprites are drawn relative to the object. Most of them do have an origins specific to what part of the body it is. For example, each arm's origin in at the base of the arm.

ok, well I really appreciate the reply. I've been having this problem for a while. If I think of any more questions, i'll ask.

[sonosublime]

I really want to play this game, but my computer is a "bum".

[pikmin4000]

I first drew and animated all the sprites using Flash. Certain sprites that just rotated, like the tail, could be animated in game, so they just use a non-animated sprite.

In the draw event, the sprites are drawn relative to the object. Most of them do have an origins specific to what part of the body it is. For example, each arm's origin in at the base of the arm.

What about the items attached to the arms? how do you make it so that they stay at the other end of the arm if the origin is near the shoulder?

[ClassyGoat]

The item and arm are one sprite, with the origin at the shoulder.
And then I think I used a separate object for the collision checking on certain objects like the sword.

It is definitely possible to have the arm and item being held separate sprites though.