THE CONDEMNED by Dark Acre Jack
Direction keys to look.
Mouse to interact.
Yes, these controls are awkward & frustrating. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to point that out. (20/12)
Thank you for playing.
Mouse to interact.
Yes, these controls are awkward & frustrating. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to point that out. (20/12)
Thank you for playing.
| Browser (Unity3D) | http://bit.ly/DALD25 |
| Source + Win/Mac/Linux | http://bit.ly/DALD25_ALL |
| Post-Mortem | http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/12/19/jacks-most-portem/ |
| Walkthrough | http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/12/20/a-walkthrough-for-your-broken-legs/ |
| http://twitter.com/darkacrejack | |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=2947 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 100% | 1 |
| Overall | 3.54 | 99 |
| Audio | 3.68 | 28 |
| Fun | 2.91 | 324 |
| Graphics | 3.83 | 91 |
| Humor | 1.95 | 572 |
| Innovation | 3.08 | 265 |
| Mood | 4.00 | 13 |
| Theme | 3.27 | 338 |
Like the intro and the atmosphere. Good work also on the 3d-modelling!
The flashlight didn't really help much in the dark parts.
Great use of the theme, I couldn't decide whether to go to the sun or earth. I eventually picked earth, but only because I'm the villain >:D
Sorry, but it says it's unable to load mono. I am trying to play on Windows7, but there's only libmono.so in the directory, and BUILDS/DALD25_Data/Mono/mono.dll is missing.
I'm a bit reluctant to install the Web Player that is...
But I really like the mood. The graphics were awesome, the whole thing was awesome. Maybe I had to understand the whole thing in order to know how the theme applies here.
But you did a very great job. The game looks really polished, also the intro into the game. Really nice work. Great job as expected from you =)
I did feel that the controls were a bit hard to wrestle with though. The hybrid between being fixed to the cardinal directions while only being allowed a small amount of rotation made it difficult to really know where I was oriented as I turned around. This was more a problem in the sewage drain than elsewhere since it was so dark
I really liked the sight/sound/smell prompts, it would have been interesting to see those incorporated into the gameplay more. The movement was also a bit clunky and hard to get used to.
I knew the controls were going to be an issue, and the version that everyone's played is the result of a lot of iterations specifically on the control scheme.
Originally it was free look/free move. However that would then have entailed a lot more collision handling and added more time to asset building. By restricting movement to a grid-like form, I was able to direct the player exactly where I wanted him/her to go & look.
When you've got 48 hours to execute on a vision, it's best to make constraints wherever possible.
Once I locked down the grid movement I also deliberated about full unlock on the camera rotation. This also caused issues as I use directional raycast for detecting movement. Because I didn't want to spend potential hours plugging every hole in every scene so that the player didn't actually jump to a movement volume in another room, I made each movement volume cover a very specific area of the view frustrum. This ensured that the player would never mis-click out into other zones and again be directed where I wanted.
I detuned the centering time right at the last minute and I think that may have contributed a bit to some of the feelings of frustration. Ideally I wanted the player to be able to move the camera to a "hotspot", interact as necessary, then have the camera jump back to zero. It felt (to me & other playtesters) more natural, like "ok, I'm done looking at that thing, what's next?" However finding just the right amount of time to give players to look before springing back was outside of the scope of the allotted time.
All in all I think I made the right design choices in order to complete the narrative run (however linear) and submit on time. I was working right up to the deadline, use all my available energy, and I think I still managed to pull it off.
Thanks all who've played so far and all yet to play, I do appreciate and hope I haven't wasted your time with this entry.
-
DAJ
... and re your comment: you haven't wasted our time at all - it's nice work! This is one of the better entries I've seen.
- When you restart, you already have the flashlight in your inventory. Nothing serious, but still.
- While the controls were a bit unusual but usable, I think they could have been improved a lot with only a couple of tweaks. First, when rotating and/or moving to a new node, the view should reset directly to looking right in front of the character, like it does when you don't press anything for a few seconds. Then, you could have used the arrow keys for rotation, but look around with the mouse. Not in a FPS way, but rather by making the character turn when the pointer came close to the edge of the screen.
- The sewer area was REALLY dark, even with the flashlight on.
- Great atmosphere, the descriptions were well written, and I loved being able to use more than one sense to get a better idea of the room I was in. The audio is also spot-on.
- The intro did its job *really* well. One of the high points of the game.
All in all, congratulations on making an awesome (if short) adventure game!
A few bugs and issues I noticed:
- Flashlight not working on sewers: I know you said it is a feature, not a bug, but it confused the hell out of me that it worked in the lit areas but not the dark ones. Just remove the batteries altogether?
- Flashlight remained in my inventory when I went for a second play through of the game.
- Since the game focuses so much on the story, it would have been nice to have the options for subtitles. Some ESL players might not get all the details from the captain's husky voice.
- The first time I did the ending sequence, choosing to save myself, at first I thought I was being ejected from the ship, and that it was a trap. That was a cool thought, but obviously not what you intended.
Cheers, and thanks for the game!
Cool graphics, they go very well with the overall mood and atmosphere.
It just took me a bit of time to get used to the controls, sometimes I felt quite stuck specially because I couldn't do a 360º turn, but once i got used it was ok.
I really would like to see this more developed because i would pay and play this game :)
Also good intro and nice choice of font
Once you can get the tech in place to not have to limit the controls it can be very nice. Especially for 48 hours, this is very impressive!
Improve: The controls could use a bit of work.
About the controls, I actually quite like them. I mean, you said yourself you didn't have enough time and this is a creative solution to dealing with the collision detection. I actually think these controls, given enough polish, could work really well. Free movement can be boring and uninteresting, but this kind of restriction can lead to a lot of very interesting design ideas.
All in all, great effort, cool game!