Title: Unfair Dodger
Release: August 31st 2017
Development Time: 2 Days
Development Status: Completed
Availability: PC (Arcade Cabinet)
Tagline: Dodge!
Release: August 31st 2017
Development Time: 2 Days
Development Status: Completed
Availability: PC (Arcade Cabinet)
Tagline: Dodge!
Unfair Dodger is a game developed for the SJSU Game Dev arcade cabinets and was developed in the span of two days (08/29/2017, 7:30PM - 08/31/2017, 7:30PM). The short development time frame was for two reasons: (1) I wanted to challenge myself and (2) I really wanted to get a game on the cabinets after seeing them in action at MAG West.
Keeping in mind the time frame and the traditional controls of the Arcade Cabinets, I wanted to take a simple idea and throw in some fun twists that would complements the gameplay. A "dodge stuff" game seemed simple enough so I went with that and worked to make it a two-player competitive game.
Keeping in mind the time frame and the traditional controls of the Arcade Cabinets, I wanted to take a simple idea and throw in some fun twists that would complements the gameplay. A "dodge stuff" game seemed simple enough so I went with that and worked to make it a two-player competitive game.
During the initial design process, I had a fairly long list of ideas for what kinds of hazards each player could use on each other including obscuring vision, rain effects, and adding fake projectiles that their opponent would have to react to (or rather not react to). The three that made it into the game–being the turret, difficulty up, and airstrike–I think are still fun and scale well into the later stages of the game where more spikes spawn organically. The abilities–dash, shade, and clear–were also purposeful addition that are meant to give the player more options to avoid the many hazards on screen aside from just moving.
Speaking of the movement, this was my first stab at momentum based controls. Keeping in mind that the game would be played with a joystick I didn't think it to be satisfying for the player to just stop when they let go of the controls. So I made a friction system to slowly decay their velocity after they wanted to stop moving, then I adjusted to the value to feel more natural. I was also going to make the player accelerate over time to top speed but that mechanic wasn't satisfying for a game that requires fast reactions; also, the controls on the arcade cabinets mimic the imputs of a keyboard so having the instant jolt of speed made more sense.
Speaking of the movement, this was my first stab at momentum based controls. Keeping in mind that the game would be played with a joystick I didn't think it to be satisfying for the player to just stop when they let go of the controls. So I made a friction system to slowly decay their velocity after they wanted to stop moving, then I adjusted to the value to feel more natural. I was also going to make the player accelerate over time to top speed but that mechanic wasn't satisfying for a game that requires fast reactions; also, the controls on the arcade cabinets mimic the imputs of a keyboard so having the instant jolt of speed made more sense.
The 4:3 Aspect Ratio was intentional as that is the monitor's resolution for the cabinets.
Implementing the "arcade cabinet friendly" slowed development a fair bit, specifically it was just making the assets for which buttons corresponded to which action since again making the art is a weakness of mine. Thankfully I could just reuse the same picture for each player's view and having played some of the games already on the cabinets gave me some best practices for the project.
I'm not sure if I will be iterating on the game further as I anticipated it being a "one-off" project, but I will take feedback from it and post about it here as the concept for this game relates to something else I want to work on.
POST MINI MAKER FAIRE 2017 NOTES:
The game was received rather well by the older audience that was able to play it, however most of the kids (age ranged from 7-12) had a lot of difficulty acclimating to the MOBA-like controls.
Younger players were quickly overwhelmed by all of the moving objects and events happening on screen. Not only that but all players were hesitant to pick up the yellow power-ups as―despite my deliberate effort in coloring them differently than the harmful objects―there were no instructions that they were helpful.
The implied objective of out-lasting your opponent got through, but again there was a problem where players didn't understand that the yellow power-ups were affecting the other player as opposed to directly benefiting them. A simple addition of an arrow or something similar reaching over to the other player's screen would've have helped in this regard.
Additionally the GUI above each of the ability icons were too small for people to notice that they were also button instructions. However in the future, I would probably implement a sandbox before the game actually began so that they could experiment with the controls while also clearly expressing what each button's function is.
I'm not sure if I will be iterating on the game further as I anticipated it being a "one-off" project, but I will take feedback from it and post about it here as the concept for this game relates to something else I want to work on.
POST MINI MAKER FAIRE 2017 NOTES:
The game was received rather well by the older audience that was able to play it, however most of the kids (age ranged from 7-12) had a lot of difficulty acclimating to the MOBA-like controls.
Younger players were quickly overwhelmed by all of the moving objects and events happening on screen. Not only that but all players were hesitant to pick up the yellow power-ups as―despite my deliberate effort in coloring them differently than the harmful objects―there were no instructions that they were helpful.
The implied objective of out-lasting your opponent got through, but again there was a problem where players didn't understand that the yellow power-ups were affecting the other player as opposed to directly benefiting them. A simple addition of an arrow or something similar reaching over to the other player's screen would've have helped in this regard.
Additionally the GUI above each of the ability icons were too small for people to notice that they were also button instructions. However in the future, I would probably implement a sandbox before the game actually began so that they could experiment with the controls while also clearly expressing what each button's function is.
In Game Music Credit:
Reformat Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Reformat Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Last Update: 09/03/2017