Feedback hey Johan, First of all, thanks for letting me in on early versions, i look forward to seeing how it evolves. I haven't pruned through much of these thread, so apologies if you've already addressed some of the points or what you plan to add..This is essentially a QA session from an entirely new visitor. In its current state, the package follows characteristics of Melodive-- a lush, open, generatived world to explore. The closest thing to 'game-like' elements are the scattered tokens-- in this case providing a temporary speed boost. Crashing resets the game, but begins you in a new location, which is essentially the same payoff as continuing to explore. I'm assuming you are intentionally avoiding common gameplay elements such as 'task-oriented challenges.' My perspective is that you've decided to focus on making a sandbox, so i'll try to feedback from that assumed intent. In the past I have done several projects with the same goal of avoiding gameplay elements.. Namely the Radiohead PolyFauna app and sequel. Some might argue it's more challenging to make a compelling non-game than it is to make a real game. Typical games have a challenge->reward cycle (i refer to as 'task driven rewards') that keeps the player interested to see what comes next. By removing the "task" you are left only with reward, which has little weight if there was no challenge. You have done an amazing job of masking the fact that the world is simply a perlin noise algorithm with some icing on top (trees, water, fish, deer) . Me being a programmer, its hard to look past that I'm just scrolling the noise function as i continue to explore, and I find myself uninterested in exploring.. Masking it further is one of the things Minecraft has done amazingly well. The addition of Biomes would help, i noticed you have some palm tree areas, are there more? What about reducing the amount of content to a subset with each session.. and have differently themed areas such as: 1) a water world, with fish, and sharp cliffed terrain. 2) a mountainous area of snowcapped mountains, and eagles, with no water 3) a jungle with huge trees that you need to navigate (ala return of the jedi forest) 4) volcanoes spewing lava and plums of smoke 5) volumetric clouds that block your view as you fly through them But then the problem is still: "if i keep flying straight will I see something new?"... So again we're running into 'task driven rewards'. If you wish to reward players for exploration-- maybe the player has to find a particular token (like in Proteus), or collect a number of them? For example, maybe finding a certain token unlocks the WaterWorld biome, etc... In the first PolyFauna, there were 100+ possible world combinations: color palettes, music mixes, creature species, environment landscapes.. This helped provide incentive for continuing to explore. Fugl is already something quite special, it's just missing more reasons to continue exploring. Thanks for sharing and keep up the amazing work!
Feedback, Part 2 In the previous post I just touched on the challenge of adding explorational incentive. One quick reference on terrain generation. You've already done a great job, but occasionally there are bulbous noise chunks sitting atop mountains. Have you tried exploring other types of noise, such as Billow, Voronoi, and rigged multifractal? Also, this article has some interesting strategies: http://accidentalnoise.sourceforge.net/minecraftworlds.html Some quick notes on the other aspects of the game: The controls are some of the best I've seen on the platform. It took maybe 10-15 min to get fully hang of it. Being able to turn with only one thumb was the last thing i discovered. Please consider adding a quick text-based tutorial. Newcomers, particularly those not familiar with dual-stick games might find this difficult to grasp. But overall, the scheme allows for quite malleable and expressive manoeuvres. Not an easy achievement on a touch platform. The voxel engine is gorgeous-- the shadows and highlights are dialed in perfectly, but the real gem is the way you've rendered the main character. Somehow you combined gorgeous, dynamic animation with the voxel engine-- totally blown away by this. thanks again!
Originally yes (and totally true for the current build), but I have this idea of making two different modes: 1) Story mode: It's like a journey, you start off at the easiest biome and work your way towards harder and harder biomes (less space to move, more evironmental hazards like whirlwinds, lava, meteors, fire breathing dragons? etc). If you die, you start from the beginning. There will probably be a storm or some kind of barrier "pushing" you forward. 2) Free roam mode: Biomes that you have visited in Story mode becomes unlocked for Free roam. Here you can fly as you please. There is no set goal, but there will some rare animals you can try to "collect". Of course, my main interest lies with the free roam mode, so it's good to see this at the main mode of the game, not the story mode actually, if that makes any sense. So it's good to try to make the sandbox elements as interesting as possible. One such thing that I have planned is perching. It has no purpose other than to pause the game and have a look around, but it's something that has been requested a lot. My goal with Fugl is just to create the nicest possible flying experience. You are supposed to get the feeling of being free like a bird! I love your work, we have the excact same interest in semi-abstract procudral generation. Also, people reading this should check out [URL="http://1000hands.universaleverything.com]1000 hands[/URL]. Yes, it is very challanging, but was is the solution? If there is no task and no need for reward, how do you make it interesting for people to continue playing, except enhancing the core experience (flying in this case), or is that enough? I get some feedback asking for mission, goals etc to keep it interesting. I'm really torn on this point... That's where the story-mode come in play, as it's a mechanic to unlock the content in the form of biomes, but I feel it's a bit restricting and tradional approach, would love something more fresh... Yes, agreed. It’s all about the layering. It just needs more stuff, imo! I do have different biomes, if you download the latest version there is a menu for switching biomes in the options, as each biome is pretty long (4000 voxels) and you need to fly in the direction of the sun to get to new biomes. I’m not sure you have seen it all, but I currently have five biomes in the game: Tropical, Mountain, Canyon, Cave and Polar. I kind of have that in the tropical biome, with the palm trees and beaches. How would it differ from this? I kind of have that, but there is water, it could be more extreme I guess as a variation with less vegetaion and more scary, snow capped mountains. I like the idea... Yes, it’s coming, Marco (my voxel-artist) have made concepts for this. Also coming! Working on them as we speak, it will be the next feature added, then the jungle and the volcano biome, haha... Like it’s now, each biome is 256x128x4096 voxels big and it loops in the x direction (z direction being the direction of the sun). I could make it square, but then you’ll only have one and one biome at the time. Then the mechanic would be like you say to find some kind of “portal” to transport you too the next biome/world… I’ve been considering it since it will prevent the sometimes obvious looping that prohibits the placement of really distinct features like for example a big temple. Only problem is the memory considerations, but that could be solved…. Also each world be only 1024x128x1024 big, it might feel small even with looping, considering the 224 voxel view distance. I’ve been also pondering a special mechanic where you would find “recipes” for world generation. It could be colors, foilage, animals, noise functions, etc. The player could combine these recipes to make their own custom world. It would truly be a nice sandbox thing I think... Thank you so much for your input, it’s very valuable for me, espcially since you both have a lot of experience with procedural generation and creating "non-games".
whoa! okay for some reason only mountain and tropical was available the last time i looked. lots of interesting variation between these! guess its just a matter of connecting them with the portal system or tasks.. Cave is a nice throwback to melodive yeah if you consider going down a game route... PilotWings and Starfox would be great references.. going through rings or through tight situations.
I have experiemented a little with different noise, I also have some domain warping in effect, but I really want to implement cell noise/voronoi, but I haven't had the chance yet. Need to figure out how it can loop. Also 3D-versions would be great, but the complexity is staggering, I have a hard time finding good implementations in c, but I will research it more. Thanks, that means a lot. I have worked in close with my most dedicated testers to both hone the flight model and the controls, so a lot of credit goes to them. I think we nailed it pretty good. I don't know about a text tutorial, as people hate text, but we have planned some soft clouds to practice in along with some virtual thumbs to show the player the basic maneovering. It might also just be a short video. I dread to program these things, but I realize they are important... Thanks, I hope to add a specular component also, and the colors need some additional adjustments, but it's working out pretty good. The bird is noting fancy, just voxelized polygons animated by sinus-curves, you can't really beat a good sinus-curve when it comes to animation, imo, haha!
One follows the other, so they are connected as of now. Yes, but the challange is: How do you make a good flying game without rings! I don't want any damn rings (or coins)!!!
This game is gorgeous. I haven't read the previous pages of this thread yet, but I can't get a handle on the controls. No matter which I try, I crash into the ground. One day I'll get it.
Did you read the instructions in description? I'll paste them in here: HOW TO PLAY: Hold your device in landscape-mode. Use both thumbs to control the bird: Imagine you're superman with your hands extended in front of you. Move thumbs down/up to pitch, move thumbs left/right to yaw/turn and move thumbs up/down in opposite directions to roll. You can steer with only one thumb also (left or right), but the bird will only flap when both thumbs are touching the screen. Use one-thumb steering to have a finer control when precision flying. Try to find a mix between soaring and flapping for maximum control. You can control sensitivity and bird speed in the options, also make sure you have selected default control scheme. If you're used to inverted Y control (flight sims), there is an option for that also. Did it help? I'm more than happy to help out more, as I'm trying to figure out the best way of learning people the controls.
2 more suggestions: Someone mentioned rings for flying thru... 1. Please DO NOT ruin the beautiful atmosphere with rings or coins. Please please please! 2. A replay feature would be cool to watch your previous flight from different angles.
I promise dearly: NO RINGS! NO COINS! Yes, I'm been toying with this idea, first and foremost a crash cam, so you could see your last seconds of flight when you crash, but with a cinematic camera from a different viewpoint. I also want to implement a video replay/sharing system.
Hey, Fugl is amazing. Here are my thoughts: - I love the feel and controls. Though I wish there were air brakes. Especially right before nose dives into cliffs. - I'm curious as to what kind of gameplay you have planned for it. So much potential there, as long as the game mechanics fit with the amazing feel that's already been established. - After a while I did find more and more animals were hopping around. I couldn't tell if I had just missed them at first because I was so focused on not plummeting to my death, or if their arrival was eventual. Also, being human, I tried diving my winged beauty to eat / pick up / soul suck the cute little things, but failed. (See above reference to nose diving) - I also eventually saw the low-floating 'upgrade' birds, so I assume they showed up later as well. Very fun task trying to grab them. - When the game gets nearer completion, I would suggest replacing the long tutorial paragraphs with something more interactive. Because no one reads anymore. Big paragraphs in mobile games are like garlic to vampires. "What, I have to read MORE than one line? Back to Hue Ball."* - I have some gameplay ideas, but because this is thread page 94, I don't feel worthy. - It needs coins, coin multipliers, and floating treasure chests everywhere. *Oh dude, did he just plug his own game? The huevos on this guy.
I have been experimenting with air brakes in the past, but it complicated the controls too much... But in iOS 8 there is the possibility to read the area of touch, so I enable air brakes based on a threshold valua of the area of touch. It's worth a shot, could come in handy when trying to land also... Whatever gameplay it will be just to enhance the core mechanic of flying and zipping through terrain at breakneck speeds. The final gameplay might involve some exploring and collecting even missions are a possibility, but I'm not sure, I would like to keep it simple and also focus a lot on making free roam as nice as possible. I've also planned a story mode where you progress though all the biomes in sequence. They get harder the farther you go. The main game is always going to be the free roam I think, but I'll work on it to make it as interesting as possible, with a lot of different biomes and animals. I'm trying to stay clear of the most common flying game tropes like rings for instance. But any gameplay involving going trough small crevices in the terrain would be great though. The animals can be hunted, they'll explode if you get close enough. Orignally hunting was going to be a big part of the gameplay, but it's just too damn hard to get close enough! This is very work in progress, but I want some kind of boost system. Not sure how it will work or what it will be good for, but I like the contrast between slow and fast. Hehe, I totally agree. Ideally no text at all. There is some kind of tutorial coming, but I'm unsure of the excact implementation. I think there is going to be some voxel thumbs involved though and some soft clouds. Please share, that's what this thread is for! How are we supposed to get page 100 without it long rants about possible gameplay? No, but seriously I want to know! Now, you're just yanking my chain, I'm not falling for that! It was a very good plug, now everybody go and download HueBall!
Overall, flying control is very well done. Amazing graphics! My only comment is it's too hard to just roll without yawing and/or pitching all over the place. With each thumb equally up and down on each side, I would expect a clean roll without changing direction. Maybe add a larger dead-zone for yaw and pitch with two thumb touch. The one finger gliding is really nice. Another suggestion; increase tolerance for bumping things. Hitting the very top of a tree shouldn't cause instant death. Final note if this hasn't been mentioned. Name is too close to slang "F'ugly" in English. Explore other names Looking forward to updates!
Thank you, glad to hear that! Have you tried dual stick control where one thumb controls yaw and the other roll? It might work better for you? No, agreed. The foilage will be possible to pass trough soon, at least the leafy parts. Bumping into terrain is a bit harder to solve, but it shouldn't feel unfair, so it's on my to do list! Yes, this has been on my mind since I first came up with the name, but it hasn't been mentioned very often. I did explore a lot of other names, but Fugl kind of stuck. They're coming... First up: Clouds!
Call for submissions! Hello dear testers, Yesterday I figured how to post gifs to twitter and it was a huge success. I have gotten 20000 impressions, 130 retweets, 200 new followers and over 60 new testers since then. So I want to start tweeting more gifs, but I need your help! I'm looking for short, very nice 5-7 seconds clips from Fugl that I can make gifs from (it can be longer also, I can make the edits). To gauge the impact I need to tweet them from my account, but I will of course credit the maker, either my name or twitter handle. Please send any clips you might have, or are making to [email protected], it will really help getting word out about Fugl! If the filesize is a problem I recommend wetransfer.com (free). Thank you so much!
I'm really loving the game so far everything from flying around to watching the animals Buzz by and the different sounds all make the game really suck you in. It feels really awesome once you get the controls of your bird down and you can start to do some crazy maneuvers like fly through tight canyons or caves, to me that is the best part of the game so far. A couple things I'd like to see I'd like an option where you can turn off to auto orientate when you're flying upside down once I learn how to fully control my bird I would like to have complete control over him so I don't need to Have the game to flip me back over I want to fly upside down or sideways all I want =] i'm also really into the idea of the updates you want to add like different hazards such as tornadoes or dragons or whatever it might be. I think this will add the depth and difficulty that I'm looking for for continued play even the jungle part sounds really neat with all trees so that way you HAVE to navigate through and can't just fly over it without a worry might be pretty cool. Also will there be some type of scoring system in this game or a reason to want to get to the point where you can traverse tight spaces just curious. Loving the game so far, these are just some thoughts or feelings that arose while playing for a couple hours the best 3 days. Thank you for letting me join in and keep up the awesome work I'm excited to see what this game shapes into and will continue flying around like a bada** ninja bird =p
Hehe, no it's pretty quiet here now, have been away on vacation so there has been no new updates to discuss. Thanks for your feedback, i've been to busy to respond but i really appreciate it!
Thanks for the feedback man! Yeah i'd like to see an auto orientation off option as well, it would be great for the acrobatic/stunt Fugl people We have some different hazards planned (fire breathing dragons, flying volcano debri, and some more)
