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Work in Progress / Regression - an unusual platformer, sort of with morals

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Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 29th May 2009 20:20 Edited at: 10th Jun 2009 22:09
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Update: the game's done! Download it here:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OF4KW8NN

Desperate for something to do other than revision, I've started work on a strange little platformer called Regression.





Basically, you go round as the little red sprite with a shotgun, and kill all the helpless green sprites which are spawned either side of the screen. The object is to kill enough to fill up the red bar in the middle.

The "morals" in the title refers to the fact that the little green sprites are helpless and plead for their lives, but you still have to kill them. And I plan to have 3 levels: one symbolising the Superego, one the Ego, and the last the Id, the idea being that the player is stripping away the layers of consciousness through violence.

Thoughts?

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tiresius
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Posted: 30th May 2009 00:20
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A more correct description would be "an unusual platformer, with no morals"

I'm not a real programmer but I play one with DBPro!
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Plotinus
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Posted: 30th May 2009 16:43
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Yes, if you have to kill them no matter what, there's not a whole lot of moral thinking going on there. It's just a matter of telling the player that they're behaving immorally, which doesn't seem very pleasant. A game with moral content is surely one that makes the player decide what sort of actions to take, and where those actions have consequences. For example, if there were different ways to rack up scores - by killing the creatures or by helping them - then you might have something.

Or alternatively: what if there were two groups of NPC creatures, fighting each other, and you had to decide which group you were going to help? They might have different characteristics and behaviour.
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Phosphoer
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Posted: 31st May 2009 02:53
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Heh, this sounds like one of those games that would be unexplainably addicting. ^^

I fully support the development of this game!

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feiting shadow
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Posted: 31st May 2009 09:32
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tiresius is right, add more guns! big ones

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Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 31st May 2009 13:45 Edited at: 31st May 2009 13:47
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Quote: "A more correct description would be "an unusual platformer, with no morals""

Well, I don't want to say too much in case I raise/alter your expectations for the game. But suffice to say, if a movie shows a really ghastly scene where the main character commits some truly awful, inhuman deeds, does that automatically make the film immoral? No - the character is immoral but the movie could be, by extension, *very* moral because it's showing you the result of those actions. I'm interested to see whether or not this kind of thing will work for this game.

Quote: "A game with moral content is surely one that makes the player decide what sort of actions to take, and where those actions have consequences. For example, if there were different ways to rack up scores - by killing the creatures or by helping them - then you might have something."

That, too, would be a moral game, and that would be an interesting game. Or if you had to help one "team" or the other, and both teams had their good and bad points morally.

But this game isn't really that kind of thing - it's much more linear and is basically an experience or a scene which the player progresses through, perhaps with some symbolic undertones and whatnot. Essentially, if BioShock or Fallout 3 are enormous great works of art (oil on canvas in the national gallery), this is the gaming equivalent of a quick (but fun) sketch.

Quote: "I fully support the development of this game!"

Thanks!

Quote: "tiresius is right, add more guns! big ones"

Mm, I never intended to add more guns than the one you start with... though that could be a way to make the player feel like they're making progress... Have to think about that. No promises though!

I guess I really should provide an update as well, so...



That's the tutorial level. Once I've written some code that actually turns it into a tutorial, there won't be so many green guys on-screen. And in case you're wondering, the green sprites at the top don't have any part in the game-play - that's just where I've put any spare green sprites which can then be recycled later. At some point I'll shift them up beyond the border of the screen so you can't see them.

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zzz
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Posted: 31st May 2009 15:41
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Creepy levels!

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Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2009 01:02 Edited at: 2nd Jun 2009 01:03
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Quote: "Creepy levels!"

Thanks - coming from the guy who's doing Soulhunter, that means a lot!

I thought about different weapons and decided to put some in. There are 3 levels in all, each with a different weapon. You start out with a shotgun (short range), move on to a sniper rifle (longer range) and finish off with a flamethrower The flame sprites aren't the best, but basically you just have to walk around and people catch fire and fall burning to the floor. I think it's quite fun.

So, checklist of things to finish off:

- Music for final level
- Improve flamethrower sprites (they'll never be great but I'll do what I can) and perhaps add a screen overlay to exaggerate the glow of the fire?
- Credits and end sequence
- Maybe add a few things (hanged corpses? Trees, maybe?) which can be set fire to with the flamethrower?
- Make it so people run away when you use the flamethrower.
- A "skip to level" menu
- Tidy up a few things (eg. placing "spare" sprites above the screen, rather than floating around at the top)

And that, I think, will be that. I have an exam tomorrow (History - Elizabeth I) so I can't promise when it'll be done, but it's certainly getting there.

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Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 8th Jun 2009 21:15
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Regression is done! You can download it here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OF4KW8NN

Feedback?

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Softwizz
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Posted: 10th Jun 2009 21:33
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how about adding in dilema (sort of moral dilema) where you get a choice of weapons t0 kill them with, also little children green sprites are worth more than normal ones

Nothing to see here, move along please.
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Profit
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Posted: 11th Jun 2009 00:56
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I liked it.
However, due to the long missions and repetitive gameplay, I found myself bored about halfway through the 2nd mission.


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kklouzal
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Posted: 11th Jun 2009 13:44 Edited at: 11th Jun 2009 13:45
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I went to download this and noticed it was 38+mb, judging from your screenshots I would'nt think this game would be anywhere near 10mb at the most. Not that that has anything to do whith anything other than I have a slow connection >.<

Looks good, wish I could try it myself.

EDIT: I have a feeling it could be your sounds xD *cough* upload one with no music.

Come Check Out My W.I.P Post: http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=151415&b=8
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Jimpo
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Posted: 12th Jun 2009 05:52
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The red bar increased so slowly, and combined with the weird reload system, I never actually finished a level because it took so long. I used the level skip feature to check out all the stages and weapons.

If killing were faster, you could have a neat little game

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Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 12th Jun 2009 12:39
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Quote: "how about adding in dilema (sort of moral dilema) where you get a choice of weapons t0 kill them with, also little children green sprites are worth more than normal ones"

That's an intriguing idea but the game's now finished anyway and I'd rather not reinvent it that much - thanks for the suggestion though.

Thanks for the comments everyone - everyone seems to agree that levels take too long and, I admit, I deliberately made them on the long side so that by the end people were thoroughly used to killing green people. However, since most people seem to be put off, I'll make it so that you only need to kill maybe 20-30 people per level, instead of whatever it was before (something like 60, I think I guess I overestimated peoples' willingness to kill things over and over).

Quote: "EDIT: I have a feeling it could be your sounds xD *cough* upload one with no music."


Ah, I never thought of that. I'll upload another one with no music.
Oof, yes, I just took a look at the music files and they come to 33 MB before they're compressed with the exe, which is more than the sound files (gunshots etc.) and the picture files combined!

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Valle
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Posted: 13th Jun 2009 05:24
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haha, nice ending
i like this kind of experimental game better then 10 wannabe-commercial-game clones. There should be more games like this on this forum.
Now Pros and Cons:

Cons:
-You could definitly use another font Not that ugly Darkbasic "Print Hello World" font. Because everything else in your game is made with so much love to the detail, thats why i'm wondering...
-Yeah, it takes too long to fill the blood-thing and i think it would be more fun if you wouldnt have to reload so often
-The shotgun and the rifle didnt feel very "brutal"

Pros:
-I felt a little guilty, kind off
-The backgrounds where very nice and also the classic background music
-The flamethrower rocked! Nice light-effect man!
-Gooood menu
-Concept-games are (nearly) always good, i think you should stick to this and do another one with the same theme

I'm looking forward to your future projects !


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kklouzal
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Posted: 13th Jun 2009 11:29 Edited at: 13th Jun 2009 11:51
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Ok, for some reason I want to badly play this so it looks like i'll wait through the long download

EDIT: Very nice! sometimes the cops would shoot at me before they got into visible areas on the screen - didnt really bother me though cause I beat it first try without dieing

Come Check Out My W.I.P Post: http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=151415&b=8
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Valle
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Posted: 13th Jun 2009 15:21 Edited at: 13th Jun 2009 15:22
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Quote: "cause I beat it first try without dieing"


i dont think you can actually die, can you?


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kklouzal
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Posted: 13th Jun 2009 15:43 Edited at: 13th Jun 2009 15:44
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I just assumed you could get killed when things started shooting at me lol

EDIT: the "TOTAL LIVES: 1" at the bottom raised suspision also xD

Come Check Out My W.I.P Post: http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=151415&b=8
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Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 13th Jun 2009 17:49 Edited at: 13th Jun 2009 17:57
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Woah, just looked over what I've written - my apologies for the long post

Also, this whole post (yes - all of it!) contains spoilers, so it'd be best to play through the game before reading.

Quote: "haha, nice ending"

Thanks At one point I wondered whether I was making it too fun, with the flamethrower in the last level and everything, and moving too far away from the basic concept of the game. But I think the ending tied it all together surprisingly well I sort of put it together, watched it and went "phew!"

Quote: "You could definitly use another font"

Hmm, now that you mention it, that's not a bad idea. I was going for a kind of retro look, with all the sprites and the low resolution, so the DarkBasic font made sense, but I could look through the free fonts websites and see if anything jumps out at me.

Quote: "Yeah, it takes too long to fill the blood-thing and i think it would be more fun if you wouldnt have to reload so often"

Yeah, in retrospect the blood-o-meter takes too long And I could easily change the clip size. I wanted to force the player to actually read the text (hence the really strange reloading system) but as long as they read the text a couple of times and understand "okay, this isn't very nice" then perhaps the "concept" of the game still holds? And, I admit, the gameplay isn't *that* fun after a while, so anything that makes it flow better might be a good thing.

Quote: "The shotgun and the rifle didnt feel very "brutal""

Hmm, I could change the sounds and make them louder and more explosive or something - maybe increase the bass. I'm not sure if I could do much gameplay-wise, though: if this were a FPS I could cause the camera to jerk upwards violently with each shot, but that sort of thing doesn't really apply here...

Quote: "I felt a little guilty, kind off"

Excellent! I wasn't sure if the game would cause *any* kind of guilt. Even if you then went off and played Child Killer 6 (okay, I jest), just the fact that this has made you think just a *bit* is an achievement for me!

Quote: "The backgrounds where very nice and also the classic background music"

Thankyou! I did all the pixel art myself; I wasn't really sure if it'd turn out okay since I've not done anything like this before. The classical music in the first level is all Mozart: the slow choir piece is "Lacrimosa" form Mozart's Requiem, and the faster piece with the full orchestra is Mozart's Symphony number 25. I thought it was appropriate for that level.
Incidentally, the music for the 2nd and some of the 3rd levels was from NGXMusical's site: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=629296 It's rather good, I think.

Quote: "The flamethrower rocked! Nice light-effect man!
Gooood menu"

Haha, yes. I remember watching the flamethrower from the Scorpio episode of the Simpsons where Scorpio flattens an entire platoon of GIs from 20 feet away, and thinking "why do flamethrowers in games have only a five-foot range?" I thought that a weapon like that would fit right into the Id level. It was a *lot* of fun to make!
The menu kind of came into my head fully formed. I already had the "you MUST kill things" idea, so it was a logical extension of that. I think it worked out quite nicely

Quote: "i like this kind of experimental game better then 10 wannabe-commercial-game clones.
-Concept-games are (nearly) always good, i think you should stick to this and do another one with the same theme
Very nice! "

Thankyou - and I also think that games which try to break the mould and perhaps make you think a little are worth 100 "let's kill some Nazis" games. Yes, they can be fun, but it's a shame games aren't being used more experimentally.

Quote: "didnt really bother me though cause I beat it first try without dieing"

Yeah, Valle's right: there's no way to die. You just get knocked down, which is why I didn't bother fixing the bug where police shoot at you from off-screen. I was kind of sneaky, putting in that "TOTAL LIVES: 1" thing at the bottom, but deliberately wanted to challenge the typical platforming idea of lives, and give you just the one life, which you then of course lose right at the end. The whole game is basically putting a horrible, unspeakable situation in a form that disguises what's happening (a game), hence the "TOTAL LIVES" thing.

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NGXmusical
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Posted: 13th Jun 2009 18:26 Edited at: 13th Jun 2009 18:38
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I tried the game and its really great.Its also fun to play but I was wondering how can we get more ammo.

Also thanks for your interest in NGXmusical its greatly appreciated
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Darth Kiwi
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Posted: 13th Jun 2009 19:55
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Quote: "I tried the game and its really great.Its also fun to play but I was wondering how can we get more ammo."

Thanks! You get more ammo by going up to a sprite and biting them by pressing "W". That'll cause them to let out a scream, which is represented with red text, which floats upwards. You then hold down the left mouse button, move the mouse pointer over the red text, and release the mouse button, and you'll have more ammo. The tutorial sort of walks you through this bit - I know it's a very strange (and illogical!) way of getting ammo, but it forces the player to read the text, which I thought was important.

And NGXmusical really does have some fantastic music, it really does speak for itself.

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