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Old 02-17-2011, 02:24 PM   #1
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Default The Sphere - A 360 panorama adventure demo

Hello! Me and a friend have currently been working on a game for two weeks now. It's called The Sphere.

You start in a sphere-shaped room. Your task is to get out of the sphere, but how?

If you want to test the game you can download it at the link below. It's pretty hard to know what to do. But if you're stuck, let me know and I'll help you.

The game is short. But what do you expect for a game that was made in less than two weeks?

Have fun!

http://blackpolygon.com/files/theSphere.rar
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Old 02-21-2011, 10:06 AM   #2
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It would be nice if someone criticized the game, or said what you liked and disliked.

And if you have tested the game, did you reach the end or stopped playing because you didn't knew what to do?
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Old 02-22-2011, 01:09 AM   #3
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I will be looking at it by the end of the month (in my site capacity) so I'll look at giving you some feedback then.
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Old 02-22-2011, 02:02 AM   #4
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Thanks! I appreciate it. I really need some feedback so that I can make better games in the future.
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Old 02-22-2011, 02:26 AM   #5
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No problem. Always happy to do what I can for people aiming to improve their game-making. Much better chance of getting good games in the future that way.
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Old 02-22-2011, 02:50 AM   #6
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I like your way of thinking. It would be nice if there were more people like you, helping others.

I'm currently working on a full-fledged adventure horror game. We are three developers right now. The only drawback is that we don't have an engine to work with yet. But our programmer is working hard to learn how to make it. We have come pretty far with the story and concept of the game and made many 3D assets.

If we are lucky and make the game complete and ready to release we hope that it will be the start for us to work as indie game developers.
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Old 02-22-2011, 03:11 AM   #7
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If you're already a way along this might not be useful, but have you heard of the Unity engine? The basic version appears to be free (with a pricy pro upgrade) and has seen a lot of use on Kongregate of late (with varying quality)

Unity Engine Homepage

One of the better examples - The Premature Death of Christopher Combe
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Old 02-22-2011, 03:26 AM   #8
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Yes, I've hard and seen others use Unity to make games. We will not use it in our game as we're going to make a game in the same style as Scratches and Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder, and we really want to make our own engine from scratch.
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Old 02-22-2011, 03:53 AM   #9
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excentri, check this out:

http://www.adventuredevelopers.com/f...p?topic=2931.0

Let me know if you're interested, we're doing a private alpha-testing!
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Old 02-22-2011, 04:19 AM   #10
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Hi Agustin

I'm really excited about Asylum. I've been checking for updates regularly. I really like those kind of games and have tested out many of them. My personal favorites is Scratches and Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder. I think Scratches was scarier than Darkness Within but the atmosphere in Darkness Within was really good.

As I'm a fan of the genre I would really like to do alpha-testing
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Old 02-22-2011, 04:59 AM   #11
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OK then, register here http://www.senscape.net/forum and I'll give you access!

I meant though that perhaps you could check out the engine for your project (it will be free to use). I'm looking for developers to assist in the programming too.

I played The Sphere a bit and it looks good, very polished!
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Old 02-22-2011, 05:18 AM   #12
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I'm now registered.

Well, you just made me really excited!

I would not call The Sphere polished, but everything from the idea to "finished" game was made in less than two weeks.

We have some more impressive graphics in our real project. But as we still are in our learning process to make attractive games nothing is perfect. But it's getting closer all the time and we are always pushing ourselves to be better.

We have not shared any wip or progress work to anyone but if you like to see some I can send you some pics.
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Old 02-22-2011, 05:41 AM   #13
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Cool, you have access now. Enjoy!

Well, I thought that, even though The Sphere is a short demo, it has some nice finishing touches to it. Looking forward to the real, scary game! I would love to see some pics actually -- send here: [email protected]
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Old 02-22-2011, 06:25 AM   #14
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I've sent you a mail with some pics.

I'm going to try out Kinesis engine now!
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Old 03-02-2011, 02:16 AM   #15
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OK. Had a chance to play The Sphere now. Comments as follows

Graphics - Excellent. Good-looking 3D environment that fits well with the sci-fi setting of the game. It feels like a real environment that the player is standing in, which is great for immersion.

Sound - The haunting back melody works with the isolation theme of the game. Does start to get a bit repetitive after a while. I think that is because there is only one tune and any tune is going to feel repetitive without any variety to set it off. The computerised voice is also very well done.

Story - Interesting concept but getting the entire thing in one go from the database makes it more like reading a short story. The limited environment makes this virually unavoidable so consider this as a positive comment. As long as you have the story revealed in a more interesting fashion in future then I think you don't have any problems with the content.

Movement - You've fallen into the same trap as a lot of games with node-based movement. If I'm standing at the bed the synthesis/food hatch is right next to me. However, to get to it I have to walk to the middle of the room. Having to take a wholly artificial diversion like this just reminds the player they are in a game, blowing the immersive feeling from the graphics. This is not to say that node-based movement is a no-no, but if you're going to have an open space, you really need to have open movement in it, at least to adjacent nodes.

Interface - The interface is nice and simple. This has both advantages and disadvantages. The big advantage is that it makes the game easy to play. I could wander around and interact with things without needing to read a long manual. The flip side is your interaction is limited. You can only do one thing with any interactive object. Because this is such a small game, there isn't really enough interaction to tell if this will make your future games too simplistic. There are many good precedents for single-click play so I'll reserve judgement.

Gameplay - As you intimated in your opening post, it is very difficult to work out what to do. I wandered around the small space, used the computer to synthesise all the food (collecting each from the hatch) and read the database. After that I wasn't really sure what else to do. I wanted to try to do the recommended exercises but couldn't interact with the floor. I wanted to try out the bathroom facilities but that was a no go. I wanted to try to combine the foods I'd synthesised but there doesn't appear to be an inventory to allow that. This may be solely because this is a test-piece that was made in two weeks (so this is all there is to do). If not, you need to give the player some better hints on what to do.

Incidentally, is the game saved in some sort of test mode? With no manual I took to experimenting by tapping random keys when I got stuck. Various options changed the field of view, resolution and other operational features. More importantly C caused the interactive portions of the game to highlight (revealing two additional sections near the bathroom door which I couldn't get to work).

Definitely leaves me interested in seeing more from you though.
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Old 03-02-2011, 11:41 PM   #16
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Quote:
Graphics - Excellent. Good-looking 3D environment that fits well with the sci-fi setting of the game. It feels like a real environment that the player is standing in, which is great for immersion.
Thank you! We made it as good as we could with the limited time we got.

Quote:
Sound - The haunting back melody works with the isolation theme of the game. Does start to get a bit repetitive after a while. I think that is because there is only one tune and any tune is going to feel repetitive without any variety to set it off. The computerised voice is also very well done.
The music was made in about 30 minutes and yes it gets repetitive after a while. Though we could have paused the music after one loop and continue it after a while.

Quote:
Story - Interesting concept but getting the entire thing in one go from the database makes it more like reading a short story. The limited environment makes this virually unavoidable so consider this as a positive comment. As long as you have the story revealed in a more interesting fashion in future then I think you don't have any problems with the content.
The story wasn't really my part in this project but the thing is that this game was made as project in a course of our education. We should read a bunch of text that was about cyborgs and other things like fear. With that text we should form a question and make a game out of that.
We were a little bit limited but it was fun nonetheless.

Quote:
Movement - You've fallen into the same trap as a lot of games with node-based movement. If I'm standing at the bed the synthesis/food hatch is right next to me. However, to get to it I have to walk to the middle of the room. Having to take a wholly artificial diversion like this just reminds the player they are in a game, blowing the immersive feeling from the graphics. This is not to say that node-based movement is a no-no, but if you're going to have an open space, you really need to have open movement in it, at least to adjacent nodes.
Yes, the only reason that we didn't make that was that we didn't really thought it was that difficult to navigate, and the hotspots in pipmak isn't really fun to make. We had to guess where to position the hotspots and redo it many times before we could get a usable one. Thought we had it in mind all the time of course but we never got that far to make it.
We will not make that mistake again.

Quote:
Because this is such a small game, there isn't really enough interaction to tell if this will make your future games too simplistic. There are many good precedents for single-click play so I'll reserve judgement.
That's correct. This game was made in thought of our time-limit, therefor we couldn't make much interaction at all. Our current "real" project will be different. I promise!

Quote:
Gameplay - As you intimated in your opening post, it is very difficult to work out what to do. I wandered around the small space, used the computer to synthesise all the food (collecting each from the hatch) and read the database. After that I wasn't really sure what else to do. I wanted to try to do the recommended exercises but couldn't interact with the floor. I wanted to try out the bathroom facilities but that was a no go. I wanted to try to combine the foods I'd synthesised but there doesn't appear to be an inventory to allow that.
This game was in fact more like a test and we really like the 360 panorama games and wanted to make one. We worked for about 12 days and this is what we got.

Quote:
This may be solely because this is a test-piece that was made in two weeks (so this is all there is to do). If not, you need to give the player some better hints on what to do.
That's correct. We call this game a test-piece. This is all there is to do, though we know that we could make it much better, but not in two weeks. The output was made with priorities to get a playable game in a small amount of time.

Quote:
Incidentally, is the game saved in some sort of test mode?
We haven't actually tested to save the game at all because there is not many things to do to make progress.

Quote:
With no manual I took to experimenting by tapping random keys when I got stuck. Various options changed the field of view, resolution and other operational features.
I know. I forgot to turn that off.

Quote:
More importantly C caused the interactive portions of the game to highlight (revealing two additional sections near the bathroom door which I couldn't get to work).
Spoiler, don't read if you want to complete the game by yourself.

Spoiler:
This is the hard part of the "game". To open the hatch in the floor you have to order sugar with the computer. Pick up the sugar and toothbrush in the food-hatch. Go back to the computer and navigate to the database and sphere blueprints. Highlight the floor tile in the picture and press the mouse button(You get no feedback at all when doing this which is bad). You have now activated two booleans that now says true. Now you can open the floor tile near the bathroom door. I wont spoil any more but that's like the main puzzle in the "game". It's very far-fetched but there actually are people that have completed the game.


Quote:
Definitely leaves me interested in seeing more from you though.
Thank you! We really appreciate all the feedback we have got from people around the world. We learn more and more what people likes and dislikes and that's important to know.

I am happy that you have taken time to play our "game" and given us feedback!

Last edited by stepurhan; 03-03-2011 at 12:44 PM.
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Old 03-03-2011, 12:50 PM   #17
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Added spoiler tags to your spoiler there. You can do this yourself in future by putting (without spaces) [ spoiler ] at the start of the text and [ /spoiler ] at the end.

Alternatively, if you use the Advanced posting options (automatic if you are quoting) then there is a button marked with ? that will do the job for you on highlighted text.

Glad to help with feedback. I appreciate that node-programming is probably not as simple as it would first appear so the node thing is no biggie. You are by no means the worst offender I've seen for that.

Thanks for the spoiler tip. I figured that piece of synthesis was important (everything else came out the same from the hatch) and I will now try to complete the game.
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