Wolfire Games Forums

Hey guys and girls!

I know I don't post around here too much but I just wanted to share with you that the indie game Dino 'Splode that I worked on just got released! I did all the art and animation for it. I'm super excited to finally have it finally done and through review.

It's on Xbox Live Indie Arcade right now so feel free to check it out and let me know what you think. It's only our first game though so don't expect it to be fantastic.

Our mini-blog thing is here: http://section2dev.com/

Here is the trailer and other related videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGesa-pONRA



If you have any questions feel free to ask

Dinos animation could be better but looks like a great game

Did you also do the cover? It looks fantastic!

Also, wow, four programmers in a team of five... That's more like what it should be, my class's project had only two programmers out of 15 or so people, and when people started moving on to other projects one of the programmers was among the first to go.

Some particle effects (dust clouds when running, white flash when hit by the bearded cavemen on 0:15) could be more transparent. At least the running is too pronounced.

The dino is on the air lots of the time, and since he's just holding a single pose in there you see a lot of that single pose. A little variation would've been good, even something as simple as one pose for "going up" and another for "going down".

I liked the enemy animation more, nothing bad to point out there. I like how you have so much variation on the human enemies with the changeable parts, and how much you did with them. I love the two skull-tank guys! I also like how the spears actually fly away, and don't just magically change into clubs.

Are the triangle-shaped stone blocks deadly spikes? They don't look that sharp, or threatening, but the triangle shape is usually used for spikes and the only creatures touching the spikes in the video are dead.

edit: also, 2 comments so soon after the first post? I guess that video really helps...

Freshbite wrote:Wait, is this going on the Xbox Live Marketplace!? I will fricking buy it!

x2

@Freshbite: Yup! It's on the new arrivals section of the Indie games marketplace right now.

@Endo: Yep, I did do the cover! It was actually the second cover, as I was not satisfied with the first one I did which was this one:



Haha yeah, we had a lot of programmers. In fact I think all of us did some programming at one point or another, so you could say we had 5 programmers. I'm also not a talented animator so can blame me for the choppy animations on the main character. The reason for this was because he uses traditional sprite-sheet animation, whereas all the other enemies are animated with some software I wrote called Anima which uses more Flash-esque interpolation style animation. And yeah, there were a lot of things that could've been polished more but we had some underlying design flaws which caused us to stretch out our resources (ie. Having 6 different zones all with unique art when the zones don't really have any significant gameplay effect). Thanks for the comment!

I could handle the repetitive music, the rather goofy enemies, the copy/paste look of the textures, even the rather useless crap that's hanging from the ceiling that looks like it could be used but couldn't, honestly, an included "Controls/Help" section would have done wonders for this game...but one thing killed it for me, your little dino has horrible jump lag and feels really floaty when moving. Once you made him run, Sandwich wouldn't jump until a second after I pressed the jump button...which means that he wouldn't jump at all because he'd explode, land on spikes, fall into a bottomless pit, get killed by cavemen, die from birds, you name it, the dinosaur probably died from it instead of jumping. The attack and movement controls felt responsive, but making him jump felt like you were trying to force a kid to eat their vegetables.

I'm sorry to have offended you so deeply with my little indie game :p

I am aware that it's severely flawed. We were all very inexperienced when we started this project, and we can promise our next game will be better in every single way possible. Thanks for your feedback though, I do appreciate it.

HAHA, sorry, I didn't mean to come off so condescending, you didn't personally offend me. At the time, the lack of a manual and the control frustration was getting to me.

I liked the art, the art was awesome for something coming off of XBLA, but the level design and the control flaws were killing the experience. I did like the story (the story idea was great), the exploding deaths, the physics were over the top and amusing, and the controls (the ones that worked), did what they needed to.

Yes, yes, its your first game, and you know its flawed, etc.

I don't know entirely how XBLA Indie works, but is it possible to implement an automatic update? The game you have there is pretty fun, as long as you work out the minor control kinks.

EDIT: Okay, I messed around with the game some more and I tried to pinpoint where he can and can't jump. Yes, I spent about 10 minutes making a green dinosaur run around like a moron, my roommate wanted to know what the hell I was doing and called me an idiot.

Sandwich can jump:
-When its at a full run and you turn around to go the other direction
-Right at the start of a jump
-From a stand still
-Going up hills
-Going down hills
-After jumping and landing when moving at full speed

Sandwich can't jump:
-When running at full speed while on a flat surface (which means you tend to fall on spikes or off of endless pits quite a bit)

This was all done on the first level, so I dunno if anything else in the later levels would affect jumping.

Also, the life counter doesn't ever seem to go down, its stuck at 5. I don't know if that's because it was the trial version or not.

The jumping is an issue with the physics - when he lands after a jump it causes him to do extremely small bounces, and if he is currently in the middle of a bounce it makes it impossible to jump. There also seems to be a problem when he is running full speed as well.

We thought about spending time polishing out every single minor kink in the game, but the problem is that its underlying structure is extremely poorly designed. You may notice that is extremely unfocused - it tries to be a silly platformer, action adventure game, and RPG all at the same time. There is only so much you can polish a turd, and at the end of the day, it's still a turd. This happened because the game started off a more of as joke, and evolved in an actual project. So we decided to just let this one go and start on a new project which would reflect what we are actually capable of.

Oh and I think the health bar you are talking about is actually the coolant pills, which can be used by pressing X to cool down if you are in the sun.

Again, thanks for the detailed feedback.

Oh, no I meant the number of lives you have. When you die is says: "You have x number of lives left" and its stuck at 5.

Oooh, I see. Yeah I think that's just because it's in trial mode.

This sounds like fun to me, next time I'm on the XBLA I'll download the trial and let you know what I think!

Although, by the sounds of what I've read so far, I should enjoy it somewhat!