Comments on: Suspiciously Spherical

By: Bernardo

Bernardo — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:41:35 +0000

I get the same problem, how did you fix that? Thanks ‘=)

By: C Whittaker

C Whittaker — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:18:33 +0000

Doh. *Many big games fail to present that level atmosphere and subtext, especially relative to the resources used to make them.

That’s what I meant.

By: C Whittaker

C Whittaker — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:17:07 +0000

I played your game (having only today read your hilarious Arthur Stone and Alice and Kev stories), and I have to say, the thing that most struck me was the atmosphere.

Using such simple concepts and graphics, with such a brief play time, you seemed to convey a lot of subtext that most big games seem to present to me. It’s relative to your resources (I think if you took that approach in a bigger project, it would be a better affect, but less suprising given this games simplicity).

I also found myself willing the ball to increase momentum, but I’ve read above why this was set low. I would have been doing that regardless – I became pretty immersed. I don’t think I can contribute any more in the way of constuctive criticism that hasn’t already been mentioned.

By: Zedo Mann

Zedo Mann — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:52:28 +0000

I loved this game. The sentries with the colored light like that reminded me of cameras in Deus Ex: Invisible War where the cameras had colored light shining out of them. I hope you make more of this game, it was suspiciously fun.

By: Allie

Allie — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:30:27 +0000

wow thats fun but kinda hard… nice graphics and good job.

By: Rorik

Rorik — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:01:47 +0000

I have found that if someone has Vista with DEP it will not allow the program to run until an exception is made with DEP in the systems settings. That is simple enough though so no big deal really.

By: jourdan b

jourdan b — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:03:16 +0000

I got to the end and nothing happened. What’s wrong?

By: Samantha

Samantha — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:22:59 +0000

I played this short game and was just starting to really enjoy it and understand it when it ended, haha. After reaching “The End” square I sort of expected it to close on its own or something (which wasn’t really a problem at all just sort of a “oh duh, click the x button” moment) but other then that I can’t add much more then already said. I personally am not a game designer and although I play video games I wouldn’t consider myself a gamer even. I enjoy games like this though, something of a puzzle. I’d really be interested in seeing it further developed or even seeing what can be done with it using a different software.

By: Leebeloola

Leebeloola — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:12:27 +0000

That’s a really nice game. I really enjoyed it. The ball was a bit slow and didn’t seem to speed up when going down a hill, but the cameras and barriers were really cool. I really liked the way the messages on the walls changed depending on what you did. The little passages you could use to get past the cameras were a nice addition, I always get frustrated when it’s only about timing.
It reminded me slightly of simplified puzzle games used in RPGs where you have to go round activating pads in different areas to open to door.
The stealth aspect came over really well, despite the speed of the ball. Felt like an exciting escape from a prison. I can see why you slowed down the momentum, but I think the fact that the messages change colour is enough to get the player to notice them.

The stealth and physics worked well together. In my opinion that’s what made it different. The physics was a bit sketchy. And as it was a university project, that is to be expected. Especially if you have to learn to script it as well!

Are you going to continue to do something with the concept?

By: roBurky

roBurky — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:20:55 +0000

Tuuvan: Thanks for playing and leaving comments.

I agree that the ball movement ought to be faster for a better feel. I ended up at that speed mianly for the purposes of the puzzle. I wanted you to have an entire room visible on screen at once, and also to have the suspicion period last long enough for someone to read the text on the screen. Trying to get the suspicion mode to be useful to the player also meant I had to reduce the effect of momentum.

I also had great difficulty with the ball speed and framerate. Unlike all of the other game mechanics, the amount of force added to the ball each frame isn’t affected by the frame rate. So when frame rate is really low, the ball moves slower. Every attempt to fix that just made the physics cause even worse problems.

I think the compromise I ended up with between physics and stealth possibly didn’t really work, and I should have embraced one or the other more fully. Either abandon suspicion mode, and give better feeling rolling physics movement, or abandoned the physics movement and given the player fine control over their avatar’s movement.

On the light clipping through objects: Yeah. This concept does really need dynamic shadows of some kind, and if I wanted to do this concept seriously, I’d be looking for that foremost in the engine or dev environment that I chose.

I started experimenting in Game Studio with this game idea in mind at the end of October, finished the game by the new year, and handed the assignment in in January. Most of my time was spent learning how to do the scripting for it.