Author Topic: My first game  (Read 3694 times)

Vitellari

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My first game
« on: October 18, 2015, 07:01:08 AM »
This is the first game I ever made so don't be too hard with me,(I know that my game is bad as shit) but I accept reviews.
 :atkHappy:

Download link:
https://www.mediafire.com/download/qpet5rx3su8k57v/I_wanna_kill_the_V.zip
VVVVVV

lawatson

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Re: My first game
« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2015, 08:12:46 AM »
So many Kill the ___ titles these days, but what can you do when there's 3 thousand of them? I'll play it and give my words about it.

EDIT: Alright, time to tell people stuff.

Okay, so there's quite a few technical problems in this game (You can decide whether or not you want to fix them in later games.) There's restarting music, which you can fix by removing the sound_stop_all() lines in the playerKill script and the world object press R event, and finally in the playerKill script changing the sound_play(snd_Death) to sound_play(snd_onDeath) or something like that. Next, there's the weird window resizing when pressing R. Basically, what you want to do is go to the init room and change the view settings to what you want to be the normal view size (800*608 preferably.) That's basically it for technical problems, so now for a review.

Alright, so basically the game is needle as far as I went (I stopped on the water screen). There's a bit of variety of the tiles and you can tell that the maker was trying! The needle is also pretty generally good until the water screen. So here's some things you should work on. First, don't use deep blue water. Not only does it kind of make it hard to see in, but it also gives you singlejump in midair instead of double jump, which can be pretty hard on people when playing. Second, being able to shoot saves from far away isn't up my alley that much either, but depending on the game, it depends. Basically to make the saves system a little better in your games is to program a bullet blocker if you want one, or even make them S saves (press S while touching them to save). Lastly, be sure to test your games. Trust me, it helps. If you think your game is fun and people would like it, you're not wrong 99% of the time. For a first game, even though it had some problems, I could definitely see the effort put into it and I think that if you take some time to get settled into Gamemaker, you can make a really good game! I hope your next is better, and maybe try to fix on some of these problems (Especially the technical ones).
« Last Edit: October 18, 2015, 08:33:00 AM by lawatson »
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Derf

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Re: My first game
« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2015, 08:46:45 AM »
It isn't terrible, but there certainly are a lot of areas in dire need of improvement. Here is a running commentary of sorts of my playthrough:

-The music shouldn't restart - definitely not in 2015.
-The layout of the first room is confusing when the player has to cross through a pipe tile (why not just make a darker pipe tile to go there; I know the spike sort of indicates you can go through, but c'mon).
-Art in the second room isn't good. Just adding a sharpen filter to regular block tiles doesn't make them interesting, it makes them ugly. I commend you for the effort, but it's very grating.
-Save spacing makes no sense. It's fairly consistent on medium until the second part of room two where you have to do two diagonals, a drop gate and an invert to get to a save, when only a few saves before it you were getting saves for doing gates/corners on their own. Oh and the save after this is just some platform jumps which are ten times easier than what came before.
-There are certainly some glimmers of interesting design in there but you tend to cake them in stock gates, diagonals, corners etc (3 corners in the first room hype).
-Room 2 ends with you having to hold down the right key and room 3 starts with the kid standing about 4 pixels left of a spike. That's not good design. The save is easy, but being killed immediately upon entering a room because of poor foresight on the creator's part is annoying.
-Room 3, just lots and lots of gate jumps.
-Graphics in room 3 aren't as bad even though you've used the sharpen filter again.
-The water in room 4 is really opaque, it should be much lighter.
-You've layered water tiles that are transparent over the top of each other leading to messy sections. It honestly feels like you'd given up with the game by this point.
-Supporting this theory are the following: water diamonds, random invisible blocks, random difficulty spike through save placement again, just loads of gate jumps.
-Room 5, disproportionately easy to what came before. Kinda boring level design. didn't really understand the 3 pits thing you had going on. Though it was a step in the right direction, it was neater and made more sense than other levels.

I don't want to dishearten you, I just don't believe lying would help you. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good. You have a ways to go before you're going to be making decent games, but you certainly have a foundation which is more than can be said of a lot of people. I think your main problems are as follows: lazy level design (not checking save consistency, having rooms kill you instantly for holding buttons you had to hold in the last room, general lack of neatness), boring jumps and grating graphics. There's potential in what you have it just needs an attention to detail and consideration for the player that is lacking here.

One note though; I would refrain from posting games that you consider bad and that are essentially training games on the wiki - it's more a place for finished, quality products to be documented.

Vitellari

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Re: My first game
« Reply #3 on: October 18, 2015, 10:00:17 AM »
Thanks guys for the reviews, i swear that my next game will be better than this.
VVVVVV

tehjman1993

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Re: My first game
« Reply #4 on: October 18, 2015, 05:51:12 PM »
Alright, here's some feedback:

-Difficulty Select/Title Screen/Opening Music all need a major change. Using a default tileset with a bright red background with guy rock blaring is not a way to start a game.
-The saves are completely unbalanced - some are "1st try" saves while others take much, much longer in both length and difficulty
-Some screens (particularly the water screen) is brutal to navigate with false walls and blocks.
-All of the screens' backgrounds need changing to something more minimal and/or less bright, especially that bright volcano one
-Tilesets need to be changed to something less bright, it looks like a really bad "HQ" version of tileset
-Restarting music is a big no-no, there are tutorials available to correct this
-Jumps were generic, already listed in this thread (it's ok to use them, but not that much, be creative!)
-Game incredibly short (not necessarily a bad thing, but you def. want to beef it up next time)
-Never use bad water. Neeeeeeeeevvvvvvveeeeeerrrrrrr

-Your music was a good choice, seriously.

Overall, if you plan on seriously taking advice and make a second decent game, please try to play through your own game and see if everything is in order, looks nice, etc. etc. Based on what I've seen, you really like the standard platforming screens, so try to take a look into games like "I wanna be the minimal", "I wanna stop the meltdown", "I wanna sheep 100", and "I wanna go across the rainbow" for some ideas for both visuals AND screens, these references will help you a lot.

Good luck.

Redtefox

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Re: My first game
« Reply #5 on: October 18, 2015, 06:15:11 PM »
I`m impressed. Its pretty good for being your first fangame. I enjoyed it, but there were some things to be worked on.

Level designs: Pretty okay, I only disliked the water one because of the spikes on the bottom of screen.

Music: Good music choices.

Gimmicks: Though this being your first fangame, I'm impressed you had gravity arrows in there.

Overall: Its better then some of the fangames on the wiki, yet has some flaws. The needle is pretty easy, well probably because of there being no save blockers. If you make a second fangame, try playing other good fangames for inspiration.

Arclooper

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Re: My first game
« Reply #6 on: October 18, 2015, 08:26:08 PM »
Pretty much have to agree with everyone here, especially about using the same tile for parts you can go through and parts you can't, and the save balance. I think those were the weakest points about your game.

Also, other than trying to stay away from too bright backgrounds, I would recommend picking ones where there's little going on in them, like, instead of using an actual picture people might use for their desktop images, get a single color and then maybe add some tiles (different from the ones you're using for platforming of course :p) to make it nicer.

And I think in some saves you tried to balance the fact you could save without reaching the actual save by putting things like the invert. (at least that's what it felt like you were doing for me, nevermind this part if I'm wrong) Personally I think that's bad practice, especially when save blockers are so common nowadays that some people might not even try to save it before getting past the jump, like people recommended, use save-blockers as well and preferably change your saves to z-saves, I think there was a post in the game design section with the codes for a z-save if you want to copy them. And those are more pet peeves but avoid putting saves that require you to jump or that you have shoot when you can only do it within the block they're on (although this second one is not an issue if you change your save type)

All in all though it was a nice first attempt imo, I would recommend you to stick around more with people of the community and maybe get someone to show you the ropes to improve a bit faster, and know what kind of things the community likes and dislikes, and don't be discouraged, good luck with your next projects, you seem to have the right attitude towards criticism and that's a really strong point :o

Mattisticus

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Re: My first game
« Reply #7 on: October 21, 2015, 04:27:01 AM »
its k