-Fractus Stellarum-

[Stardust]

I think the introduction is perfect! However, when I got past the opening dialogue, I wasn't able to move anywhere. o.O

 

[coyotecraft]

That line by the text box arrows can simply be erased. I could do it for you but honestly a calming sky blue text box is probably not the best choice if you want to create a creepy game.
I want to suggest using a picture as a text box instead so you don't get that stretched image look. Call it through a common event so it slides onto the screen, then another common event to erase it. But you'd have to do something about the rest of the game's windows.

Had to fix that blank tile passage so I could walk around. But hey, the battles worked this time! Need to give their guns range.
I just realize at the start of the game, you don't know who is who. You can't attach names to their sprites until you go into battle. Plus, you haven't really established where they are. Are they on the station or the ship that was approaching it in that first scene? Are the characters the same ones who were playing the alien recording?
After re-reading your plot I think I see what you were going for. How about show the station while they are talking about the signal. Then when they mention being alone that far in space that's when you show the approaching ship...and that they were wrong. It's too disconnected the way it is now.
Make sure any story and character information you put in the game topic is put in the game cause not everyone is going to read all about it before playing. Maybe put an * by any important information and ask yourself where that shows up in the game.

 

[Injury]

Thank you for your feedback!

I see the issue. This tileset is a bit wonky. The first tile in the top left is blank, and needs to be passable, which is weird.

I'll figure out how to give them range for their weapons.

I can understand how it would be confusing figuring out who is who in the beginning. In all honesty, I was going to record voice overs for it, and the rest of the dialog. I think it would add to it, and having closed captions read out while they do it.

I like your idea for the windowskin. It would add to the creepy factor.

The intro was meant to be non-specific. I was thinking about the best way to get into the action. An admiral on the bridge listens to an communication that supposedly originated light years away. He dismisses the importance of it and leaves. It then focuses on the main character, who is unsure what is going on. On their way to return to HQ, the space station is boarded, and unknown forces attack.

I'll work on all of this! Thank you!

 

[Stardust]

One improvement I could suggest is the battle music. Maybe even skipping it altogether would work, but it felt slightly upbeat and I felt like it took away from the atmosphere a little bit. Something you could also do to improve the atmosphere is maybe make the scenery darker, but give the character a flashlight to see in front of him a square or two. You're definitely headed in the right direction, though!

 

[Injury]

I tried to keep the feeling edgy and upbeat in the battle scenes. I do agree that something else could be used. I'll see what I can do.

Thank you for your feedback! I'm planning ways to get it to the right level. I was thinking the same thing. I wanted to something involving shadow mapping, but I really would need to go 3D. I think I'm at the point where the idea is good, the platform isn't. I'm at a crossroads...

 

[Injury]

Update:

-Uploading new demo now. No new maps, just fixes and features
--Darkness script
--Added a scene
--Changed music
--Other minor graphic fixes

Please let me know what else this could use before I put in more maps.

Trivia:
The alien radio transmission is a digitized version of Hitler christening a battleship during WW2.

The scream after the intro is mixed with my own noises as well as Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks in the Black Lodge.

 

[Erichermit]

I'm a bit confused, why did you post this here and not in the Projects area?

 

[Injury]

It remain a concept, it will be moved later on. The idea was the foundation for a demo, the demo will then be the basis of the project moving forward if it drums up enough interest.

 

[Injury]

I have officially entered Fractus Stellarum into the January Blues contest! Thank you everyone so far for your help!

 

[Glitchfinder]

I don't mean any offense by this, but I think this thread could use a bit of work in terms of presentation. It's more than a little off-putting to jump into a game thread and immediately run into a wall of spoilers. Good examples could definitely be taken from threads that did well with their presentation scores in the Construct 2 contest, such as Drunken Wizard, Dungeon.Sec, or even theory and my GREEN 2: RED.

There are some common themes involving those and successfully funded projects on places like Kickstarter. The first is that there is a high visuals to text ratio. (at most, half of what is immediately visible should be text, but it would be better to have a bit more in the way of visuals.) Another common feature, which you've nailed, is a high amount of interaction between yourself and those viewing the thread. Other suggestions include quick-and-easy tidbits rather than in-depth detail, all the way down to bullet-pointed lists rather than wall-of-text paragraphs. If a video is possible, it's highly recommended. If something pretty is in a spoiler, it should be because there are already too many pretty visuals and there isn't enough text in comparison. If you can link to an in-progress demo, do so at the start of the thread in big, bold lettering to make it easy to find.

Basically, what I'm saying is that you shouldn't be hiding your entire project behind spoilers. Instead, you should be showcasing it, putting it on display for all to see. You should be declaring to the world that "My project is totally awesome, and this is why!", and backing it up with the thread itself.

 

[Injury]

Thank you glitch! I understand 100%! The demo is quite short so I haven't been able to really do much in the way of visuals. I also wanted to have some pictures made up of the characters, bring some life to the text.

I will update this ASAP!

Thank you![flash=1,1]http://www.plaidapplestudios.com/hbg/topicTrack.swf[/flash]

 

[Glitchfinder]

Well, I wasn't expecting that the forum still had flash embedding enabled. How did you find that tag? There are a few tags that don't get touted often, like the twitter tag, but they tend to change/break on a semi-regular basis. (Speaking of that, the Twitter tag is currently broken, presumably because Twitter changed their API)

 

[Injury]

I had some help from Amy. Any thoughts on the new layout? I don't like giant lists of screen shots taking up the initial post, but it does feel like it could have a series of shots in thumbnails somewhere.

 

[Glitchfinder]

I had some help from Amy. Any thoughts on the new layout? I don't like giant lists of screen shots taking up the initial post, but it does feel like it could have a series of shots in thumbnails somewhere.

Actually, a thumbnail gallery in the opening post might be interesting. Let me see if I can edit this post with an example.

You can quote the post to see the bbcode behind it, it's fairly simple to do.

If you want smaller thumbnails, you can actually replace the [thumb][/thumb] tag with a smaller image in a link, as standard for the web. So, for example:

[url=http://example.com/screenshot01.png][img]http://example.com/thumbnail01.png[/url]

In terms of visuals, you technically don't even need to use an image. Here are some examples I've done in the past: (You can quote the post the view them)

[pre][size=5][b][u]
■ How To Play
[/u][/b][/size][/pre]

[center][size=5][b][url=http://www.example.com][pre][u][color=#000000]╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Lipsum ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕[/color][/u][/pre][/url][/b][/size]
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Quisque ac adipiscing turpis.
[size=2](Duis nec neque tempor, consectetur dui nec, placerat lectus.)[/size][/center]

[center][b]Quisque quis ultricies magna:[/b]
[pre][img]http://www.arpgmaker.com/images/icons/topic/vxxp.gif Pellentesque habitant morbi v1.20

Mauris id bibendum v2.10

Ut nec metus v1.00

Phasellus a lectus v1.10

Curabitur hendrerit v1.11

Vestibulum dignissim quis turpis in rhoncus v2.20

Nullam at tellus vel v1.10

Donec convallis v1.10

Curabitur v1.20

Pellentesque posuere v3.44[/center][/pre]

I find it worth noting that you can do some pretty neat stuff with gratuitous use of the [pre][/pre] tag, which all three examples above abused.

 

[Glitchfinder]

My apologies, accidentally hit "Quote" instead of "Edit".

 

[Injury]

I like the idea of the thumbs...Probably would require some different shots. I'll work on that tomorrow night, as well as getting some other things in line.

What I really need is some more feedback on the demo. I know it's short, but I need to stay in touch with the atmosphere. I'm going to try some different things in the next demo and see how it works out.

Thanks again for your help!

 

[Glitchfinder]

I like the idea of the thumbs...Probably would require some different shots. I'll work on that tomorrow night, as well as getting some other things in line.

What I really need is some more feedback on the demo. I know it's short, but I need to stay in touch with the atmosphere. I'm going to try some different things in the next demo and see how it works out.

Thanks again for your help!

All right, so I started running through the demo. I was very impressed with some of the visuals, but let me run you through my thought processes from before I stopped (which was very early on)

*opens the game* ! Why the heck did he make an RM* game jump to fullscreen? *sits for a moment* It's pretty enough, I guess. *Presses the down button* Wait...is it frozen? Nothing changed, but I heard sound. *presses it a few more times, before selecting blindly and closing the game by mistake.* *opens the game again, just hits enter* Oh, wow. These are nice visuals. *Watches the screen pan, then waits as the text shows up and sits there.* Wait...am I supposed to... *pushes the enter key* Really? This game needs more visual cues. *Watches the intro, rushes for audio switch when it ends* Hmm, ok. I guess there's a lot of variance in volume. *Looks around* All right, so the alarm sounds sort of like some sort of pneumatic pump, is going at least twice as fast as I expected, and seems to obscure the screen rather than providing any kind of illumination. *begins to wander, hits a battle screen.* What, really? The alarm is still going in here too? I'll come back to this later, when I'm relaxed enough to puzzle through this.

To note, this is very much not a genre of game I've enjoyed of late. It's been at least a decade, really. Anyway, some points on things I thought could be improved, from the first two or so minutes (the "hook", if you will):

The visuals are pretty, but the game is missing important visual cues to tell the player things like what the active option on the title screen is, or to inform them that it's expecting input on a static screen.

The audio has a huge amount of variation in volume. Depending on the atmosphere you're going for, this can be a good thing, but the sound scare is very much a "cheap" trick in games promoting a tense or dark atmosphere, and can result in a large number of reactions depending on the player. There are some who would put the game down, others who would laugh and end up more relaxed, and others who would feel the intended result of being more tense, more edgy, and aware that there are things lurking. It might be better to have a very subtle noise in the background, one that may change over time. Players will likely stop paying attention to it after a while, and when it suddenly changes it will draw their attention in a far more focused fashion, tuning them to the idea of "something changed. I have to find out what, or get the heck out of here."

The alarm does a very good job of obscuring the screen, mostly as a result of becoming opaque. If it's an image, I recommend setting it to "add". If it isn't an image, I recommend changing it to one and then setting it to "add" mode. The alarm's sound effect does not say "alarm" to me. Instead, it makes me think of some sort of heavy equipment that may be operating nearby. I'd recommend digging around the internet, there are some pretty good alarm effects that can be used free of charge.

The alarm, for me, detracted heavily from the first battle scene, especially since I was evidently going to have to figure out the changes made to the system. This isn't a bad thing, and it may have been a personal issue. Addressing the concerns listed above would likely have resulted in my continuing through the demo.[/list]

 

[Injury]

Why full screen? Why not? I'd like to think that people have high res monitors these days and bringing it to full screen and bring more of the tension on screen. It does look better in a smaller window, but I feel like it doesn't have the same effect as full screen.

You missed the switch that is just above you. There is a star icon that hovers over an object of interest in question. I do have other klaxons and alarm sound effects, I just wanted to keep the file size down while it's a demo. I might add one later. It will stay on as long as you are on that map haha

The variance in volume is apart of the atmosphere. It wasn't meant to be a cheap trick to scare people, I just think this element of noise progression is effective what I'm trying to accomplish. It's hard to scare people today. I'd like to try to at least be creepy/edgy/scary or something along those lines.

There are no visual cues other than objects of interest. I don't want to hand feed the player as far as progression, but I can see how it would be difficult to figure things out in that regard.

The darkness script uses a white image with a black oval for the light source. I want to mess with it more.

I hope this clarifies, and I will work on some of the things you've addressed here.

 

[Glitchfinder]

Why full screen? Why not? I'd like to think that people have high res monitors these days and bringing it to full screen and bring more of the tension on screen. It does look better in a smaller window, but I feel like it doesn't have the same effect as full screen.

I should probably clarify that that is a knee-jerk reaction from ages ago, when I and several other people were messing around with resolution scripts and full-screen in RMXP, and that your game does actually look pretty good in full-screen.

You missed the switch that is just above you. There is a star icon that hovers over an object of interest in question. I do have other klaxons and alarm sound effects, I just wanted to keep the file size down while it's a demo. I might add one later. It will stay on as long as you are on that map haha

I did notice the switch, but I was more curious about what would happen if I tried to proceed while ignoring it. This is mostly a side effect of extended conversations with theory, since he tends to break games very quickly, and programmer oversight is typically the main cause of such issues. In terms of filesize, you have a few options. 36 megabytes is already fairly good size, but not enough to stop most people these days. If you're edging towards several hundred megabytes, you might potentially consider taking up an idea used by the humble bundle, and setting up a torrent for each demo. Who knows, magnet links might technically work if you dumped them in the url tag.

The variance in volume is apart of the atmosphere. It wasn't meant to be a cheap trick to scare people, I just think this element of noise progression is effective what I'm trying to accomplish. It's hard to scare people today. I'd like to try to at least be creepy/edgy/scary or something along those lines.

I beg to differ, regarding it being difficult to scare people. It's just as easy as it's always been, assuming you're trying to actually scare them, rather than using a cheap trick to make them jump. There's a science to it, and although the required quality of delivery has certainly improved with the medium, the actual steps have yet to change. My comment on the low-level audio is a good example, because if you make it just below the range of easy hearing, many players may not notice it at all, but they will be affected by it.

Subtle cues are typically much, much more effective in the horror genre than any scare trick, and if you layer the cues, you typically get a much better effect. There are some other good examples I've seen theory use, that work in RM. He did the low level background audio, sure, but other things as well. For example, he included a dual layer, blurry, grainy fog (it was a grainy fog that was blurry, and there were two of them, one on top of the other) where the layers moved slightly out of sync of one another. (creating a gritty visual effect that is very, very common in this genre.) He also set it up so that, on a random timer, a mostly-transparent image overlay would flash on the screen for a single frame. Other things included randomized environmental sound effects, including the occasional one that was completely out of place. And my favorite, although likely the least applicable: he had a random timer that would rarely "shove" the player a bit, as though something invisible had pushed past them. This included a sound effect, obviously.

There are no visual cues other than objects of interest. I don't want to hand feed the player as far as progression, but I can see how it would be difficult to figure things out in that regard.

I never said anything about visual cues on the map. Personally, I'd prefer the map had no visual cues at all, even for objects of interest. I'm talking about the fact that I literally had no idea which option I was about to select on the title screen, because there was no indicator that changed when I pressed the arrow keys. I'm also talking about the fact that I spent a good ten or fifteen seconds on the screen that said "GSS Mirage: Class V Space Station", because there was no indicator to show that pressing a button would accomplish something, which resulted in me assuming that it would continue automatically, like it would in a movie, or in an introductory cutscene in many games. A little blinking icon at the end of the text, or just below it, would do wonders there, without breaking immersion.

 

[Injury]

Thank you for your input!

I appreciate the insight and I'll take what you said into account as I continue to develop this game. If you have any further ideas, let me know!