   First game done!
  After slaving away at this game for the past month, me and my team have completed an alpha release of our game! I'd like to share it with everyone and get some feedback. You can download our game here: Gladmoor (20.5 Mb)We were a bit too ambitious with our game design (I'll take all the blame). We had to make a lot of cuts to the features in order to deliver it on schedule, but it has come together quite nicely. I'm going to keep working on this over the summer with my team, but the work schedule isn't going to be as slavish.The game takes place in a cartoonish but dark fantasy land where a magician managed to turn himself into a "lych" in his pursuit of immortality. Unfortunately, the transmogrification spell didn't work out quite as planned, so the lych was lying in a dormant state for thousands of years, too weak to move. Then, someone somewhere, made a dark wish which was the catalyst for completing the resurrection spell. But, the land was full of goodness and light, which the lych had grown averse to during his slumber. His magic book of incantations was torn apart, and in order for the lych to exist in the world, he has to cast a spell of eternal darkness upon the land. Well, you can read the full story in the game. (I had to truncate the story a bit because most people aren't interested in pages of text)The object of the game is to navigate past obstacles in order to find the missing pages from the book of darkness. The lych has spells at his disposal which manipulate the environment in ways which solve the problems he's confronted with. One of the only design requirements was that the game "Can't be violent!", so we've done our best to avoid that by focusing on solving puzzles instead of blowing up enemies.The game was developed in C# using XNA Gamestudio 3.0 for the PC platform. The art and a lot of the programming was done by Kate (our team superstar), the user interfaces and music was done by Jayson, and I did the game mechanics and particle system effects. The game is going to be open sourced to any other developers who feel like committing some time and effort to contribute to this. Let me know if you'd be interested.Anyways, take a look at the game and let me know what you think about it so far and if you have any ideas/suggestions for it, I'd love to hear & consider them.Cheers,[Edited by - slayemin on June 10, 2009 6:36:47 AM]
  Screenshots?   ;;  I'm not sure what kind of feedback you're looking for.  The game is clearly not finished.  The UI system is really frustrating.  It is not clear what your spells do (I figured the white pushy thing out by accident).  I'm not even sure there's more than one puzzle.  I get stopped at the lake and I'm not going to spend 10 minutes randomly clicking to try and figure out if there's more.  Your collision detection going left is also missing.Also, why does it take so long to load at the beginning?The graphics and particles are nice....but I'd rather play a crappy looking game that I can figure out.   ;Quote:Original post by ChurchSkizI'm not sure what kind of feedback you're looking for.  The game is clearly not finished.  The UI system is really frustrating.  It is not clear what your spells do (I figured the white pushy thing out by accident).  I'm not even sure there's more than one puzzle.  I get stopped at the lake and I'm not going to spend 10 minutes randomly clicking to try and figure out if there's more.  Your collision detection going left is also missing.Also, why does it take so long to load at the beginning?The graphics and particles are nice....but I'd rather play a crappy looking game that I can figure out.Okay, thanks. I'll make the spell selection more obvious. Did you find the left-right movement of the targeting cursor to be frustrating or was it just the lack of information?;Quote:Original post by slayeminOkay, thanks. I'll make the spell selection more obvious. Did you find the left-right movement of the targeting cursor to be frustrating or was it just the lack of information?Both.  I was referring specifically to the "targetting" system though.  Trying to do fine movements results in the reticle going to the other side of the character.  You could probably fix it by adjusting the sensitivity.;  Does not even launch on Win7.Just sayin!Edit: I have an nvidia quattro, not sure if that's more helpful information >.<   ;  Big congrats on getting your first game done. That's way more than many people ever manage. Now you just need to spend the next 8 years getting the damn thing to work right on all the PCs out there ;)   ;Quote:Original post by catchDoes not even launch on Win7.Just sayin!Edit: I have an nvidia quattro, not sure if that's more helpful information >.<Windows7??? Oh man... I'm about 6 years behind on the latest OS (I'm running WinXP). I suppose I'll have to get a few other popular OS's and see what we need to do to make sure the game is supported on them. Now, if only I could land some sweet hookup from Microsoft to get copies of their OS for super cheap...academic alliance maybe? They should have a 'developer alliance' too!   ;Quote:Original post by slayeminQuote:Original post by catchDoes not even launch on Win7.Just sayin!Edit: I have an nvidia quattro, not sure if that's more helpful information >.<Windows7??? Oh man... I'm about 6 years behind on the latest OS (I'm running WinXP). I suppose I'll have to get a few other popular OS's and see what we need to do to make sure the game is supported on them. Now, if only I could land some sweet hookup from Microsoft to get copies of their OS for super cheap...academic alliance maybe? They should have a 'developer alliance' too!If your school has msdnaa (afaik most reasonably sized schools in NA do) then you will most likely have easy access through it to get the Win7 beta and a boatload of copies of vista business editions for the very purpose you seek them.PS: it didn't run at all on my laptop, which has the latest stable release of DX & .net, but has a super-junk intel integrated video chip.PPS:  by didn't run at all, I mean it crashed before it even created a window or attempted fullscreen mode.  "Do you want to report this error to microsoft?"   