View Full Version : GDC3: Hyper Knights VS Ultra Ghouls
BlackShipsFillt
02-11-2011, 02:42 PM
http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/HyperKnights/HyperKnightsLogo.png
Hyper Knights!
Filip Orekhov and I are making a little game for Game Development Competition 3.
It's kind of like a twitchy Castle Crashers, with low health, playing DOTA. The Hyper Knights (who are goodie but still kick-ass) and the Ultra Ghouls (who are scary and also kick-ass). (I'm in love with 0space so the twitchiness factor was rather high)
As of Novermber 30 here is the program. It does not come with a tutorial or settings or anything, it's best played with four XBox controllers: http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/HyperKnights/HyperKnights_Windows_Build_30_November.zip
Here is a little work-in-progress of some characters. They are VERY early in design... we're still deciding on a direction for the art (although it will be pixel art).
http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/HyperKnights/Knights_02(show).png
The game will be four player team vs. One team playing the Hyper Knights and one team playing the Ultra Ghouls. Both teams will have a stream of minions pouring out of their respective castles. The objective is to get your minions to enter the castle on the other side. The arena will be small so round times will be really short. Dying results in respawning. Characters don't level up, but harvesting enemy minions, or performing special character-based tasks, fills up your energy bar which you can use for special abilities.
Things we would like to do to fit the criteria of the comp:
Develop a selection of characters (at first they will be just colour shifted versions of the same thing).
Make the characters use different powers that better fit their themes. The ghouls cripple, raise corpses, or eat corpses to restore health or create poison the earth effects. While the Knights learn advanced team attacks, heal, resurrect and clear poison the earth effects.
I will update this post as we do stuff for this.
[UPDATE!]
Here's the progress on the playable bit: http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/HyperKnights/WebPlayer.html
(it's up down left right and P, [ for player1 and WASD and ZX for player 2... It's still not a game, I'm just getting the sandbox going)
The music playing is by Eero Johannes. I don't have rights to it. I will be replacing the music with something custom tomorrow or the next day. I'm just trying to establish a style at the moment.
[UPDATE!][UPDATE!]
Here is the game as of November 30. It is best played with four XBox controllers. There is no help, I'm posting some info now (in one of the later posts), but eventually the game will be better explained and better eased into. http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/HyperKnights/HyperKnights_Windows_Build_30_November.zip
How will you lay out the "world map" so to speak? Will you include smaller areas for doing things outside of the main battlefield? (Creep camps that spawn random creeps to kill to gain buffs?)
I like the art style, and cant wait to play this.
BlackShipsFillt
02-11-2011, 03:56 PM
It'll be very tight and small... perhaps even one single screen... The idea is that in one play session players should play through multiple battles, and there would be lots of secondary goals, like if your side doesn't win you can still be the player with the most kills, or most deaths. If each match is under 5 minutes this should be possible.
What I don't want is that thing DOTA has where players grow powerful over time and quite often 15 minutes before the end one side has already lost. I want losing to be quick and painless with lots of possibilities for players to set their own meta game challenges.
We'll probably make most of the game on one of these November weekends. A lot of the complicated things I'm talking about may not make it in during this challenge (this month is crazy busy for me), but I LOVE to think ahead.
filiporekhov
04-11-2011, 05:22 PM
Looking forward to doing this game with Evan! (Mega awesome skillz of doom)
Should have some more sprites posted tomorrow :D
filiporekhov
05-11-2011, 10:25 PM
Some more concept sprites! Lots more left to do...
http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/5852/heroeslight01.png
BlackShipsFillt
08-11-2011, 05:32 PM
Hey... I did a version of Filip's chracters (in my style)...
http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/kickyfighter/Heroes_Light_(e)2.png
And Filip countered with an adjustment. (Which is the style we're going to go with I believe)
http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/kickyfighter/Heroes_03(big).png
BlackShipsFillt
27-11-2011, 05:43 AM
Okay... So we've got the first vestiges of the programmery part of the game going...
So far it's just a battle simulation (nothing interactive), a whole lot of knights run at each other and try to kill each other and leave bits of knight juice on the ground. If you have the time please have a look and let us know how horribly it abuses your computer (probably pretty horribly I'm expecting, there's bound to be a jitter every 1 second on slower machines as it tries to fix memory leaks).
Next step is making something playable! YAY!
[edited]
It runs fine on my PC, though blue seems to be overpowering yellow very well on my PC. Did you use the Unity extension you posted about not so long ago?
01DT!m3r
27-11-2011, 10:44 PM
It ran fine on mine as well,but I had the opposite.Yellow overpowered the blue after a while.
BlackShipsFillt
28-11-2011, 01:25 AM
Thanks for trying it out (it runs much slower in the editor, so I was worried)
Here's the latest progress on the playable bit: http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/HyperKnights/WebPlayer.html
(it's up down left right and P, [ for player1 and WASD and ZX for player 2... It's still not a game, I'm just getting the sandbox going)
The music playing is by Eero Johannes. I don't have rights to it. I will be replacing the music with something custom tomorrow or the next day. I'm just trying to establish a style at the moment.
The players are generic at the moment. I'm going to add some powers next.
I've started getting the ghouls vs knights flavor. Well the ghouls at least. The ghouls are a bit more chaotic and self destructive. Next I'm going to add some archers onto the Knights side, which should make them feel like a more structured more skillful force.
There is still no win condition or scoring, and a bunch of other stuff. I think it's getting "fun" to mess around with, but it still feels hollow and pointless. Getting there.
BlackShipsFillt
30-11-2011, 02:33 AM
I've updated it again... You can pick things up, and there are some sort of special moves.
There is a glitch where the character flies off screen when you are too eager with the picking up and throwing (technically I think you can pick yourself up and catapult out the screen... it's dumb, but it's late and I need some rest)
BlackShipsFillt
01-12-2011, 12:36 AM
New Update!
Here's a windows build. The reason why this is a build and not a web player is it uses 4 XBox controllers (which require a dll).
http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/HyperKnights/HyperKnights_Windows_Build_30_November.zip
Basically: The object is to overrun the other side.
Less Basically: The four buttons attack, pickup, throw and use specials respectively. Attacking towards whatever is attacking you keeps you safe. Jumping on enemys' heads hurts them and is also fun.
Evan less basically: The Golden Knight heals nearby knights and gains energy from nearby knights slaying enemies which allows him to unleash a wave of energy. The Purple Knight gains energy through killing things and can use its energy to summon minions. The Blue Archer fires arrows and can double jump and gains energy from jumping on enemy heads and can use energy to clone himself (weird right?). The Castle-Headed soldier can teleport-dash instead of jump and gains energy by killing other players. The Castle-Headed soldier can use energy to teleport behind enemy heroes.
Higushi
01-12-2011, 01:06 PM
Hey I gave your latest release a try, but I'm only getting Unity's trademark bluescreen (after the unity logo shows up)...
I don't have an XBox controller, let alone 4. Is this somehow required for the game to start? I'm attempting playing with just the keyboard. I see you've mapped secondary input to the keyboard, so I'm thinking this shouldn't be happening.. Let me know if there is something I should do before just running the exe.
Really digging the look of the sprites, btw. :)
Edit:
I gave your web version a try. Very cool stuff. The Castle Crashers influence is strong, but that's awesome, because I love Castle Crashers. The animations and the graphics really work well together... I almost can't find anything to criticise, besides there being an actual end to the battle (although I'm sure you just haven't put it in yet), and the controls were rather awkward using WASD for movement and having Z, X and C as action keys - it just doesn't work so good. I know you're developing for use with an XBox controller, but give us keyboard fellas some love too. ;)
Very keen to see where this is heading.
BlackShipsFillt
02-12-2011, 11:59 AM
Monkey Balls! (thanks Higushi)
Okay, I've fixed it (I managed to build it with just an empty scene in my hurry to demo it at the community night). It's the same version that was played at the community night.
I'm going to eventually make it that the keys can be customized. Right now I'm keen to get the gameplay good, but I'll put some love into the keyboards soon :)
I got some great feedback (from people playing it). Loosely as follows:
The heroes should be fractionally larger (to be more recognizable) (thanks Disleksia)
And probably more cleverly color coded (or at least the minions should be duller)
And the scene could be a lot less noisy (The blood is a bit hectic, perhaps is could blur with footsteps)
The hero respawn should be highlighted nicely. (and the heroes should be briefly invulnerable at the start)
There should be a line denoting where the battle is raging, or least who it is favoring. (Thanks Ruan)
And there should be lines following each character (these can be displayed at the top of the screen)
Hero respawn time should be affected by where they die (if they die in their half they take longer) (Thanks Aequitas)
And a variety of things should be affected by where they happen. Like some abilities. Like minion spawn rates (maybe) (Thanks Aequitas)
There should be terrain types, that divide up the map. Like a river in the middle of the map that slows down most characters. (Thanks Aequitas)
Other terrains could be interesting. A spikes terrain that mustn't be jumped on. A dirt terrain that allows sand to be thrown in enemy eyes. A lava terrain that mustn't be hung out on and allows lava balls to be picked up and thrown.
There should be some kind of longer build up to something particularly devastating that can be hoarded and strategically used to turn the tide. (Thanks Nandrew)
It is too easy to form a stale mate. Getting minions over the enemy side needs to increase pressure. Having angry minions spawn from your side like in Super Crate Box would help.
There could be some kind of leveling up. It would be nice to feel more DOTA-like. Perhaps coupled with a progression of violence from the minions. Am not sure how to achieve this.
Cave Trolls (Thanks Jarred)
The archer is thematically broken at the moment. Jumping on enemy heads is not suitable for his play style. There should be a separate jumpy hero class. (Thanks Richard)
The assassin needs to be a bit more useful.
The golden knight's glory wave needs to be more epic (or perhaps scale with level)
Who is who on the HUD needs to be clear.
The throwing should be more friendly. Right now you can damage allies by throwing them. (Thanks Richard)
The throwing should look cooler.
There still needs to be terrain objects that can be used or thrown or something. (Thanks Filip)
The game is fun. (THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO PLAYED)
http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/HyperKnights/HyperKnightsScreenShot3.png
BlackShipsFillt
08-12-2011, 05:27 PM
More feedback:
Instead of longer respawn times for players when they're sucking. Players who are doing well should be rewarded, with health boosts or power boosts or something... Kind of like the way Counterstrike does momentum. (Thanks Fuzzy!)
BlackShipsFillt
08-02-2012, 09:49 AM
Had a play of this this last weekend... The slightly adjusted graphics make it a lot easier to read.
A few things have changed: notably there is camera shake and explosions now, the special effects look more special, the heroes are better balanced (though the purple knight still has the best winning strategy), and there is still plenty of mashing.
http://www.blackshipsfillthesky.com/HyperKnights/ScreenShot_Progress.png
You need to still give me your contact details, seeing as you dont reply to the PM. (to get your book)
BlackShipsFillt
10-02-2012, 09:59 AM
Oh crap! Replying now.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.4 Copyright © 2019 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.