If you miss entirely, you should fall down a peg and lose stamina. If you barely hit it, you should lose stamina, and if you get it perfect, you should shrink the sway, and slow down the next climbing spot, making it easier to hit. And just getting it in the circle, but not perfect should use no stamina. Running out of stamina on a climbing route should make you fall back down, gaining a little corruption (iirc, that's how your health system works?), and making you have to retry it. Climbing skill should make climbing easier, shrinking the sway and slowing it down, and then you can have route difficulties where harder ones move faster or have bigger left/right sways of the reticule, making it harder to land on the target. This would mean someone who's got the skill to play the Minigame can still do hard climbing routes, but has a higher chance of failing. This is just my thoughts.
I really agree with all of this. I keep coming back to Skyrim's lock picking - I like how I can still attempt Master locks at level 1 but expect to fail pretty regularly. I've dropped all this into my dev board and will start thinking about it!
Just wanted to say that I've been slowly catching up on this entire playlist for about a month now and finally reached the "end". Really love the way you present your content and how you take us through your thought process and journey in and around development here. Excited for more and wish you the best!
It would be neat later in the game to drop a rope in areas youve climbed previously for faster traversal. Especially if you have to backtrack, it could be an interesting tradeoff to skip the xp gains in favor of faster climb/descent.
Here’s a fun idea for climbing: instead of the circle moving horizontally, have it move in a line from the player to the hold, so the visual is unique for each hold and keeps the player paying attention
I dig this! It could also be more clear on a complicated route which direction the player will be heading next. Feel like this shouldn't be too hard to do.
This is a great idea ESPECIALLY if there's a rope-climbing animation. This way it doesn't feel like a video-gamey "fast travel," but still rewards you for finding/making/buying the rope.
I have a cool idea. When you have your inventory/notebook open you could apply a Gaussian blur to the pixel background, and then pixelate it again. Or you could experiment with some other dither effects. But I think that would suit the pixelated style very well and it would be a cool effect. You could even have a short animation of a few frames when you open it which goes from no blur, to high blur very quickly, while keeping things pixelated. Pretty sure you could implement this as a shader, so it should be fast as well.
I've stayed quiet for the last 3 years I've been following this project but I must say, this project is looking better and better every time I pop in. Can't wait to see the future of this game. Well done and thank you for the dev logs, I would watch these early in the mornings while trying to wake up in my first period class throughout high school. Now that I'm graduated these videos are kinda nostalgic to me now. 😅
I haven't really had the time recently to watch any TH-cam or anything at all really. So when I finally had some time and I saw that you had uploaded my day got way better! Love your stuff and please continue doing what you are doing!
Okay actually watched it! Brilliant video Ben thanks! Literally the game has gone from interesting because it’s well presented to actually looking fun, love the implementation of the skills etc (and RuneScape inspired aspects haha excellent gameplay loop!). Not sure if you’ll read this but as a real life climber I think it would be cool if you would ‘slip back’ rather than fall to the ground and you could add a simple rope perhaps? That way the route unlocks but you still have a gameplay challenge and while traversing isn’t the core gameplay since climbing is its own skill there’s no reason longer routes can’t be more involved and later maybe allow unlocking quick routes or something? Finally abseiling, or similar to get down would make sense, or once you hook into a route and complete it the first time you can traverse it much more quickly with the SPACE to climb method? Just a few thoughts, really really love that idea though seriously :D Glad you’re back! :)
Hi Ben! Long time no see! Glad to see that Dauphin is getting better and better, don't give up, you're one of my biggest inspirations to finish my project
Your mention of trash on the island made me think of the organization Precious Plastic They've done projects setting up micro-recycling locations in places like the Maldives (which don't have centralized recycling), and they use this to convert the plastic trash into useful products Could be really cool to have a crafting system converting trash into items that you can use later, and use your game to spread awareness for the cause :)
I like the idea of not being able to make it up if you miss too many times. Sort of like Zelda where you run out of stamina and don’t make it up the mtn. Perhaps in the future, more challenging and valuable climbs will have harder accuracy holds so you really have to work for it to make it up.
Hello! Nice video as always. a little thought: i think makes more sense to let the player forage corrupted entities, but doing so can have some negative effects on the player, or weapon damage, or droping less items. I think just stop the player form foraging corrupted itens it's too abrupt. giving them the choice (maybe they need really bad the item, even with negative consequences) is a better option. Good luck with your project!
Never considered this - maybe just as simple as having the player take "corruption damage" when harvesting from a corrupted organism. Thanks for the idea!
Would be cool for the climbing route I think if the only punishment is the time it takes to climb the wall, even keeping the current xp mechanic, but if you get a perfect accuracy check the jump animation is 2x fast, conversely a bad check is slower. Keeps the game accessible for everyone by not barring areas for a failed skill check, but also as the game goes on and people need to move around more and more climbing areas, there is a great reward in getting from point a to point b possibly even twice as fast. Great video, looking forward to seeing what happens next :)
I think whether you pursue positive reinforcement only vs punishing players for mistakes really depends on what sort of tone you want the game to have overall. The general vibe I get so far personally would say go for the bonus XP option and allow the player to succeed 100% of the time, but there's definitely a contingent of gamers out there who really dislike when a game is too lenient in that regard. Maybe consider other mechanics that have/will have some sort of skill check and think about what those would look like with or without similar bonus vs fail options. Is there a more obvious answer in those cases? And either way, does it actually make sense for all similar mechanics in the game to follow the same approach or does variety make more sense?
I really like the climbing system. I really like the no negative feedback for failing. rather positive feedback for succeeding. it makes it less punishing and more accessible. The only thing i could see is that since the total xp is so much greater than the small climb hold xp spamming space would probably be faster if you just went up and down. A possible solution is that final xp could be calculated based on a combo. an example: 5 hold climb you get in order( perfect, perfect, good, fail, good) 2+2+1 = bonus 5 xp because that was the largest combo during the climb. something like that
Given the direction of the game, I feel like system for climbing with no actual failure could work. Maybe a system where the better you do, the faster things go, so really skilled players can blast through the climbing super fast. Especially if people are gonna go back and forth a lot, getting caught up in tedious travel can really bog a game down so having a high skill ceiling that lets players traverse quickly could work in the games favor! Looks like it'll be a cool feature either way!
My first idea for a way to jump to the next node was a simple key match reaction command; after pressing space, the player launchs to the next node while getting a command to Q, W, or E. If they miss they drop or something. You could make it easier by using less options and harder using more options (A,S,D,Z,X,C). That would also make climbing faster for skilled players and slower for new players.
If you're worried about controller support, you could limit it to no more than 6-8 options. But the default Q, W, E, & Space would map to a standard controller's buttons.
Great update as always Ben! My thoughts for the climbing part depend heavily on how much Climbing there actually is in the game flow. If you need to Climb to unlock new areas and rarely have to backtrack, might be nice to punish the player for failing a couple times and fall back down. But, if you regularly climb to go to different areas in a short amount of time, I feel like allowing the player to just spam space to climb and not gain XP as punishment is better.
Love the climbing mini game! Suggestion: At lowest level player only can climb one notch up at a time (currently you go up several) as you level up you have the ability to skip notches making climbing quicker
Probably too late, but throwing it out there, for some of the more challenging climbs, having multiple moving targets for maybe a particularly difficult hold. Lots of great suggestions from everyone else here!
I think it could be good to use stamina for every check, and if you miss the check, you lose a bit of extra stamina and don't progress to the next hold. If the stamina runs out maybe you fall back down. I picture something similar to Legend of Zelda Breath Of The Wild. This game is coming along amazingly, thank you for sharing your journey and I can't wait to play it once it comes out!
Since climbing is usually more of a slow methodical process rather than a timing based activity, it might be cool to have some kind of puzzle element. I thought of this idea of making each climbing hold a node in a graph, then make the edges between each hold a value that represents how much energy/stamina it takes to get from one hold to another. So the puzzle is you have to find a route from the bottom to the top that doesn't use up all your stamina, sort of like a shortest path algorithm. And maybe the more stamina you expend without going over your limit, the more exp you gain
While climbing IRL not hitting a hold correctly means you either waste energy repositioning or you have a shakier foundation for the next step. I think having a stamina bar that constantly goes down (but gets upgraded with the skill), and goes down more if you mess up would work well.
Haha you made a rock climbing simulator, thats actually really sick! The player should definitely be able to fall, it makes good gameplay, more of a challenge to get to higher places, the more complex the route, the higher the route, the bigger the reward. It should be able to get difficult enough such that a beginner should not be able to climb every route based on skill alone. If you have no climbing skill, it should be so hard, near impossible to climb the hardest peak, but with time as your skill xp increases it should get easier and easier so you can explore more places.
Depending on how crazy you get here, it might be cool to have the player be able to choose between which foothold to grab onto next - allowing you to make different climbing routes that go to different areas, encouraging the player to really climb all over the mountain, since there could be hidden rewards in a long, offshoot path.
Wherever the player clicks for the accuracy check should be where the character jumps towards, and you have to catch yourself on the hold- that way, the closer the accuracy check is to the hold, the easier it is to catch the hold and advance. If you miss the accuracy check by a lot you could have no chance of catching the hold and fall back down.
14:57 Show oscilate vertically rather than horizontally. Rounding to the nearest climbing hole. That way theres also tangible reward for getting it right (plus xp for the tiny little nuances in accuracy). Aka you climb faster and earn more xp Just soft punishment and soft (actual) rewarding. No need to reset player progress from scratch as that would be waaay too annoying
Hey ! Nice to see you back :) Your video on animated water tiles was actually one of the very first tutorials I watched for my very first dev project, so it was kind of nostalgic seeing them again here. We're actually progressing at similar rates and it's kind of nice following along :). I was wondering! I put together some shader code to blur the game behind some of my ui with a mask shape. I could toss it your way if you want it for your hotbar :)
4:47 I think, instead of the game-stopping pop up, it would be better to make the players axe bounce off of the wood with some corruption sparks and lightning coming from the point of striking. That would be simpler, not require reading and instantly communicate the message that corrupted trees can't be destroyed with an axe. I've been out of the loop on your progress for a really long while now. I don't know if you can damage corrupted animals with an axe or pickaxe, but, if you can, then there could be confusion as to if corrupted animals are protected from whatever melee weapon is wielded
Some great progress and I like the play demo. I will say that while using a tool on a rock or tree and knocking off resources makes sense, the break loose then pick up mechanic on the rocks/sticks/trash on the ground looks very awkward. Maybe some kind of animation would convey that better, but it just looks like you drop everything you pick up the first time. Looks frustrating. To further that, once you knock a log off a tree you can pick that up right away, but a stick you just find on the ground you have to interact twice. I would drop that mechanic and just have you picking things up. On the climbing mechanic, I wouldn't have people fail to the bottom as they get close to the top, but not progressing for a miss or possibly falling back one hold for a miss would be good. Maybe an XP difference only for just being close but not perfect.
I like the oscillating climbing target mechanic, it adds a nice extra layer of skill! the way I see a climbing system is it could be made more interesting with some kind of stamina mechanic. something that refills/resets when your feet are on the ground, but depletes gradually with each climbing "step" the player makes. I think that would provide an opportunity for interesting progression where you can find permanent upgrades to how much stamina you have, allowing you to climb higher, unlocking new areas and providing another game loop! how the feathers work in the game A Short Hike, if you've played it, is a nice example of that I think. anyways, just an idea. it might not fit the overall view of your game.
I think it would be cool to have branching paths while climbing. Like a quick but hard one, or a slow but more reliable route. This could also make it so some secrets could be behind a hard climbing area. You could also make it so if your climbing level was high enough and you had climbed the route before you could just jump up it and not have to deal with timing.
An idea: let them pick maybe 1-3 holds high and each height makes the target smaller and faster, so if they take every single layer it is safer and easier but if they choose larger gaps it's harder
I love the progress with this game, looks amazing! But I think the island is now running out of room and it's beginning to look cramped. Have you thought about either making the island larger? Or create a second island for the player to explore? Amazing work so far!
hi devduck!, Daupin looks really cool!, do you have any sort of release date planned for it? because it looks like a lot of fun!, and is there a steam page for this yet? because I can't seem to find it in the description
Couple of ideas: I think that you should not be guaranteed to be able to make a climb - regardless of climbing level. Of course the result of not reaching the top is falling - which seems too extreme. So I would suggest to add rope to be able to climb larger walls. When I climb, there are two things that affect stamina: how long I am on the wall, and how much readjustment I need to do. With training you can hang longer on the wall, and have better technique so that you have to adjust less. So I would suppose that while climbing your stamina drains, but slower as you gain more experience. Then for each hold deplete an amount of stamina based on how accurately it was hit. Smaller holds should be harder to hit (crosshare is faster, less time over hold). I don't think that experience per sé should limit which routes you can start. However it could have a message like "You need rope for this climb" where roped climbing is a skill to unlock, or a general advice "You would likely fall if you attempt this route".
I think the crosshairs need to come from the outside towards the inside of the path so that you can synchronize all the jumps and since all move at the same speed and the same direction you can time your space presses so that they can be completeled super fast and satisfying
The tooltip idea is pretty cool looking, though I could envision it getting obnoxious after a while. Might be good to put it behind a delay of 2-3 seconds and have it animate in.
About that climbing: The choice is if your skillcheck is RPG based (character can-cannot), or skill based (player can-cannot) or both. That is to say, you should have some idea how much you want to involve the player in the game. Seeing that you have swimming minigames, fight mechanics, etc. I'd say that you want some player involvement. Therefore, I'd go with RPG system working as a difficulty, where the more skilled your character is, the easier it is for the player to perform, but it still is the player that must perform it. Falling down is a good failure state. Player looses some time, so it's good for "rushing, but carefully" mindset and it's also not a "game over" which breaks immersion. The mechanic itself, I'd like something more involved, maybe actually pointing to the next point, with some cursor shake as my stamina goes down, or something like that? So I'd be forced to move fast (the longer I take, the harder it gets) and I'd have to be careful (as to not fall). Add to it the stamina related to the skill check and you can have a very nice system indeed. All of this is just a food for thought, not necessarily a concrete tip. It should just illustrate the difference with your system, where can/cannot climb is purely a skillcheck and then there is a boring (sorry) wait for the cursor to reach the destination. If it's very easy to do, it's tedious, It's just a busywork. You can either have a full on RPG system (so basically an animation climbing up, when you can), or an involved system, in which there should be a room to differentiate between good and bad players. (They don't need to be 'punished', mind you, they just need to feel that there is a room to grow).
The grading could be determined by a combination of length of the route, and diffculty of the holds/moves. Each hold has a cost of stamina. On difficult hold, the crosshair could move faster, or at random. The better your move, the less stamina you lose on each hold, thus enabling you to climb longer routes. When leveling up your climbing skill, each move will cost you less stamina, and the moves themselves get easier, as in the crosshair moves slower.
hey, it would be really cool if you could somehow make it so that getting rid of the trash requires some management, meaning that you need to seperate between the different types of trash and shipping it to the garbage dump costs money and becuase of that you have to fund the thrash collection with your job as a marine biology or something of the sort.
for the climbing, i think a more "maze like" thing could work. smaller climbs being more linear while longer/higher ones having branching paths (maybe with some "secrets"). this puts a large part of the penalty/reward the player gets on their memory and stratergy. the foothold thing seems like a good idea but i'd do away with a timing based minigame and instead opt for something more in line with the more relaxed pace the game seems to be taking (personal opinion). as for penalry/reward. first and fore most. safety gear. the player should HAVE to use safety gear. this would be a harness, rope, and helmet. with additional things like talc and climbing gloves being craftable at higher levels to ease the process. instead of a timing minigame i think some creative liberties can be taken on realism and you can have the climbing gear be like a grappling hook system. what i mean is you have a path(s) the player can take. the player holds down the w, a, s, or d key (to go that way) to "charge" a throw. if you over or undershoot the grapple point then you loose some stamina and have to try again. the amount of stamina lost would be based of the number of nodes in the longest path up + a few extra for buffer. starting with a base fraction of the path length +/- the amount you missed by (undershooting costing less). each level over the min requirement for a climb would add 1 to the bonus attempts. this would ensure that every climb should be possible, even if some are harder. when a climb is failed the player will become exhausted and loose their grip, being caught by the ropes/harness (denoted as the player dangling in a harness with squiggly lines or something to indicate fatigue). the ropes then lower the player down to the ground as a "failsafe". better climbing gear could give additional attempts and even some consumables (like climbing talc). on rare occasions you may have a ledge the player can stand on. this will allow the player to recover up to 50% of their attempts and would only show up on very long/high climbs. they would allow easier left/right movement too. you could also include some things like cliff nesting birds at these ledges to encourage exploration down these otherwise dead ends and alternate paths, meaning that the player doesn't always just memorise the most optimal paths. hope you can get some good ideas from this monster of a "comment" XD
It's not really "finicky" in any way IMO but I dislike that I can't do 4k 120hz. If I could pick a new display now I might go for something with display port that would allow for that.
The perfection of hit should determine how high would you go , if perfect hit you land at the correct hole , if not an accurate hit climb to holes below that
With regards to the climbing mini-game, I think you should have it so that the stamina is always draining and the player only climbs up when they do a good enough job with the timing. But if you get a perfect with the timing, then you reward them with that exp thing.
I like the idea of being able to fail a climbing route, it shows the efforts put into it. In addition, climbing level could be an indicator of difficulty more than a fixed requirement. For example, if you're in a good condition (stamina at max) and performing well (perfect at every climbing steps) I think you should be able to climb a route 1 or 2 level above your current level. Another idea, failing a climbing step could lower your stamina depending on a ratio between the route level and your current level (example: you are a lvl 10 climber climbing a lvl 1 route so you are too strong to possibly fail the route).
Don't know if this has been mentioned before, but what if you gave two options per hold; one option that's easy, which gives you only 2xp on a perfect hit and a second one where the target moves faster, but gives you more xp. Failing this more difficult route would subtract more stamina on a failure, which makes it have different approaches to climb a mountain and not just always the same route.
For the mining node, it would be nice if you gave some indication that you are making progress on it. Right now it looks like you cant brake it until suddenly it works. But you probably already know that haha.
On the climbing hold mini-game, I think if you missed the hold, the player should fall backwards to the last successful hold. That would "punish" the player by making the climb take longer.
Totally fine, if you keep the climbing system as-is, but I'd change it slightly so you don't move or just hop up and down a moment, if you're completely off. The XP alone is a nice reward system already, but you still shouldn't be able to just mash, even if you don't care. As a side note: I'd make the visual appearance of the climbing spot level dependent. Not too many variations, but you could start with like a ladder (only few rare occasions, like tutorial or whatever), rope ladder (maybe as a purchasable upgrade to "simplify" routes you've climbed before (no more skill checks, just going up/down), then vines, then those holes, and maybe last something else.
I like the idea of losing stamina when you miss and eventually failing a climb for too many misses like other commenters have said. Also, maybe instead of your climbing level prohibiting you from more difficult climbs, allow the player to attempt them but increase the difficulty based on the difference in level. This difficulty could be from a more strict accuracy range, a faster/more erratic climbing reticle, and/or a lower number of misses before a failed climb. (Also I know I'm late to this video I just caught up lol)
i feel like when you hit soothing with corruption or that you need a higher level for you should do something different then a textbox showing up. my idea would be just not letting the player do it and make like a recoil animation for the player when he hits something he cant.
Hey there, Cool mechanic! A levelling mechanic would greatly help to keep it interesting and again provide the possibility to find new biomes, creates, etc. I think that the punishment for not timing the climb correctly is fair. I don’t believe you showed a climbing gear (unless I missed it) but considering you have crafting, maybe the player would need to craft gear in order to climb and every time the player misses, the gear would take damage? Then the player would have to repair the gear in order to try climbing again. You could also use stamina like you do right now. It works for Zelda as well. Maybe instead of having the player progress the climb even when they missed they should fall down one hold? To me it sound logical that if you missed to grab the rock on a cliff, you’d fall like in real life. Some thing to consider is what if the player has successfully climbed the cliff? Does the player have to climb the cliff every time they want to revisit the same place? I Think that once the cliff has been climbed, there should be an easy way for the players to re-enter the area. Perhaps the player could craft a ladder and deploy it at the top? That way, once the player has done the hard work and completed the challenge, they’d have an easy way back. But because the player has to craft the ladder, they would have to work for it a little bit. Hopefully that helps! Good luck making your game!
Maybe a better climbing accuracy could climb the cliff faster? Like, maybe on a Perfect, you skip a node, or the next node is higher up. This would represent the skill of the player being translated directly into the climbing ability of the character.
dude how much did you just over head press?? Cause if it's what I think it is that looked wayyy to easy 🤣But the game is coming along amazing, your gathering looks really polished already! edit: At first look it definitely seems like you should fall down if your cursor completely misses the node, and if its a near miss then you could lose some stamina, also eventually falling if that reaches 0. Maybe that's doing too much tho, just my two cents.
Maybe instead of putting a hard No Entry sign in front of routes that are too high level, you could instead make it so that the amount of stamina you have less decreases by some amount determined by, for example, your climbing level, the accuracy of your check, and maybe some "difficulty" value associated with each hold.
Love the idea of climbing in this game and think the routes are a cool way of doing it. I'm not a fan of the way the player jumps. My experience of climbing is that it's a very deliberate path that is carefully executed. Perhaps a smooth animation would be better?
The climbing skill check should not be about if you can do a route, but how fast and far the target goes around the hold and as the player gets better the target fine tunes to be slower and stay closer to the target. As for missing the target they should just jump towards that spot but ultimately fall back to where they were and if out of energy they go back to the bottom.
I think the point of such a system is to aid exploration, which means, there must be some challenge, otherwise it’s just window-dressing. You want players to not immedeatly climb that face. You want them to work for it. Now what is the challenge? I’d say level and stamina determine how difficult it is to climb. As you level, and have more stamina, the easier it gets, and the higher/more challenging a route can be overcome. The level should be a general progression gate, which helps also to tell the player they aren’t ready yet, and shouldn’t bother. It acts as a pre-condition. If the player meets the level, it will be very difficult, but possible to climb up. It should be difficult even when fully rested, and stamina-buffed (food?). But as the level keeps increasing, and players can cook more potent meals, and rest in better camps etc, it should become easier and easier, until it requires no skill at all. Imagine climb routes have a difficulty value, and eventually players unlock a rope skill etc that allows them to overcomes cliff-faces lower than that level etc.
No minigame when climbimb please. Just go with the first iteration, it was clean and relaxing. Devs sometimes tend to overcomplicate things, trust me, go with the first and simple climbimb aprouch. Good work as always!
I think the XP punishment is good also having a higher Climbing lvl maybe make it so you having less jumps to do to get to the top (adding a bit more jumps to the current system)
Goose from Top Gun???
Winner!
@@DevDuck I feel the Need?
So your wife was Maverick?@@DevDuck
I was going to go for mario and peach.
@@Y0uTubeCommentPoster She was! We are about the right relative heights for that pair too, it was pretty great haha.
If you miss entirely, you should fall down a peg and lose stamina. If you barely hit it, you should lose stamina, and if you get it perfect, you should shrink the sway, and slow down the next climbing spot, making it easier to hit. And just getting it in the circle, but not perfect should use no stamina. Running out of stamina on a climbing route should make you fall back down, gaining a little corruption (iirc, that's how your health system works?), and making you have to retry it.
Climbing skill should make climbing easier, shrinking the sway and slowing it down, and then you can have route difficulties where harder ones move faster or have bigger left/right sways of the reticule, making it harder to land on the target. This would mean someone who's got the skill to play the Minigame can still do hard climbing routes, but has a higher chance of failing.
This is just my thoughts.
Came to more or less comment this. Only change, is increased level should increase the target indicator size, making perfects easier.
IMO.
Fully agree!
I really agree with all of this. I keep coming back to Skyrim's lock picking - I like how I can still attempt Master locks at level 1 but expect to fail pretty regularly. I've dropped all this into my dev board and will start thinking about it!
Just wanted to say that I've been slowly catching up on this entire playlist for about a month now and finally reached the "end". Really love the way you present your content and how you take us through your thought process and journey in and around development here.
Excited for more and wish you the best!
Your videos have the perfect length for a good warmup session on the treadmill. Thank you so much!!! Love your content!!
It would be neat later in the game to drop a rope in areas youve climbed previously for faster traversal. Especially if you have to backtrack, it could be an interesting tradeoff to skip the xp gains in favor of faster climb/descent.
Interesting idea! I definitely like the option for faster traversal.
Here’s a fun idea for climbing: instead of the circle moving horizontally, have it move in a line from the player to the hold, so the visual is unique for each hold and keeps the player paying attention
I dig this! It could also be more clear on a complicated route which direction the player will be heading next. Feel like this shouldn't be too hard to do.
This is a great idea ESPECIALLY if there's a rope-climbing animation. This way it doesn't feel like a video-gamey "fast travel," but still rewards you for finding/making/buying the rope.
He lives!!!! Yay! Even a twitter (X) update would be great to see if you’re still alive haha so happy! Thanks!
I enjoy the format of your videos. Thanks for the content.
Hitting the mark on climbing should allow you to skip the remaining climbing mini-game?
I have a cool idea. When you have your inventory/notebook open you could apply a Gaussian blur to the pixel background, and then pixelate it again. Or you could experiment with some other dither effects. But I think that would suit the pixelated style very well and it would be a cool effect. You could even have a short animation of a few frames when you open it which goes from no blur, to high blur very quickly, while keeping things pixelated. Pretty sure you could implement this as a shader, so it should be fast as well.
I've stayed quiet for the last 3 years I've been following this project but I must say, this project is looking better and better every time I pop in. Can't wait to see the future of this game. Well done and thank you for the dev logs, I would watch these early in the mornings while trying to wake up in my first period class throughout high school. Now that I'm graduated these videos are kinda nostalgic to me now. 😅
Miss you so much 😁😁
I haven't really had the time recently to watch any TH-cam or anything at all really. So when I finally had some time and I saw that you had uploaded my day got way better! Love your stuff and please continue doing what you are doing!
Westley (Cary Elwes) from The Princess Bride.
Great guess! But not quite. Good idea for a future costume though haha
Bruh you nail that look! I’d keep the ‘stache if I were you.
Okay actually watched it! Brilliant video Ben thanks! Literally the game has gone from interesting because it’s well presented to actually looking fun, love the implementation of the skills etc (and RuneScape inspired aspects haha excellent gameplay loop!). Not sure if you’ll read this but as a real life climber I think it would be cool if you would ‘slip back’ rather than fall to the ground and you could add a simple rope perhaps? That way the route unlocks but you still have a gameplay challenge and while traversing isn’t the core gameplay since climbing is its own skill there’s no reason longer routes can’t be more involved and later maybe allow unlocking quick routes or something? Finally abseiling, or similar to get down would make sense, or once you hook into a route and complete it the first time you can traverse it much more quickly with the SPACE to climb method? Just a few thoughts, really really love that idea though seriously :D Glad you’re back! :)
Hi Ben! Long time no see! Glad to see that Dauphin is getting better and better, don't give up, you're one of my biggest inspirations to finish my project
I concur, the more I see him work on his game, the more it inspires me to work on my own.
Your mention of trash on the island made me think of the organization Precious Plastic
They've done projects setting up micro-recycling locations in places like the Maldives (which don't have centralized recycling), and they use this to convert the plastic trash into useful products
Could be really cool to have a crafting system converting trash into items that you can use later, and use your game to spread awareness for the cause :)
I like the idea of not being able to make it up if you miss too many times. Sort of like Zelda where you run out of stamina and don’t make it up the mtn. Perhaps in the future, more challenging and valuable climbs will have harder accuracy holds so you really have to work for it to make it up.
I agree, I think this is the biggest change I need to make - making climbing truly fail-able.
Hello! Nice video as always. a little thought: i think makes more sense to let the player forage corrupted entities, but doing so can have some negative effects on the player, or weapon damage, or droping less items. I think just stop the player form foraging corrupted itens it's too abrupt. giving them the choice (maybe they need really bad the item, even with negative consequences) is a better option. Good luck with your project!
Never considered this - maybe just as simple as having the player take "corruption damage" when harvesting from a corrupted organism. Thanks for the idea!
Would be cool for the climbing route I think if the only punishment is the time it takes to climb the wall, even keeping the current xp mechanic, but if you get a perfect accuracy check the jump animation is 2x fast, conversely a bad check is slower. Keeps the game accessible for everyone by not barring areas for a failed skill check, but also as the game goes on and people need to move around more and more climbing areas, there is a great reward in getting from point a to point b possibly even twice as fast.
Great video, looking forward to seeing what happens next :)
I'll wait for new episodes!! Love ur devlog so much :з ❤
love the work! going through my own long game dev journey 😅 inspiring to see yours!
these gamedev logs are pure relaxation ☺️
edit: there was absolutely not a horrific grammar error 😂
I for sure read that little thought bubble with a pickaxe as "you need a pick in order to interact with this" at first
I think whether you pursue positive reinforcement only vs punishing players for mistakes really depends on what sort of tone you want the game to have overall. The general vibe I get so far personally would say go for the bonus XP option and allow the player to succeed 100% of the time, but there's definitely a contingent of gamers out there who really dislike when a game is too lenient in that regard. Maybe consider other mechanics that have/will have some sort of skill check and think about what those would look like with or without similar bonus vs fail options. Is there a more obvious answer in those cases? And either way, does it actually make sense for all similar mechanics in the game to follow the same approach or does variety make more sense?
I really like the climbing system. I really like the no negative feedback for failing. rather positive feedback for succeeding. it makes it less punishing and more accessible. The only thing i could see is that since the total xp is so much greater than the small climb hold xp spamming space would probably be faster if you just went up and down. A possible solution is that final xp could be calculated based on a combo. an example: 5 hold climb you get in order( perfect, perfect, good, fail, good) 2+2+1 = bonus 5 xp because that was the largest combo during the climb. something like that
Given the direction of the game, I feel like system for climbing with no actual failure could work. Maybe a system where the better you do, the faster things go, so really skilled players can blast through the climbing super fast. Especially if people are gonna go back and forth a lot, getting caught up in tedious travel can really bog a game down so having a high skill ceiling that lets players traverse quickly could work in the games favor! Looks like it'll be a cool feature either way!
The mustache is sick! I've been trying to grow one as well. My guess is that you were ThePrimeagen for Halloween.
My first idea for a way to jump to the next node was a simple key match reaction command; after pressing space, the player launchs to the next node while getting a command to Q, W, or E. If they miss they drop or something.
You could make it easier by using less options and harder using more options (A,S,D,Z,X,C). That would also make climbing faster for skilled players and slower for new players.
If you're worried about controller support, you could limit it to no more than 6-8 options. But the default Q, W, E, & Space would map to a standard controller's buttons.
Great update as always Ben!
My thoughts for the climbing part depend heavily on how much Climbing there actually is in the game flow. If you need to Climb to unlock new areas and rarely have to backtrack, might be nice to punish the player for failing a couple times and fall back down. But, if you regularly climb to go to different areas in a short amount of time, I feel like allowing the player to just spam space to climb and not gain XP as punishment is better.
Love the climbing mini game! Suggestion: At lowest level player only can climb one notch up at a time (currently you go up several) as you level up you have the ability to skip notches making climbing quicker
Great climbing mini game ! This has a lot of potential improvements as people are suggesting !
Probably too late, but throwing it out there, for some of the more challenging climbs, having multiple moving targets for maybe a particularly difficult hold.
Lots of great suggestions from everyone else here!
I think it could be good to use stamina for every check, and if you miss the check, you lose a bit of extra stamina and don't progress to the next hold. If the stamina runs out maybe you fall back down.
I picture something similar to Legend of Zelda Breath Of The Wild.
This game is coming along amazingly, thank you for sharing your journey and I can't wait to play it once it comes out!
Since climbing is usually more of a slow methodical process rather than a timing based activity, it might be cool to have some kind of puzzle element. I thought of this idea of making each climbing hold a node in a graph, then make the edges between each hold a value that represents how much energy/stamina it takes to get from one hold to another. So the puzzle is you have to find a route from the bottom to the top that doesn't use up all your stamina, sort of like a shortest path algorithm. And maybe the more stamina you expend without going over your limit, the more exp you gain
While climbing IRL not hitting a hold correctly means you either waste energy repositioning or you have a shakier foundation for the next step. I think having a stamina bar that constantly goes down (but gets upgraded with the skill), and goes down more if you mess up would work well.
Valeu pelo vídeo! Seus vídeos sempre ótimos.
Dude! Nice mustache. I dig it
Haha you made a rock climbing simulator, thats actually really sick! The player should definitely be able to fall, it makes good gameplay, more of a challenge to get to higher places, the more complex the route, the higher the route, the bigger the reward. It should be able to get difficult enough such that a beginner should not be able to climb every route based on skill alone. If you have no climbing skill, it should be so hard, near impossible to climb the hardest peak, but with time as your skill xp increases it should get easier and easier so you can explore more places.
Depending on how crazy you get here, it might be cool to have the player be able to choose between which foothold to grab onto next - allowing you to make different climbing routes that go to different areas, encouraging the player to really climb all over the mountain, since there could be hidden rewards in a long, offshoot path.
Yeah okay Ned Flanders
Wherever the player clicks for the accuracy check should be where the character jumps towards, and you have to catch yourself on the hold- that way, the closer the accuracy check is to the hold, the easier it is to catch the hold and advance. If you miss the accuracy check by a lot you could have no chance of catching the hold and fall back down.
The stache took dedication, I bet working from home was nice 😆
14:57
Show oscilate vertically rather than horizontally. Rounding to the nearest climbing hole. That way theres also tangible reward for getting it right (plus xp for the tiny little nuances in accuracy). Aka you climb faster and earn more xp
Just soft punishment and soft (actual) rewarding. No need to reset player progress from scratch as that would be waaay too annoying
Hey ! Nice to see you back :) Your video on animated water tiles was actually one of the very first tutorials I watched for my very first dev project, so it was kind of nostalgic seeing them again here. We're actually progressing at similar rates and it's kind of nice following along :). I was wondering! I put together some shader code to blur the game behind some of my ui with a mask shape. I could toss it your way if you want it for your hotbar :)
could you make the fourth tab boss equipment?
Welcome back!
Was the mustache for a certain German ruler?
4:47 I think, instead of the game-stopping pop up, it would be better to make the players axe bounce off of the wood with some corruption sparks and lightning coming from the point of striking. That would be simpler, not require reading and instantly communicate the message that corrupted trees can't be destroyed with an axe.
I've been out of the loop on your progress for a really long while now. I don't know if you can damage corrupted animals with an axe or pickaxe, but, if you can, then there could be confusion as to if corrupted animals are protected from whatever melee weapon is wielded
Some great progress and I like the play demo. I will say that while using a tool on a rock or tree and knocking off resources makes sense, the break loose then pick up mechanic on the rocks/sticks/trash on the ground looks very awkward. Maybe some kind of animation would convey that better, but it just looks like you drop everything you pick up the first time. Looks frustrating. To further that, once you knock a log off a tree you can pick that up right away, but a stick you just find on the ground you have to interact twice. I would drop that mechanic and just have you picking things up. On the climbing mechanic, I wouldn't have people fail to the bottom as they get close to the top, but not progressing for a miss or possibly falling back one hold for a miss would be good. Maybe an XP difference only for just being close but not perfect.
I like the oscillating climbing target mechanic, it adds a nice extra layer of skill!
the way I see a climbing system is it could be made more interesting with some kind of stamina mechanic. something that refills/resets when your feet are on the ground, but depletes gradually with each climbing "step" the player makes. I think that would provide an opportunity for interesting progression where you can find permanent upgrades to how much stamina you have, allowing you to climb higher, unlocking new areas and providing another game loop!
how the feathers work in the game A Short Hike, if you've played it, is a nice example of that I think. anyways, just an idea. it might not fit the overall view of your game.
I think it would be cool to have branching paths while climbing. Like a quick but hard one, or a slow but more reliable route. This could also make it so some secrets could be behind a hard climbing area. You could also make it so if your climbing level was high enough and you had climbed the route before you could just jump up it and not have to deal with timing.
You should make it where if you are hanging on a hold for too long, you slip and fall. (either to the bottom or to a lower hold)
Looks great man. Been watching this thing since it was just a little dude walking around on the sand.
An idea: let them pick maybe 1-3 holds high and each height makes the target smaller and faster, so if they take every single layer it is safer and easier but if they choose larger gaps it's harder
I love the progress with this game, looks amazing! But I think the island is now running out of room and it's beginning to look cramped. Have you thought about either making the island larger? Or create a second island for the player to explore?
Amazing work so far!
There will be many islands to explore! In fact, sailing between them is likely the next big thing I work on...
@@DevDuck This game is turning out to be an epic journey! I look forward to your next video.
hi devduck!, Daupin looks really cool!, do you have any sort of release date planned for it? because it looks like a lot of fun!, and is there a steam page for this yet? because I can't seem to find it in the description
Couple of ideas:
I think that you should not be guaranteed to be able to make a climb - regardless of climbing level.
Of course the result of not reaching the top is falling - which seems too extreme. So I would suggest to add rope to be able to climb larger walls.
When I climb, there are two things that affect stamina: how long I am on the wall, and how much readjustment I need to do. With training you can hang longer on the wall, and have better technique so that you have to adjust less.
So I would suppose that while climbing your stamina drains, but slower as you gain more experience. Then for each hold deplete an amount of stamina based on how accurately it was hit. Smaller holds should be harder to hit (crosshare is faster, less time over hold). I don't think that experience per sé should limit which routes you can start. However it could have a message like "You need rope for this climb" where roped climbing is a skill to unlock, or a general advice "You would likely fall if you attempt this route".
I think the crosshairs need to come from the outside towards the inside of the path so that you can synchronize all the jumps and since all move at the same speed and the same direction you can time your space presses so that they can be completeled super fast and satisfying
Also if you miss you can call down one
The tooltip idea is pretty cool looking, though I could envision it getting obnoxious after a while. Might be good to put it behind a delay of 2-3 seconds and have it animate in.
About that climbing: The choice is if your skillcheck is RPG based (character can-cannot), or skill based (player can-cannot) or both. That is to say, you should have some idea how much you want to involve the player in the game. Seeing that you have swimming minigames, fight mechanics, etc. I'd say that you want some player involvement. Therefore, I'd go with RPG system working as a difficulty, where the more skilled your character is, the easier it is for the player to perform, but it still is the player that must perform it.
Falling down is a good failure state. Player looses some time, so it's good for "rushing, but carefully" mindset and it's also not a "game over" which breaks immersion.
The mechanic itself, I'd like something more involved, maybe actually pointing to the next point, with some cursor shake as my stamina goes down, or something like that? So I'd be forced to move fast (the longer I take, the harder it gets) and I'd have to be careful (as to not fall). Add to it the stamina related to the skill check and you can have a very nice system indeed.
All of this is just a food for thought, not necessarily a concrete tip. It should just illustrate the difference with your system, where can/cannot climb is purely a skillcheck and then there is a boring (sorry) wait for the cursor to reach the destination. If it's very easy to do, it's tedious, It's just a busywork. You can either have a full on RPG system (so basically an animation climbing up, when you can), or an involved system, in which there should be a room to differentiate between good and bad players. (They don't need to be 'punished', mind you, they just need to feel that there is a room to grow).
Just Played Dontnod "Joustant" i love the climbing mechanism
The grading could be determined by a combination of length of the route, and diffculty of the holds/moves.
Each hold has a cost of stamina. On difficult hold, the crosshair could move faster, or at random.
The better your move, the less stamina you lose on each hold, thus enabling you to climb longer routes. When leveling up your climbing skill, each move will cost you less stamina, and the moves themselves get easier, as in the crosshair moves slower.
hey, it would be really cool if you could somehow make it so that getting rid of the trash requires some management, meaning that you need to seperate between the different types of trash and shipping it to the garbage dump costs money and becuase of that you have to fund the thrash collection with your job as a marine biology or something of the sort.
for the climbing, i think a more "maze like" thing could work. smaller climbs being more linear while longer/higher ones having branching paths (maybe with some "secrets"). this puts a large part of the penalty/reward the player gets on their memory and stratergy. the foothold thing seems like a good idea but i'd do away with a timing based minigame and instead opt for something more in line with the more relaxed pace the game seems to be taking (personal opinion). as for penalry/reward. first and fore most. safety gear. the player should HAVE to use safety gear. this would be a harness, rope, and helmet. with additional things like talc and climbing gloves being craftable at higher levels to ease the process. instead of a timing minigame i think some creative liberties can be taken on realism and you can have the climbing gear be like a grappling hook system. what i mean is you have a path(s) the player can take. the player holds down the w, a, s, or d key (to go that way) to "charge" a throw. if you over or undershoot the grapple point then you loose some stamina and have to try again. the amount of stamina lost would be based of the number of nodes in the longest path up + a few extra for buffer. starting with a base fraction of the path length +/- the amount you missed by (undershooting costing less). each level over the min requirement for a climb would add 1 to the bonus attempts. this would ensure that every climb should be possible, even if some are harder. when a climb is failed the player will become exhausted and loose their grip, being caught by the ropes/harness (denoted as the player dangling in a harness with squiggly lines or something to indicate fatigue). the ropes then lower the player down to the ground as a "failsafe". better climbing gear could give additional attempts and even some consumables (like climbing talc). on rare occasions you may have a ledge the player can stand on. this will allow the player to recover up to 50% of their attempts and would only show up on very long/high climbs. they would allow easier left/right movement too. you could also include some things like cliff nesting birds at these ledges to encourage exploration down these otherwise dead ends and alternate paths, meaning that the player doesn't always just memorise the most optimal paths. hope you can get some good ideas from this monster of a "comment" XD
how do you like using the LG TV with your macbook? i've been a little gun-shy about giving it a try because i've heard its finnicky.
It's not really "finicky" in any way IMO but I dislike that I can't do 4k 120hz. If I could pick a new display now I might go for something with display port that would allow for that.
The perfection of hit should determine how high would you go , if perfect hit you land at the correct hole , if not an accurate hit climb to holes below that
With regards to the climbing mini-game, I think you should have it so that the stamina is always draining and the player only climbs up when they do a good enough job with the timing. But if you get a perfect with the timing, then you reward them with that exp thing.
I like the idea of being able to fail a climbing route, it shows the efforts put into it.
In addition, climbing level could be an indicator of difficulty more than a fixed requirement. For example, if you're in a good condition (stamina at max) and performing well (perfect at every climbing steps) I think you should be able to climb a route 1 or 2 level above your current level.
Another idea, failing a climbing step could lower your stamina depending on a ratio between the route level and your current level (example: you are a lvl 10 climber climbing a lvl 1 route so you are too strong to possibly fail the route).
Don't know if this has been mentioned before, but what if you gave two options per hold; one option that's easy, which gives you only 2xp on a perfect hit and a second one where the target moves faster, but gives you more xp. Failing this more difficult route would subtract more stamina on a failure, which makes it have different approaches to climb a mountain and not just always the same route.
For the mining node, it would be nice if you gave some indication that you are making progress on it. Right now it looks like you cant brake it until suddenly it works. But you probably already know that haha.
On the climbing hold mini-game, I think if you missed the hold, the player should fall backwards to the last successful hold. That would "punish" the player by making the climb take longer.
Totally fine, if you keep the climbing system as-is, but I'd change it slightly so you don't move or just hop up and down a moment, if you're completely off. The XP alone is a nice reward system already, but you still shouldn't be able to just mash, even if you don't care. As a side note: I'd make the visual appearance of the climbing spot level dependent. Not too many variations, but you could start with like a ladder (only few rare occasions, like tutorial or whatever), rope ladder (maybe as a purchasable upgrade to "simplify" routes you've climbed before (no more skill checks, just going up/down), then vines, then those holes, and maybe last something else.
That's a good stash man
Foraging has a pickaxe icon?
I like the idea of losing stamina when you miss and eventually failing a climb for too many misses like other commenters have said. Also, maybe instead of your climbing level prohibiting you from more difficult climbs, allow the player to attempt them but increase the difficulty based on the difference in level. This difficulty could be from a more strict accuracy range, a faster/more erratic climbing reticle, and/or a lower number of misses before a failed climb. (Also I know I'm late to this video I just caught up lol)
i feel like when you hit soothing with corruption or that you need a higher level for you should do something different then a textbox showing up. my idea would be just not letting the player do it and make like a recoil animation for the player when he hits something he cant.
Hey there,
Cool mechanic! A levelling mechanic would greatly help to keep it interesting and again provide the possibility to find new biomes, creates, etc.
I think that the punishment for not timing the climb correctly is fair. I don’t believe you showed a climbing gear (unless I missed it) but considering you have crafting, maybe the player would need to craft gear in order to climb and every time the player misses, the gear would take damage? Then the player would have to repair the gear in order to try climbing again. You could also use stamina like you do right now. It works for Zelda as well. Maybe instead of having the player progress the climb even when they missed they should fall down one hold? To me it sound logical that if you missed to grab the rock on a cliff, you’d fall like in real life.
Some thing to consider is what if the player has successfully climbed the cliff? Does the player have to climb the cliff every time they want to revisit the same place? I Think that once the cliff has been climbed, there should be an easy way for the players to re-enter the area. Perhaps the player could craft a ladder and deploy it at the top? That way, once the player has done the hard work and completed the challenge, they’d have an easy way back. But because the player has to craft the ladder, they would have to work for it a little bit.
Hopefully that helps! Good luck making your game!
halloween costume is Chick Hicks?
Could you abuse the xp system for jumping by just continuously going through the same route over and over again?
When do you see release date +-? Year? Two? 3 ?
Maybe a better climbing accuracy could climb the cliff faster? Like, maybe on a Perfect, you skip a node, or the next node is higher up.
This would represent the skill of the player being translated directly into the climbing ability of the character.
aaaaassss yoooouuuu wiiiiisssshhhhhh
oh damn, didn't notice that "goose from top gun" post till I said this 😞
Hey DevDuck, I see you're using GDScript. What are your thoughts on using C#? I'm thinking of doing a C#-only Godot project, since I use C# at work.
Ted Lasso ?!
I'm voting for Ted Lasso as well.
dude how much did you just over head press?? Cause if it's what I think it is that looked wayyy to easy 🤣But the game is coming along amazing, your gathering looks really polished already!
edit: At first look it definitely seems like you should fall down if your cursor completely misses the node, and if its a near miss then you could lose some stamina, also eventually falling if that reaches 0. Maybe that's doing too much tho, just my two cents.
Maybe instead of putting a hard No Entry sign in front of routes that are too high level, you could instead make it so that the amount of stamina you have less decreases by some amount determined by, for example, your climbing level, the accuracy of your check, and maybe some "difficulty" value associated with each hold.
Love the idea of climbing in this game and think the routes are a cool way of doing it.
I'm not a fan of the way the player jumps. My experience of climbing is that it's a very deliberate path that is carefully executed. Perhaps a smooth animation would be better?
The climbing skill check should not be about if you can do a route, but how fast and far the target goes around the hold and as the player gets better the target fine tunes to be slower and stay closer to the target. As for missing the target they should just jump towards that spot but ultimately fall back to where they were and if out of energy they go back to the bottom.
the link on google play is not working..
first name mario,last name mario,mario mario
I think the point of such a system is to aid exploration, which means, there must be some challenge, otherwise it’s just window-dressing. You want players to not immedeatly climb that face. You want them to work for it.
Now what is the challenge? I’d say level and stamina determine how difficult it is to climb. As you level, and have more stamina, the easier it gets, and the higher/more challenging a route can be overcome. The level should be a general progression gate, which helps also to tell the player they aren’t ready yet, and shouldn’t bother. It acts as a pre-condition.
If the player meets the level, it will be very difficult, but possible to climb up. It should be difficult even when fully rested, and stamina-buffed (food?). But as the level keeps increasing, and players can cook more potent meals, and rest in better camps etc, it should become easier and easier, until it requires no skill at all. Imagine climb routes have a difficulty value, and eventually players unlock a rope skill etc that allows them to overcomes cliff-faces lower than that level etc.
No minigame when climbimb please. Just go with the first iteration, it was clean and relaxing. Devs sometimes tend to overcomplicate things, trust me, go with the first and simple climbimb aprouch.
Good work as always!
The dad from inside out?? Probably not but thats what i first thought of
Please use popup text that appears and fades instead of a full dialog box. It interrupts gameplay in an intrusive way
Lieutenant Jim Dangle
Ron Swanson!
I think the XP punishment is good also having a higher Climbing lvl maybe make it so you having less jumps to do to get to the top (adding a bit more jumps to the current system)
ron swanson and leslie knope???
As soon as you uploaded, my mom woke me up from bed. Here i am. A bit late but...