hey hi, Ive been working on a VR archery game since april and i figure its getting close to show off. Looking for ANY feedback, good, bad, ugly.
im curious if people here will think this is kickstarter worthy or if not i would love some suggestions on what i should change/fix/remove/add to make it worthy.
also if anyone has any advice on how to best do a kickstarter that would be awesome.
i want to make this game to be like nazi zombies with bow and arrows, survive waves to make gold to spend on stuff to help you kick@**, place traps, rebuild broken defences and upgrade equipment. i want atleast 4 player coop… i could go on, but most of it is on my site. http://www.clavertech.com/aetherwatch
First video is kinda long, its an intro with a battle segment at the end.
but i wanted to get it in the game as quick as possible to see if it would even work and therefore even be worth the time to polish this at all.
so heres a quick rig and texture
And heres a WIP zbrush test model… the new flying enemy, this guys a necromancer wraith thingy ma bober… and he throws projectiles that spawn fodder inside your base, beyond your defenses.
Simple charged arrow and Multiple auto target powered arrows like REZ would make the game more fun without needing so much arrow movements with your joysticks, you can consider arrows zone rain unlock capacity. The level is too dark we barrely see ennemies far away, it looks too simplistic.
You need level design complexity and get explosion, teleportation, effects looking better. Good luck.
Charged arrow… You mean like if I pull my arm as far back as possible and held it there it would make the arrow do extra damage? If so I do like that idea.
Auto targeting arrows… I’m not opposed to this at all, the new flying enemies are WAY to hard to hit cuz they are either too small or too far away.
Arrow rain zone… In assuming ur talking about a spell that causes arrows to rain in an area, I’ve been working on something similar for a bit, kinda inspired from Diablo 3 demonhunter. I will put that in the next video.
Level too dark… Yes this is true, for VR a lot of times you don’t want things to be very bright, cuz it can cause weird lens effects and is just too bright on that close of a screen, in fact the fire arrows and explosions are literally BLINDING on the Vive.
Enemies too far away… I agree sort of. They are definitely small targets at a distance and since you can’t zoom in on something in VR the only way to make them bigger is to get closer to them or make them literally bigger so that they are twice the height of the player. Right now everything spawns far off cuz I want to give the player enough time to choose the right arrows, get more aether or relocate for better angle. I could bring the spawns in closer but it might make the game too hard… But I won’t rule anything out.
Make stuff look GOOD… Yeah the total contribution to level design is like 10 mins worth of work do far, same goes for most of the effects. I need to pour in WAY more work to make these great. Honestly the current levels won’t go in the final game cuz they are just ****, made just for testing purposes.
Thx for the feedback and ideas, I hope I can make a better showcase on the next video.
About charged Arrow,i did not intend to pull the arm as far as possible as any player have different arms lenght, instead the more time you keep the arrow ready to shoot, the more it will do damage to some limit. If you charge the arrow and quickly fire it it will only do the base damage.For auto targetting, you charge the arrow and a cursor would appear , passing it throught ennemies would lock target them. You’ll have to find how to balance this or players would only use auto target arrow.
Rain zone is just one power, what about a growing fire on the arrow, once the arrow is fired it becomes bigger and bigger, like a big fireball that can touch more ennemies at same time as it travels in the air, well anything is possible to make the game less repetitive.
I stumbled upon this thread doing my morning unreal 4 forum tour.
It’s looking really interesting.
First of all I watched the video, I have some feedback on this part. Secondly I watched your video miniatures. And I have to say I think you chose a really nice color scheme and video splash art, it looks professional and intriguing.
Now regarding the game:
Vibration in the remote controller when charging the bow near to its max is a nice addition and provide a good gamefeel
Not sure if representing the remote controller in game is a good idea or not
I know HUD is impossible in a VR game, how are you going to represent yours?
I feel like killing skeleton can feel more rewarding, hit sound, hit effect, death sound, particles, bones
Ok I like the clarified idea of the charge arrow, I just need to find an easy way to tell the player they are charging and at max charge. But I like it thx for the idea
As for auto target arrows if like that as either a magic consuming ability or even an exclusive bow ability (cuz I want truly different bows)
As for the growing sized fireball style arrow. I’ve toyed around with a water wave (just trying to come up with arrows of all elements) that functions kinda similar I think. The area the arrow does damage in is significantly bigger than any other arrow. But your idea of it ever expanding as it goes is an interesting idea.
I definitely need a vibration system for player feedback and yeah good idea on pulling back on the bow. Right now I have a vibrate when u pick an arrow up, let loose an arrow, and can interact with something.
About the hud, yeah I tried a vr hud for a short time and it was absolutely horrible. Something being fixed to the screen just looks out of place and breaks the immersion bad. So I made a floating ship that has info displayed on the sides of it and put it hovering nearby the player area, it worked but you would have to turn and look at it all the time to see what was going on… So I decided to make the ship display more of a game data display only (wave number, game time, Aether collected that sort of stuff)
I needed to display Player specific data, like my health, my amount aether for spells, so on… I realized if your holding your bow with your left hand then the left hand and the bow is almost always in view. (cuz your holding them up to aim) So decided to put some of this player data on the surface of these in the form of lit gems of certain colors. So the controllers at this point are as close to a hud as I can get right now… I’m open to other ideas I just figured it was a good placeholder until something better comes along.
About killing skeletons… I agree completely. I need better particles, dismemberment, bone chunks flying all over, good soundeffects, a hit effect (something I TOTALLY overlooked thx I’m gonna do that tonight!! but yeah I’m gonna put a lot more work into that
You can simply make some visual particle or effects around the arrow that will grow as you keep it charged , once it is charged at max you play a sound and change the color particles or bring a new “fully charged” effect. About displaying player health, i would display in front of the camera a list of duplicated 3D objects like stars or green cubes, or some rectangular green cube less or more scaled in X depending on your health.
Well I would put the effect on the arrow itself, but all the magic arrows already have effects on them, I’m not sure effects on top of effects will be clear enough. A sound effect and vibration would definitely help tho, sadly I haven’t purchased any sound effects yet.
basic gameplay idea so far: spawns in at the end of a wave and terrorizes the players by spawning skeletons inside the fort. pretty hard to kill and is constantly flying all over the place.
right now thinking of reworking the necromancer to be a rare spawn and who simply resurrects any fallen enemies, so you would want to kill it first other wise your just gonna keep killing the same things over and over again.
Been busy as HELL working on a releasable demo in preparation to setup a kickstarter. Most of my work recently has been building a tutorial level to teach people the controls and how to play…
But besides that I’ve added a BUNCH of new stuff…
a new bow with a passive of generating aether per kill (i call it the DeathEater)
added a new Charge Up functionality.
functional Gold system to gain gold per wave and per kill
functional build system to buy defenses/traps
enemy wave system that cycles every 3 waves, increasing the difficulty as you go
enemies now have a chance to spawn with armor that makes them completely immune to damage in that spot.
added a chance that enemies spawn with a gem that if hit causes them to die instantly.
added a necromancer rez system to resurrect fallen enemies
made more damage spots on the cyclops to make killing him a bit more difficult and fun.
Added Equipment Item …Shurikens… these babies fly out and seek the nearest enemy to kill.
reworked equipment to have a triggerable special modes to change how they function.
added new magics like wind, waterwave, cluster arrows, rapid fire, and slice…
…stay tuned for an updated video showing all this off.
And Heres the [SIZE=6]DeathEater bow,
its energy display is actually the glowing purple beam inside the vertebrae. the bow also makes a flash effect in the eyesockets when you get a kill… its a really nice feedback actually… i kinda want to put something similar on all the bows.
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I’ll be adding some new pics here for my recent progress, im pushing for a December Demo release and i will release it here first to get critical feedback before i setup the kickstarter.
any thoughts, comments, suggestions, graphic innuendos, feel free to throw it my way. THX
Edited— cuz i dont know how to add images or something…
And heres a look at the HUB… this is your Base which also acts as the Main Menu sort of.
Primarily its purpose is to hold the portals to all the other levels… giving you one central area to access all others.
but it will also display how much Aether and Gold you have collected, you can upgrade it with other visual improvements and purchase extensions to give you more portals.
Here you will also be able to buy/upgrade bows, equipment and spells.
