The Raven (Release Candidate 4)


Hello all.

I’ve been working on this game for a while now. It’s close to completion now, and I expect to have it finished before the month is done. At which point I will publish and sell it, hopefully.

This is a game where you move forward and dodge obstacles to survive, and collect gates to increase your time; all before your time runs out. Blue gates give you a half second, green gates give you a full second and magenta spheres give you 6 seconds.

As it stands, this game is incomplete, as stated and does not represent the final product blah blah; However, I would like anyone to report any errors, glitches/bugs or design flaws that they encounter, even things that you think could be done another way, either for efficiency or just because it’s not fun/could be more fun.

Known issues:

  • None as of now.
    (- Maybe the score feeds are a little small now…)
Screenshots:

<img src="/uploads/default/original/4X/c/b/7/cb7e287ec9b6bbf6740481bbe5a93aa5d96ae138.jpg" width="690" height="388"><br/>

<img src="/uploads/default/original/4X/3/e/c/3ece048f55bef68aa6583b876cec4a1e562324a6.jpg" width="690" height="388"><br/>

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It runs at 60 fps at 1600 x 900 on my computer, at low settings.

Recommended settings arrangement:

For AMD HD 7750 / GTX 560 or lower:

    At 1080p:
        SSAO: off
        Bloom: off

    At 900p:
        SSAO: low
        Bloom: low

    At 720p or netbook resolution:
        SSAO: low
        Bloom: low

For AMD HD 7770 / GTX 570 or higher:

    At 1080p:
        SSAO: low
        Bloom: low

    At 900p:
        SSAO: low
        Bloom: high

    At 720p or netbook resolution:
        SSAO: high
        Bloom: high

Anything later than an AMD HD 7800 series or GTX 580 will play SSAO and Bloom on high at 1080p, I think. However Intel integrated graphics has PROVEN not to be able to render the SSAO shader or Anti-Aliasing, but can render the Bloom shader.

To do:
    - Difficulty settings before play.
    - Death screen, prompting for change of difficulty, presenting score and such.

And now, the game.

Updated: 29th of March 2014
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~!
// https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46198618/The%20Raven.rar
// Approximately 57mb compressed
// Approximately 118mb uncompressed
// Do not distribute, please. :(
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~!




Thanks in advance,
TomCat

Screenshot?

Opening the “How to Play” and “Settings” in game at the same time, creates an overlap…
BTW, you’re right, it’s quite addictive :D!

Way too hard couldn’t finish the first level, might want to add a fog or increase the clipping distance in the camera to make it look better. It’s very nice though.

Agreed. I’d settle for mist/fog over bloom/ssao. But then again, great game.

Maybe also see if the field of view can change and get wider the faster you go, it will make it look more exciting and feel faster as well as
give the player better sight in the distance as he goes faster.
Maybe also an element of screen vibration which relates to speed (the faster you go the more erratic the screen vibrates)
to give more indication and feel to how fast you’re going.

Thanks guys, much appreciated.

Absolutely, I’ll post one later today when I get home.

I know right! I have no idea why it’s doing it and I have no idea how to fix. I’ll see what I can do after I’ve posted the screenshot.

And thankyou, that’s good to hear, kind of.

So far it is only the one level. I was thinking that it would be just the one level, and such that level would get progressively harder until the player inevitably fails; The score will be displayed and the player will show his/her friends and such.

Those are some interesting ideas, I think maybe I’ll give the screen shake a go. However I think that if the FOV got wider, the player would have less visibility of distant objects because the centre of the screen will shrink. But a good idea nonetheless.

As soon as I get home, I’ll get straight to work. Cheers for the motivation,
TomCat

Update // Release Candidate 2:

  • Buttons react to mouse over and mouse press
  • SSAO High setting now functions
  • Fog added (It was actually a good idea, thanks for that UnknownGuest)
  • Music changed because the old stuff was weird and boring
  • various other things…

27th of March,
TomCat

Downloading it now. Looks similar to Race the Sun :slight_smile:

My specs:
Radeon 5970
AMD FX6100
8GB DDR3
Dual 1080p monitors

[will post opinion/results here]
EDIT:
Okay, first thing I noticed is that in How to Play, there is a S key instead of a D key icon, and vice-versa for the S key.
Settings look really clean, but I’m not sure if I would prefer the checkbox on the right where the other options are (high/low).

Music and sound is disabled by default for some reason.

The score points/+1 second are incredibly annoying and distracting. I think the HUD needs some work to make it easier to read all the required information as quickly as possible in a condensed space.

I get ~37fps maximized. I can run most AAA games at ultra/high settings 60fps. I think the bloom filter needs some optimization.

The bloom is also quite distracting and low quality. I think I would prefer it to be only horizontal, not vertical. Makes it match the horizon.

It’s seriously hard. I often find myself running into places where there is like no way to actually get any speed boosts. They’re either too far away or have objects right behind them. Suppose it is a runner game, but I genuinely started raging after about a minute, which I guess makes it a good runner :stuck_out_tongue:

Good work :slight_smile:

Maybe you should consider doing a usability study as well, to help you further identify the weakpoints of the game and strengthen them.

On a completely different note:
-Another thing i found annoying was the fact that colliding with the beams made me lose, since they’re often small and very hard to avoid since barely touching them triggers the reset. I would remove them or make them get destroyed without affecting the craft as a sort of eye candy.

  • Since the game is so fast paced and you can restart many times per minute, maybe add a counter to the screen showing the previous run’s score, as well as maybe a best score list on the main menu showing the top 10 user achieved scores.
  • On triggering the reset, there should be a In my Opinion a promt, showing the score achieved during that run, and an option to restart the game and another option to quit to main menu, otherwise the game lacks a certain sense of achievment.

Race the Sun was actually the inspiration for this game; It’s basically a clone of Race the Sun.

AND YOU ARE SO RIGHT THE S AND D ARE SWAPPED, I can’t believe I did that… and then missed it… everytime. Thankyou so much for spotting that.

The reason music and sound are defaulted off is because I feel like most people would want it that way. I guess we’ll see, though now that I think about it maybe they should be defaulted on…

As for the bloom, I’m not at all familiar with GLSL and so I can’t do much to fix the issue. I suppose I could contact someone that can maybe add a second blur to the final texture of the shader so that it’s not blocky and rectangular. Other than that I’m not sure what else to do with it. But it’s definitely something I want to improve.

I’m glad you think it’s a good runner game, it makes me feel accomplished. Thanks man.

I was hoping that this thread would serve a similar purpose to a usability study, just with the feedback from the community.

With regards to your further points:

  • I changed the camera angle so that everything is far more visible, these changes will be observed in RC 3 version.
  • That, I feel, is a little far for me in terms of technicality. I don’t think I’d be able to do that, being that it would require a read_from_file / write_to_file kind of setup in python and I’m only just learning that in C# in class. I’m afraid it’s far too advanced for me. Plus the lack of a “previous run’s score” deal, it would encourage screenshots of the score they achieved, and thus subsequently increases sharing.
  • This was added in RC2, I’m not sure if you perhaps didn’t notice, or for some reason it’s broken for you, but I’m certain it was in RC2.

Thanks for the feedback though, it’s muchly appreciated and I’m glad you can help out.


RC3 incoming by the way. The first post will be updated shortly,
TomCat

EDIT:
Changed:
    - Force restart button now functions.
    - 5 royalty free songs are now the soundtrack during play.
    - Mouse no longer shown during play.
    - various other small things

It looks pretty cool dude. I love how the graphics in this game still look so raw, showing us that it is still work in progress. Hope you’ll have great success in this field.

Update // Release Candidate 4:

  • New player model, much better quality
  • New level system, the one level will gradually get more difficult
  • An actual splash screen
  • Transitions between splash and main menu


A few more sound effects and obstacles, and I think it might be ready to sell and ship.

3rd of April,
TomCat