Andean Bird 0.4
Note: to follow the development of this little project, read 1, 2, and 3.
With this version, the Andean bird game finally actually becomes a game, and not a control prototype. But I’m left unsatisfied.
The very crude title screen
Trying out more controls
Last time, there was a desire among those who tried it to add mouse controls, something I have resisted, and ended up not putting in even to try out just because of the massive rewrite it would entail. The whole core of the engine is built around the flapping code, and if I switch to mouse controls, the flapping would go away altogether. Instead, I think my next step may be to hook it up to triggers on an XBox 360 controller.
But I also hadn’t liked the addition of two more controls for diving and climbing. In the last version, you could use the up and down arrow keys, but as some suggested in the thread, diving is really accomplished by putting the wings into a particular configuration. So I tried to accomplish that. There is now a global “gravity” that is always pulling the bird downwards very slowly. However, if you hold the wings back all the way, you will go into a much steeper dive.
Climbing happens slightly every time you flap; there’s now a real trick to flapping at the right tempo to climb steadily. The island now gains real significance as your “altimeter” because I have still avoided putting things on the HUD.
There are a bunch of implications for this; turning to one side or another, for example, is almost certain to cause you to slip lower, because one wing is held down the whole time, unless you manage to get the timing just right. As a result, flying the bird is demanding more skill.
The issue — it may just have gotten too hard and tiring. How to tell?
Goals and rewards
Without a goal, there was no game. It was all well and good flapping about and trying out this control scheme, but I couldn’t tell how hard it really was. So I added a flight path that you have to stick to. This was also the first opportunity to put in some Andean iconography in; I selected for my arrow shape a textile pattern from Cuzco.
The flight path veers from side to side and up and down as well. I made it tint red when you were too high or too low; it’s unforgiving if you are below it, but there’s a tolerance level when you are above it — when you’re close, it’s blue, and as you get too high it shades to purple and thence to red. If you are flying over it when it is purple-to-blue, you get points, and it turns white to indicate that you “captured” it. Flying slowly along the path earns more points, actually, because the scoring literally increments every time it detects that you are on the path. You can tell when you are below the path because it overlays on the bird.
If a segment of the path isn’t captured and scrolls off the bottom of the screen, you lose some lifeforce. Run out of lifeforce, and the game ends. This is displayed via an obscure white bar at the bottom of the screen, right by the score. I’ve toyed with other ways of showing this — the bird growing translucent, until it finally pops in a shower of feathers, or the game starting out at dawn and moving to dusk and finally night when you’re about to die, making the time of day into a metaphor for your progress.
And the bird should still pop in a shower of feathers. 🙂
Effects
One thing that became clear last time is how much of the experience of this is basically aesthetic. When clouds were added and the island, and especially the music, it made a big difference in the feel. So I spent some time adding effects.
If you recall, the original concept involved “a bird made of light.” I’ve drifted away from that, but it occurred to me that with the clouds and whatnot, I was getting a lot of nice color variation on the screen. So I decided to emphasize that with a full screen motion blur. The way this was accomplished was by not clearing the screen, but instead overlaying a heavily alpha’d color rectangle across the screen. After a few frames, it builds up enough to wipe the screen, but recently past frames remain there for just a few frames. Ths effect made a big difference with the clouds and the bird, but the island gained some unsightly artifacts.
I also added water sparkles, using pathetically simple little particles that just draw ovals. Once the motion blur was in, these gained faint trails (as did everything).
Once I had those, I wanted to add time of day. A simple clock increments when a bar of music ends, and there’s different light color settings for each hour. The actual light gradually moves towards the new target color, and the result is a gradual wash of pastels. If you let the game run without starting to play, you can see the time run by in accelerated fashion.
Once I had that, I kind of wanted a reflection of the sun or moon in the water. I ended up just having a slightly denser cloud of sparkles in the water, and then I made the other sparkles I already had center on this reflection and fade out with distance. For now, this just moves sideways across the screen very slowly, but eventually I can tie it more firmly to the clock. If you can get down there before the lifeforce runs out, you can see the effect up close — it looks like very out of focus sparkles on water if you squint and sit a few feet away from the monitor. Heh.
Where it is now
There’s a variety of goofy bugs — sometimes, your lifeforce just goes crazy, killing you with no indication of why. Sometimes the drawing of the flightpath goes crazy — an artifact of drawing the path in two passes, the bits above you and below you. The addition of gravity and flapping up means that in normal flight, the stuff below does a distracting zoom-in-zoom-out thing, which can probably be fixed by dampening the zoom. The sun/moon reflection behaves erratically bcause I didn’t synch its movement to the clock.
But more importantly, is it doing what I hoped it would? The addition of the game element actually detracts from the overall experience to a degree. Whereas the last version was very peaceful, the new version gets rather frustrating as the wind blows you off the intended flight path and you can’t get back on it (and thus die). Now the controls really are a battle, because the flightpath is pretty unforgiving. Lastly, while flying through the shifting colors is kinda cool, having to pay attention to the path makes you zero in your focus, and so you don’t see the environment. I’d like to add dolphins in the water, other birds flying by, a full tile-based scrolling background with stuff to collect and see, all done with the Andean style… but would you see it? Perhaps the flight path only applies when flying from island to island.
There are some positives. Crude as all the new effects are, they enhance that sensation of a mystical flight. Some of the colors are off, but overall, I like the broader palette. The motion blur isn’t quite what I want, but I can see how it would work. Flying with Z and M and nothing else feels right. And the idea that just flying and mastering those controls can be a challenging game experience is borne out — if anything, it needs to be easier.
To address the flight path, I’d probably still display the whole path, but have waypoint along it that are the only ones that “matter” for lifeforce. That would give more freedom to fly about. A way to regain lifeforce would also help.
The big question still remains the controls, of course.
I’ve got a lot going on with work things lately, so this may be the last version for a while. Let me know your high scores. 🙂
17 Responses to “Andean Bird 0.4”
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s something to be said for being your own boss [IMG ;)] I do expect to see games where you have to apply a little brainpower. No straight hack-and-slash from Raph. Maybe an MMOBFS (Massively Multiplayer Online Bird Flight Simulator)?
I’ve been following this project and haven’t contributed anything to the conversation up until now but I figured I’d throw a couple of thoughts your way. My main motivation for speaking up is the addition of the flight path.
This game is now very non-etheral. The flight path gives it a really rigid and “locked-in” feel. I had this same feeling about the islands. In my opinion, the islands only serve to indicate forward motion but while they do that, they make the world rigid. The game would be more etheral if the islands were replaced by a cloud layer or two indicating forward motion. If there are islands, why can’t I land and take a break? Am I over the ocean? It looks like it, but there aren’t repetitive islands in the ocean. They break the immersion.
You made a great decision to keep the inputs simple. I think you were spot-on in your analysis of what using the mouse would do to the game.
Now, about that flight path. After starting the game I was completely boggled. Why would he take an etheral game and cover a fifth of the screen with feedback data? I thought a bit and came up with a better question. Why does the game work to indicate that altitude is important when the camera angle of the whole scene emphasises that altitude doesn’t matter? The game is now fighting itself. I wonder if that thought didn’t run across your mind the whole time.
Perhaps it is just a matter of me not understanding where you are going with the game. I most certainly accept that I created very strong impressions of what it would be like before firing up the first version. In my mind, etheral meant: no text on the display, no hard edges, subtle feedback, no frustration, and emphasis of “pleasant reward” over failure punishment.
When you get the time cycle synchronized I hope you lose the clock entirely. Again, the bird would not break immersion itself it it were soft edged in its final incarnation. If the game is going in the direction I thought it was going from the begining, you’ll ditch the concept of life-force and death in exchange for rewarding active flight with pleasing color shifts in the whole scene and variations in music tempo.
Or, take it the direction you are currently taking it. I’m just throwing my thoughts in the breeze here. I just figured that playing this type of game should leave the player with a sense of just having played with a zen garden to enjoy its beauty rather than struggle to figure out high score techniques and the perfect key combo for pathing perfection.
At any rate, kudos on what you have done so far.
Well, I think you’re actually putting your finger on what bugs me about the flight path — it increases the pressure too much, which detracts from the overall zen vibe. It makes it more gamey, but in the process makes it less charming, I think.
Long-term, there won’t be repetitive islands; really, there should be an ever-varied and interesting set of scenery down there.
I wouldn’t keep the literal clock on the screen, no… it’s just there for debugging right now. Ideally, there’s no HUD at all.
Oh — and making altitude matter. That came about because the sensation of diving in and out was enjoyable. Again, tying it to a mandatory task causes the pressure problems, I think, not the actual ability. You get caught up in “how high up am I?” and start wanting an altimeter, rather than just enjoying the sensation of moving up and down.
You get caught up in “how high up am I?” and start wanting an altimeter
I got to a point where I seemed to be locked into a state that was too high. (It looked red…) I tried to dive, but the island became humungous and the triangles were getting no bluer. I eventually died. I definitely wanted an altimeter at that point (since there was plenty of time for me to think about it while waiting for the life bar to go away).
And my score was around 48000… I don’t remember the exact number, since it’s been an hour since I played and I won’t be able to play again for another three hours.
[…] Edit: latest version and post in this topic can be found here. […]
My wrists hurt. No, seriously. I also think I broke my right-arrow button.
I’m with Tom Welch and Raph on the zen thing. I feel like if a bird had to work this hard it would quit and become an ostrich or ibis or something.
Also, drinking Scotch while playing does not help.
Use Z and M, it’s much easier on the wrists. 🙂
I’ve honestly never liked the keyboard controls. I stand by my mouse-driven flight recommendation. In games where I’ve enjoyed the experience of flight, the enjoyment was derived from a largely perceptual experience. The last games in which I experienced flight that was attractive and compelling include Pilotwings 64 and Descent. Armored Core and Starfox may have also been among those games.
I wasn’t persuaded by your argument, Raph, that mouse-driven flight would somehow ruin the experience. If that were true, vehicle racing games simply wouldn’t sell. When I play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, I play mostly to drive around in vehicles and do crazy things. Aside from being required for progression, the missions are unimportant to me. I am, in fact, at a mission that involves learning to fly a plane; unfortunately, the flight controls are so horrible that flight is a chore. I haven’t played the game in a month since encountering that mission.
I think the gameplay of Andean Bird should not be focused on the mechanics of avian flight — flapping; instead, I think the gameplay of Andean Bird should be focused on providing a fun and intuitive avian experience.
If I didn’t mention it before, I’d like to mention that the game that most made me feel like I was flying was Nights into Dreams (for the Sega Saturn if I’m not misremembering).
I’d also like to suggest that maybe Andean Bird was never meant to be a game, maybe it’s supposed to be a toy.
[…] Are these all strategies for luring people in? The theory of fun says that not everyone will be wanting or needing the same cognitive stimuli in order to have fun. So sure, you can and should be mixing and matching here. You may not end up with what someone calls a game, but who cares? If your goal is fun as opposed to game, you have a much wider palette. This is precisely the stage we reached with the last version of the Andean bird project; by making it a game, we actually robbed it of some fun. Fun is not confined to games. […]
[…] I was reading Raph Koster’s “Influences” speech at the Project Horseshoe, where he showed his Andean Bird Demo, a sort of Jonathan Livingston Seagull game. He explained that he wanted to make a game about flapping. Not a simulator, fighting, strategy or any kind of challenge. […]
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