Post by pmanacas in Ballsy! World Cup 2020 comments

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Wow, just wow. I don't mean this lightly. I have tried a lot of football games in my lifetime. really a lot. From match day 2 on the spectrum to sensible soccer on the amiga to the golden age of PES on the PS2. and I have been waiting for a long time for a game like this. You nailed the ideal speed and passing game feel on the spot. congratulations. this is exactly what the football gaming community needs: a slower version of sensi. there are however a few little niggles and omissions, but of course for an beta its already pretty good!

here are my suggestions/niggles:

Sprint/knock ahead should be more immediate and pronounced, feels a little slow and not responsive
Add the ability to curl the ball a la sensi with immediate stick movement after kick (shouldn't be overpowered though). The way this could work would be, when you hold the kick button to power up the shot/pass your kick direction becomes set and then you can use the stick already to add curl and height (if you pull back) and these are applied when you release. This is cool because it allows a lot more depth to the control system without adding immediate complexity for the novice player.
Cam 10 doesn't really need it but add an optional radar for those who like to play more zoomed in
Allow even further zoom out camera options! (ideally until almost all the pitch is visible)
The side selection screen is a bit confusing, should follow the convention of showing the team names and flags on each side instead of a cryptic [Team 1]
The speed is maybe just a tad too slow? Definitely Sensi speed is too fast for nowadays, but this is maybe too slow. Ideally allow to choose from 3 speeds or something in the menu.

You have something special here. I tell you. Would definitely pay for a more fleshed out version.

properlydecent4 years ago

Thanks so much for your kind words! I really needed that. I'm having trouble keeping up motivation since there seems to be little interest in my game :)

About the game speed; I notice that making it faster makes it more reflex-oriented, while making it slower makes it more tactics-oriented. I prefer the latter, though I understand that's a personal thing. I will consider a game speed slider for this.

The curve ball idea is a good one!

Radar/zoom good ideas, though I may add it later (I really want to release ASAP, this project is starting to drag on a bit)

Side selection, good point!

Cheers!

pmanacas4 years ago(+1)

Yeah, about the speed absolutely, only testing you get the feel and I trust your judgment. Definitely feels tactical at the moment.

One more suggestion:

A nice control feature from classic PES that you could implement to great effect here is - tap dribble modifier right after a pass and the player that made the pass makes a run fwd into space. Again this ads absolutely no complexity for the novice player, but ads depth to the game allowing to setup one-twos or even to make dummy runs (i.e. make the passer run and then as the opponent tracks that run then you pass to the other side instead)

About lack of interest:

Its tricky, the market is just so overcrowded with small indie games (and big ones as well!). I guess you may have to play around with the core presentation and the core focus of the game at some point. Maybe make it a clear five a side street football feel? (instead of the grass)

The World Cup stats progression just doesn't feel that great to me at the moment. Not very interesting i guess. I see this more as a game where each team could have their own fixed identity (even if it is unrealistic) like one team have great speed but poor shot power etc. That would be very innovative because tipicall football games focus on player individuality, you could focus on team individuality instead. Something along those line. Then really stylize the art in an original way so that it really stands out in the crowd and doesn't look just like another flash game (which I'm sorry to say it does a bit now =)

Anyway, I have infinite ideas that I can bounce your way about this later =)

properlydecent4 years ago

1-2 passes is a great idea!

a question about team individuality; I did try that; for example, japan has great ball control but are very slow, most african teams are more the opposite, south-american teams have generally higher agility etc. is this not what you mean? or do you mean more extreme differences?

I fully agree on the presentation part. I made it a bit too generic. My original idea was to make it look like an MSX game - very barebones - but with modern gameplay. I guess maybe I should have gone for that, to stand out :) The idea for street football is also fun; I can still consider making other types of fantasy stadiums, but at this point I just want to release soon, and then update it later - or start a new footy game with better presentation/other graphics to start with.

(In fact, I started a few years ago with an isometric style game, with a bit larger scope; but it was a bit too big so then I made this as a way of just having a game in the market, to get some experience with that. I may continue working on that other game later.. not sure yet. The idea was to have 5-7 completely different teams, with themed stadiums. I made one so far: https://www dot youtube.com/watch?v=W0tvdekv_nk (replace the 'dot'; if I paste the full link, it'll embed the video and I don't want that :) ))

pmanacas4 years ago(+1)

For team individuality i meant more extreme even. And I wouldn't use countries to avoid xenophobic connotations with the skills etc (sigh... you never know these days....) I meant like really imaginary 5 a side teams, like a trickster team, a slow but powerful team, you know, almost like Mario Tennis balance if you know what I mean. (If you don't know Mario Tennis I highly recommend you analyze the control scheme in that series. It uses only 2 button, and with those 2 buttons by combining double tap or tap in sequence or tap together it achieves a really deep control scheme.

The "stadium" in the video looks awesome, so atmospheric!

I had a look in your yt channel, I cannot believe you are the author of that game that google was using for the machine learning project!

And you made your own 3d engine! Serious level of skill.

Also incredible that you experimented with a top down racer! One of my favorite games ever is Turbosliders.

I'm just an amateur programmer, but for years I had these 3 games on my todo list one day:

A karting game inspired in turbosliders. With no collisions but with semi-realistic kart handling physics.
A football game mixing sensi top down perspective with some elements of classic PES. (exactly what you have here!)
A tennis game with a control scheme inspired by Mario Tennis but with online multiplayer.

properlydecent4 years ago (1 edit)

Ohh Turbosliders looks very similar to my game! I swear I had never heard of it before now :D Seems a lot of fun!

Thanks for your kind words on my other projects! I did make a lot of stuff over the years, though it annoys me that I never finished anything; which is why I want to just finish this game so bad, without enlarging the scope all too much :)

Btw, a tennis game (in some abstract interpretation) is also on my todo wishlist, ballgames are fun! Also, some pinball game would be fun!

I acknowledge that your idea about very different teams, it may work well, but I have to keep that for a future project; I don't want to change too much anymore for this one. One of my future football games ideas is to also have very individualistic differences between the players; this would be denoted using hats. So if you put a hard-hat on a player, they become very strong in defense, or you can put a wizard hat on em, they get some weird tricks, etc. But yeah ideas for a future game ;)

Oh and a good point about the xenophobic connotations, didn't really realize that possibility.. but I'm not going to have my behavior changed by some woke dicks, so I'm gonna keep it in :P

Btw what language/engine do you program in?

pmanacas4 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

You just gave me an idea, what about a game that mixes tennis with pinball! Where you it and aim with a racket like tennis but have pinball mechanics to achieve goals and targets. The concept of mixing pinball with other genres has been proven by the excellent "Yoku's Island Express".

I totally get and support you wanting to finish the game and that all these wacky ideas are totally out of scope. (love the hats idea by the way)

That said I still have to ask: Please add a net bulge + sound effect when the ball hits the net!

It makes scoring a goal so much more satisfying. It can really complete the experience. Trust me, even if its just a simple shake of the goal frame with a simple "thwack" sound it will make a huuuuuuuuuuge difference.

I mainly program in python for work and fun, and I tried to do a couple of game prototypes using Godot Engine. I tried to build some tutorial level stuff in Unity and always found it really clunky and not fun to learn. Godot on the other hand uses a scripting language that is almost the same as python and the UI and engine concepts are so much easier to grasp for an amateur. And it just runs from a standalone exe that is like 50 Mb! The Godot IDE itself is a Godot application! Amazing tool really.

properlydecent4 years ago

I like the pinball-tennis idea :D I've considered various pinball-mixed-with-other-genres too, there's a lot of fun possibilities when you throw in ball mechanics :P Maybe I can make a prototype of such a concept after this game :)

I'm really not looking forward to making net bulge mechanics, sounds hard :P BUT I agree some effect is needed! How about fireworks/confetti coming from the goal when you score?

Cool that you like Godot, I hear more people being positive about it! I'm coming from C++ so C# is probably better for me; I'm always fighting with Python :P But I guess it really depends where you are coming from and what you are used to :)

pmanacas4 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Yeah, by "bulge" was probably the wrong word. I didn't mean it needs proper physics. A shake animation for the whole goal + a nice sound effect is probably good enough and more fitting with the rest of the graphics. Definitely not fireworks or confetti for each goal (that's something that would be fitting when you win the world-cup or something).

Regarding Tennis+OtherMechanics - the Virtua Tennis series had some great mini-games mixing Tennis with many other mechanics along it's various iterations. Question is to find one that is fun for longer than just a "mini-game".

properlydecent4 years ago

Shaky goal + sound sounds like a good idea, I'm on it!

properlydecent4 years ago

I've added some goal shake (may need some tweaking) and a goooooool sample :) see end of this video: https://youtu.be/Fkw6_PVChHQ

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Vstrix2 years ago(+1)

Bro, what you are creating is really amazing. I bet not a lot out there who knows to make one. If you ever make a course just for this I will definitely buy. I urge you to explore the options to pas this onto the community in some way or the other.

properlydecent2 years ago (1 edit)

Thanks man! I have been thinking a lot about sharing the knowledge I gained over the years, but I find it really hard, I'm not a teacher type at all. I've tried some blog posts in the past but I really hate writing them lol. I hope someday I can force myself to document some stuff.

Either way I appreciate your kind words <3

Vstrix2 years ago(+1)

I am indeed happy to see unique talent

itch.io

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