Project Critiques

  1. What is your favorite aspect of the proposed game? Why? For this question, point out what you think is the coolest feature of the game, what makes it novel, or what aspect would make you most inclined to play it. Your thoughts on the coolest part of the game may differ from those of the game designers!
  2. What is your least favorite aspect? Why? Which part of the proposed game seems to be the least fun? Is there something that might be dull or boring? Why might you get tired of playing the game or find it frustrating? Be candid, yet tactful and polite with your answer.
  3. What one change or addition would you suggest to most improve the game? Offer a helpful suggestion on how to make the game better. Maybe you have an idea on how to make the gameplay more fun. Or, perhaps your favorite feature could take on a more prominent role. You might offer a resolution to your least favorite aspect that would improve the game. Please make comments that are reasonable given the scope of the course.

Peter Bucher

Incredible Battle Machines

  1. The Building your own robot part sounds very nice. But will be very tricky to make it feel natural with the limited controls. Make sure to simplify the process enough that one can be built in several minutes.
  2. The logic editor while adding a layer of depth to the building part, might be a bit much. Sure it would be nice to add more complex control patterns, but to be really powerful it'd need to go all the way to be more like a Lego Mindstorms. Why not move the 'assign buttons' part to the building editor.
  3. Make sure the hazards are more a tactical element. In fighters with such hazards it's common, that one can be thrown or pushed into one by the opponent, but they can be easily avoided.

Project Magma

  1. An ice cold battle in a volcano. I love the setting. The proposed Micro Machines like camera sounds great and will greatly improve the dynamics of the gameplay.
  2. The pillars sound like a nice addition, but from what I imagine, they could also be experienced as aggravating obstacles, drastically decreasing the degrees of freedom of the islands.
  3. Try to use the volcano setting to add occasional obstacles like eruptions or falling rocks. But don't forget the signalize them, that the players have a chance to evade.

Dirty Derby

  1. Reminds me of Destruction Derby and Interstate '76 both great games I've had a lot of fun with. Guns and cars are always a good combination.
  2. Realistic car physics are cool to develop, but considering the setting of the game arcade style physics would be a better fit. Simulations are in danger to be frustrating if the cars slide around like crazy and don't do what the player wants them to.
  3. Car controls will be one of the most important factors to tune. I also hope to see a good terrain renderer with nice texture blending.

Christian Schulz

Incredible Battle Machines

  1. Independent of the fact, that you can build your own machine, the fights will be thrilling if players with very different characteristics join a deathmatch. Then you really need some good tactics to smash your enemy.
  2. Is it possible to switch between machine and logic construction or are they sequential tasks? For a maximum of creativity and refining possibilities I think that this strong separation feels somewhat limiting.
  3. Your game proposal does not elaborate much on the actual battle fields. While constructing a machine I would already consider future operation areas. It would be nice to have more distinct map characteristics.

Project Magma

  1. Comparing to other game proposals, a really prominent aspect is that you are not playing in a more or less static environment. Moving islands are great for an exciting gameplay.
  2. Maybe you could experiment with the camera perspective. If islands change their height I could imagine that a player will have difficulties in evaluating their exact (three dimensional) positions from a static view.
  3. Island jumping is a risky fun and contributes significantly to a fast-paced gameplay, but from your description it is only a rare jetpack powered action. Consequently, I would like to jump all the time.

Dirty Derby

  1. As a fan of titles like “Destruction Derby” and “Flatout 2” I appreciate your approach. Especially that you include to push your opponent off a cliff, which is to my knowledge not a feature of the originals.
  2. In your proposal you said that a player wins a match by earning the most points. This is done by collecting certain items. Attacking your enemy is not your primary task, why should I do that and not just deliver a decent race performance?
  3. As we have already discussed in the class, the limitation to two players may be reconsidered. There is nothing to say against a duel; nevertheless I prefer crashing many cars.

Nicola Ranieri

Incredible Battle Machines

  1. I like the idea to build your own battle machine. It makes me remind of "Robot Wars" which I watched on TV when I was a child. Also the idea of of combining your own controll logic sounds interesting. I really look forward to build my own battle machine.
  2. In section 2.4 you state to make the game cartoon-like and exaggerated. I think that this game could strongly benefit from using some real looking metallic shaders and try to give you the smell of crude steel. It is clear that exaggerated physics are cool, but it alltough should allways seem to be possible.
  3. I think the most difficulat part is, to provide the gamer with an easy and intuitive interface in the two editors. I would really focus on this and early get feedback from others. But since each game should immediate be playable in the main game mode, it would make sense to have a couple of predefined battle machines.

Project Magma

  1. This game has great potential for surprising with extremely cool visual effects. The special abilities (Ice Spike, Snow Storm, etc.) can also improve the game fun, as seen in games like Diablo2 and Star Craft.
  2. On one side you want to have animated characters, on the other side you will have an isometric view (perhaps with zoom-in) on large maps. It would be too bad to spend that much time in character animation when its not really visible in the game. But perhaps you will find a good tradeoff... Another point is, that a beaten player has to wait on the others. But there are many possible solution for that problem.
  3. There are still open questions which will strongly affect the game play, as for example the view or the size of the islands. You should try out the different solutions and get feedback from other players which solutions make more fun.

Dirty Derby

  1. As you mentioned in the presentation, crashing cars makes fun. You also talked about some game modes (e.g. this bomb passing mode) which sounds nice. I am not a great fan of car games, but with a gatling gun on the engine hood it can become really interesting wink
  2. You do not mention your damage model. This would really be missing, crashing car does make fun, but only if you can see what you did. As far as I can remember you mentioned high maps for map generation. But this would prevent bridges and such stuff. Perhaps it is worth to think about modeling the maps in maya/blender/3ds.
  3. As mentioned above, visible damage would improve the coolness factor by Pi.

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2024-03-29
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