2017-11-24 16:05:17

Hello, I'm from the University of Baltimore.
My game is a mini stealth game where the player is required to collect papers of a competing company.

The mechanics mainly work. My main concern are the sounds of the game on whether their clear enough and the play-ability of the game.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

The executable can be downloaded here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JM0Dl … 50tqfp7CRx

2017-11-25 03:03:17

Thank you for sharing this with us. Great work! I just wanted to let you know that it is a little bit challenging to understand each guard's path of travel. Are guards patrolling from left to right? That's just a tad unclear to me. Perhaps a brief explanation of how the guards move during the game instructions could help with this. Thanks again.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. - Mark Twain

2017-11-26 19:37:06

This is a neat concept, but yeah I'm afraid I can't really tell what's going on either.
I'm pretty sure you can only move on the y and Z axis, though the odd thing about the z axis is that your supposed to jump when you hit space, but it's more like taking a single step straight up than jumping, at least based on the sound...


The buzzing things are files from what I can tell, because I did actually get one once, I got close enough to it to start hearing paper rustling sounds, then I pressed E and it went away, plus I think I heard good job but I may have forgotten lol.
Their is a laptop hard drive type sound (kind of a crackling) very quiet, and when I get too close to that I get caught, but since I'm  pretty sure I can't turn, they are nearly impossible to avoid.
Those could also just be the paper rustling sounds from farther away, and not hard drives, it's difficult to tell.


Sometimes I get a chair scuff sound, and if I keep moving afterwards I almost always get caught, which makes sense, but I also easily get caught without that sound as well so...


Then their are all the grunts and sighs, but they don't seem to follow a pattern, and it's kind of confusing because they can come from left and right, but I can only move forwards, backwards, and up from what I can tell.
I've tried timing them so that I don't move when I hear them near me, then start moving again afterwards, and I do seem to have more success that way, but like I said before, as soon as I get close to that crackling sound I'm screwed either way.


A learn game sounds dialog/sub menu, accessed from the main menu would be very useful hear, as you already have a solid menu system going on.
The way those generally work is that you pull up the menu, then each sound is named, via TTS or voice over, acting as a very brief description of the sound, and then you play the sound by pressing a key, and it loops until you move to the next item down.
For instance, I open the game, and you have your normal start and quit options, but you also have a learn game sounds option.
I hit enter on that and I hear a dialog that explains how to use the menu, something like (use up and down arrows to select a sound, space to play it, and escape to go back).
So I find my self on the first sound, with the item being called simply (distant file) then press space to listen to the buzzing sound, until I'm satisfied with my ability to recognize it.
Now I press down arrow for the next item called simply (close file) and get that rustling paper sound.
And so on and so forth, for walking sounds, being detected by an enemy, etc.


For a dialog, (best used when you don't have many sounds to memorize) like maybe 6 or less, you would have an option in the main menu as well, but instead of a sub menu you would just explain each sounds purpose, play it for a little bit, then move on to the next, in a static format, then go back to the main menu when done.


Otherwise, in terms of controls and gameplay instructions, they are pretty solidly delivered the way they are now, in a small dialog at the start of the game, though you may want to talk a bit slower/clearer when stating each key, so they are better separated and therefore easier to understand.


While the walking sounds are low quality, the grunts, sighs, chair scuff and paper rustling sounds are already fine, but either way, you could have some office ambience and a sound for picking up a file, some menu/background music, selection and boarder sounds for the menu if you want ETC, which could spice things up with not too much effort.
http://www.Freesound.org is a great place for that, with a massive selection and easy to understand licensing, (they wont' spam you either). tongue
For music, their are allot of good choices:
http://www.freemusicarchive.com
http://www.soundimage.org
http://www.nihilore.com
http://www.incompetech.com
http://www.marcelofernandezmusic.com/ro … ree-music/