Raph's Website » Vague game less vague: Andean Bird 0.3

Vague game less vague: Andean Bird 0.3

July 20th, 2006 (Visited 15641 times) Tags:

This time, there’s a new version to download!

Last time, I talked about how there were a few things that had caught my imagination: dynamic music based on how you were flying the bird, and the idea of adding verticality into the flight model, so you could zoom in and out. This latter one, I concluded, should be done before I put in any obstacles or challenges, because it would dictate what sort of challenges I could present. I also had planned to add the wind.

The bird gains some art

As you can see from the screenshot, the bird has been tweaked. Not only di I adjust the arc of the wings in numerous location, but I got rid of the old “fatigue” bar that was previously in the upper left corner (the vertical red bar) and instead made it affect the angle of the shoulders. Now all the flight model feedback is in the shape of the bird’s wings.

I then used a simple 2d texturemapping routine to slap a very crude feathers texture on the bird’s wings. The rest of the bird is still mostly drawn procedurally: ovals, lines, etc. This is a stand-in bit of art just to make it look a little more appealing. In the long run, I am still interested in pursuing that Andean art style.

To do the music, I went into my recording software, and set up a simple drum loop of a known length. I then recorded the most basic form of the riff. I then looped that as a backing track, and recorded as series of simple riffs atop it. I chopped these up so they were all the same length, and put a timing routine in the game that said “every sixteen seconds, go into the pickMusic() routine.”

pickMusic() chooses up to three of these little loops to play — the backing one, and two others based on things like angle of the wings, position on the screen, and so on. There’s a few cues that are very predictable; if you get to the top of the screen, you get one loop, if you are at the bottom doing nothing, you always get just the backing. But most of the others have some randomness as to whether or not they will play.

Lastly, I added the verticality. I created a quickie island in Photoshop, and then added the ability to move up and down with keys. Now that I’ve done this, I want to change the interface for it; diving should be accomplished by holding down both wing keys, and climbing by a particular stroke pattern, I think. I like the simplicity of the flapping mechanism as the basic interface.

The island is there really only to give you the sense of verticality; I alpha fade it out based on altitude, which gives a nice effect of distance. Long term, the landscape probably needs to be a complicated thing built out of tiles, with a level-of-detail system so that I don’t kill the speed of the app by drawing too many tiny things in the distance.

Worth pointing out, btw — this is still very much a 2d app, despite using some texturemapping and zooming. No 3d math used here… The size has alas bloated because of those music loops — even at 22Khz, they’re still 1.3MB apiece…

Controls:

Z or left arrow to flap the left wing
M or right arrow to flap the right wing
K or up arrow to dive
SPACE or down arrow to climb
ESC or the close button (yes, I added that) to exit the app

Keep an eye on the wind meter at the top!

Next time? Almost certainly the ability to catch something. As my son said, “this would be awesome if you had a ray gun. All good games have enemies and ray blasters.” Sigh.

Downloads:

ZIP of the Windows version (11MB)
ZIP of the Mac version (11MB)

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rss_syndicate wrote on July 25th, 2006 at 6:02 pm:

совершенно гениальную игру. silvercreature [комментариев: 20] read more at dirty.ru

dirty_ru_lenta wrote on July 25th, 2006 at 6:02 pm:

Интернет по-Украински wrote on July 25th, 2006 at 6:02 pm:

совершенно гениальную игру. silvercreature [комментариев: 20]

Dream of sail wrote on July 25th, 2006 at 10:59 am:

Гениальная игра про птичку

crusty : Weblog wrote on July 25th, 2006 at 1:00 am:

Кажется один сумасшедший делает одну совершенно гениальную игру. silvercreature [комментариев: 6] dirty.ru/comments/106970/#new

flatline : Это лытдыбр. wrote on July 25th, 2006 at 1:00 am:

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Choose : Блог wrote on July 25th, 2006 at 1:00 am:

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Tide's Horizon wrote on July 21st, 2006 at 1:51 pm:

public design project

Faith wrote on July 20th, 2006 at 1:35 pm:

[...] Comments [...]

ProjectPerko: Meditative Games wrote on July 21st, 2006 at 9:12 am:

[...] Sometimes, people make a game for something other than gameplay fun. Some of these, as I’ve mentioned in the past, are called “games with a message” and suck. That’s because they’re trying to use the paradigm to get a message across, and like giant companies starting a blog, it doesn’t work. The algorithms that let it work are not suitable given their goals and restrictions.But sometimes you’re forced to admit: what we consider gameplay is really just the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of games which provide an experience that is wholly different from any of the “kinds of play” we generally endorse. They require no real skill, they have formless or unimportant goals.Games like that weird “flying through clouds” game, or that “deer running through a forest game”, or even the chronicals of Jaruu Tenk, which is a bit like an adventure game without any of the adventuring. There’s also dozens of quirky little flash games that fit the bill.These games are rare, but they provide an experience totally unlike any other games you can find. Raph’s silly flapping thing is an example: with primitive graphics, bad UI, and charming music, it has NO goals or challenges of any kind. But it’s still a very relaxing five minutes.The thing about these games – and the reason they are so rare – is that they die quick. They are very relaxing, very calming, but they offer nothing juicy enough to keep us coming back. We learn everything there is to learn about the game, then move on.These things are like a painting: you can love a painting. You can buy a painting. But you aren’t going to spend a significant amount of your time over weeks or months staring earnestly at a painting. Maybe if you could hang one of these meditative games on a wall…Normal games are more like books. They take serious time to get through and, a few months or years later, you may even read them again.The question is… is there some way to produce a hybrid? A very relaxing game which keeps players coming back?The game must have no real goals, but it must still have rewards that mean something to the player. The game must require no skill, but it must still offer a landscape which varies enough to hold interest.How can something have meaningful rewards when the player doesn’t need skill to get them and can’t be rewarded power for getting them?I’m sure there are many ways. Pipe up if you have any ideas. Here’s the one I ran with:The first, obvious answer is MMORPGs. They’ve already been nixing the skill requirements from them, replacing it with a time requirement. The same basic solution serves well in this case, too: it is not skill which this meditative game needs, but time.The rewards and varying landscape are somewhat more difficult to achieve. We could follow in the footsteps of Jaruu Tenk, with a world that evolves over time. But that world is too small: in order to hold my interest, the world would need to be very large, and scripting a large world to change over time is flat-out impossible.Most of these games have extremely limited worlds. “Small” is a misnomer, since most of them have infinite worlds which simply don’t have anything in them. The reason for this is simple: it takes a lot to develop large worlds, and these games are always labors of love.Some have larger worlds which don’t change at all or change in meaningless ways. I think these games hold attention longer, but the difference between five minutes and twenty minutes is not enough to celebrate.So, the solution I see is a game with a procedurally generated and self-altering world.The thing is, the world has to be interesting, and it has to change in understandable but interesting ways.Think of it as Myst, minus the puzzles, plus Pets, minus the feeding. You bomb lazily around this imaginary world, and you find out all sorts of really neat things… and the world changes even as you watch. Generations pass. Civilizations rise and change. New and interesting things happen.Is it possible?You would need to have some way of generating culturally significant content in a way which appeared to make sense. You would need to simulate people, but since the player wouldn’t be interacting as a person, this would be significantly easier than it would otherwise need to be.You would need to have some way for the player to interact with the world “vaguely” – such that there was no skill required, preferably not even a conscious UI – but we could lead the world automatically down the paths the player is most interested in.Procedurally generating a world is insane. You would need to either simulate or pretend to simulate ecologies, cultures, buildings, cities, resource-gathering, technological/magical advance, people at war, people in love, people being born, people growing old, people knowing legends… and let the player meander through it, trailing sparks of interest behind him which take root and make the world change.How could it all be done?You would, of course, fake it. Fake ALLLLLLL of it. Even assuming that, it’s still insane. And it would have to be done graphically: a text engine would not suit the mood.Hmm…Even then, I’m not convinced. The game dynamic itself would need to mutate over time, because once you’re sick of the basic method of play, the game goes in the trash. And you get pretty sick of a zero-skill system pretty quick.For example, if the primary method of play is spatial navigation (and it almost certainly is) your limits and capabilities need to change from day to day. Perhaps one day you play a bird. Later, you play a cat. Then a ghost. A butterfly. All are mobile things, but each provides an interesting new way to navigate the universe.More powerfully, having your way of looking at the universe change over time would be even better. For example, as a butterfly you can only flap during the day. When night falls, you sleep. As a cat, the exact opposite. If you played a tree, you would see the world evolving, people growing old and having children around you in an impressionist swirl. As a bee, perhaps the world seems frozen in time to you, humans moving impossibly slowly. As a ghost, perhaps you can see the swirl of interpersonal relationships pulling humans towards each other, but be unable to see the physical walls which make up their world.Is it even possible?Hmm…. [...]

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[...] [...]

dirty.ru wrote on July 25th, 2006 at 1:41 am:

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Raph said on July 20th, 2006 at 10:32 am:

Argh, corrupted Mac archive, working on fixing.

Morgan Ramsay said on July 20th, 2006 at 10:58 am:

I like the music, but I think the simulation requires too much feedback from the user.

There should at least be an option that allows the user to control the bird using only the mouse. For example:

MLOOK to change direction, dive, and climb.
RMB to accelerate using the correct flap pattern.
— Release RMB to decelerate.
LMB to perform an action, such as ‘catch fish’ or ‘attack predator’.
— Hold LMB and RMB to glide.

Probably more applicable to a 3D environment, but they might work in the 2D environment. These controls are far more intuitive to me than the current control scheme.

By the way, that bird can climb to a seemingly infinite altitude. I was hoping to climb into space and see stars, but no such luck… Eventually, you might want the bird to exert energy to perform actions, and to lose oxygen as the bird climbs higher than the safe altitude. To restore energy, the bird would catch fish while to restore health the bird would need to rest. There could also be a threat indicator in case of predators in the vicinity, and of course, the occasional jetliner or cropduster wouldn’t hurt…

Craig said on July 20th, 2006 at 11:17 am:

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t get the damn bird more than an inch from the bottom of the screen.

Chris said on July 20th, 2006 at 11:39 am:

I like this version much better. The positives:

-The music sets the right feel.
-The bird looks much more like a bird now.
-The addition of islands and ocean is great.

Things to work on:

-It needs mouse control.
-I don’t see any point to flapping really. It’s alot of work and it doesn’t earn you anything. The land doesn’t seem to scroll by any faster even.
-Having the bird start always at the bottom of the screen feels weird. Put the normal state in the middle of the screen.
-I would kill to be able to swoop down to ground level and land on one of those islands.

Good stuff.

Morgan Ramsay said on July 20th, 2006 at 12:00 pm:

Craig wrote:
Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t get the damn bird more than an inch from the bottom of the screen.

Try holding the Z key while tapping the M key, and vice versa. You can then hold and slowly tap the Z and M keys together to glide.

damijin said on July 20th, 2006 at 12:00 pm:

I critisized the original version for feeling like hard work to keep the guy afloat! Maybe I just didn’t “get it” yet.

However I must say that I’m starting to feel the zen that people were talking about. You were right, the ocean and islands going by really change the feel of the game.

I think you may have mentioned this as a game of journey before, following the bird from his home to a destination. With the music I can see a very unique and calming game if you chose to go in that direction. You could take off, bright and exuberant with a happy song, then travel the world, seeing sights as the music changes, getting lonely as you cross large oceans without much to see. Maybe you could even meet a fellow bird or two? Play around for a bit?

Very cool Raph

Allen Sligar said on July 20th, 2006 at 12:01 pm:

Ok Id like to take this opprotunity to be the first forum troll for this game, some will call me fanboi they just dont understand my personal investment in the Andean Bird. To wit:

1. I hereby request that you withhold this patch and implimentation, its obviously game breaking

1a The new Andean bird is overpowered in PVP and PVE. Its UNBALANCING!

2. Please revert to Andean Bird as we saw it in beta, or provide pre-pach servers for us “old school real andean bird afficianados” to play on so we dont have to play Andean Bird with the ver 0.3 14 year old dweeb noolars.

3. We dont like the new graphics, interface, and textures of the new .3 andean bird, it dosnt hold to andean bird cannon, in fact were not even sure you read the design and beta information on what this game is really about!

4. We dont like the new .3 Andean Bird music or skill sets, its not “Andean Birdsy” (OMG so sorry I couldnt help it hehe) enough.

5. New Andean Bird .3 is to complex, people wont play it

6. New Andean Bird .3 is to easy, people wont play it

7. Can I have a job at Andean Bird Productions? Ive played a lot of games I bet I could make a good one!

Nothing like a good laugh on a Thursday eh?

damijin said on July 20th, 2006 at 12:06 pm:

I lolled.

chabuhi said on July 20th, 2006 at 12:28 pm:

Allen, for cripes sake you’re always calling for nerfs!! The skill sets are fine, the patch is a plus, and if you want a job a ABP you should probably apply to be a volunteer Counselor.

Why don’t you just go back to Shadowbane if you hate it here so much??

Azador
Lvl 61 Raptor
Parakeet Shard

Allen Sligar said on July 20th, 2006 at 12:39 pm:

My 9.9 Sharpened Beak and Dual Bladed Claws so WTFPHWNzor your level 61 Raptor! (PS: Falcon Shard > Parakeet Shard (iz4or Carebearz))

PS: Cant wait to DL and play this when I get home

Impossible said on July 20th, 2006 at 12:39 pm:

What engine\framework are you using to make this app?

Raph said on July 20th, 2006 at 1:41 pm:

I’m using BlitzMax.

-It needs mouse control.

Ah, now we have our first big design controversy!

I am basically completely uninterested in giving it mouse control. As soon as I do that, the reason to make the game goes away. Remember, the game was about flapping in the first place. The challenge is in learning how to fly.

If it’s controlled by mouse, the control becomes completely trivial. The flapping becomes a canned animation, the movement becomes simple inertial mouse control… enh. The game instead becomes completely about content: either what gets thrown at you that you have to avoid, or what you have to shoot. You would basically be making a classic scrolling 2d shooter style game. I didn’t start the project to make one of those — they can be fun to make, but the world also doesn’t need another one.

That doesn’t mean that the controls couldn’t stand to be tweaked, mind you.

But picture playing this with a console controller, where the flaps are on the analog triggers on the back of the controller. Hmm, I may actually try that.

-I don’t see any point to flapping really. It’s alot of work and it doesn’t earn you anything. The land doesn’t seem to scroll by any faster even.

Moving up the screen should in fact make everything scroll faster. Can you watch closely and see if it’s truly broken or not?

-Having the bird start always at the bottom of the screen feels weird. Put the normal state in the middle of the screen.

I’ll try it, but I suspect that being at the bottom and feeling like you need to move up is important.

-I would kill to be able to swoop down to ground level and land on one of those islands.

Well, that’s sort of the longer-term plan, probably. Right now, you can pretty much zoom in until everything turns into giant blocky pixels.

Raph said on July 20th, 2006 at 1:56 pm:

Mac version works now.

Morgan Ramsay said on July 20th, 2006 at 2:17 pm:

Since you currently want to focus on the flight mechanic, I’ll send you some articles on bird flight.

Frank Mitchell said on July 20th, 2006 at 3:07 pm:

The scroll mechanics is working. The farther up the screen you travel the faster everything scrolls, although its only really noticeable at the extremes. I still feel like I’m fighting with the controls. When I first get into the game and the bird is floating at the bottom I have the urge to try and use long and slow flapping to propel my self forward, however that just doesn’t seem to work. Instead I resort to what Morgan described quick taps, it just doesn’t feel right to me, especially now with the music. On the other hand when I’ve reached the top and I’m able to better control the bird with long keys presses, it’s a much more satifying experience. The music is absolutely amazing in it’s ability to set the mood of the game. It reminds me of Tower of Goo in the respect.

Chris said on July 20th, 2006 at 3:42 pm:

“I am basically completely uninterested in giving it mouse control. As soon as I do that, the reason to make the game goes away. Remember, the game was about flapping in the first place. The challenge is in learning how to fly.”

I knew that and I remember your Joust analogy. I used to love that game. And since this game is your pet project done in your spare time, if you enjoy flapping up to the top of the screen I guess that is a design concept you should stick with. (And I wish I had the talent to create something 1/100 as good as this beta in a few hours work!)

Since I did like Joust, I admit that flapping and swooping can be alot of fun. But it’s just not working for me yet. To fly to the top of the screen, I hold down one wing and flap the other one really fast. It just feels wrong.

And I see “exploring” concepts galore in this game. Finding nests, digging out worms, etc. The aerial combat aspects I see potentially coming will turn it into an Atari game for me. But it’s all about what you are trying to do. If the flapping is the main point, stick to that. But it needs alot of work to make it feel more “birdlike”.

Michael Chui said on July 20th, 2006 at 3:58 pm:

Disclaimer: I haven’t gotten home yet, so I haven’t d/led and messed with it yet, thus I am an ignoramus, but.

Instead I resort to what Morgan described quick taps, it just doesn’t feel right to me, especially now with the music.

Perhaps if you think of it in terms of the fast flaps a bird makes to launch from the ground in the first place?

Chris said on July 20th, 2006 at 4:02 pm:

Did I mention how cool swooping down catching a fish would be?

-Nerf Eagles!

Tony Buser said on July 20th, 2006 at 4:37 pm:

I played this for a while before reading the comments and it was oddly satisfying once I figured out how to move up the screen after going back and forth along the bottom wondering what the heck this was about… Since the wings don’t really flap much, I didn’t realize what pressing the keys did. Comparing it to joust is interesting, but it needs more swooping and less button mashing. After a while I found myself pushing down really hard on the keys. My fingers hurt.

Ferum said on July 20th, 2006 at 5:07 pm:

Way cool!
Don’t listen to the haters, the flapping controls are good on the keyboard. I think the diving/climbing controls need to be linked to the wing controls somehow, being able to dive with my wings fully spread feels wierd. I don’t know all the mechanics of bird flight so I can’t recommend how these controls be linked, I just know they should be.
I love the music, It reminds me of the Motorcycle Diaries soundtrack. It would be nice if the music were alittle more varied (maybe intead of pickMusic() choosing loops to play, have it choose queues to get music from). Then just add some south american flute parts and you’ll have the Andean feel perfect.

Chris said on July 20th, 2006 at 5:30 pm:

My 3 year old love this game btw.

Iakimo said on July 20th, 2006 at 6:48 pm:

Death-ray eyes. The bird definitely needs evil-looking red rays shooting out of his eyes to simultaneously blast and cook innocent sparrows for dinner. And maybe a PETA camp on the island, so he can swoop down and drop a strategically-placed load of biohazardous birdie fluids onto the head of the Bald Activist for mongo bonus points! And maybe a park with a Confederate Statue, too….

Raph said on July 20th, 2006 at 7:47 pm:

Really interesting to see the reactions, btw. I need to watch some people play, over their shoulders. My kids have zero trouble getting the bird to anywhere on screen, and neither do I except in a strong wind.

The fatigue factor is supposed to prevent the quick taps from being a viable method to climb to the top. It doesn’t look like it is working correctly. Right now, medium length strokes are supposed to be ideal (and in fact, that’s what I use), but they’re a little too quick — they need to feel longer. Holding down one wing and tapping the other quickly is officially “an exploit” — an oversight side effect of my adding the sideways glide when a wing is held there.

Of course, it also matters a lot where the arc of the wing is when you start to press and when you release — you have to learn to watch the shape of the wings to determine when to press. Flexing when the wings are out of position doesn’t help.

I am pretty much determined not to have guns or shooting in this. Catching and avoiding at most. I really do see it as a meditative, new agey kind of experience.

Raph said on July 20th, 2006 at 9:16 pm:

I think the diving/climbing controls need to be linked to the wing controls somehow, being able to dive with my wings fully spread feels wierd. I don’t know all the mechanics of bird flight so I can’t recommend how these controls be linked, I just know they should be.

I very much agree with you. I think that holding both keys down should result in a dive. Some particular rhythm or method of flapping should result in a climb.

Xuri said on July 20th, 2006 at 9:38 pm:

How about doing some zooming on the bird itself when diving/climbing? Like, when climbing, the bird gets bigger and bigger the closer it gets to the “camera”, and vice versa – smaller and smaller the closer it gets to the landscape beneath.

Also, I think an increased difference in scrolling-speed (of the background) would be nice – as it is now I hardly even notice it.

Amaranthar said on July 21st, 2006 at 4:54 am:

To satisfy this rather basic desire, you could change this to a pigeon and give it bombs of bird poop. Add some shiney clean cars below to target.

Adam MacDonald said on July 21st, 2006 at 4:59 am:

This is quite nice Raph. FWIW, have you ever seen Cloud? Was made by an EA coop, but it has a unique aesthetic, and maybe useful for this experiment. Dunno. Thx.

IQpierce said on July 21st, 2006 at 7:11 am:

This might be a bit too much to bite off, but you could consider visualizing the air currents, both on your level and on levels higher and lower than yours.

There was a nature.com article recently stating that Van Gogh had been amazingly accurate in his depictions of wind and turbulence. Can’t find the article now but it would be interesting to see such depictions done in real-time; and where would it have more application than here?

A “real-time Van Gogh” art style would be very cool, though the Andean style you’re planning on is intriguing as well.

Raph said on July 21st, 2006 at 8:57 am:

Yeah, I have seen Cloud, though I am trying to stay away from it, so to speak.

Raph said on July 21st, 2006 at 8:59 am:

The air currents is something I had toyed with too. But I can’t think of a way to keep it from being just visually overwhelming — especially if I do multiple layers.

Simple updrafts and downdrafts seems more feasible. I thought about using color to represent air temperature, or something from the Andean iconography…

Of course, I am also wrestling with the big question of whether the game stays realistic or starts adding in floating icons in the sky.

CmdrSlack said on July 21st, 2006 at 9:12 am:

I think it would be vastly improved by in-game advertising of some sort.

chabuhi said on July 21st, 2006 at 10:31 am:

Raph said:
Holding down one wing and tapping the other quickly is officially “an exploit” — an oversight side effect of my adding the sideways glide when a wing is held there.

Will we get banned for this?

chabuhi said on July 21st, 2006 at 10:37 am:

Everytime I look at this latest iteration I am reminded of the ending sequence in Final Fantasy (the feature animation) with the shot of the eagle flying high above the newly restored landscape.

I vote for leaning more towards realism, but maybe the “fantasy” of it grows out of the mytho-historical Andean bird foundation.

Christopher Allen said on July 21st, 2006 at 11:58 am:

Nice work, the zen feel of it reminds me of an early mac paper airplane game I played once.

The biggest thing that don’t feel quite right to me is that when I flap one wing, I feel like I should be turning, but I always return to flying “north”. What I think I want to have happen is for the 2d world underneath me to rotate around me when I turn. This way I can “aim” for the center of the island as I travel. Implied by this is a possible absolute direction indicator, or a wind direction indicator, so that you travel faster when going in the direction with the wind, or slower against the wind.

Almagill said on July 21st, 2006 at 12:38 pm:

I didn’t find anything ‘difficult’ about getting my bird near the top edge of the screen, and once I got the hang of swooping and climbing things started getting fun.

Now I’m just wondering about how you incentivise the player to move around the screen and not just freeload a ride off the bottom row of pixels.

Trying to stay with a ‘calm’ feeling, rather than sticking a big cat headed flying snake behind the player which you’re tryin yo to escape from, you’d maybe want to go for a reward/reinforcement model. So, little Andean frog beasties to eat and get power to stay flying?

But why just fly? What if the bird is some sort of skyspirit and is looking to unload some retribution on the farmers below who are wiping out the frogs?? (Well, after eating all those frogs… it’s going to need to shift some ballast)

That gives the player three objectives,

Controlled flight
Gathering frogs
Splatting farmers.

You’ve got a basic ecosystem of frog and farmer spawns, these could be related in some way (too many farmers, fewer frogs. More splatting, less farmer, more frog)

OK, I think I have to go lie down now…

Over00 said on July 21st, 2006 at 3:50 pm:

“The road you take is more interesting than the destination itself”

It’s maybe not the right words but I think everyone knows what I’m talking about. This little game seems to be just about that and that’s what strikes me. Come on, the bird is going nowhere… but who cares.

I might be late but it took this game to pop that on my face. Might explain why I didn’t care to play any games ever since I stopped playing SWG and started to read this blog.

Sorry, it’s not really the focus of this thread but that’s the only thing that came to my mind.

Now, what could I play that would give me the same feeling?… I mean, something where I don’t have to get to X to have “fun”…

Iakimo said on July 21st, 2006 at 4:31 pm:

Actually, I was just griefing you (and parodying modern market “wisdom”) with my suggestion for death-ray eyes. I thought about adding a suggestion for a big-breated pixie rider in a too-small corset to add sex appeal, but I figured I was best off stopping with the Confederate Statue-as-target idea.

magicback (frank) said on July 21st, 2006 at 10:39 pm:

Raph,

in term of adding indicators and icons, may i suggest:

1. using head feathers to indicate direction (e.g. a feather in the head will always point north
2. using tail feathers to visually indicate wind direction
3. a particular contrail to indicate the magnitude of head or tail winds

My thinking is that the environment should stay realistic, but the Andean bird may have or gain special abilities to help with flight.

Once you add wind conditions and then natural indicators for them, new moves can be added; like a dive toward an area of updraft to gain speed and lift.

Frank

Aerium (Runda'nin) said on July 21st, 2006 at 11:54 pm:

The air currents is something I had toyed with too. But I can’t think of a way to keep it from being just visually overwhelming — especially if I do multiple layers.
Simple updrafts and downdrafts seems more feasible. I thought about using color to represent air temperature, or something from the Andean iconography…

I like your concept of recieving feedback directly from the shape of the wing, as it put the focus upon the grace of movement you are trying to master itself. With that in mind, what do you think about adding an animated texture that ruffles the feathers as the winds change? (I’m recalling the many episodes of Nova I watched with my father growing up). Ruffling would perhaps come from angles on each wing, with different patterns representing up drafts and down drafts. Combine that with a visual shifting of “up” or “down” of a wing for an instant would indicate to the player that he needs to respond to new stimuli (the up or down draft) with subtle physical movements (pressing of the keys).

Combine that with a force-feedback gamepad and I think you’re on to something very “Nintendo-zen” like… something cosmic for the adult audience

Max Battcher said on July 23rd, 2006 at 10:51 pm:

On the subject of interactive music, did you investigate DirectMusic’s interactive music engine as a possibility for when you feel like doing something a bit more complex than a simple music loop? I remember having fun playing with in a very weird context (unusual experimental web pages), but have only noticed one game actually use it (One Must Fall: Battlegrounds).

Rik said on July 24th, 2006 at 12:03 am:

Feels pretentious of me to make suggestions to Raph Koster’s game, I’m here to soak up knowledge not dispense it. … but here we go.

The Controls: Seems to me I should be controlling the wings. The left and right is fine, why one button for dive? Map it on the keypad and have the buttons work like this:

“4” works like Z (left); “6” works like M (right). If you hold down both 7 and 9 the bird climbs. If you hold down both 1 and 3 then the bird dives. You may be wondering what happens if just use one and not both. Me, too. I’m guessing you’d dive but turn at the same time.

The Story: Wide open at this time. But I’m thinking you want something with no lasers. Could be something “mission based” with each area having a different goal. Find a snack, find a friend, find a rainbow/perfect sunbeam, have your picture taken, avoid the bird of prey. No clock and no racing, I’m thinking that’s not in fitting with the current idea. But short levels. Just a thought.

Paul Donnelly said on July 24th, 2006 at 8:14 pm:

I like your flapping idea, and also the meditative style of the game, but the way you’ve implemented flapping feels completely wrong to me. I’m having trouble putting it into words, but here’s my best shot.

First, the bird’s flaps are way too slow. Take a look at a real bird and you’ll see what I mean. The wings of a small bird do two things: flap, and wait. Flaps are a blur, and pauses are sudden. Large birds flap a little more slowly, with pauses to glide and slightly slow flaps to maintain altitude and speed. (As an aside, it would be a lot of fun to be able to choose a large soarer or a small “flitter”. Gameplay could be very different for each.)

Second, waiting for my wings to return to position after a big flap is, frankly, ridiculous. What kind of bird can’t get its wings to the proper position any time it wishes? Having to wait for your leg to move into position would be unacceptable in a walking simulator. I realize that this is closely tied to your control scheme, but planning aroud out of position wings is just bizarre. Birds are flapping machines, for crying out loud.

Third, I can’t really make out the effects of fatigue. I can’t say whether this is a problem with the fatigue system or if it is obfuscated by the frustration of flapping. I can’t even make out a change in the shoulder angle.

On the plus side, your flapping implementation would make a perfect jellyfish simulator, since a jellyfish in water can’t move as fast as a bird in the air.

If I wanted to implement flapping, here’s how I’d do it. Rather than making a flap continue to the end of a keypress, I would make the rate of flapping correspond with the rate of the keypresses. The faster you tapped, the faster the bird would flap and ascend the screen (level of fatigue permitting), and if you slowed a lot, the bird would slow to gliding with intermittent flaps, sinking if you slowed enough. I suspect that making keypresses correspond to actual flaps at slow speeds but not at very high speeds would feel best, but I haven’t tested it. Sort of a “press to flap, and tap like crazy to dash” arrangement. I’d also work in diving to gain speed at the cost of altitude. It would also be nice if the music’s tempo corresponded with your speed.

As for controls, I have to echo the plea for mouse support. While I know you think it would eliminate the whole point of the game, flapping, I think it could actually be a much more natural flapping interface. Moving the mouse forward could move the wings forward, and moving it back would move them back. Left to right movement could change the angle the bird flies at. That would leave players without individual wing control, but I don’t think birds operate them individually anyway. Of course, if the bird was twisted onscreen, the player would have to stroke the mouse in a direction consistent with the way the bird faced. The buttons could possibly ascend/descend.

I also like the idea of analog control via a gamepad, as you mentioned, the only downside being that not everybody has one. I think it would be great if the wing position was tied to either the pressure sensitive buttons (especially with the type of triggers on an Xbox controller) or the analog sticks, which are more universal.

To me, flying should feel more like falling than anything — just like in Toy Story, “That wasn’t flying, it was falling with style!” . Imagine jumping down a flight of steps, with nothing under your feet and wind rushing past your ears, but instead of hitting the ground, you put your arms out, pushing against wind stronger than anything you’ve felt before, and turning your downward momentum into a new leap into the air. Like making up a roller coaster as you go along. This is what a flying game needs to capture for me. I don’t know where I’ve felt this before, or how you’d put it in a game, but it’s incredibly vivid in my mind.

Thus concludes the most negative post I’ve seen about this game idea. I don’t mean to sound like the Bible of Game Design personified, but I want to share my thoughts. I really do like your idea, but I can’t get over the dissonance between how flapping feels and what seems right to me. It would have to be awfully compelling in other ways for me to struggle through it.

P.S. I just discovered your blog. It seems like a good place to hang out: very fascinating.

Paul Donnelly said on July 24th, 2006 at 8:21 pm:

Just another quick thought: it seems like we have fundamentally different ideas of what flapping is. You seem to think of it as the slow and gentle process of flying (judging by your game), but to me it’s more like spinning up a flywheel before getting to the real part of flying. You have to flap to climb and speed up, charging your flywheel (gaining kinetic and potential energy), then releasing slowly in a guide or converting some potential energy to kinetic in a dive. Sparrows versus long-haul truckers like geese, I suppose.

Raph said on July 24th, 2006 at 10:35 pm:

did you investigate DirectMusic’s interactive music engine as a possibility for when you feel like doing something a bit more complex than a simple music loop?

Nope, I didn’t.

It’s REALLY interesting to see all the ideas on controls. Paul, I don’t see how the mouse control & the flapping control you describe would work together? You cite moving the mouse back and forth to flap, and you also describe a button-mashing mechanic where tapping fast means flapping fast. I assume these are two different systems altogether?

I definitely am thinking long haul flight, not sparrows, though.

I may need to implement all these control systems just so everyone can compare them!

Paul Donnelly said on July 25th, 2006 at 12:07 am:

Yes, the button tapping and the mouse control are two different systems. I just dumped all my thoughts into that post, which maybe isn’t as organized as it could be. If I were set on button-tapping I’d do it as I described, but I also think that mouse control could be a viable option. Of course, I haven’t tested any of my ideas yet, so take them with a grain of salt (which I’m sure you are). Buttons for flapping and mouse control probably wouldn’t work in the same game, since the kind of control they provide is very different. I may just try them out though, and I’m intrigued by the idea of a jellyfish simulator.

My big gripe with the current control scheme is that I don’t really feel like I’m in control of the bird. I feel like my wings should respond directly to my keypresses, without waiting for them to return to a usable position. How exactly they could be made to feel more responsive is anyone’s guess, but my thoughts on the subject as what I’ve written above.

I like the idea of long-haul flight as opposed to a quick game focusing on reaction time (as a sparrow game would probably be), and my comments apply to slower, more meditative games too. Probably the parts of my post above the jellyfish quip are more relevant to the game in your head. The rest are mostly my musings on the topic of bird games in general. I can take a while to shut up once you get me thinking.

Vague game less vague: Andean Bird 0.3

71 Responses to “Vague game less vague: Andean Bird 0.3”

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