Flying Snake Dev Log 3 (How Not To Bore New Players):

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JimGiant

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Flying Snake Dev Log 3 (How Not To Bore New Players):

Posted by JimGiant - September 22nd, 2017

Really quick post showing off what the checkpoint unlock system will do to early game.

The most common critisism I've recieved by far is that early game is boring. I definitely don't want to bore experianced players but I don't want to alienate less experianced players.

Hopefully this is a good sollution. Rather than starting from scratch each time your snake will now rapidly grow until it reaches the length of your previously unlocked checkpoint and start at a higher speed. When this update comes out it'll be a great oppertunity to set some new high scores!

Oh sorry for the potato recording. Got about 10 programs running in the background for dev stuff while recording.

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Zero2562130 2017-09-23 01:06:36

Amazing take on Snake. I'm honestly surprised this wasn't already done by 2004 at the latest.

Anyway, 2 cents: SEMI-TRANSPARENCY FOR BALLS TOO CLOSE TO THE CAMERA

Do that, and your game is golden, and ready for Google Play with VR support.

Cheers.

JimGiant 2017-09-23 01:06:36

Thanks, semi-transparency has been on the to-do list for a while now. I'll try to squeeze this in for the next update. Personally I play in first person so it doesn't bother me but most people seem to prefer 3rd person.

Zero2562130 2017-09-23 01:16:27

Also, if you made each face of the room a different color, you probably wouldn't need a solar map to begin with.

JimGiant 2017-09-23 01:16:27

The levels are going to get a big facelift at some point and there'll be levels with obstacles in later updates too.

Zero2562130 2017-09-23 01:27:52

Np. I even made a post on my profile to promote your awesome game.

Well, people tend to gravitate towards 3rd-person because they can better see where they collide with the rest of the world and its game objects, fyi.

JimGiant 2017-09-23 01:27:52

Thanks bro. I switched to choosing 1st person after played Testdrive Unlimited, 3rd person just feels weird to me now.

The game has improved a ton from all the feedback on here. When I didn't have anyone else to test it it was way too easy to pretend details like that didn't mater.

Zero2562130 2017-09-23 01:43:36

Hm, yeah, that does tend to be the case if you don't meticulously plan out your game's design like Richard Garriott or Tomonobu Itagaki.

Zero2562130 2017-09-23 23:48:20

2 more improvement notes:

1. Face culling: Have the room faces only have 1 side, don't render their faces if the camera clips through the room.

2. Not sure if you already did this or not, but have the snake components be pre-made in an object pool; don't just keep "Newing" more of them every time a fruit is obtained.

Hope this helps.

JimGiant 2017-09-23 23:48:20

Definitely need to implement face culling, good call.

I don't think pooling will help much in this case. As I understand it it only helps on frames where objects are created or destroyed. I might get a a slightly faster frame when fruit is collected and new segments are spawned but I think it would result in a slower framerate in the early game. I could be wrong though.

Next update will be up tonight btw.

Zero2562130 2017-09-24 10:18:11

Not sure where you're getting the idea that an object pool will slow the game down; it exists to prevent such a thing by pre-loading the maximum amount of segments you can have. Granted, you aren't destroying them at runtime, so memory fragmentation isn't that big of an issue, but it's still a good practice to have, especially since it (Theoretically, anyway) should prevent greater lag resulting from new objects being activated due to normalization achieved through the pre-loading.

JimGiant 2017-09-24 10:18:11

Some players have scored over 2000 and they're likely to score even more in the new mode. If I set 2000 as the pool limit and a player can only score 300 that would be a lot of memory taken up unnecessarily.

If I was to implement pooling I think the biggest difference would be on the time it takes to restart a level since that's when 100s of objects are deleted simultaneously.

I suppose I could have the pool size be set by the player's highscore. I'll look in to it.

Zero2562130 2017-09-25 02:39:04

Kind of, but it's not like the memory is going to be used for anything else.

Who says you have to delete them from memory just because they stopped playing in that particular mode? Chances are pretty good they're going to want to dip their toes again, either in the same mode or not, so unless you're going to have some radically different gameplay modes, it makes no sense to delete tons of objects you're very likely to always use (Like, for example: Player assets in any given videogame, like the character model, animation file, texture, etc.)

There's a thought; I look forward to seeing your next update.

JimGiant 2017-09-25 02:39:04

Thanks, you've spurred me to do a lot more thinking. The snake scripts are going to get an upgrade in preparation for the snake designer so I'll add pooling then. It should smooth things out a bit when levels are first loaded too.

Zero2562130 2017-09-26 00:29:35

Excellent, great to hear.

Flying Snake Dev Log 3 (How Not To Bore New Players):

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