Mission Failed

_Stephen

Hey all, I'm new here but I thought I should show what I've been up to recently. So here's the first game I released this year. there's a separate thread for my 2nd (Deadly Shadows).

MISSION FAILED
You are on a Special Ops mission to rescue prisoners of war. Everything goes wrong. With your mission failed you are cut off from all support and stranded behind enemy lines.

Low on resources and short on time, you need to find a way to regain communications, battle through to safety and complete your mission objectives along the way.

Play single-player or as a team in local split-screen co-op.

Sadly there was zero interest in the game. So rather than spending many more months on it, I've stopped development and left it at this one level, fully functional demo and moved on. I like it though 🙂!

Tomcat

Yeah, that's an interesting concept. I definitely remember playing it. Was it on the official website? I liked the game. 👍️

_Stephen Sadly there was zero interest in the game.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't.

MikeCL

_Stephen Sadly there was zero interest in the game.

No way! Checked the video. it looks great! Reminds me of old-school Metal Gear but for SNES and some more action.

MikeCL

Oh, I will try and find some time and try it this weekend. looks fun!

_Stephen

Tomcat I did post some info on the official forums at the time, minus the video. It's only available to download via Itch and there have been a few downloads, but nowhere near enough engagement for me to invest another year in it 🙂 Not a problem though as I've got a new idea I want to work on now 🙂

_Stephen

I've added a video with sound to the original post 🙂

_Stephen

MikeCL 🙂 Thanks for the kind words Mike!
The initial seed of the game was based on a game called "Conflict Desert Storm" from 2002. But around that time there were a few games of that type, including Splinter Cell and Metal Gear, I think. Those were the days 🙂

MikeCL

Tried the game, it's awesome! Didn't manage to complete it so I will have to pick it up again next week. I can also imagine this being a blast playing with a friend.

_Stephen

MikeCL Amazing! Thanks for giving it a go, and for the feedback 🙂

SnapCracklins

Reminds me of an old game called General Chaos? Looks fun though!

_Stephen

SnapCracklins I just had to look up General Chaos, looks like a fun game with some beat-em-up mechanics? I might have to find a playable version somewhere 🙂 Thanks

xyz

_Stephen A small tip. Use post processing color correction to unify the color palette of the final image. It's an ages old cheap trick to make things appear more "professional" 🙂 The usual approach is to push the lights towards yellow and darks towards blue. But it really depends on your art direction.

_Stephen

xyz That does look very nice. I really like it, and in this case it adds to the retro feel as well 🙂 If I do an update on this game at any point I will incorporate this suggestion... and I will be trying it out on my next project too 🙂

tbh I always struggle with the art side of things. Thanks very much for the tip!

MikeCL

I made it! 😃 🎉

This was a lot of fun! Great job!

If you ever would revisit the game or make a sequel. Here's some feedback.
The atmosphere is great! I do agree with @xyz comments about try to use colors a bit more. It took a while for me to understand the lights from the windows.

I would probably also put the camera at a slight angle. Just to give it some more depth, visual interest and also to make it easier to identify different world objects such as walls, etc. Like you did with some of the props, do something similar to walls, etc.

The towers you could climb, not sure what the benefit of that was.

I thought at first that I was supposed to use the first car you encounter 😅

And also perhaps Ultrawide screen support would be great.

But man, this gave me some serious SNES nostalgia vibes! Loved it!

_Stephen

MikeCL Thanks for the feedback Mike, so happy that you had fun playing this 🙂

I've taken on board ALL of the feedback in this thread, and I will attempt to implement and/or improve as suggested when I do pick this up again.

RE Ultrawide screen support, did you try that? And did it produce odd results? I can imagine it would have.

I started this game about three years ago, worked on it in my spare time, and took a year off of in the middle.

It had 10 re-playable levels planned all with varied missions, you re-establish communications, rescue POWs and complete various other objectives while making your way to the border. The demo you played is more or less the first mission I had planned.

I had realised after three years that there was still a huge amount of work ahead, I wasn't sure anyone would actually be interested in it and had doubts about continuing.

So I decided not to work on any more features and to just polish up the first level and package it as a playable 'concept' demo. Then I could gauge interest and either stop or continue development.

Now, What I think I may do is to use this demo as a starting point, create a dev-log on Itch and use the feedback so far to produce a second, updated demo. That may generate some more interest and thanks to all the great feedback here may catch a bit more attention! 🙂

Oh, to answer your tower question... in this demo the only reason to climb towers is to stealth-kill guards. But I had planned to implement zip lines too!

Thanks again!

xyz

_Stephen Now, What I think I may do is to use this demo as a starting point, create a dev-log on Itch and use the feedback so far to produce a second, updated demo. That may generate some more interest and thanks to all the great feedback here may catch a bit more attention! 🙂

👍️

xyz

_Stephen Finished the level. It's quite good. Below I'll just address possible improvements. I played with mouse/keyboard.

Movement feel in general and especially in respect to obstacles could be more glide-y. It'd be better if colliders for props are smaller than props so that the player overlaps them a bit rather than keeping distance from them. Because of this it's hard to tell where you can squeeze through. Some places look like you should be able to pass through but you can't (e.g. between a bush and a dumpster or between a building and a wall. Legs shouldn't be a problem here. You can draw their sprite underneath props or just have a smaller leg span.
Related to previous point, use rounded corner box colliders instead of plain boxes for chairs, tables, benches etc... so that player would slide around corners. Now it can sometimes look as if player is stuck on nothing when going around a prop, while it's just player's circular collider trying to push around an invisible sharp corner of an oversized box collider.
Camera movement could be smoother, more eased.
Switching to/from crouch mode should have better visual and audio feedback. Currently the only visual difference between modes is that small icon.
Visual feedback when a stealth kill is in range.
Containers could cease to be interactive once you search them, with better visual distinction between searched and unsearched containers.
Not sure but you may not need the walk mode. Only run (or swift walk) and sneak.
Grenades shouldn't be amongst primary weapons that are circulated with the mousewheel.

_Stephen

xyz Fantastic xyz, more feedback!
All valid points and noted for addition going forward 🙂

When I replayed the game the other day to do the video (above), I was surprised at the camera movement. I don't remember it being like that. And I was using a controller, but also got snagged on lots things and initially struggled a bit.

When you work on something for so long you become blind to a lot of small things that first-time players would encounter. Everyone's feedback here has been so valuable 🙂

It sounds like you found the 'quick throw' for grenades then (middle mouse button) 🙂 I can show the number of grenades in the inventory seperately and keep it out of the primary weapon list, no problem.

Also, I'm sure you noticed that the pop-up help text referred to a controller and not a keyboard. That's something else I will fix!

My to-do list is growing, thank you so much everyone!

_Stephen

xyz
I was just thinking about the walk/sprint/crouch. Each one does have an intended use...

Crouched movement is slow but is almost silent. Making it possible to sneak and to enable stealth kills.

The walk is a bit noisier and faster, if you use this mode while enemies are close they'll hear you and become alarmed. But it allows you to cover distance at a decent pace and to exercise caution. So if you can see there are no enemies close, it's safe to walk while exploring, without making too much noise.

Then the run mode is loud and will alert enemies from a wider area. Only really to be used when either running away or if you're engaged in a firefight and need to run to cover fast.

The current loudness of your character is indicated in the HUD under the health bar, and is an important factor if you're trying to max out your stealth kills. The indicator shows the noise made when moving, and also when firing weapons. Each stance and each weapon has a different sound radius/loudness. I've also implemented player shotguns (very loud), pistols (quieter) and rocket launchers (very loud), but I didn't include them in the demo (first) level.

I will have to think about whether to make changes to this system, or maybe I can try playing with walk disabled and see how it goes 🙂

Thanks for the great suggestions, very much appreciated 🙂

xyz

_Stephen My main gripe is with movement/collisions and overall environment interaction. I'd make polishing that a priority. This is basically your short term gameplay loop. If you manage to make this feel as smooth as butter, the player will perceive the game as super high quality within seconds of playing. Many small things contribute to it though and they should all be finetuned and orchestrated towards maximally smooth experience. You can safely drop some "realistic" things in favor of gameplay flow (e.g. the player must stand at the front side of a container to open it, and it happens only with some containers. This is clunky and inconsistent...)