SFML community forums
General => SFML projects => Topic started by: fallahn on June 30, 2015, 05:16:42 pm
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pseuthe (pronounced 'soothe') is a small project which started when I was playing around with writing my own physics. You take on the role of a deep water plankton and simply must survive as long as you can by feeding on other microbes.
http://youtu.be/ik0rvmaLXOI
You can find binaries for Windows, Linux and macOS here (http://gamejolt.com/games/pseuthe/256275) (it's free!), and it is also open source (https://github.com/fallahn/pseuthe). Thanks to everyone who has helped me with this, particularly eXpl0it3r, Tank and select_this :D
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I haven't tried building it yet, but I will within the next week! I'm looking forward to playing this. Those graphics look astounding, and the sound seems enjoyable (at least in the video).
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Whoo! just whoo!
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I like the look of this. Watching it is rather pseuthing! Although, I imagine that it might get somewhat stressful playing it (when it progresses/gets harder).
Pseuthe is a modern mix of the classics, Snake and Asteroids.
And it looks so pretty! :)
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Thank you for all the kind words :) I tried to be as minimalistic as possible with the graphics - the orbs are just sf::CircleShapes, and the light rays are a VertexArray (they aren't even textured). The sounds are made with Native Instruments Reaktor and Massive VSTs (you can get the players for free (http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/bundles/komplete-players/) if you're on Windows or mac)
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Awesome! My english dictionary is too short to explain my feeling about it.
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As said before, it looks really great! :)
And the ambient sound is quite nice as well.
However the controls are not to my liking. Guess one can get used to it, but I wanted to quit the game before I even died once... :-\
You can grab my Windows build here: pseuthe (http://my-gate.net/pub/pseuthe.7z) [10.5 MiB]
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I've played for a little bit (thanks Exploiter for the Windows build ;)).
While the gameplay itself was not my cup of tea, I was really impressed with the presentation: the game looks fantastic, it sounds nice, it runs well, and you even managed to add a resolution option, which is something that I'll always appreciate.
Good job! ;)
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Thanks for the feedback. I can understand some people having concerns about the controls. As I stated, originally, this was an experiment with physics so the controls work based on placing a force on a mass to gain acceleration (and a negative force to decelerate). There is no friction or air resistance modeled so bodies, including the player, will continue indefinitely. In computer games, though, this seems counter intuitive so (even though I personally quite enjoyed the challenge of learning the controls - it reminded me a bit of games like KSP) I'll add an 'arcade mode' with controls which behave more like most people expect.
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Cool game, I really like the art style! Pseuthe reminds me of flOw :)
I agree that the controls are not ideal. My main concern is that controls are absolute (up/down/left/right) rather than relative (forward/brake/steer left/steer right). This limits the acceleration to 4 or 8 directions and makes the organism a bit awkward to steer.
I don't mind if there's an acceleration involved, instant thrust or brake would make the game less fluent to play.
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I've updated this now with controls which people should be more comfortable with. You can enable them by checking the 'Arcade Mode' box on the main menu. Names in the high score menu are marked with an A or a C depending if that score was achieved with Arcade or Classic controls. There are also a bunch of bug fixes and gameplay tweaks.
This limits the acceleration to 4 or 8 directions and makes the organism a bit awkward to steer.
Good point. I didn't really think about this as I mainly tested on an xbox controller. Hopefully the new controls are more fluent.
Thanks for all the feedback!
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I updated the Windows build (http://my-gate.net/pub/pseuthe.7z) to incorporate the latest changes. :)
It's now quite a bit more enjoyable. I guess using a gamepad makes things easier (if you're used to gamepads).
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This is really cool. I like the ambient music and the particle effects. I think this could be a great Android / mobile game (although, like other people mentioned the physics is... different).
Awesome work!
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I just got chance to try it out (and thanks to eXpl0it3r for the build!) and it's nice :)
A few comments I'd like to make:
- When using the "arcade mode" controls (which seem to feel more natural when using the keyboard), occasionally - when stopping - it would face an unexpected direction. It looks like a 180 degree turn but it might be less.
- I don't think there is enough difference between the green and red 'food'.
- Green food can be too scarce. I played for minutes and while no greens appeared. Although I didn't touch any reds, or collide with anything, I still starved to death.
- Might just be for me but the frame rate drop was noticably significant at higher window sizes.
- At higher speeds, turning becomes impossible.
- I think it's unintuitive to be able to press Escape to start the game.
- When you press Tab for help, the mouse cursor should still be updated. It currently gets frozen and if you move the mouse during help, the cursor doesn't follow. Then, when you close help, the cursor still doesn't follow until you move it some more. It would be better to keep it in use during help.
- The mouse cursor disappears (doesn't get drawn) when entering the 'black bars' section of the display.
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A few comments I'd like to make:
- When using the "arcade mode" controls (which seem to feel more natural when using the keyboard), occasionally - when stopping - it would face an unexpected direction. It looks like a 180 degree turn but it might be less.
- I don't think there is enough difference between the green and red 'food'.
- Green food can be too scarce. I played for minutes and while no greens appeared. Although I didn't touch any reds, or collide with anything, I still starved to death.
- Might just be for me but the frame rate drop was noticably significant at higher window sizes.
- At higher speeds, turning becomes impossible.
- I think it's unintuitive to be able to press Escape to start the game.
- When you press Tab for help, the mouse cursor should still be updated. It currently gets frozen and if you move the mouse during help, the cursor doesn't follow. Then, when you close help, the cursor still doesn't follow until you move it some more. It would be better to keep it in use during help.
- The mouse cursor disappears (doesn't get drawn) when entering the 'black bars' section of the display.
Thanks. A few of these I'm aware of (and a few I've fixed already). I shall add the rest to my todo list :)
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Fallahn, how do you feel about me porting the code over to iOS and uploading it to the App Store? It might take me a while, I will have to convert it to C# and setup the environment but I can post back here when it is done. If you don't mind and want any specifics you can message me.
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Not trying to rain on your parade, but keep in mind that SFML's mobile ports still run on OpenGL ES 1.1 right now, which means there's only the fixed rendering pipeline (= no shader support). Considering the game relies on shaders heavily, you'll be out of luck for now, unless you reimplement the shader stuff or help updating SFML's drawing code. :)
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I love the aesthetics of this (as I said on IRC) but I'll be damned if I can grasp either of the control schemes!
I also got a corrupted double linked list coredump on exit - not a huge deal but I can get a debug stack trace for you if you'd like.
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@ R23MJ
I appreciate the offer, but this is still very much work in progress, and I'm not looking to target mobile platforms right now. If you have apple experience though I am looking for someone to test the OSX build, and add support to the CMake file. The contribution would be greatly appreciated.
@select_this
I'm assuming you built from source on linux? The only doubly linked list I can think of is the deque in the message bus, and someone else had mentioned valgrind complaining about it. As for the controls it currently defaults to micro-machines style steering - but as there is no friction you only need accelerate up to speed and let go. Holding the acceleration key/button is going to lead to some crazy fast action :)
As for the game itself, I've recently applied all kinds of bug fixes, as well as tried to address any issues which people have had. I've also had to modify the scoreboard format slightly which will replace any existing scores logged with previous versions, such as the builds kindly supplied by eXploit3r (just to warn people). I've also added jelly fish which spawn very rarely, but award full health if you manage to eat one. If you see one of those suckers grab it quick!
http://youtu.be/u_Kk6p2QWBM
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For all the people not follow the GitHub/IRC action, here's the updated Windows build (http://my-gate.net/pub/pseuthe.7z) from the latest commit. :D
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Thanks for all the feedback, support and contributions everyone! I now have Windows and Linux binaries available on itch.io (http://fallahn.itch.io/pseuthe)
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Your Linux package's ReadMe.txt is marked as executable, fyi. :)
I quite like the effects and mood. It is quite soothing!
I'd only mention two things:
1. Some of the obstacles are a bit too dark in color. They blend in with the background, and I initially thought they were actually in the background, until I ran into one.
2. Maybe try softening the chime background noise a bit? Either lower the default volume, make it adjustable, or just reduce the amplitude of the chime track a bit. This may be a bit biased though, I'm up pretty late at the moment as is. Haha.
It was enjoyable to do for a few minutes before going to bed! Good job!
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Like said on IRC (https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.sfml-dev.org/sfml) already: Nice work. Your games are always of superb quality. I can't say that I can be motivated to play pseuthe for a longer time, but it's already nice to watch the visuals and the meditative music. :D
Now please finish your Micro Machines and crate mover games. :P
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Your Linux package's ReadMe.txt is marked as executable, fyi. :)
D'oh. Probably because I added it in later on a Windows machine.
I'd only mention two things:
1. Some of the obstacles are a bit too dark in color. They blend in with the background, and I initially thought they were actually in the background, until I ran into one.
2. Maybe try softening the chime background noise a bit? Either lower the default volume, make it adjustable, or just reduce the amplitude of the chime track a bit. This may be a bit biased though, I'm up pretty late at the moment as is. Haha.
Good point about the colours. I'll try and adjust this a bit. There's a volume slider on the very first menu though, if you want to turn the sound down :)
Now please finish your Micro Machines and crate mover games. :P
I haven't finished this one yet! :) (A few bugs to fix here and there as I'm sure you've found). If you want me to finish CRUSH (http://en.sfml-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=17517.0) use the map editor to make some maps for it ;)
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I've posted version 1.0.1 to the itch.io page (http://fallahn.itch.io/pseuthe). This version includes a couple of bug fixes as well as adding the ability to disable controller input, and making it more obvious when the game is paused.
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I've updated the source and the itch.io page with 1.0.2. This adds some more information to the help screen about which plankton is which. Hopefully this will be the last release for a while.
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1.0.3 is now available for download on itch.io (http://fallahn.itch.io/pseuthe). I've fixed a bug where scores could be rigged by making the window not active, updated the help menu and added a colour blind mode for people who have trouble distinguishing between red and green. Also thanks to the ever helpful SFML community (Jonny in particular) an OSX binary should be available soon!