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Author Topic: pseuthe - casual survival game [1.0.3 Released]  (Read 14201 times)

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fallahn

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pseuthe - casual survival game [1.0.3 Released]
« on: June 30, 2015, 05:16:42 pm »
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 (it's free!), and it is also open source. Thanks to everyone who has helped me with this, particularly eXpl0it3r, Tank and select_this :D
« Last Edit: May 15, 2017, 09:57:53 pm by fallahn »

kitteh-warrior

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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2015, 05:59:05 pm »
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).

Hiura

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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #2 on: June 30, 2015, 06:37:56 pm »
Whoo! just whoo!
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Hapax

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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #3 on: June 30, 2015, 06:39:31 pm »
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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fallahn

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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #4 on: June 30, 2015, 07:14:21 pm »
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 if you're on Windows or mac)

ChronicRat

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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #5 on: June 30, 2015, 09:44:14 pm »
Awesome! My english dictionary is too short to explain my feeling about it.

eXpl0it3r

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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #6 on: July 01, 2015, 12:22:46 am »
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 [10.5 MiB]
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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #7 on: July 01, 2015, 02:45:30 am »
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!  ;)

fallahn

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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #8 on: July 01, 2015, 10:35:41 am »
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.

Nexus

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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #9 on: July 01, 2015, 01:28:12 pm »
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.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2015, 01:30:08 pm by Nexus »
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fallahn

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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #10 on: July 01, 2015, 10:18:27 pm »
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!

eXpl0it3r

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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #11 on: July 01, 2015, 10:36:36 pm »
I updated the Windows build 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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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #12 on: July 02, 2015, 04:47:51 am »
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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Hapax

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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #13 on: July 02, 2015, 02:42:00 pm »
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.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2015, 02:53:11 pm by Hapax »
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fallahn

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Re: pseuthe - casual survival game
« Reply #14 on: July 02, 2015, 05:56:00 pm »
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 :)