Zirkon Zaga: Jonas Plays Your Game #003

hey first thing you need to know is that I have started getting a lot of submissions magically they have started coming in so this will take me a while to go through all of them please have a little bit of patience if you want me to play your games and a true Jonas plays your game at gmail.com and then a pretty good mail because I think oops at some point I will not be able to play all of this anymore I don't think I can play all of the games you've sent me but I will try my very best obviously I want to help as many of you as possible so that's what we're gonna do now let's go today we're playing a game bye I don't know didn't leave his name but he made a game called silicon saga you can already download it on each dot IO and he also has a YouTube channel links to both of that in the description let's see which questions he has awesome obstacles too hard or too easy does the game games graphics style look too bad it's fall jumping too difficult or feel weird did you find both the objectives white squares in the game did you take too long to figure out how to play does the character control well is the vaporwave

inspiration in my game noticeable I don't know that games oh I can probably not tell you but maybe some of my viewers can bother adding more to this game or should I just finish it and leave it the way it is and move on to the to a new project the last one is the interesting questions or should you finish this game or not we will see but let's jump into your game my second recording I wasn't quite happy with the first one because video footage was kind of weird so about this is very good for you because now I can summarize my thoughts way more quickly and way more condensed firstly I think you're going for a bit of a crappy look here so yeah it's a crappy look but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad you can either do a good crappy look or you can do a crappy crappy look I think this is definitely going more into the direction of a good crappy look the palm-trees though are pretty weird because look at them they are 2d sprites and as soon as

I get close to them they turn into real 3d palm trees this is not good fix that and also they look like assets you took from the asset store which is also not that awesome so I like that I bring a bit of green into the scene I think this desert scene deserves a bit of green but maybe you can find a different way and the more suitable way to bring some green to the scene as I've said I think crappy look is fine you need to make sure that it's a good crappy look and not a bad crappy look though so I'm not really sure about those purple cubes and in the background you can see a bit of 2d saw wheel sprites so in terms of the design I think the more most important thing for creating a good crappy look is getting the color scheme right so you really need to make sure that the colors fit together very very well that's really important for a good crappy look it's okay to have weird random textures everywhere as long as

the color scheme fits together you know if I look in this direction I kind of like the look maybe this red jump thing there is a bit too annoying and a bit too crappy I'm not really sure about that if I look in this direction looks kind of good though you need to fix the color scheme make the colors a bit more interesting and make them fit a bit better maybe add a tiny bit of fork things like that and as soon as we go further up onto a higher platform it looks even a bit crappy er though because we can then we can see the end of the level and that is always with crappy crappy not good crappy if you can see the end of the level though that's not good you know I think you need to add a little more detail here and there you have a lot of very big blocks maybe add a couple of more small stone blocks you know a couple of small stone cubes here

at the botton just really just make it look a bit nicer I also kind of like the sand texture I like that this doesn't look realistic it doesn't need to look realistic that's not the point at all it just needs to be a good crappie instead of a crappy crappy and as I've said I think this yeah this already goes more in the direction of a good crappie but there's still a lot of work to do to make this a good crappie look maybe maybe the waters a bit extreme the color of the water and also maybe the color of those purple cubes is a bit extreme these stone textures know maybe the cubes need to be a bit darker at the bottom and a bit brighter at the top that didn't go well and I hope some of my viewers can give you some tips to that as well I think the look is totally fine I think you can go with that I think you need to be aware that it's a bit of a crappy look and you can make it a pretty awesome crappie look nonetheless okay if you're smart about

it you can make this look and feel pretty awesome and it's already on a good way to be I got crappy look then the movement the first thing you need to fix is the camera movement because the camera moves firstly really slowly secondly I can only move it this far so that's all I can do I would like to move it even further up so I can change the perspective even more that would be nice if I could do that and then obviously also needs an option to invert the camera control the y-axis because for me personally this is the wrong way around this is not what I'm used to so I would like to invert that camera that needs to be an option somewhere you definitely need need some sort of shadow or drop shadow under the player otherwise can just not see where you will end it's hard to tell where you are in 3d space either a drop shadow directly under you that costs extremely little performance and tells you exactly where you're going to land or you could also use standard

unity3d shadow thingy that would be fine as well I think lighting this scene correctly would go a very long way maybe placing some lights at very smart positions and doing a light peg for the scene will definitely upgrade the look of this a lot yes I know light baking is quite a challenge it's quite hard to do correctly I think light baking could help this look a lot and the water oh my god the water is so bright and as you can see from the top here you can see the end of the level that is not good crappy that is crappy crappy so even make the water plane really really big so I can't see the end of it or just make walls around the level or find something that looks cool and that doesn't just end the level right there you know that would be nice then in terms of the movement I think the acceleration of the player is fine

but the maximum speed is too long in a game like this I really want to build a lot of momentum I want to go really fast I want to do crazy and awesome wall jump stunts and I feel this speed is definitely too slow to do that so the way I speed up is fine but if I keep going in this direction I want to keep getting faster and faster for a bit also one problem with your wall jump is that it adds a velocity up so you probably use at force or it just add something to the velocity in unity I wouldn't do that I would just set the Y component of the velocity to a fixed value because the problem with this is if I move up and then use the wall jump I go way way way higher so let me show you a fall down here and I will jump I actually keep falling down that fields

pretty so if I fall down and I will jump I still want to go up you know that's why adding velocity is not enough just set the velocity to a fixed value this way you can control way better how far the jump will go how high you can jump and it doesn't depend that much on your current velocity for example if I jump here and press wall jump right after that look how high I jump this is just insane and this happens when you just add the velocities up I don't know maybe such a high volume would be pretty cool but the problem is the inconsistency so if I am NOT this fast anymore I can wall jump as much as I want I will still drop down so honestly I don't like that so that's something you need to fix about the controls and then also the

acceleration is something you need to fix about the controls and the camera movement is something you need to fix about the controls in my opinion and then I also think you should add some sort of checkpoint system or some sort some way to get back to points very where before because replaying huge portions of your level over and over again it's pretty feels pretty stupid nobody wants to do that in 2018 so just for example put a checkpoint up here so I don't need to replay the entire thing if I fall down because this happens quite often in this at this place right here I cannot make this jump yeah see it's just too hard for me and now I have to play everything again just put a checkpoint there please also I think it would be pretty cool if this level are a bit more open world-ish so I could explore a bit more freely

maybe another path over theirs or it can take different paths different routes that would be awesome maybe that's not what you're going for but I think I would enjoy this in this kind of game now by the way you also might have to rethink the player character just using the basic unity feels a bit weird to me but maybe that's just me because I know it's the default shape and unity stuff that always looks a lot like a prototype and not like a finished game for me it can be an abstract shape there's absolutely no problem with using an abstract shape but this shape in particular don't know don't really know you know what's also important for a good art style is also using or creating some interesting contrast good contrast is a pretty difficult thing to achieve for example you have some contrast right here with your blocky level and then those detail

palm trees right here so this contrasts somehow makes more interesting but at the same time they don't really fit together so maybe you can see if you can create some interesting contrasts in a way that fits together a bit better so maybe get rid of those palm trees you can find a different way to get some green into your scene I think the green is really good for the scene it's very beneficial it makes it look way nicer but I'm really not sure if those palm trees are the right choice first of all I would start with putting a couple of bricks on the ground a couple of smaller blocks and then if you're go for crappy style like this don't be afraid to make it look crappy on purpose so maybe you can just use a couple of blocks as a tree or something like that no just get creative cause everybody can part a palm tree from from the asset store but not everybody can get creative and create a good crappy style everybody can create a crappy style using assets though that's

not all that hard Shea I feel your game has a pretty cool vibe it feels kind of cool it makes me feel kind of nostalgic and in my opinion that's a good thing maybe a bit of guidance for the level would be cool I think you know where to go here but here is one of those places where I'd not everybody will figure out where to go should I go here should I go here should I go here so one easy way to do this do this is to put some collectibles here where I need to jump that's an easy way to show me that I need to go there but maybe also think about putting an arrow here or just something that shows me that I need to go this way because I think I would not have figured that out by myself I just saw that in your gameplay video that you have on your YouTube channel that's why I know I need to go this way as you know I managed to propel me up here because I did the wall jump right after jumping from the ground this is just because of the thing is

that earlier that you just add a velocity in instead of setting a fixed velocity I hope finally I can get to this island from here yeah finally the water going up and down some interesting idea what is this okay now this is cool I like this somehow works like an elevator thingy that's cool you know this is fun and especially in places like this I wish my character would go way faster and that would feel way more flowy and I like that it feels a bit more open world-ish here that's a cool puzzle I can appreciate that but once again I think with my trick I can get up there alright I cannot wall jump on the surface I can I not wall jump on the surface too slippery why does it not work feels

weird or can I only wall jump on stone walls I think if I cannot watch I'm on a surface it needs to look way more slippery than this I don't really understand this is stone and this is stone so honestly feels pretty weird that I cannot go up there who says don't know if that was the intended way but it most definitely work no let's see dude okay worked this is way too many dynamic lights by the way just putting a dynamic light into every single one of these cubes costs a lot of performance I would not do that if those are real lights I would definitely not do that you can find different ways to create a similar effect don't put dynamic lights and absolutely every collectible that's cost so much performance that you could use on little

decorations and they would get you way further than the lights and your collectibles these are wheels right here I'm really not sure if they are good crappy or bad crappy I think they are bad crappy because they are just 2d sprites in a 3d game no doesn't really work for me a weird pacing challenge yeah I mean yeah you can do something like this but I really don't feel like replaying the entire level again if I don't make this no thank you that's it I'm done I'm finished one more question you had was should you finish this game or should you start a new project I definitely think you should continue with this project you can turn this into something absolutely awesome I think this has a lot of potential you can definitely create a cool game with this just need to put in a bit more

work or a lot more work I think it can become something cool so definitely definitely continue with this one not only because it can become something cool but also because it's a good practice to finish your project you don't just want to learn how to start new projects you also want to learn how to finish them how to go the extra mile to make it look really nice and all that good stuff that you otherwise wouldn't learn if you didn't finish your project finish it and keep improving keep iterating I don't recommend to build a lot of levels yet before you start building your levels and your game content you should definitely try to nail your minge so it feels absolutely perfect to move around with this little white thing and then you can start building more levels building the levels first not a good idea at all because then when you have to change the movement again you need to rebuild all the levels that's

not good also do something about the palm trees and the color of the water and the bounds of the level movement camera all that good staff you know the jump you can turn this into an amazing game I believe in you and I all already kind of like it if you have any ideas how to improve this game leave your feedback in the comments that would help a ton thank you very much for watching make the world your playground and see you on the next one bye