Putt Mania (Announcement)

[Jeff Evertt]

It's been a while since I've posted on these forums, but I haven't stopped working on indie games. I just finished up one called Putt Mania. I'm not looking for specific kinds of feedback, more just wanted to reconnect with a few people here and show them what I've been working on. But, if you have some comments to share, I'd like to hear them. So, here's the details...

Web site: http://www.evertt.com/moreinfo_puttmania.htm
Demo (7.4MB): http://evertt.swmirror.com/Setup_PuttMania.exe

ScreenShot: http://www.evertt.com/screens_puttmania/puttmania.jpg
(for more screens, check the web site link)

System Req: 1GHz CPU, DirectX® 8.1 (or Higher)

Jeff Evertt
http://www.evertt.com

[Vincent033]

Like the simple designer graphics and the physics is not that bad either. What are you doing for the physics? Played the front 9 holes. Those are some creative holes. Nice work!

[Arex]

Yeah, nice work indeed! :)

[svero]

For me it's one of those "diamond in the rough" games. I think it could potentially be a great mini putt game, but unforunately there are a number of things that I feel hold it back. In particular..

- The interface and menus (substandard)
- The play interface... mouse movement is treacherously slow.. its very frustrating. It needs an acceleration in it.
- The music/feel of the game is wrong. The music itself is nice, but it doesn't seem to fit the game's theme at all. When I think mini putt i think fun day at the fair kinda music. Overall the game needs a more "fun" feel.

[Sharpfish]

I agree with some of what Svero said, Though I think due to the very abstract nature of the environments that the music is "ok", especially the second course's track which is more jolly. The first track does seem a little melancholy especially as the first introduction to the game. I would put the jolliest sounding music first.

Graphics are solid, though obviously not geared towards casual players. I would have liked more to the environments to make them more fun, and there was pretty bad moire effect coming from the horizon due to the tiled floor patern. An option to switch the texture on that would be nice (it looks like the editor texture is simply used again where a more subtle/subdued one may work better; especially if it removes the moire).

Physics and control were nice, though the ball seemed underpowered (stretching the mouse/arrow seemed to take longer than it should). In other words a faster power gain/arrow stretch per mouse movement would feel tons better because I had to pick up the mouse move it down my desk and push it up again to make the power what I wanted (which was "lots" more times than not).

Some of the female voice samples were a bit scratchy (and tinny), I would also maybe put text announcements in in case someone wishes to turn the voices off. (I may have missed this as I didn't delve into the options).

Overall it's a nice abstract golf game that is definitely about the gameplay, I have seen prettier golf games but this one felt nice to play and the courses (that I saw) were a pleasure to play. Something about the graphics does suggest a raw, technical edge rather than a fully polished/realised title to compete with the best looking mini golf games out there. I would love to have what you have here (as a dev) and expand on it by adding cheerful surroundings, better interface (faster, more colourful etc) but that is just my tastes. This reminds me of an executive toy version of the game rather than one aimed at kids/females (which is fine).

Either way it's better than my mini golf game* by miles and it's a good game overall! :)


*due to the fact I haven't even got one so who am I to talk? ;)

[Jeff Evertt]

Vincent033 - I'm using the Newton physics engine. I switched to it from my own during dev of this game. I'd totally recommend it.

servo - Can you give me specifics about what you think is lacking in the menus/interface? Are you expecting a more art-heavy interface, drawn borders? There's an option for mouse shot sensitivity, did you find that?

Sharpfish - The aliasing of the ground texture was something that I'm a little concerned about. At 1024x768 res and above, I don't actually see much of it. At 800x600 (the default res), it is annoying. Filtering the higher frequencies out of the lower mips could fix that. I might look into that.

The feel of the game that I'm going for (and I chose the music to fit it) is a slower, more strategic type of play. Thanks for taking the time to give feedback.

[svero]

servo - Can you give me specifics about what you think is lacking in the menus/interface? Are you expecting a more art-heavy interface, drawn borders? There's an option for mouse shot sensitivity, did you find that?


Well yeah.. probably a more art-heavy interface. But its also again about the fun "day at the fair" kind of feel and how it all comes in etc.. If you look at menus in a game like Toy Golf, a mini putt I quite enjoyed, they're all colorful, easy to read, zipping into the screen with nice effects etc... It "feels" fun and nintendo-like for lack of a better phrase. Yours by contrast are flat, hard to read, organized a bit oddly, not particularly attractive looking and so on...

As for mouse. You want mouse accel Id say. Mouse sensitivity is ok I guess but its kind of a short cut measure. It doesn't allow for fine tuning little shots. With accel on the mouse you will be ok for a broader range of initial starting sensitivity settings and let people do very small tweaks as well. That's the way I'd do it anyway. Although I wouldnt remove the sensitivity options.. Id still keep those.

[Jeff Evertt]

I'm actually already doing acceleration. And the sensitivity both increases the linear and curvature of the shot sensitivity. I've gone back and forth on the default sensitivity. It's a balance - too sensitive and it's too hard to control for some. But, I don't think I've nailed it.

Toy Golf looks neat - I hadn't seen it before.
-Jeff

[Bad Sector]

Nice shots, but once i tried to run the game Windows told me that "this application failed to initialize itself properly" (or something like that, i have Greek Windows) and died.

[Dan MacDonald]

Jeff.. I thought you were done man! Good to see you're still out there finishing games :)

I'll take this one for a spin and give my feedback when I get home.

[Philippe]

I really liked this. It has great atmosphere (especially the dusk-y/night courses) and the music adds to it, IMHO. Sometimes the music got a tad repetitive, but I'd suppose there are more tracks in the full version?

I agree with the others about the interface, though. Especially the fonts don't do the great look and feel of the 3D environments justice. I wasn't much for the fireworks and floating type at the end of the 9 holes either.

Overall, great work. Would you be willing to share an estimate on how many man-hours the game took?

[mcopley]

Hey Jeff,

Congrats on getting the game done! Are you still working on the game and incorporating feedback? If so, I suppose I could give it another looksee with a finer tooth comb. I do think the bundled editor is really slick :)

[Jeff Evertt]

Hey Mike - In general, its all done. I already went through a beta round and made a lot of changes. But, if there was something that I thought would really help it, I'm open to changes.

Dan - I'm still working on things. I took a new job and have ben kind of busy, so haven't been reading the forums. I gave up on the kids game I was working on before this one - ran into a production problem that I just couldn't find a solution for. So, do any of the locals still meet up to chat? If so, I'll try to make the next one.

Philippe - This was probably about an 8 month project. Maybe 6 to 10 hours a week, one man team. But, this isn't my first indie game, so I wasn't starting from scratch.

Jeff Evertt
http://www.evertt.com

[Dan MacDonald]

Very cool game jeff, I took it for a spin. Unfortunatly I can't add much to the feedback that's already been given. Svero's comments about the Shell UI and the power meeter taking a lot of mouse movement rang true for me as well. This one has gobs of potential all over it. Nice work as usual :)