Kudos 2 First Screen

[cliffski]

This is what I've been working on for the last 6 months. It's Kudos 2, the same idea as the original game but looking way nicer, with much higher quality everything, and much better presented and designed.

So basically its a turn based modern day life sim game, and here is the first screen shot. Those profile pictures are obviously placeholders right now.
Feedback welcome.

[Ricardo Vladimiro]

Looking good!

One (I wonder how) stupid question: You have a attractiveness measure... will that relate to the graphics? Because she looks kinda attractive already, but her measure is zero.

I guess my question is: will the variables relate in any way to the graphics?

[cliffski]

god no, there's too much graphical requirements as it is without worrying about that

[Grey Alien]

Looks cool. So it's 1024x768 then yes? Will you have any widescreen support?

[adam.stanbridge]

Looks really nice, Cliff! I think this graphical style will have a much broader appeal than the original. Look forward to seeing more as it progresses.

Adam.

[cliffski]

I'm sticking with 1024 768 for now. it makes things easier, plus I have horrible amounts of overdraw and going higher res will mean making it worse! (must fix it all!).

[Desktop Gaming]

There is no point bothering with code to support widescreen formats, since every widescreen display I've ever seen has an option to disable screen stretching.

If somebody's disabled that, and you compensate for it too, you'll end up with a game screen that's taller than it is wide, and that'll look even worse.

Regarding the 'attractiveness' thing.... I'd maybe change that to 'personality' or something if the graphics don't change depending on the level of attractiveness. I think people will expect her physical appearance to change.

Just my $0.02 tho.

[brun]

The screen looks really nice and the gui is slick as usual . One thing I've always thought it would be awesome, is to have one of these sims-stats games using actual 3d models for the characters. You could have all sorts of graphical effects according to the activities that the person does, like change the way they dress, their body shape, animations etc. Ala sims but without the world (stats based).

[zoombapup]

Can I be the one nay-sayer and just say that there's something about the style that really puts me off. I'm not even sure what it is, perhaps its the "uncartoony valley" in that you've gone for a certain style and it seems to me to have a bit of a mix of styles in there.

For instance, you have a nice light orange background and a nice colourful main character in the screen, then you go for silver grey menus? If you look at it, the personal organizer (the phone), wouldnt that be better essentially ripping off the look of an iphone? i.e. sleek black with more iconic representations? What about any popup windows on the iphone, what do they look like?

I cant quite put my finger on it, but there's something strange going on there for me at least. Seems others like it though, so maybe I'm wrong.

[cliffski]

No I think you are right. the two styles don't work, and that's something I'm going to have to fiddle with at some stage.
It stands out to me quite badly, but then you are always too close to be objective with the look of your own game.

[ChrisP]

The gradient in the top-left is quite muddy. I guess it's transparent-shading-to-grey? When the orange of the background shows through, it's getting mixed up with the grey and turning into a muddy brownish colour which isn't very attractive...

One quick fix might be to simply make it white, and forego the transparent gradient altogether. But that's probably too simple then. Hmm.

[Reactor]

I agree with the muddy look of the top-left area. Instead of making it white, you could use the same pattern from the bottom-screen gui bar (or even fade that texture in from the top to white at the bottom).

Anyhow, looking good

[MrPhil]

Looks great overall and I feel that the boxy bars are the only thing that doesn't fit the rest of the screen.

[ChrisP]

I agree with the muddy look of the top-left area. Instead of making it white, you could use the same pattern from the bottom-screen gui bar (or even fade that texture in from the top to white at the bottom).

Ah yes, good idea, that would look good and help to make the appearance more consistent as well. I overlooked that bottom bar completely to be honest. I like the wavy edge on it!

[aliosa]

i do remember you. i belive u posted kudos on rent a coder to find graphic artists to work for that game, on kudos, if u were to use poser please generate more than just standard models, look on contentparadise or sites like that for other models and props.
the new version is verry well improuved i like it the 2d version of it coz its a trend this days with 2d graphics.

i wish you luck and success to you and your game!

regards,
Aliosa

[GnadeGames]

Let me start off by saying that I like the direction that the art style is going in. The characters/backgrounds are already looking more upbeat and warm, whereas the first one had some creepy characters and sort of a cold feel. I agree with some of the comments above about switching to a sleeker looking phone, but you're definitely on your way to some vast improvements.

[WaveRider]

A hottie like that should have a lot more confidence.

A vast improvement over the stock Poser models.

[cliffski]

here is the latest version. Still placeholder NPC portraits, but a lot of other stuff is tweaked.
Feedback welcome, obviously.

[simonh]

Ten times better. Looks much more 'gamey' and inviting.

[AlexWeldon]

I like the style, but it's very cluttered. It's tough to present that much information in an organized fashion, but I think you need to find a way to do it... a stronger hierarchy of some sort. The floating windows allow you to see more on screen at once, but I think for the casual games crowd, that's going to be awfully intimidating. I'm pretty hardcore as a gamer and it's intimidating for me just looking at it.

What if you had a more structured information layout, but allowed the option of "tear-off" windows? That way newbies would always know where to look to find the information they needed, because it would always be in he same place by default, but more experienced users could have a more customized, dynamic way of navigating, once they were comfortable managing several windows at once?

[cliffski]

having draggable windows is very much a binary nuclear option of yay or nay. The original game had them, and I think people are pretty ok with them these days. Anyone playing games has used a windowed O/S so they understand the idea. Sometimes you need several of them open at once, so it's not easily doable without letting them be dragged...

[GnadeGames]

I think the draggable menus are a necessity. Part of the addictiveness of the original Kudos was tracking all of your stats.

[AlexWeldon]

I haven't played the original Kudos, but I can imagine that draggable windows are necessary... however, maybe I didn't make it clear what I meant by "tear-off" windows. Have you used any of the CS3 Adobe products? The different windows are all available as tabs at the right of your screen by default... you click on a tab and you get just that one window, so you can look at one thing at a time without a bunch of clutter.

However, if you want one window to stick around while you flip through the others, you drag it away from the tab bar and it "tears off" and becomes a floating window. When you click the X to close it or drag it back to the tab bar, it rejoins the one-at-a-time tabbed windows.

[zombibubonik]

I'm having a little trouble reading the blocks of text, all the words feel like they're running together (unless the text is just placeholder?)

Also *cough*extrovert*cough*

[cliffski]

Also *cough*extrovert*cough*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrave...d_introversion

Extraverts (also spelled extroverts[1])

doesn't seem to be any consensus on that one

[Nexic]

I find it very confusing how you have mix of negative and positive attributes. So sometimes a full bar can be good, and another time it can be bad. How about sticking to only the positive sides of each attribute?

For example:
Stress > Relaxation
Tiredness > Energy
Boredom > Fun

Etc...

Would also help combat the negativity that a lot of people picked up on in Kudos 1.

[GolfHacker]

I never played the original Kudos - part of the reason was that I'm not much of a sim person (though I have played one or two sim games), and the screenshots just weren't that exciting to look at. But I really like the new art - it's making me think twice about trying your game! I think this will help it out a lot!

Kudos to your new artist (pun not intended)!

[cliffski]

I find it very confusing how you have mix of negative and positive attributes. So sometimes a full bar can be good, and another time it can be bad. How about sticking to only the positive sides of each attribute?

For example:
Stress > Relaxation
Tiredness > Energy
Boredom > Fun

Etc...

Would also help combat the negativity that a lot of people picked up on in Kudos 1.

interesting idea, cheers

[andrew]

Looking good!

p.s. make sure to do a US localization (i.e. "socalize", "extrovert", "$", etc

[Nexic]

Would be interesting to see if using the British (read: correct) spelling of words actually put someone off buying.