Feedback Request: Keith Goes Painting.

[DanDanger]

Hello all !

I've pretty much finished a game called "Keith Goes Painting" and I was hoping you could all try it out for me

I would appreciate it if anyone could download it and give it a try. I would also appreciate very much if you could give me feedback on the game, either on this forum or by email.

Any type of feedback will be most welcome.

Anyhoo the game can be gotten here:

http://www.wolfys.co.uk/SetupKeithGoesPainting.exe

And some screenies can be viewed here:

http://www.wolfys.co.uk/screenshot1.png
http://www.wolfys.co.uk/screenshot2.png
http://www.wolfys.co.uk/screenshot3.png
http://www.wolfys.co.uk/screenshot4.png
http://www.wolfys.co.uk/screenshot5.png

Thanks !

daniel.leyden@gmail.com

[Mike Wiering]

Hi Dan,

I just tried your game, here are some comments:

- Horizontal scrolling works smoothly. There seems to be a problem with vertical scrolling though: I get horiontal lines at the top/bottom of most of the tiles (probably half a pixel of the tile above/below in the texture). This is especially visible at the lower part of the level. They disappear when the character is back on the ground (Geforce 4 MX).
- The options screen is confusing and suddenly requires the mouse.
- I didn't like the combination of cartoony drawn graphics and photo-realistic graphics together, try using a more consistent style.
- No idea what the balloons are for, am I supposed to bring them somewhere?
- For the first level, I would prefer a smaller, easier and more inspiring level with a clear goal (after getting killed, I didn't feel like trying again).
- I think the download is quite large for a game like this, also 70 Mb for installation is quite a lot, I have a pretty large disk, but it's always almost full.

Good luck!

[ChilledOut]

I really enjoyed playing this game. I like the quirky feel of it and it is definitely fun. I think it still needs a lot of polishing though.

Everything that Mike said goes for me as well. Additionally...

- I think there should be some sort of feedback while you're painting something. Right now you see Keith start painting, then you wait a few seconds, and all of a sudden he stops and the thing is painted. Maybe you could slowly tint the piece of furniture?

- When you fall in a pit, you respawn back in the pit, and it's pretty tough to get out. Similarly once I go stuck bouncing between a trampline and a bat, and I couldn't get out until I died a couple times.

- Right at the beginning you explained the keys to pick up and drop (which was great), but not jump and shoot (or did i just miss it?).

- The options menu is soooo confusing. It looks cool but I couldn't figure anything out.

- I think you should introduce new elements (of art and gameplay) more slowly.

- I love the balloons and the phone. Also that's HILARIOUS when you paint the statue!!

[Ryan Clark]

I just gave it a whirl... excellent old-school Commander Keen-esque fun! The concept is good, but I feel that the current incarnation is quite rough.

My main beef is that there's no indication of progress when painting. Also, it's not always obvious what is paintable and what is not. Since painting is the name of the game, I think some more effort should be expended in this area.

I also found the options menu confusing, although I eventually figured out that a double-click was required to make many things work. I wasn't expecting this!

Anyway, as I said, I really like the concept and the feel of the game. Nice work!

[Robert Cummings]

Thought this was fab. It's fun and I like the ideas of the physics. For example I got 3 balloons and they made me float more. Also, I made my way to the roof of the house.

There's a lot of fun to be had but I think that this game will be the ice breaker for your masterpiece. There's a lot wrong with it, but I'm not interested in focussing on that... because what you have here is the beginnings of something thats very fun!

Nice one...

[Curiosoft]

The game has some interesting possibilities.

I played it for a little while and wish that when you start out...there would also be a sign that tells me to press "A" to jump. There should also be a sign that says press "S" to shoot.

This is stuff I didn't know how to do until I pressed every key I could.

Still, I like how you introduce the tutorial. It is a nice way to get folks acclimated before starting the game; I may borrow your tutorial idea.

As for the game itself, it is all right. I think the painting option offers a lot of opportunity. I think you should pursue the painting idea a lot more....

Because that offers the possibility to be somewhat unique...like where you go around town and paint stuff. So that you have goals you need to accomplish....like painting a few buildings. So you have to find the paint and special tools (that is the adventure/exploration part of the game). Then you have to paint the buildings. So the game would morph into an adventure/expression game.

Also, when I was playing the game.....I didn't see the current benefit to painting the drawers. I don't see how it exactly relates to the gameplay.

Then again, I stopped playing because I didn't know how to kill the bats...and they would alway congregate to the point I started out at (when I died and then came back to life again).

Also, I like the special effect you have to regenerate the character after he dies; pretty cool effect.

Hope that helps.

Take care,
Curiosoft

[AVataRR]

My first reaction to this game is "WOW, that's a huge platformer". 20 megs is something I'd expect from a 3d game. But I guess it's okay since I'm a broadbander now. :}

In the intro, the scaling-up of that circle thing, which is possibly an eye (is it an eye) is a little jerky. Not a big deal but just thought I'd mention it.

The significance of the baloons isn't readily apparent. When I was playing, the most they did was stop me from falling into a lower platform because they were stuck between a wall and a floor. But what else do they do? Do they make you jump higher?

I also don't understand why you can't paint things even though you've already taken a bucket of paint. In the first level, I was only able to start painting things when I visited the house's cellar. Maybe you should clarify this issue in the tutorial sequence.

I like how you intigrated the menu system into the game itself. :} I don't think I've ever seen this done before.. (except maybe in one of the old marios that I don't really remember) I also like that Terminator2/Cyrax Teleport effect when you die and regenerate.

[Surrealix]

After reading all these comments, I got curious, and downloaded it.

And promptly spent the next hour or so playing it

I'd agree with some of the comments here; the physics are cool, and the game plays well.

Curiosoft mentioned the bats congregating when you die. This happened to me, but when I re-spawned, it 'zoomed' backwards along the path I'd taken until I was out of danger. It worked well and looked very cool.

The menu was fine, I figured it was supposed to be like a computer; ie. double-click the icons, and move them by dragging (that was a surprise). The only problem I had was that I'd been using the keys to control the player, and it took me a while to realise that you needed to use the mouse. Mabye have the menus key-controlled, or state that you need to use the mouse. It could also be a good idea to make it more like a computer, or let the player know that was what it's meant to be. (It is actually meant to be a computer?)

There's a slight bug when you're painting something, and try to move sideways (press up+sideways at the same time)

Finally, the lack of a save system really put me off. Even if it's just checkpoints, it's very offputting having to start from the beginning again, when only 5 pieces of furniture were remaining.

Overall, it's a great game. Well done

[DanDanger]

Thanks for the comments folks,

All the feedback is really appreciated It's always great to hear what people really think.

I feel a quick potted history of the keith project might be quite interesting to this forum so here goes:

I wrote KGP originally on the amiga about 13 years ago (it was a flip screen game and a lot more basic than the current version). I converted it to the PC a few months ago as a means to learning Java. I was unemployed at the time and realised there were a lot of java programming jobs about. Anyhoo, I got a bit carried away with the conversion and started expanding it into a new game, an arcade adventure style of game with lots of puzzles, things to play with and places to explore. This arcade adventure game was going to take a good few months to finnish so I put together the version you can currently download, which is basically the original amiga game (its even the same flip screen map data which I stitched together). I put in a bunch of the new stuff (doors, cog wheels, computer system, safe cracking game, etc..) to try it out and see what people think.

Anyway the upshot of all this is that I now love Java and wish to take it to bed with me. I never thought i'd hear myself saying that, ive used C++ for years, making console games, and just presumed that was the best language for the job. When I actually got time to try out a new language I was simply blown away. I really believe that java (or some java like language) is the future for large scale game developement.

Actually before I continue ranting about new programming languages perhaps i should start a new thread about it

Oh yeah, that is why the game download is 20meg, it includes the full java runtime.

[DanDanger]

Ive put a finished version of the game up, you can get it at

www.wolfys.co.uk

I've made the computer thingy use the keyboard as well, so that should be a bit easier to use, the tutorial stuff has been expanded, fixed the sliding painting bug (and loads of other), the death rewind thing also works as it should (rewinds until you are on solid ground and not near any baddies).

I didn't bother with game saving though, the game is rather short and didnt think it needed it.

Oh, and the expanding eye thing at the start is the loading bar, so thats why its a bit jerky.