Area 61 - Hunt down aliens in this FPS.

Bizarre.

If you're making a demo to extoll the virtues of your new engine, the demo should look better than a game not worse. You can forget about gameplay and even much of a gui and just concentrate on blowing peoples socks off with spangly stuff.

I'm sorry if you don't wanna hear that, but sometimes the truth hurts. If you're bright enough to be able to code a parallax depthmap shader in sm2.0 you're certainly bright enough to be able to look at that screenshot and reach the same conclusion as the rest of us.

If your engine (and you) can do better than this, then what's the point of this demo. You're deliberately underselling so no wonder you're taking heat. By saying its a demo, you're also saying this is the *best* you can do, and it really isn't much tbh.

I still think this looks better. The lighting is correct for a start.

 

I'm sure he has finished a lot more commercial games than you have. (I'm guessing you've made exactly zero)

 

Picklejar, I'd like to ask you this question: How old are you?

 

Couple of points:

1) See my other post asking for help on making my site better represent what we do/have done.

2) I don't really give a toss tbh. I'm not out to prove anything. Whereas you just seem to be trolling for praise with a laughably bad piece of work. Good luck with it.

 

I ask the same question. Nobody has said that you suck. Nobody has said that your programing sucks. They just said that your artwork sucks. And you agreed! Its not even your artwork, why are you taking that criticism as a personal attack?

 

PickleJar, the guys were a little blunt (as usual) but they weren't trying to flame you. Relax a little. Perhaps we can actually help.

The graphics look pretty bad. In fact, they're really bad. If you haven't noticed that, well... let me know and I'll give you a full rundown on why. Suffice to say, I've seen your engine and games before, but I've always thought if you did work harder on their appearance you might find more people would check out your hard work. Perhaps technically what you have going is capable (for basic stuff, of course) but when you, as the developer, don't show people how high the bar can be raised, people generally won't bother putting in the effort to find out what your engine can do.

My other comments about this game were summed up by Nexic quite well. However, I will say that if you can't animate, learn (or pay/ask someone to do some for you) or simply create games that don't require any animation.

 

I'll just add...

Speed is good, but speed should never come at the cost of quality. Try building quality games, as a testament to your engine... and not just in terms of technical ability. I'm talking about everything, from art, to sound, to gameplay. Show us what your engine can really produce. If it takes a long time, so be it.

EDIT: Btw, welcome to the forum

 

Picklejar,

Keep up the good work! You're on the right path, just keep going.

This thread does bring up the whole criticism issue, and it's a hard one. I had to learn a few tricks myself back when I wrote books and took them to writing conferences and showed them to other authors. It's tough to take criticism, it's never easy. I remember what one author had us do at the beginning of a workshop (it was Tracy Hickman for those familiar with him)... he had us all stand up and hold our manuscripts in one hand. We then held out our manuscripts as far away from us as possible and all said aloud, "This is ME (pointing at ourselves), and this is a manuscript (pointing at our manuscripts)." I think we said it like 3 or 4 times in a row so we might actually believe it after a while.

Some people give criticism bluntly, others give it with lots of padding and gift wrap. It's all valuable, even if some of it may not be used or considered. I just released my latest game, and the criticism immediately came flooding in with it too. Just remember to take a deep breath (exhale slowly and completely), take a break if you need to, and then keep moving forward.

I hope that helps, and I certainly hope you don't give up on this forum. It's a great place to get help.

-Jeremy

 

I think you missed the point of the DOOM comment... The point was that Doom looks better (which it clearly does) even though it's using a lot simpler technology. Meaning that your use of shaders doesn't help your game look good, which is sort of the pointof shaders.

And it is also the most constructive criticism that's been presented here. If you don't improve the look of things, few people will show an interest in your game. The things Nexic listed needs fixing too, but they are secondary things, and won't make your game good on their own, unless you fix the main issue.

But I guess it's more fun to just pick out the easy things and fix them, and wave everything else off as unfounded insults.

 

I'm not following you around. I was on this forum long before you got here. But as long as you keep throwing around insults about members of this forum I respect, I'll keep replying. If you don't like it, feel free to report me to a moderator if you think I'm out of line, or maybe just ignore my posts.

I think it is a bit sad that you don't realize that the Doom comment is neither a joke nor an insult. Yes, it's using simple lighting, 8 bit textures and no shadow, and STILL manages to look better than your game. There's something to be learned from that, if you'd be open to it.

 

You know, the only reason we started posting here in the first place was to help. If you don't want our help, why are you still here?

But ok, since you asked me too, I'll leave this thread alone now. Feel free to add some witty remark of your choice to ensure you get the last word.

Oh, and you're welcome.

 

I feel somewhat compelled to say that although PickleJarGames has certainly not received the criticism in an altogether great fashion, it is my opinion that some of the comments in this thread seem to have been written in far too provocative a manner.

I would also have expected that those members who have made the comments should know better, as it really doesn't achieve anything other than to wind people up.

Anyway, feel free to disagree, but I personally would rather see a little less of the elitist approach to situations like these.

...and yes, I'm aware of the irony here, but I believe I have a valid point.

Steve O

 

The collision detection is very bad.
Movement is something you need to work on.
Did not work in windowed mode.
The textures are kinda bad.
The gun particle effects are kind of out of place.
Due to the texture problem the shaders do not help your game a lot.

Honestly due to the movement and collision problems i could not play it more than 1 minute, because i kept getting stuck in various corners.

I had some weird problems with the target in full screen mode