OSERM

OSERM has room to grow as a prototype, but it's gotten some exposure to a variety of players and a lot of good feedback. I went as far as making a keyboard friendlier version that preserves the TinderBox keymapping but calls out key assignments for players in game and handles quitting differently. This made it much easier to demo outside of the TinderBox environment.

In the future, if it seems worth it to develop the idea further, tuning game play, adding sound, and creating multiple levels with a story of some sort would add a lot. I'm torn on the decision to use tiny offscreen cams and one main one. It does push players to stay grouped, and a lot of the fun of this game is working within the limitations. Ultimately it's not a very aggro game, perhaps a competitive mode would make it more interesting for a group.

This was a great learning experience, being a one person team exposed me to all of my areas to improve :) A blessing and a stressor, I suppose.

I'll close with a few gifs, starting with video of the TechFestNW afterparty - it doesn't matter what it is, seeing something I made up on a big screen is pretty great.

I was trying to play and shoot video on my phone, it did not go well

Two players vs. the AI

Four players vs. themselves

I worked out TinderBox specific kinks on Wednesday, it was nothing spectacular. Near as I can tell, OSERM isn't using any unusual Unity features, so here's hoping that what works in Windows works in Mint.

New features:

• Four tiny cameras for anyone who goes off screen.
• An aggressive, if somewhat pointless NPC. Its name is Aggro in game files. This is now an aggro party, though maybe not a wild one.
• Ability to quit from the splash screen.
• Win and lose text.
• Better visual signal of O2 levels
• Little particles in the ... water?

Things that would be nice before the TechfestNW afterparty:

• Better art.
• More than one level.
• Pitting players against one another.
• Better strategy from Aggro.
• A little more communication with players.
• Better camera follow.
• Some sound. Any sound.

So this is a short term thing, meaning it isn't a good idea to put a lot of time into designing a workflow. (If you've ever read Red Dwarf, you might remember Rimmer's problem with making detailed color coded lists that left him no time to actually work on the thing he'd prepared for.) I'm going to try having a few lists in Trello devoted to iterations of ... here's a screen shot, I should get back to work.

That is yet to be answered. For the time being, there are four ROVs to control and some mood lighting. And a level reset timer.

More to come, as I learn, apply learning, repeat.