[Game]Recreation

Description

Here is Recreation, my interpretation of the Cute Demake Jam, released version (also available).

It’s a game actually containing ,demakes of old games:

  • Jump’n’Bump as “Arena”;
  • Blobby Volley as “Bunny Volley”.

Now, this game was build for local multiplayer, through sharing the buttons of the Pokitto or via new additional button provided by the PEX. Arena is pretty much by alone, but there is an AI for Volley that might give you some kind of challenge!

I wanted initially to have 3 games, but that might come later.

On the tech-side:

  • It’s built on FemtoLib by @FManga - I call it “minilib with features”.
  • Custom renderer, strip-based (like TAS but multiple lines at the same time).
  • Clanky entity system and game engine framework I’m also using for Escarmouche and ARIAT.
  • No SD requirement (except for Femtolib’s stuff).
  • Relies on the PEX for additional players.
  • Runs at a steady 30 FPS.

Associated devlog - [DEVLOG][Cute&Demake] Récréation
Itch.io submission page - Rate Recreation by carbonacat for Cute Little Demake - itch.io

Packages & Sources

Jam version - recreation-jam.zip (513.2 KB)

The ZIP contains all the installation tips, as well as the instructions for the PEX extension! However since I rushed to get it submitting within the Jam’s time limit, there might be some issues or misunderstanding :laughing:

Unfortunately there are no Windows built yet. Technically I could release a Mac version, but there are annoying restrictions there and that requires some time to test it.

The source aren’t available as of yet. I need a proper license inside it, especially concerning the assets, and other stuff. Once I figured out how to make them compile on and for Windows and Linux, that’ll be done.

Screenshots

Screenshot 2021-08-29 at 22.45.23
Title screen. I recycled a drawing I made a few weeks ago :laughing:

Screenshot 2021-08-29 at 22.42.09
Volley - aka the demake of Blobby Volley

Screenshot 2021-08-29 at 22.43.42
Arena - aka the demake of Jump’n’Bump

2021-08-29 - Recreation
A boring GIF summarizing everything.

Cut-off features

They’re plenty. Underestimating is my specialty!

  • Third game - some kind of tennis/pong using joyhat for the other player.
  • Lots of sounds and musics
  • Lots of tiny details I wanted to include in the Arena.
  • Another level for Arena
  • Powers-up

And now?

  • I’ll work on providing the build for Windows, and the sources as well as soon as I can.
  • I think there might be some fixes to throw around.
  • I want the players to chose their avatars. Currently there are 6 kind of bunnies, but only 4 are available (and 1 inside these 4 cannot be controlled). I drew cats and bunnies and I’ll probably add them.
  • I also want to build more on this game because I think the Pokitto lacks a bit for local-multiplayer games.
  • I’d also attempt a try at wired two-pokittos action!
  • Making an AI for Arena would be a great exercise too.
9 Likes

This is great! But wow is that AI brutal! I have to get over the net and play right in its face if I want to score any points :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Oh yeah sorry, the game was more intended to be played by two or more and with the PEX than intended to be played alone, so I didn’t tune properly the AI - I chose to focus on polishing as much as I could.

Yeah you got to be sneaky to take it on :laughing: occasionally it might go into your side, but it wasn’t especially programmed to do so

(All things considered I’m going to get trashed in the gameplay score because of that psychotic AI and the fact that most people are going to play this game in solo anyway :laughing:)

4 Likes

You think so? I actually find the over-the-top AI pretty great, and I think you should take sadistic pleasure in having made it :stuck_out_tongue: Makes me want to keep going back to it. Mark my words: I WILL beat that punk. And then I’m going to post my point differential as a highscore board!

8 Likes

I am sure @tuxinator2009 will eat that for lunch :rofl:

2 Likes

That was my thought too. I haven’t scored yet but dang it felt good when I did get the ball to my serve.

1 Like

Next up: @carbonacat demakes Dark Souls, replacing all humanoids with satanic bunnies. :P

6 Likes

I would play that. I would so play that. “Peter’s quest for the holey grail” (intentionally spelled)

1 Like

I’m sure he would - but it was supposed to be a friendly AI for training mostly, not intended for him :stuck_out_tongue:

… thought yeah, he DID suggest me to add an AI :laughing:

3 Likes

The famous last words before Skynet emerged… :rofl:

3 Likes

Even though the minigames are simple, the movement in the games feels really smooth and fun to control. I managed to play some of the “two players on one pokitto” mode, and it’s pretty fun. The controls for that are pretty hard to get used to, but it is still some chaotic fun. I’m excited about the idea of playing with two linked Pokittos, though.

The graphics are also really nice, and the bunnies are well-animated. The presentation is really polished overall.

The volleyball is really difficult, even for two players. Like everybody else, I got destroyed by the AI, and I couldn’t score a single point against it. I couldn’t even return the ball to the other side more than once or twice, even playing against another person, and they were struggling too. For me, the ball was too small or something. I don’t think it needs fixing, but wow, it is hard.

I noticed in the pet arena against the AI that it is possible to stand in a location that prevents the 4th player from spawning. I’m not sure how that should be handled, since you don’t want the player to spawn next to somebody, but preventing them from spawning doesn’t seem ideal either. Playing it against another person was fun! Are you planning to add a time limit or winning score to the pet arena?

1 Like

Wow such a complete feedback, thanks!

Same! that’s definitely something I wanna achieve with this game! At least 1 vs 1, more if possible!

I agree, the base gameplay is difficult. I probably need to adjust the way the ball interact with the bunny. It feels harder than the original Blobby’s Volley actually!

The AI can deal mostly with this difficult gameplay (by “predicting” where the ball would land), so it’s indeed a combination of both that makes it hard. (adjusting the AI was the most unscientific thing I did since long) I wanted to make it commit more mistakes at first and to up its game, so it’d be more enjoyable, but I ran out of time unfortunately!

[quote=“wuuff, post:11, topic:2822”]
I noticed in the pet arena against the AI that it is possible to stand in a location that prevents the 4th player from spawning. I’m not sure how that should be handled, since you don’t want the player to spawn next to somebody, but preventing them from spawning doesn’t seem ideal either.[/quote]

Spawning was done, in what we call “à l’arrache” in french:

  • I added spawn points (not enough actually !)
  • When a bunny needed to spawn, it’d choose a random spawn points, then check if no other bunnies were around.
  • If everything is clear, pooof

Glad to hear about it!! I couldn’t test it against someone because no one was available locally :laughing: (the big issue about local/couch multiplayer I guess)

I did want to add an intermediate “rule screen” where you set the end score (very similar to Volley’s), but I ran out of time (again) ! A time limit would be nice, especially in that variant where you need to pop balloons that I had to scrap as well (would have been playable in solo as well too).

Also, thanks for all the nice words!

I started the jam by sketching the bunny and other animals. I want to build more on this game:

  • Exploring the multi controllers hat idea (i.e. a PEX Hat with 3 or 4 tiny controllers wired to it)
  • Having a wired connection, Pokitto vs Pokitto
  • To add more game modes that uses the same assets, until I run out of Flash (then Hotswap will probably be used :stuck_out_tongue:)
1 Like

One thing that makes it hard could be that the ball feels heavy. Heavier than the bunnies. If you make it lighter it should be easier to handle.

1 Like

The current ball/bunny interaction is pretty much a billiard ball one, with the weights being bunnies heavier by a ratio of 2:1. A more accurate ratio would be 4:1 or 5:1 (average bunny vs standard volley ball).

I did try to have a much lighter ball at some point, but the gameplay felt very weird, and the ball tended to bounce back a lot to your side (i.e. you shoot at it, and it comes back at you without the opponent even touching it - it still happens right now, but it’s a more rare event).

Something I wanted to experiment with (but had to scrap because I wanted to work on other things) was to use a much less realistic physically wise: rewriting the ball’s velocity with the same speed, and a direction based on the bunny-to-ball direction. I think that’s what blobby volley is using, which is perfect for blobs I guess, but I felt like it’d feel weird so I took instead the more physically realistic approach instead.
Now that I got time, I’ll probably experiment on it!

I assume you have same size bounding circle for both the ball and bunnies? How about if you increase the diameter of the bunnie’s bounding circle but make it only a half circle? That should make it easier to hit the ball and also help aiming.

bounding_semicircle

2 Likes

That’s something to try, I’m curious how it’d behave when you’re above the ball tho!
Lots of things to try actually.

Unfortunately, I want to take a rest -especially for the code part- for a few weeks and focus on non-pokitto projects -so I can crave again for pokitto coding. Most of things I’ll do until the rest is finished is exploring the HW part (multi controller hat especially).

2 Likes