Jack's Revenge

Competitions / Hackathons 360 Gyro Competition
#1

Ok here it is!!
Jack’s Revenge is what I wanted Jack’s Hide n Seek to be.

ZapWorks Halloween Competition 2017 | Jack’s Hide ‘n’ Seek

First, No there is no Asteroid Defense game yet. I was going to make one with Jack’s game but I had a lot of overtime at work and family things come up this month. So past the planning and getting parts together there isn’t one yet. Maybe someday.

Jack’s Revenge has all that I wanted Jack’s Hide n Seek to be.

  • I used a video for the 360 Gyro where last time it was just a photo.

  • I have a 10 second timer now where I didn’t in the Hide n Seek. He would just sit there till you found him.

  • Jack’s movement last time was just a time line I move each time he was found. This time I still have a time line but Jack’s placement is picked by random.

  • I have added animated 3d monsters to jump out and attack you when you are close to Jack. I used a raycaster to activate them. Then I have it doing a random attack each time.

  • The decoys are probably my favorite part. I wanted them to be random but to add more of them as the levels went up. I had to find a way to randomize them without repeating so each level had the right number of them. I ended up making an array, then I randomize the array and took the count I needed to display. This way it was always random.

I may still add some more sounds and adjust the time lines if I have time.

Steve
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3 Likes
#2

Ok so it’s been a week since I posted this and only Mark liked it. You all got me a little scared here. Is it that bad? Anything you like or don’t like I would love to hear from you all. It can only help make me better at things!

Steve

#3

Hey Steve!

We will be publishing the winning entry and reviews from our in-house team over the next day or so, so hopefully there will be some great feedback for you there.

From my perspective, I thought the improvements that you documented about made a huge difference to the quality of the experience, and it is certainly a big progression from the v1 submitted in November.

I would like to see you focus a little more on both the story and user experience elements. For instance, in the opening you have written “Press Start”, but that made me think that the text was clickable. Actually I had to click the button in the controller. Testing with maybe 3-5 users who have never played before by observing them play for the first time should help identify this type of “quick win”.

The experience also start by saying “Start the hunt”, but there is a good opportunity here to add some more context. For instance, who is Jack? How did he end up in this scary place? What is the purpose of him finding the items?

When I collect the items, each time I get the shocking noise and image appear. This almost reminds me of the game minesweeper. It might be cool to see it maybe evolve into a situation where some of the items generate the scary interstitial (the equivalent of the bomb), and others don’t. This would keep the tension higher throughout, as after a while I learned that I am going to be scared each time.

Hopefully you find those ideas constructive. Overall its a great entry and a definite contender for the first prize. Keep up the good work!

Cheers,
Chris

#4

Thank you Chris!

I wish I would have gotten this sooner I would have added glowing hot spots to the instruction book and controller. I was going to but didn’t because there is a “START” and “OPEN” on them.
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I wanted it to be like a real NES system where it would say it on the screen “Press Start”, My kids got it right away so I left it.

I was going to add more backstory in the instruction book but didn’t want to make it more then one page. I will keep that in mind. Thanks.

As for when you collected items I’m sorry to tell you that was the Decoys not Jack.
Per the instruction book page I tried to show that with out giving away things.
Jack has a face the Decoys do not. (See instruction book)

If you pick Jack you move up a level if you pick any Decoys which change and add more per level you will get the Jump.

I was going to add to the score board at the end a spot for Decoys hit but felt it took up to much room on the score board.

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Thank you Chris I would rather hear what is wrong with my work then not every time!
It can only make me better at things.

Steve

#5

Read the manual! Ah ok so that makes a LOT more sense for me now. I would consider making that a forced tutorial, but then that was just my experience so it would be worth seeing how other users react.

It seems like on me missing the start button and the instructions book might be because the text themselves became quite small. Maybe you could try a version with the controller relative to the screen instead? I always like experiences that have a combination of screen relative buttons that activate different states on the tracked parts.

#6

LOL yea I need to add the glow points.
I can’t add them now can I ? I wouldn’t want to cause problems with judging.

Steve

#7

I love this! Would you be willing to share your zpp file so we can look at your code? We want to create a 360 implementation if possible.

#8

I sent you a message.

Steve

#9

Thanks sir.