The Wrong Sort of Bees

It's like Peggle but with bees!

...

8/15

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/41449088/index.html

<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/u/65931997/wsob_promopic_01_062012.png" border="0">

The Wrong Sort Of Bees

v.085

Left Click - Spawn Bees

Right Click - Puff

Hold Right Click - Attract/Bees

-Spawn Bees on Pegs to Dislodge Pollen

-Help Guide Pollen to Collectors By Puffing

-Redirect Wayward Bees By Attracting

Anyway...

This is a pure score attack type game. Shoot Bees to dislodge pegs, pegs will spawn pollen. If pollen land in cups in bottom of screen you get their score. Keep Bees alive as long as possible!

Bees swarm, sometimes they flit, sometimes they flutter, sometimes they hone in on things, sometimes they steer clear of them. It took a lot of tweaking and even more fun accidents with the physics system to create their behavior. They die after enough collisions with objects. You get a bonus for how big your swarm gets as well as how long the swarm persists.

<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/u/65931997/wsob_promopic_02_062012.png" border="0">

The more pollen bounce off objects, the more valuable they become once harvested and can even earn you more bees, so combining bees swarming and proper puff usage you can really boost your scores.

Puffs started out as a way of dislodging stuck balls, which it does. But it has since been upgraded to do a lot of things. Puffs, blow eggs and honeydrops useful for juggling and saves, attract all bees momentarily, drug bees who come in contact momentarily, and kill ants.

High SCores have been disabled for now because they breakeded things!

Haven't tested Touch Controls yet but I've been mindful of them. An amber partially transparent circle in the top left is a toggle to use the left mouse/touch as either the bees or the puffs. I've also made the toggle button drag droppable so the user can adjust it to whereever they see fit or on the other edge of the screen for lefties :).

Once I get enough statistics for scores I will probably be setting score "goals" in order to pass the levels. I have an upgrade system I want to implement that will produce hardier bees, and modifications to your puffer (will probably start the puffer to only juggle balls, then allow user to upgrade to bee attraction, etc.)

So far made with just the free version, it's at this point that in order for me to get the rest in shape and add more content and features I'll need the full license. It's also at that point where I'll either find the time to do the HUD and replace some art assets properly or pay someone with time.

I would love for any feedback anyone has in any department. Here are my release notes:

-All audio is temporary. At first I started with a pinball sounding set, but then had a great idea to make everything more musical. Have the swarm size change the music to be more dense and varied as time progresses. A basic implementation of this is in place with a bass loop playing while bees are on screen and stopping when there is zero.

-HUD is temporary. I like the font, but I need to streamline the presentation of this. This includes final placement of the scores, and other feedback text throughout (especially post game/high score! yech).

-I will probably keep the background artwork but I'd like to upgrade the pegs, their fonts, the shooter, the eggs and honeyballs, and possibly tweak the obstacle appearances. I like the simple silhouette quality to them, fits the font and the theme.

-Will definitely have a tutorial level that shows off the basic mechanics.

A bit about myself. I'm a professional audio engineer who works for a commercial game developer. (http://tony-porter.weebly.com, to see my credits) I picked up construct because it seemed a quick way of prototyping ideas, but I'm really liking what I see here and plan on sticking with it for final deployment. It's really addictive, and I like its speed of use. It tends to keep up with all the crazy things in my head fairly well so I give it credit for that. I mean, who says I want to make a patchinko game with bees and goes for it?

Anyway, thanks for any time you spend with my game. I'll be updating this thread as I make notable upgrades. Thank you!

Well maybe no one likes Bee-Chinko... Still! I have a first pass at a dynamic music system in play for anyone who wants to check that out.

Basically I wrote a short 30-40 second music loop with three elements, bass, drums, guitar. I edited them to be sample accurate across the board (I'm an audio engineer by trade!) One track has bass, one track has bass and drum kit, and the final track has bass, drums, and guitar. On beginning of layout I play all 3, and mute everything but the bass. So I tell the system

On layout start - mute everything except bass track

If Bees > 0 - mute bass track, unmute bass/drum track

If Bees > 25 - mute bass/drum track, unmute bass/drum/guitar track

If Bees < 25 - mute bass/drum/guitar track, unmute bass/drum track

If Bees = 0 - mute bass/drum track, unmute bass track

You can check it out with the version I have online right now. I start you with 100 bees so you can play with these numbers.

Things to address

• Muting and unmuting is too harsh. Next iteration will be fading in and out volumes vs the hard mute.

• The tracks stay in sync but for a few successive loops, so I will probably end the loop at game end with a nice stinger/outro and restart it when a new level is seleted.

• Other sfx have been silenced temporarily, but I like having the music in the forefront so I will keep the rest of the sfx to a minimum, probably no collisions sounds (too crazy) but definitely for scoring and other game elements of note.

• High scores are even wonkier so don't bother with it quite yet. Getting some extra help on that...phew!

• Someone asked, are there more than just the one level? Yes, three currently. At level end a 1-1, 1-2, and 1-3 appear. Click on them to try other levels. Need to delay bee spray at beginning of levels. Clicking on the triggers to start level starts you on-click and you waste a bee or two unknowingly.

-Webfonts are mixed right now. I used to get security errors when trying to load them but I may have said yes to them all so I don't get that anymore. Is that common with webfonts?

The game may be a harder sell than I thought without seeing it, and most importantly the bee swarm in action so I'll work on getting a small vid up just to show some action. Otherwise, thanks for those who have tried it and look forward to any public feedback or suggestions!

facebook video, showing off new swarm mechanic

Thanks for anyone who has played it. hard to get feedback. Plus everytime I think I'm nearing a good plateau I suddenly want to revisit things and streamline this and that. Don't worry, I know about the dangers of gamedev without proper documentation. For me this project is to learn both how I work and how I want things to work from start to finish before I tackle larger scoped ideas.

I have a facebook page for the game where I'll be chronicling the games development. Was gonna do that here, but haven't had much response so I'll keep it all on the FB page for now save major announcements.

facebook.com/TheWrongBees

At any rate, I've still got a ways before all this tech and art settle into one cohesive game, but I'm getting there. I was hoping for some feedback from THIS community simply because they know the tool I'm using. FB community will be ooh and aah but this forum would take one look at my game and have half of it figured out how I did this and why I did that and I was hoping for that perspective, eh maybe my next project. No hard feelings, I'll still be around learning.

-Tony

Hi Tony!

It's really a pity that no one have commenten on your game.

I find it really interesting and I think you've really done a good work with it :)

Though for me it seems like the game is based a bit too much on luck. But I guess that's most likely just because I suck at the game and have played it for too short. :P

Thanks for checking it out. Yeah, the economics of everything will shift the balance of luck and skill more than anything. How long do bees live? How many times do they hit the pegs to dislodge them? How many bees do you start with? How many pegs should there be on the board? Any one of these numbers contribute greatly to skill/luck.

My "base" model of this ratio is Peggle. It seems half is aiming and timing and the rest is watching math done up right purty. So I don't mind making a large part luck, that's where the physics come in. And I don't mind making a large part chaos, that's where the bee AI comes in. I figure if i always give the player "something" to do to try and steer chaos and luck in their direction than that could be enough. Balls bounce everywhere and bees keep hitting them? Use the puff to help steer them to safety. Bees keep wandering to places they don't need to be? Rein them in and relocate. Ants keep popping up and stealing balls? smack em dead with the puffer. Any one of these is a viable strategy, and allows players to hopefully play any style and pace they want. But for those that employ all of their skills and learn when to use what they will get the highest scores (which is a shame that mine are "under construction.")

I'm still working on a more clear "goal' to present to players. I've gone back and forth about this, but that sentiment you had...not knowing how good you are doing" is a problem for sure. I'll probably have a score quota in place soon so players can have a target to gauge performance. That might help.

That and a tutorial could go a long way! :)

Again, thanks for checking it out.

Been having some weird issues with recent builds using r97 not working or loading in any browser. Upgraded to r98 (also beta) and problems seem to go away I think.

Added a quota

Added a timer

Removed Mouse wheel aim ( to test for touch only users)

Have Text and Alerts coming out of the YINYANG for all kinds of player feedback.

So, next step is doing soemthing serious about the HUD. I need to convey a lot of math and interactions with a simple, easy to glance at HUD. That will cement this gameplay I believe. Give it a whirl if you like.

s159260531.onlinehome.us/tony/index1.html

New ultra first pass at some graphical hud elements.

<img src="https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/202361_426201420735997_1889424925_o.jpg" border="0" />

I like the direction of removing text and replacing it with graphics what with pictures > 1000 words. I INTENTIONALLY have different drop shadow sizes so I can see what works and what doesn't for now. I was against it because I like the flatness of it all. But something about a good drop shadow, suddenly wants me to experiment with more drop shadows around...maybe for the obstacles? Eh, maybe not. So the first screen you get to now is a level select and quickie control definitions. Wondering if that is stopping most from playing and giving feedback (I have the game posted on a small amount of forums.) But I've been select with the people I care to show for now. As more features get rounded out I'll show off more, and once high scores get nailed down I'll probably do a larger "lookatme" type campaign. But feel free to share the page with anyone you think would be interested in checking out this game.

love the bees good game mate keep it up.

its a bit difficult to play :S

Do you think it was the controls? The chaos? The speed?

Next few iterations I'll be experimenting with difficulty settings. These will increase bee life, decrease peg health, maybe bigger cups on the bottom. I hadn't thought of decreasing gravity a bit so balls would fall slower giving you more time to juggle. Interesting.

Again, thanks for playing.

Introduced a difficulty toggle. Up at the top right click on 'Hard" to change to Easy or Medium.

For now it only affects game speed as I've heard from some that it looks like fun but its too hectic, too fast outright. So I'll probably play with a bit if a gamespeed slider that will either increase as you progress or just be a blanket choice of the player to play at that speed. It also does a few other internal math things like adjust peg health, bee health, and i can even add in quota and other numerics to balance it all out, but for now I'd like to get what "feels" good for a beginning or casual player and perhaps use that as default.

Easy to me is likeplaying on the moon, Medium might be more where I will start players, Hard is about what feels fun to me, might increase it for bigger challenge, higher difficulty. Anyway, give it a shot and let me know what you think about the game speed, what feels right.

http://s159260531.onlinehome.us/tony

Still cranking away. Changed Bee pic, added pollen marker to see better, decreased bounce on attract, added temporary push back for bees when they run into puff, added physics to shooter so you can kinda push some bees around, as well as flick dead ants, etc.

Play current version here:

dl.dropbox.com/u/41449088/The%20Wrong%20Sort%20of%20Bees/index.html

Early Beta trailer up. Game is still coming along, but its slow going what with the job and other such projects a goin on.

youtube.com/watch

dl.dropbox.com/u/41449088/index.html