Launch of Tidy (new Game) and our new Website

User Code & Projects
1

We are back again!
Hey guys. Over a year has passed, since our last post in this forum. While we had to deal with some code unrelated problems, and the difficulties of a start up studio, we where very busy with some smaller projects. One of it has now reached alpha state and we would love to hear some feedback from you guys.

But aren’t you the Myrdragor guys? Did you stop working on the game?
No, we haven’t. We are still on the crusade to get this game running, but as you might experienced for yourself, sometimes it needs recoding over and over again, if you aren’t pleased with what you see. Currently, we have terrain issues, that slow us down, and trying to fix the same problem for weeks sometimes calls for a little break. This break brought us Tidy, a little game we are very proud of.

Ok … what is Tidy?
Tidy is, what we call a “Jump’n’Think” game. Gameplay mainly sums up to pushing boxes around. Its that simple, but in its different gamemodes it is more fun than you might guess. Arcademode lets you clean up (therefore “tidy”) a plattform, pushing boxes over its edges in as little time as possible. Chaosmode lets you have even more fun, trying to survive on combos and powerups. Puzzlemode lets you solve complex puzzles, where you have to jump around and think about how to solve the level. And then there is multiplayer coming soon.

Here, have a picture of the game:
http://agtinet.de/images/puzzle.png

Well, what do you expect Tidy to become?
We want Tidy to become our first finished game. We want to explore the world beyound coding and designing, perhaps get the game going on steam and android over the time. There will be a paid version (premium) of the game some time in the future, and we want to test the potencial problems of going real on a game, bevor doing this with Myrdragor. Therefore and above that, we want Tidy to become a lot of fun to play and a great game.

Ok, what do you want from us?
Well, nice that you ask. We would love to get some feedback from you guys. We would love to see you testing this game over the next months, so that we can improve it as much as possible. For example, there are still a lot of physic related bugs you will experience, and perhaps you have some ideas how to solve them. We would love to hear that. In substitution we will answer your question regarding some parts of the game, and give out pieces of code if you need them. :smile:

Can you please stop talking and give us the download link?
Okok, here it is: Download

Whats with this website of yours?
Its Agtinet.de. Its our studios website, and its freshly launched. Yesterday. We still have some minor bugs, as you might see. You will get some information on the side, about what we do, and about our current projects. There are still some informations missing. We will constantly add content to the page, so visiting on a regular basis has its advantage. In addition, Agares is writing tutorials for JME coding (currently only in german, I will translate that soon), and I have a blog about games and gamedesign included in our website. You might want to read that.

Is there anything more?
Yes, there is allways more. But I will not write everything in this post. Let me just say thank you for this engine, all the answers I found in this forum without having to ask them. Keep on going!

Have fun,

Nick aka Tirnithil

5 Likes
2

Hey guys. We just released a new alpha patch for Tidy, version 0.4.8. If you would like to take a look, you are very welcome.

We would really love to get some feedback :smile:

Download
Newest Patchnotes

3

Word of advice: Always include a video showcasing your latest progress when you do development updates. Most people will be too busy/lazy/clueless (there’s no Mac installer, waah!) to be convinced to download and play the game.

Also, videos put you in control, which lets you showcase only what works instead of letting the player experience everything that doesn’t work yet :stuck_out_tongue:

All that being said, because I’m such a swell guy I did play the game! Only the first three levels or so to get the feel for it, but I did get the sense that you have an important design decision to make:

Which is the main challenge? Solving the puzzle, or executing the solution?

  • Super Meat Boy is 95% execution.
  • The Room is 99% puzzle solving.
  • Portal is roughly 50/50, depending on your experience with FPS gameplay.

For a simple game, I would strongly suggest leaning heavily towards one or the other. Making thought provoking puzzles is really hard, and making an enjoyable control & movement system is equally difficult. Trying to do both is super duper hard.

Here’s one example of letting go of character movement in favor of pure puzzle solving:

  • Ditch the 3rd person character → Go “god-mode” instead, being able to move around the level in a free-cam type mode.
  • Select each individual piece to control it. Its movement will be dictated by its shape, so:
  • Cubes can only go straight (by tipping over) in 4 directions.
  • Cylinders are limited to two directions.
  • Polyhedrons can only move in… whatever weird pattern emerges when you tip a pyramid over repeatedly.
  • Spheres can go all over the place!

Now it’s strictly a game of good logistics and proper order of operations. Maybe you need to move two squares in place before you can roll a cylinder safely over them and so forth.

Just my 2000 cents.

1 Like
4

Hey Erlend :smile:

First, let me thank you for your constructive words. I will try to give you some proper replies:

  1. You are right. We should have made a video about the changes. We will do this for the next update, thanks for the advice. :smile:

  2. The decision, what will be the main challenge of the puzzle mode is still to be made. At the moment this depends on technical things, that are still not clear. For example, we still have problems with objects sliding over the floor, especially when passing the object from one floor to another. You might have experienced that.
    If we can’t come to a good solution, the main goal for the puzzle mode will be jump’n’run. If we find a solution, we will definetly do both, to get the jump’n’think game we want to have. I agree on your definitions for the games you mentioned, and I also agree with you, that doing both will be a very hard challenge for game design AND programming. But, we would like to do that :smiley:

  3. Making a MAC-Installer is an option I will look into for the next patch, promise :wink:

  4. I like your ideas for object movement, I will look into that, if we can’t make the physic do this properly.

Again, thank you for your reply … your’s are always very helpful :smile:

5

The game is catchy but it needs more audio and video effects.

6

Thank you @aegroto.

Tidy will get its own soundset and music, but its not done yet :smile: For effects, we try to offer a wider range of graphic options, including some nice effects, but we only add them from time to time, so just watch the patchnotes.

By the way: We are working on some technical improvements for puzzlemode and hope to bring the next big patch in the following weeks.

7

I pick the first one. And the second too… and maybe the third, a little.

Video ! video !