"Hide-n-Seek Winter" (Coming early February)

[snowconesolid]

Hello playmaker community. I have been working on a toon game for sometime now. I am using playmaker to bring it to life so I thought I would share here. You might have also seen my post for this on works in progress section on the unity forums as well.

Anyway, heres a preview of what I have created so far. Let me know what you think

Story: Choco and his little sister Frosty are playing outside in the snow when suddenly an approaching car looses control of its breaks and crashes into the two kids. After being run over by the speeding vehicle, Choco suddenly finds himself standing in front of his house. Choco then receives a letter from his little sister Frosty. The letter asks Choco to search for his little sister because they are now playing "Hide and Seek", Frosty's favorite game.

This will be a short game that tells the story about a brother and his sister.

Plan on releasing it sometime in February. It will be for windows, Mac and Linux. (And possibly Android later on depending on how things go)

teaser trailer

characters:
Choco: main character, big brother.


Frosty: choco's younger sister. Loves to play Hide and Seek.


In game Screenshots:













For more info check out my dev blog (Link in my sig).
and heres my wip thread on the unity forums as well: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/225008-quot-Hide-n-Seek-Winter-quot-%28Coming-early-February%29

EDIT: Sorry for the huge screenshots that are cut off.. Not sure why they appear so big on these forums.

[coffeeANDsoda]

First in game screenshot looks like the train is in space? Is that going to be there in the final version of the game?

Besides that, I think it's interesting that you make the characters look like characters out of a earthbound game.

[snowconesolid]

^Thanks.
Yes, the space train level is in the final game. Each level is different in its own way and in a different setting. The theme is what I am keeping constant all throughout the game (the theme of snow. So all levels are snow levels.)

So, you might be playing in the space train level and once you finish that you will find yourself in a level that is just a normal street with a house for example. The levels are not constant or connected with each other (for storyline purposes) but the theme of snow is constant.

and your not the first one who mentioned earthbound. I have actually had other people tell me that my main character reminds them of Lucas from earthbound.

[snowconesolid]

I have been posting updates more often in my thread on the unity forums than here on the playmaker forums but heres some more screens and stuff from my game I recently posted




Some of my FSMs





And a nice moonlight shine:

[snowconesolid]

This is the last week of development for this game. Going to wrap things up and release it around the end of this week. stay tuned!

screenshot:

[snowconesolid]

New update:

just going to paste what I said in my unity thread. (which I tend to update more often than my thread here on the playmaker forums.)

UPDATE:
Big update and changes I am making to the game. I just posted this on my dev blog over here http://snowconesolidwho.blogspot.com/2014/02/hide-n-seek-winter-changes-new-character.html

I don't feel like typing a lot anymore so check out my blog post for the full long update if your interested. I will keep it short over here.

But basically, I created a new original character that will be the main villain of my game.

I call him the "Hiding Demon"


info:
The hiding demon is a very toony, stylized demon type character with a lot of personality. He is known as the king of the game hide and seek because he cleverly hides in various areas when playing. He doesn't like fish because he had a bad childhood experience while on a fishing trip with his father. He can perform various tricks such as grow or shrink his body parts such as his head or hands.The hiding demon lives in the "Infinite snow world" (where the game takes place) and is the main villain of "Hide-n-Seek Winter".

Recently finished setting him up in unity and in playmaker. Here is what my final FSM looks like for this new character of mine.


I created a ton of animations for this character, probably the most I have ever created for any of my characters. Although this FSM I made looks really complex big and messy its actual very simple. I created this with playmaker in a matter of minuets and all I am doing is controlling different animation states for this character.

Storyline changes:

I decided to go a different direction with my the storyline so I came up with a new storyline for my game.

The New Storyline of the game:
After playing a game of hide and seek, little sister Frosty compliments her big brother Choco by telling him that he is the greatest hide and seek player ever. After saying this, the "Hiding Demon" suddenly appears and refuses to believe that choco is the greatest hide and seek player ever. The hiding demon then kidnaps Choco's little sister and disappears. The hiding demon tells Choco to meet him at the frozen pond in the "Infinite Snow World", a strange alternate dimension world where it snows forever. In order for Choco to rescue his little sister, he must defeat the hiding demon in a game of hide and seek.

side notes:

I am having a lot of fun developing this game and like always I feel like it is a major step up for me compared to my previous games. It is definitely going to be my most polished and best looking game I have made yet.  I look forward to finishing this and releasing it and hearing peoples feedback. I still plan on finishing and releasing this game before the end of February (this month) so expect it to be out soon.

More updates coming soon. Stay tuna!

[jeanfabre]

ouch.... Are all the states pretty much doing the same?

 You should study a way to only have one of these states and likely another fsm dealing with a higher level logic to transit and deal with animations.

bye,

 Jean.

[snowconesolid]

I think the way I have it set up is perfect for my case. I am doing something similar to what you mentioned.

All this character will do is play the animations it has when I want it to. Thats it, its not a playable character, no ai or anything, he doesnt have any logic other than his own animations. So the states are very simple because all they will do is play the animation when I want. It just looks like a lot and really messy because of the many different animations I created which are pretty much loop able posses that dont involve the character to move out of its position ever. So things like sitting, crouching, laying down. So I dont need to use other logic like itween to have him move to a certain position while his walk animation plays or something.

Its a very controlled fsm. It won't do anything on its own. The reason why each state has the same amount of transits between animations is because all of the animation states are global, so I will call on which ever animation I need from a different FSM, like my cutscene manager or something or if I need him to actually move from position to position, I would only call his animation to play and then actually do the real movement from a different fsm manager I have set up. But if I needed to quickly transit to another animation I can simply just call on it from the current animation state that the character is already in. So the FSM for this character is only handling its own animations.

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

 uhm... but then why not use global transitions? have for each states its own global transitions.

 Demon_ball global transition leads to Demon_ball state
 Demon_AllAloneSit leads to Demon_AllAloneSit

you could even fire a generic event "ANIMATE DEMON", pass a string like "AllAloneSit" and play that animation, then you would have only one state...

If you are interested, pm me with this package, and I'll provide an optimized version. I may be missing the point, in which case I would still be interested to provide what's require to ease the developmen of similar character setup.

bye,

 Jean

[snowconesolid]

I am using global transitions so I can call them from different FSMs whenever I need a certain animation of this character to play.



They all have the same amount of transitions so that I could immediately call a different animation from which ever animation state I am currently in from any other fsm.

And this is what each state is doing.


(First thing I do is an optional thingy I usually tend to do with all my character setups) I first make my characters mesh visible. (I have a separate state called Demon_Disabled, which does not render the mesh and plays no animation. Just for optimization for when I am not using the demon character I can quickly call Demon Disabled. I could also just deactivate the entire object at once but sometimes deactivating the entire object might not be the best option depending on your case, So I like to use my own type of deactivation setup)

Then I set the animation speed of the animation for that state. And finally I play which ever animation is for that state. Every other state does the same thing. They just each play the animation that corresponds to that state. For my purposes this works really well.

I might not fully understand what your saying and I might be the one missing the point. Or maybe I am thinking of something else. I am interested in seeing how you would set up a character and appreciate the feedback. I have seen a lot of your other posts around here way before I even purchased playmaker and you are a really helpful person. Would I need to send you the entire package or is there a way to just send you my Demon character prefab with the fsm?

[fromfame]

It does look like everything took a lot of effort, well done!
I kinda burst out laughing when i saw that screen shot of events flying everywhere hahah

[snowconesolid]

Thanks fromfame. yes, I spent a lot of time working on this game. Creating every asset from scratch. Im so thankful for playmaker because it has saved me so much time for setting up the games logic and gameplay in the engine. So I was able to spend more time on the art like models and other assets.

Todays Update:



In a previous update I introduced a new character, "the hiding demon", which will play the role as the main villain in the game. His ability is to cleverly hide in various areas.

A unique boss battle:
In the final level of the game I wanted to do something special. So instead of ending the game with a traditional boss battle like in most games, I decided that it would be cool to have the player battle the boss in a game of hide and seek.

So in the final level of the game, you play actual hide and seek with the "hiding demon".

The demon will hide in a random area. You have to find him a certain number of times within a time period to win the game.

He will hide in various places such as behind trees


or ice


and other areas that are much more clever and less common than the areas I mentioned above.
The cool thing is, that I made it so that the hiding demon hides in random areas each time. So he will never hide in the same area each time you play the level. This way, if you loose at this part of the game or want to replay it, it won't get boring because you can't predict where he will hide.

How it was done:
I was able to easily do this by creating a manager with playmaker which stores a number of different spawn points (or hiding spots in this case) around the map. Each time the "spawn random" event is called the manager will select a random spawn point and place the demon there and then have the demons appropriate expression match the spawn point he is sent to. So for example, if he is sent to a sign, he will crouch behind it, or if he is somewhere in the snow he will lay down, etc.



currently I created 20 different hiding spots. With my spawn point manager, I can easily add as much as I want.

The final level has a big open map with various random things scattered everywhere. There is a lot to check out and explore. so it will be a challenge to find the hiding demon but really fun as a unique boss battle I think. Because you get this feeling of excitement when you are looking around the map everywhere and then you see the hiding demons head or something peaking out from a distance you say to yourself "ahh there he is! I found you!". (well at least I felt that feeling when I was working on this gameplay and testing it out)

Although this is a short game, each level is unique in its own way. You will find something new in each level and notice that the gameplay is different for each level as well. I am really proud of the diverse levels I created for this project. Personally, for me, I feel like this hide and seek level will be the highlight of the games gameplay.


Closing thoughts:
I will be wrapping up this game project real soon and begin prepping it for release.There is a few more things I need to work on but I will finish on time. I promise to release this game before the end of this month.

More soon.

Stay tuna!

[snowconesolid]

Hey everyone. Since I am working on finalizing (working on the menus, ending, etc) the game and prepping it for release, there isn't much dev screenshots to show anymore.

So while I am working on the final parts of the game I am kind of fooling around and playing around with stuff.

Just for fun, heres what the game would look like without the toon shading. This is how it looks with unity's Specular shading and the game engines shadows (Set to highest quality resolution)

(In Game)


(Screenshot from the scene editor window.  As you know, those red logos are gameobjects with playmaker FSM's on them)


I know, it might look a bit too shiny. I really didn't spend anytime tweaking anything, just was a quick for fun thing. Now back to work!

So there you go. If you where wondering what the game would of looked like without toon shading there it is. More updates coming real soon.
(Off topic: I do plan on going for a more graphically realistic style for my next game project after finishing this one)

Stay tunafish!

[snowconesolid]

Game is finished. Releases sooner than you think...



Wow, I can't believe we are already in March! Sorry for the lack of updates here. There was nothing really else for me to show, or I guess I didn't really want to show any more screens or anything because I have been spending the rest of time since my last post finishing up the game, adding a little extra polish, working out some features I forgot to add like a save system, etc.

So I haven't updated in a couple days but I have been working on it non-stop. Or whenever I had a chance to.

As you might know from my previous updates and the title of this wip thread, I originally planned on releasing this game early February and then that eventually led to releasing it at the end of February, and I promised to release it before the end of February. But as usual, things never go as planned. I had run into some issues, I needed to add some extra features and I needed to work on the final game. Also, I haven't had as much free time to work on this project for the past couple days because of life and other non game dev stuff. So I decided I needed a little extra time, just a little, to really finalize my game because there is no point in releasing a broken or unfinished game right?

Anyway, I have good news. Finally, after taking the extra time I needed, I finally finished the game. It feels great! This has been probably my biggest and most serious game project yet and I ran into a lot of frustration while building it, for the most part it was smooth though. But finally, its done and I feel really good about it :cool:

you see? Preparing the final builds as we speak.


So its done, when are you going to release it?

Actually in a couple of hours. I will release the game March 6th (Tomorrow) sometime in the afternoon or so. Like my previous projects, I am releasing this 100% free. It will be available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Why don't you just release it now if its done?
Im going to do some final test to make sure everything is working right, (even though I know it is since I tested so many times in frustration) but I have to double check. Also, the main reason I decided to release it tomorrow is because tomorrow is also my birthday (going to be 21, starting to feel old mold). So I want to give you guys a present on my birthday.

Ok thats all I have for now. I am really excited and looking forward to finally releasing my new toon game. I will probably be updating this thread frequently with other stuff up until I release it tomorrow. So stay tuned.

[snowconesolid]

UPDATE March 6th 2014
Game is finished and released!



You know what today is? (my birthday). The release of my newest game!
Just as promised yesterday, today I am finally releasing my first game of 2014. This is probably my most polished game yet. I put in a lot of hard work on this and it took me a lot of  time but finally its complete and I am happy to add another game to my list of completed game projects. This one is my best game yet so far.

I just finished writing a giant blog post on my dev blog where I say all these things about my game and kind of brag about it then I have the downloads section for the game up. So if you wanna check out the full blog post for my newest game check out the release page for it here on my blog:
http://snowconesolidwho.blogspot.com/2014/03/hide-n-seek-winter-released-birthday.html


So anyway, just getting to the point. My game "Hide-n-Seek Winter" is out now and is available 100% free to download and play. Currently it is for windows, Mac and Linux platforms. I might make and android version of it sometime down the road and I will probably create a webplayer version to put here as well later on.

Release Trailer: (NEW)
Before you download you can check out the release trailer I made for this game to see what its about:

Story:
After playing a game of hide and seek, little sister Frosty compliments her big brother Choco by telling him that he is the greatest hide and seek player ever. After saying this, the "Hiding Demon" suddenly appears and refuses to believe that choco is the greatest hide and seek player ever. The hiding demon then kidnaps Choco's little sister and disappears. The hiding demon tells Choco to meet him at the frozen pond in the "Infinite Snow World", a strange alternate dimension world where it snows forever. In order for Choco to rescue his little sister, he must defeat the hiding demon in a game of hide and seek.


Download Links: (Dropbox)

Hide-n-Seek Winter for Windows
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50235309/DarkChocolateWinter/Builds/FinalBuilds/HidenSeekWinter_ForWindows.rar





Hide-n-Seek Winter for Mac
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50235309/DarkChocolateWinter/Builds/FinalBuilds/HidenSeek_Mac.rar





Hide-n-Seek Winter For Linux
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50235309/DarkChocolateWinter/Builds/FinalBuilds/HidenSeek_Linux.rar



Well thats it. Like always I had a lot of fun creating this game. I believe that this is a major step up compared to my previous games. It was a really big project for me and definitely one of my most serious attempts at making a good game. If you play it I would love to hear your feedback and critics. Enjoy the game everyone!