Gravitee Wars Post Mortem by Stuart Allen of FunkyPear

Gravitee Wars A Post Mortem Speaker: Stuart Allen FunkyPear.com

Part 1: Background

The Gravitee Series●  Gravitee 1 and Gravitee 2 ●  Golf in space ●  Newtonian physics to simulate gravity ●  Sponsored by Kongregate

Gravitee 1●  Released September 2007●  Approximately 5m - 6m plays●  Current Ratings ●  Newgrounds – 4.22 (Front Page) ●  Kongregate – 4.00

Gravitee 2●  Released August 2009●  Approximately 4.5m - 5.5m plays●  Additional game modes & improved graphics●  Current Ratings ●  Newgrounds – 4.00 ●  Kongregate – 4.05 ●  Lower than Gravitee 1 – Original gameplay diluted?

Gravitee Wars●  Original concept for Gravitee 1●  Change of gameplay from golf to artillery ●  Concerned about alienating original players ●  Weapons and violence seem to do well!

Part 2: Development

Initial Thoughts●  Single player planned since day one●  Multiplayer possibilities for future games●  Unit personality●  Destructible planets●  AI quality important●  Cheap gameplay ●  Medals, achievements & rewards

Destructible Planets (1 of 3)●  Each planet originally a bitmap, with explosions being removed from the bitmap ●  Simple implementation ●  How to get units to walk around planets correctly? ●  How to calculate the new planets mass after an explosion?

Destructible Planets (2 of 3)●  Planet shape stored as a series of points ●  Planets made up of about 40 points●  Units walk around by following the line represented by two consecutive points●  Shape drawn to a Movieclip then used as a mask over the planet graphic●  Vector representation means mass easily calculated

Destructible Planets (3 of 3)●  When a planet is hit, another series of points representing explosions created●  Function takes the explosion and planet shapes and cuts the explosion shape out of the planet ●  Calculates intersections between the shapes ●  Walks around each shape until it intersects the other shape, then switch shape and continue until back to origin

Cheap Gameplay●  Wanted to use cheap gameplay to keep players playing ●  Better medals awarded for better scores ●  Achievements ●  Rewards –  New weapons –  Unit victory and idle animations –  Features (old school GFX, infinite ammo)

Unit Movement●  Units can walk around planet CW/CCW●  Started with Right = CW, Left = CCW ●  Makes less sense when at the bottom of a planet●  Decided to try to guess which way the player wanted to move ●  At top of planet R = CW, L = CCW ●  At bottom of planet L = CW, R = CCW

Artificial Intelligence (1 of 2)●  No experience with AI!●  Various stages ●  Are there any pickups I can get? ●  Am I directly in the line of sight of enemies? If so, is there somewhere I can retreat to after shooting that isnt? ●  Gravity set up too complicated to work out a power & angle to guarantee a hit.

Artificial Intelligence (2 of 2)●  AI throws out 720 different shots (72 different angles, 10 different powers)●  AI decides on which of those shots to take, based on who can be hit, how much health they have and what weapons are available●  Each enemy team has an accuracy score. Shots are knocked off by a random amount, based on this score.●  Originally if the AI couldnt hit an enemy it would move or teleport to another planet and try again

Part 3: Response

Response Overview●  Very well received!●  Hit the 1m gameplay mark after 6 days●  Total plays to date approx 12m – 15m●  Current Ratings ●  Newgrounds – 4.42 (Top 50 for a while) ●  Kongregate – 4.40 (Best of Nov 2010)

User Complaints (1 of 3)●  AI Flaws ●  Enemies take too long thinking – fixed ●  Enemies walk over mines ●  Enemies are too accurate with their shots ●  Enemies dont use all of the weapons

User Complaints (2 of 3)●  Balancing issues ●  Why dont the AI teams shoot at each other? ●  Money cheat – end score based on health remaining and damage done ●  After earning enough money, its easy to just meteor strike and nuke the enemy to death

User Complaints (3 of 3)●  Miscellaneous ●  Intuitive movement – hard to control ●  No multiplayer yet!

Revenue % Break Down

Thanks for listening! :)

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Gravitee Wars Post Mortem by Stuart Allen of FunkyPear

by mochimedia on Sep 14, 2011

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Gravitee Wars Post Mortem by Stuart Allen of FunkyPear — Presentation Transcript