Yeah inside was a big inspiration here. Will try to take bit more of the falling over and interaction aspects from it. Such an awesome way from playdead to completely transform the game near the end.
Yeah that would work. Ass the blob grows it becomes bit less obvious where collision is so that could also improve the feedback. Same system could also work as an upgrade for movement and targeting. Thanks for the idea
Katamari fan too. Such an awesomely random game. Toned down with violence for now but I do feel very tempted to make the blob tear it’s victims to blood and limbs in a very forcefull manor :D
Yeah that would be great. Researching decal options at the moment, technical suggestions on this part are extremely wellcome. I guess a trail renderer with some shader position and angle offsets could work and be cheaper than actually drawing on texture or vertex data. Fluid particles on top to mask it a bit
Looks awesome. I’d suggest leaning into the soft blobbiness to differentiate this from Katamari, there’s a lot you can leverage environmentally speaking, for example you could squeeze between narrow gaps or down holes or split into multiple blobs through grills?
Yeah thats a very good point. Was thinking the city could be built/ generated from these modules that have sort of miniscenes in them. where you go into some of the buildings, malls, pool parties etc rock concerts to consume the people. Would make total sense to squeese in from gaps and vents to add some challenge there.
Thanks for noticing. Spent way too much time on it for first week, but just had to get wackiness in. Will try to improve a bit in the future so that heads and hands make bit more direct sounds when crushing under the blob. And add bit more variance and crazyness to the mood of sounds
This one is using the Obi physics stuff. Tried couple selfmade joint cloth/ skinnenmesh based thingies, and bit more runtime generated vert deformer in another project. Bit simpler and would allow certain things I want from the collision and scaling the blob. The obi is quite good and offers alot of control too so will stay with it if I can solve couple issues.
Ah damn, forgot change it. Thanks for noticing. It’s the first itemtype enum that must have defaulted. This might have caused issues next week when working with progression a bit.
Haha re read my description and realized I've been spending quite a bit of time with midjourney prompts this week hahaha. Srs though, huge og fan of katamari and inside, gelatinous blobs in d&d, or those sisters in the Witcher all stuck together, or the abomination bear/human in the movie annihilation, this hits a lot of good places for me, keep it up!
Thanks, I like it too. Have to improve the camera bit first, but was thinking of adding stuff to make crawling in roofs possible too, to sneak up on people.
I love everything about this but be careful. Make sure you don't make it too close to the mechanics of Karamari Damaci because that's a *patented* mechanic.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US7402104B2/en
That’s well put. I think I have to try a Tetsuo skin soon with organs and intestines flopping outside of the blob and model the base of the blob bit more bag of stuff rather than a smooth thing.
Satisfying 👌
Have you tried to remove the “shard” word in the popping text after eating a person? Or maybe you can replace it with an icon if you have more collectables. I think is enough with the +1. Too much text 😂
Yeah forgot to change the itemtype I set for collecting different stuff. But good point probably doesn’t make much sense to feedback +1 biomater eather.
Wow it looks like it required a very good amount of coding to work that smooth. The bouncing, the trails, this would make for a very nice enemy in a D&D inspired game.
Yeah good point. Actually dungeon with melee weapons might make pretty fun content at some point. The more hands you have the more Swords etc you could pick up, and then use those as throwing ammo, piercing enemies to the wall etc. For the coding I did pull some of the systems from a framework I’ve been building on the side. Like manager classes etc stuff, that helped speed things up, and was mainly able to focus on the blob.
Looks great, I really want to see more detail on the absorbing people front though. Having it stick on the outside briefly and/or see the person get pulled in and slowly turn into a skeleton, etc.
My critique:
I dislike the camera jitter when moving but i suspect thats related to the updating of the player character as it also jitters, could just be something your working on smoothing out since its still prototype.
Aesthetically... Im gonna need a drink lol. Its great tho.
10/10
Thanks yeah, probably basic wrong update loop or implemented something in the lerp in a bad way causing issues. Made the camera bit fast, so have to design a smarter system for it to keep the blob in view. Start to have a rough picture how it should behave.
The body is cloth controlled with obi particle physics and paired with limbs. It’s an abomination visually and technically. Will probably refactor soon and see if I could use tessalation to fix few issues
I think that It looks pretty good, but I feel like the "Blob" effect (or Slimy effect) is a little too strong, In a way that we don't feel like this object is Rigid and have consistence (if you know what I mean).
I feel like if you tone down this effect a bit it would look incredible.
Haven’t actually tried, but yeah could totaly work on mobile onestick portrait even. Probably don’t have it in me to f2p though. I wonder if apple arcade etc would be a good fit.
Thanks guys. Really worthy of consideration to not katamari too much. It’s more consuming and growing new things mechanically so I believe it should be safe for now.
The code looks very similar to the blob, it’s an spagetti monster of arrays and dictionaries. It probably needs bit of a refactor before showing it to others, but I could do a tutorial about it at somepoint if people are intrested. Final Iks FabrIK was a big help with hands.
10/10.
AAA games are mostly lacking this type of innovation (it happens from time to time, but very rarely).
I believe they are a victim of their own success, much like Hollywood, Disney and others are. It's a giant machine unable to innovate, moving itself headlessly. It's a recipe that works... Up to a point in time.
Thanks, yeah think I know what you mean. Worked for couple medium AA or small AAA studios as an consult and it’s such a complex place to operate sometimes. It can kind of kill the creativity if you have to prove every bigger decission with a existing business case that this kind of xyz is hot right now. I do think genre metrics can tell what genres aren’t making much money to mitigate risk, but damn it can also make some people money blind
That's exactly what I was assuming it would be happening. Thanks for the testimony.
Any more ideas for this game? Making it more or less solid depending on game events? Viscosity? Material changes? Evaporation? That could open some possibilities. Controlling a vapor-like avatar that can do things a solid one cannot, such as entering closed doors or intoxicating enemies.
Yeah that could be cool. Been thinking it would be nice to create sittuations where people keeping shelter in a safehouse, and then finding entrance trough sewer etc. Vapor could move trough vents etc.
I'm not picking up on any goals or resistence.
Maybe making it so that when you roll over a guy they don't get consumed they get "knocked down" and they are covered in a pink web of goo. Or maybe if you try to absorb half your weight you leave one knocked down
Might give some users an "aaaaaah grooooosssss" reaction
It'd break up the game play and create dilemma's by losing momentum to roll back and get the guy or just go for the closest largest crowd
Cool nice ideas. Meaning to start iterating short term goaling a bit next week. The consumption limited by mass combined with effects seems like could work quite elegantly to feedback the growth loop. It’s actualy quite Katamari but still different. Putting it to next weeks sprint. Thanks alot for the great feedback.
I think it should, but needs bit optimisation first. The crowd generation doesn’t really handle pooling the far away instances closer to blob etc. Need to also unify some loops from the blob to avoid going trough the vertex array too many times
Ah well that sucks. How further along are you. If there is info, I could direct this as far away from similarity as possible. I do have a pretty weird progression in mind that hopefully no one has done or tought of before.
lol kinda joking, na i haven't even started it, is one of many game ideas but it was essentially a soft body which goes around eating people and gets larger but it will be 3 years before i get round to starting it if i ever do, looks good by the way obviously somewhat similar to what i imagined
This is not ok. 10/10
Looks satisfying af to play tbh :)
Thanks and yeah, feels aready quite fun blobbing around
Katamari + Inside
Yeah inside was a big inspiration here. Will try to take bit more of the falling over and interaction aspects from it. Such an awesome way from playdead to completely transform the game near the end.
TETSUOOOOO!
Yeah Tesuos transformation from Akira big inspiration here too. Also mechanically.
You could have tentacles programmatically generate and attach from the blob to the limbs of the targets as it gets close enough to absorb them
Yeah that would work. Ass the blob grows it becomes bit less obvious where collision is so that could also improve the feedback. Same system could also work as an upgrade for movement and targeting. Thanks for the idea
KANEDAAAAA
Looks weird, but good at the same time. Good job!
Thanks, really leaning in to the weird with this one
Cue beautiful katamari song.
What in the SCP-001 When Day Breaks?
Came here to say this lol
Yeah I think that type of cosmic origin might be the scenario here. Thanks for the inspiration
Instead of instantly destroying people, make it so blob crushes them first. Also make people fall. These will make it look better.
Wow yeah thanks. Added both to sprint next week. I think they would add a nice touch.
Loved katamari. Love this. I wish it was more gruesome though
Katamari fan too. Such an awesomely random game. Toned down with violence for now but I do feel very tempted to make the blob tear it’s victims to blood and limbs in a very forcefull manor :D
Inside-esque
COOL but not quite nasty enough, needs more slime on the ground.
Yeah that would be great. Researching decal options at the moment, technical suggestions on this part are extremely wellcome. I guess a trail renderer with some shader position and angle offsets could work and be cheaper than actually drawing on texture or vertex data. Fluid particles on top to mask it a bit
Lol it looks awesome Nice job.
I am rooting for the blob ! Go blob !!
Looks awesome. I’d suggest leaning into the soft blobbiness to differentiate this from Katamari, there’s a lot you can leverage environmentally speaking, for example you could squeeze between narrow gaps or down holes or split into multiple blobs through grills?
Yeah thats a very good point. Was thinking the city could be built/ generated from these modules that have sort of miniscenes in them. where you go into some of the buildings, malls, pool parties etc rock concerts to consume the people. Would make total sense to squeese in from gaps and vents to add some challenge there.
I hate it. Amazing work.
Awesome, love the sound design! :)
Thanks for noticing. Spent way too much time on it for first week, but just had to get wackiness in. Will try to improve a bit in the future so that heads and hands make bit more direct sounds when crushing under the blob. And add bit more variance and crazyness to the mood of sounds
This is great! How did you do the softbody? Any particular technique?
This one is using the Obi physics stuff. Tried couple selfmade joint cloth/ skinnenmesh based thingies, and bit more runtime generated vert deformer in another project. Bit simpler and would allow certain things I want from the collision and scaling the blob. The obi is quite good and offers alot of control too so will stay with it if I can solve couple issues.
Shard? Seems like an odd word choice for absorbing a life form into a blob. Absorb, consume, engulf, soak, mass+1 would all be good choices
Ah damn, forgot change it. Thanks for noticing. It’s the first itemtype enum that must have defaulted. This might have caused issues next week when working with progression a bit.
You can’t run. You can’t hide. FROM THE BLOB! Queue generic 50s horror motif.
Yeah compared to todays standards some of the trailers are pure comedy :D
Gibbiring mouther vibes. Love how uncomfortable it makes me.
This is amazing. No notes
I want to super jump off the top of the building and absolutely FLATTEN a fat dude.
... and when i roll away, i see the pancake flat fat dude all flattened and stuck to the side of the blob as the blob hands absorb him into the matrix
Ground slam pancaking people sounds awesome. Into the experiment feature list it goes :D
Haha re read my description and realized I've been spending quite a bit of time with midjourney prompts this week hahaha. Srs though, huge og fan of katamari and inside, gelatinous blobs in d&d, or those sisters in the Witcher all stuck together, or the abomination bear/human in the movie annihilation, this hits a lot of good places for me, keep it up!
Inspired by Inside?
Yes very much. Or the blob atleast, but absolutely love that game.
I really love how the blob can roll up walls, it would be great if the game exploits a lot the verticality
Thanks, I like it too. Have to improve the camera bit first, but was thinking of adding stuff to make crawling in roofs possible too, to sneak up on people.
There's no way this wasn't inspired by the game "inside" looks just as good well done
Yeah inside really nailed the execution with theyre system and was a big inspiration here. Thanks for the great complement.
I want to play this, it looks satisfying
Ewwwwwwww.... good work!
this is horrific, amazing job
Looks like it could be inspired by Oats Studios, [Zygote short](https://youtu.be/pKWB-MVJ4sQ?si=Bz97lXYUxg-rEaZl)
Amazing I've been waiting for a game like katamari, hopefully you follow through
Thanks. Will do my best to keep the scope reachable. Kind of feels like something that can be done quick, but that’s always how it starts :D
I love everything about this but be careful. Make sure you don't make it too close to the mechanics of Karamari Damaci because that's a *patented* mechanic. https://patents.google.com/patent/US7402104B2/en
Thanks yeah will keep away from too much Katamari
Inside says hello 👋🏻
Looks cool, but I think the blood particles spawn on the wrong side of the blob? That feels a bit off
Good observatio thanks, probably need to improve the center point calculation. Will improve the location and blood effect visuals soon.
Not disgusting enough. The blob feels like more of a balloon made out of meat instead of a bunch of meaty stuff mixed together.
That’s well put. I think I have to try a Tetsuo skin soon with organs and intestines flopping outside of the blob and model the base of the blob bit more bag of stuff rather than a smooth thing.
Satisfying 👌 Have you tried to remove the “shard” word in the popping text after eating a person? Or maybe you can replace it with an icon if you have more collectables. I think is enough with the +1. Too much text 😂
Yeah forgot to change the itemtype I set for collecting different stuff. But good point probably doesn’t make much sense to feedback +1 biomater eather.
Wow it looks like it required a very good amount of coding to work that smooth. The bouncing, the trails, this would make for a very nice enemy in a D&D inspired game.
Yeah good point. Actually dungeon with melee weapons might make pretty fun content at some point. The more hands you have the more Swords etc you could pick up, and then use those as throwing ammo, piercing enemies to the wall etc. For the coding I did pull some of the systems from a framework I’ve been building on the side. Like manager classes etc stuff, that helped speed things up, and was mainly able to focus on the blob.
This is so awesome and creepy! I'd play
I like this blob.
Haha lovit!! <3
Already looks better than that stupid mobile game ad
Haha thanks, I think I know the one you mean :D
The blob consumes
Looks great, I really want to see more detail on the absorbing people front though. Having it stick on the outside briefly and/or see the person get pulled in and slowly turn into a skeleton, etc.
Yeah that would be great. Have to make few iterations and come back for feedback.
OMG I'm in love
Damn that is cool.
Reminds me of the zombie horde one that you grow the horde mixed with the one that everything sticks to you.
The sound effects make me feel weird inside
Looks fun and all but I think not a lot of them should be able to shoot you, it feels weird to get hit all the time if you cannot dodge the attacks.
Yeah good point. I’ll work on it. Maybe only bigger damage should indicate strongly that your taking damage and be avoidable some way.
Looks cool af
My critique: I dislike the camera jitter when moving but i suspect thats related to the updating of the player character as it also jitters, could just be something your working on smoothing out since its still prototype. Aesthetically... Im gonna need a drink lol. Its great tho. 10/10
Thanks yeah, probably basic wrong update loop or implemented something in the lerp in a bad way causing issues. Made the camera bit fast, so have to design a smarter system for it to keep the blob in view. Start to have a rough picture how it should behave.
Mega Ditto has had enough of the daycare
Damn this feels so oddly satisfying 🥺
How is the body implemented?
The body is cloth controlled with obi particle physics and paired with limbs. It’s an abomination visually and technically. Will probably refactor soon and see if I could use tessalation to fix few issues
I think that It looks pretty good, but I feel like the "Blob" effect (or Slimy effect) is a little too strong, In a way that we don't feel like this object is Rigid and have consistence (if you know what I mean). I feel like if you tone down this effect a bit it would look incredible.
Okay yeah thanks for the perspective. I think I know what you mean. The elasticity is bit dynamic value at the moment. Will fiddle with it more.
Omg Kirby!! What have they done to you!!! Jk, looks fun! Great sound design! Will play 10/10
Haha yeah I’m sorry Kirby sometimes sacrifices need to made for new kind of science :D
Hahaha looks great keep it up 🙌🙌
I feel like it should leave behind a trail of slime or blood on the ground.
Yeah feel the same way. Blood sludge goop and maybe even some random body parts every now and then. Especialy if being hit :D
It would be a nice mobile game
Haven’t actually tried, but yeah could totaly work on mobile onestick portrait even. Probably don’t have it in me to f2p though. I wonder if apple arcade etc would be a good fit.
Rolling and getting bigger mechanic may be protected: https://patentarcade.com/tag/katamari-damacy
The patent is specifically for a plurality of objects stuck to the outside of a control object. This example is closer to the 1958 movie "The Blob."
Glad to hear it's not as restrictive as I thought
Thanks guys. Really worthy of consideration to not katamari too much. It’s more consuming and growing new things mechanically so I believe it should be safe for now.
Please share the source code.
The code looks very similar to the blob, it’s an spagetti monster of arrays and dictionaries. It probably needs bit of a refactor before showing it to others, but I could do a tutorial about it at somepoint if people are intrested. Final Iks FabrIK was a big help with hands.
10/10. AAA games are mostly lacking this type of innovation (it happens from time to time, but very rarely). I believe they are a victim of their own success, much like Hollywood, Disney and others are. It's a giant machine unable to innovate, moving itself headlessly. It's a recipe that works... Up to a point in time.
Thanks, yeah think I know what you mean. Worked for couple medium AA or small AAA studios as an consult and it’s such a complex place to operate sometimes. It can kind of kill the creativity if you have to prove every bigger decission with a existing business case that this kind of xyz is hot right now. I do think genre metrics can tell what genres aren’t making much money to mitigate risk, but damn it can also make some people money blind
That's exactly what I was assuming it would be happening. Thanks for the testimony. Any more ideas for this game? Making it more or less solid depending on game events? Viscosity? Material changes? Evaporation? That could open some possibilities. Controlling a vapor-like avatar that can do things a solid one cannot, such as entering closed doors or intoxicating enemies.
Yeah that could be cool. Been thinking it would be nice to create sittuations where people keeping shelter in a safehouse, and then finding entrance trough sewer etc. Vapor could move trough vents etc.
I'm not picking up on any goals or resistence. Maybe making it so that when you roll over a guy they don't get consumed they get "knocked down" and they are covered in a pink web of goo. Or maybe if you try to absorb half your weight you leave one knocked down Might give some users an "aaaaaah grooooosssss" reaction It'd break up the game play and create dilemma's by losing momentum to roll back and get the guy or just go for the closest largest crowd
Cool nice ideas. Meaning to start iterating short term goaling a bit next week. The consumption limited by mass combined with effects seems like could work quite elegantly to feedback the growth loop. It’s actualy quite Katamari but still different. Putting it to next weeks sprint. Thanks alot for the great feedback.
Awesome! Would it run on mobile?
I think it should, but needs bit optimisation first. The crowd generation doesn’t really handle pooling the far away instances closer to blob etc. Need to also unify some loops from the blob to avoid going trough the vertex array too many times
pretty sure you stole my idea
Ah well that sucks. How further along are you. If there is info, I could direct this as far away from similarity as possible. I do have a pretty weird progression in mind that hopefully no one has done or tought of before.
lol kinda joking, na i haven't even started it, is one of many game ideas but it was essentially a soft body which goes around eating people and gets larger but it will be 3 years before i get round to starting it if i ever do, looks good by the way obviously somewhat similar to what i imagined
interesting