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Aerial Guard Prototype

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A 3D flight sim, with racing game and shmup elements. Took a while to figure out what direction I wanted to take this, but here we are with a demo. A lot is subject to change from the visuals to the game's design, but I'd definitely like to know what you think of it in its current state, although unfinished.


This demo only contains one level, so it's relatively short. A beach stage where you try to get to the goal. I hope you'll check it out.


If you want to stay tuned for more of this game's development or smaller projects, drop by https://twitter.com/Amni3D

If you want an offline desktop build: https://sonicfangameshq.com/forums/showcase/aerial-guard-alpha-demo-1.776/


Controls:

Steering = Gamepad Left Analog / WASD

Free Look = Gamepad Right Analog / Middle Mouse Click/ Arrow Keys


Boosting = Gamepad Right Trigger / Left Shift

Brakes = Gamepad Left Trigger / Left Ctrl

Drifting = Gamepad A / Space

Barrel Roll = Gamepad Shoulder Buttons / Q and E


Fire = Gamepad X / Left Mouse Click

Slash = Gamepad B / Right Mouse Click


Pause = Gamepad Start / Enter

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This game is a lot of fun. It's seems like a good racing game that blends with Starfox 64.

It was an outstanding experience to navigate the island and experiment with controls. The boosting and brake seem to get stuck sometimes when using Xbox controller. Keyboard and mouse were very clunky - controller experience is great!

The gem placement seemed off too - What is the objective of this game? Time, or enemies or both? Maybe that is part of the appeal for your future? Will this be a competitive game or a narrative driven game?

It would be neat to see a battle multiplayer racing shooter where you could shoot at the other racers throwing them off a little bit.

Either way, I am incredibly excited to see what Prototype 2 or Final looks like.

Great job love this game!

Amni3D responds:

The idea behind it was to make a "3D shmup that I'd like to play" while giving it more of a flight aspect. Problem is I ended up falling into an entirely different set of design issues, and it got stuck in dev hell. I've always got ideas that I put to the test, but sadly R&D doesn't always come out fruitful.

I've been developing it in the background, but have been prioritizing multiple other prototypes too. Given time I do think Aerial Guard will leave the prototyping phase, but for now it's still under heavy experimentation (and not necessarily in full scale development).

I'm glad you found it fun, even in its current state. Makes me wonder if I'm too picky with my own mechanics..

Seems like a good start, but there's definitely some issues:
- If you try to steer with Ctrl held, browser shortcuts will be triggered.
- Using mouse buttons while not steering with the mouse is not that intuitive. My head never really got around that.

Amni3D responds:

Noted.
I'll rethink the control scheme for keyboard. Addressing this next development demo. Thanks for letting me know.

This is so kickass that I feel a little awkward giving feedback, but the things that struck me are:

Using a drift mechanic in a flight sim game is simply insane! (Physics be damned!) That seems like it could really be exploited to make for some remarkable gameplay, but with a very open level design it's not really necessary to drift for maneuverability. It would take some serious thinking about how to set up a level so drifting well would be rewarded, without making the level so tight and cramped that you can't see where you're going and what you're doing when you're flying around at a few hundred miles an hour. (Maybe there are areas in this stage where it's useful, but I didn't recognize them.)

Mouse buttons for firing and slashing seem a little weird if the mouse doesn't also aim -- it seemed like aiming was determined more by which direction in world space the plane is pointing, plus some degree of auto-locking on targets. If the mouse is only used for free-look angling, when I did that it became ridiculously difficult to play so it seems like I wouldn't really use it in practice while playing. (Maybe just have a button for rearview for when I've got bogies shooting me from behind?) And in that case, I'd probably rather have my right hand on the keyboard (with access to a bunch of keys) instead of essentially just using that hand to control the two mouse buttons.

For laser fire, I might recommend either making an overheating mechanic or smth to make it more than a matter of just holding down the fire button for the entire stage, or just make it autofire instead of even needing a fire button. I'm not sure what the slash will ultimately be used for (hacking a path through obstacles?) but I didn't have much use for it in this level. Similar for barrel rolls, and braking if there's a drift mechanic. Hopefully level design will bring them into play as helpful features.

Overall the recurring theme seems to be level design. With this level, many of the gameplay features seemed not to be necessary, and ultimately in order to reach its full potential I get the feeling that level design will have to be done in such a way to demand that the players master the tools you've given them. Especially drifting :3

Amni3D responds:

Thanks so much!

Drift is a really hard mechanic to figure out, I think this kind of drift works best for sharp 90 degree corners and combat in more open maps. I have some ideas now how to use them in level design.

The keyboard control scheme was messed up because I needed Q and E for barrel rolls, forcing a WASD control scheme. However, now I think barrel rolls would be better off as directional double taps, allowing me to go to arrow keys, giving you the whole rest of the keyboard for input. Definitely will look into this, so don't get too used to the keybindings if things work out :p

I think a weapon switching mechanic would be significantly more interesting than weapon leveling by itself. And I need more intent behind combat, but the lockon is certainly part of what makes this playable. Will have to look into improving aim while making it less automatic.

I'll get more competent with level design the more content I make, I think I can already make this map 2x better in less time, so that's neat!

Wrote this down, definitely taking this into account.

i had really liked that game and not really any bugs i seen really the only complaint i have is the controls are a little janky and constructive criticism maybe add some power ups maybe add like a super laser and maybe add it to where you have to collect ammo and to have a clear objective. but other then that great game

Amni3D responds:

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the leveling system. Weapon pickups basically serve that purpose while being 2x more interesting. And non linear level design is definitely something I want to explore.

Thanks for the feedback!

Credits & Info

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Faves:
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Votes
95
Score
3.46 / 5.00

Uploaded
Sep 5, 2020
2:02 PM EDT
Software
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  • Krita
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