HTML5 Tonight I'll kill the white whale

Jacnofuture

Member
Hi everyone!

So yesterday I finally released my first game. I started using Gamemaker first to create a surprise game to a friend but slowly I started to love coding and creating my own things so I decided to keep on going and make my own little stories. My goal would be in the future to create some narrative games. I want to be able to use the medium to mix short-films and games and create good atmospheric experiences :)

TMmZx2.png

This is Tonight I'll kill the white whale. It's a storytelling game about monsters and the fear of the unknown.
You can use the directional arrows on the keyboard or A and D to move around.
Link to the game (Browser)

This is my first game so I know that I definitely need to progress with my coding skills! I hope in the future to be able to even re-do this game from scratch with better features and improve the gameplay/cinematics.
 

chance

predictably random
Forum Staff
Moderator
It was pleasant to play through. I enjoyed the music selection. The artwork was a bit rough for my taste. But I liked the character's peg leg. And whale slowly rising to the surface was eerie.

It was short, so you might consider expanding it a bit. Or not. It's fine as it.

EDIT: forgot to mention this: The key presses (Q and E) require upper case. You might want to use lowercase for player convenience.
 

Jacnofuture

Member
Thanks for the feedback!

I definitely want to re-do a newer version once I get the hang of coding a little more :) Graphically as well as making more choices at the beginning of the experience + have more interactivity and have the possibility to stay in the harbor and sleep before going for the whale + perhaps interact in the village with citizens.

As for the message of the game I need to reinforce it without making it too obvious because it still needs to stay floaty. But it's about racism and mystifying and hating people that have grown to be from a different culture.

@chance I'm going to check this! That's pretty strange I could definitely use my lower case. Are you with an AZERTY keyboard?
 
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Kyon

Member
Hell yeah!
This is the kind of games I love.
Keep it up! I love the atmosphere, can't wait what you'll make next.

The capital letter Q/E was not the case for me, it just worked either way.
Sometimes I accidentally skipped a newspaper because you get out of it quite easily by pressing an arrow key (maybe make that Q/E too?)
 

O.Stogden

Member
Q/E also worked fine for me.

Good work, and keep it up. Would love to see a longer length game done in a similar way.
 

Jacnofuture

Member
I've updated the game hopping that it works now with our without using capital letters? Thanks for pointing this out.
And thanks everyone for the nice supportive comments! I'm really glad you liked the experience!
 
You managed to capture the atmosphere aspect of game development with this one.

I have a couple of questions about this which is relevant to my concerns with game maker.

1) It took 1 minute to load (That is what I would expect from a AAA game in a bad situation)
2) This would have loaded instantaneously on a normal windows platform compile
3) Should GM be used for HTML even though it's technically supported (Very skeptical)

Would it be fair to say that GM is wonderful for windows but all other platforms? Eh not so much. It always confuses me with GM especially with HTML5 compiles specifically, causes problems.

You look through the manual and it's rife with HTML5 exceptions. I'm not sure if that's what happened here. I would love to see a PC platform compile for this game.
 

Jacnofuture

Member
Hi Daniel,

Thanks! I'm going to reply with a very simple answer I learnt the hard way with this one :
- I have created multiple "cinematics" directly in after effects rendered as image sequences (I'm a video person first so I wanted to use these skills in my game as part of my pipeline). However I realized that over time it would've been better to use the in-engine sequencer.
- I have created some of my cinematics on a bigger scale (game is 1280*720 and my renders are 1080p) thinking that they would end up with a better resolution. But apparently it just adds up to the compiling time.
 

Ricardo

Member
Great concept! I enjoy a lot this kind of small atmospheric projects. They are an awesome form of art expression.
I didn't have any issue with the controls (QWERTY keyboard), and the title took a few seconds to load here. It also ran smooth all the time over Chrome.
 
Looking back at my old post I feel as though I may have come off a bit rude. Sorry if that was the case. I think my main issue is that I like to know how everything works. I guess I just have to accept that you don't get that with proprietary software like game maker. I just like to know what's in the box. But maybe it's not all that important.
 

O.Stogden

Member
You managed to capture the atmosphere aspect of game development with this one.

I have a couple of questions about this which is relevant to my concerns with game maker.

1) It took 1 minute to load (That is what I would expect from a AAA game in a bad situation)
2) This would have loaded instantaneously on a normal windows platform compile
3) Should GM be used for HTML even though it's technically supported (Very skeptical)

Would it be fair to say that GM is wonderful for windows but all other platforms? Eh not so much. It always confuses me with GM especially with HTML5 compiles specifically, causes problems.

You look through the manual and it's rife with HTML5 exceptions. I'm not sure if that's what happened here. I would love to see a PC platform compile for this game.
Looking back at my old post I feel as though I may have come off a bit rude. Sorry if that was the case. I think my main issue is that I like to know how everything works. I guess I just have to accept that you don't get that with proprietary software like game maker. I just like to know what's in the box. But maybe it's not all that important.
I think the load-time might be down to the fact that GM tends to pre-load everything in advance, and does very little loading when in the game, unless you specifically tell it to do so. I'm unsure if GM would let you program an HTML5 game to load on-the-fly like you could with a Windows compiled game.

As for the load-time itself, I think that's internet connection based, timing it on my own, the game took 14 seconds from me clicking "run game" to me being able to move the character. I would guess on a fast connection (mine isn't), it'd be under 10 seconds.
 
I

iSolo

Guest
I decided to give it a try and I enjoyed it. Has an eerie feeling to it yet relaxing.
I loved the music and the animations are pretty cool.

The character walks a little too fast in and out the Light House. I really liked the experience overall.

Good job!
 

Jacnofuture

Member
it was short but definitely good, good job son
Gal :)
Thanks for then kind words!

Looking back at my old post I feel as though I may have come off a bit rude. Sorry if that was the case. I think my main issue is that I like to know how everything works. I guess I just have to accept that you don't get that with proprietary software like game maker. I just like to know what's in the box. But maybe it's not all that important.
No worries Daniel it's all good! :)
 

Roa

Member
Eh, its good for a first project in that sense and I usually like these artsy fartsy type of story games. Cool music and art, though a little harsh on the eyes.

But I literally giggled at the end. It was wholly inappropriate.

Short games are fine, short stories are fine, minimalist of both is fine.
But if you are going to claim a short story and try to cram some "moral" in there, you have to actually have a story, something to investment or enticement to keep players going, and something where the moral reflects in the story and changes the character. There is none of that. There is nothing to think on, nothing to question, no build up, nothing the character goes through or challenges anyone can related to.

You just slapped some random quote in the end there, that came out of no where, made no contextual sense, that came off as unwarranted and pretentious. I probably spent just was much time staring at the ending asking myself "what the 💩💩💩💩 just happened" as I did playing the game lol. I even had to replay it to make sure I didn't somehow miss something or screw it up.

I think more than art or programing improvements, you need to work on narrative if this is the goal you want to achieve.


As for the message of the game I need to reinforce it without making it too obvious because it still needs to stay floaty. But it's about racism and mystifying and hating people that have grown to be from a different culture.
Also this, never even touched my mind. It actually blows my mind that this is what I was supposed to take away from it XD
It's not even close to being too obvious. It seems far fetched. I only know your moral because you posted it, and I'm still confused....
 
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Jacnofuture

Member
Eh, its good for a first project in that sense and I usually like these artsy fartsy type of story games. Cool music and art, though a little harsh on the eyes.

But I literally giggled at the end. It was wholly inappropriate.

Short games are fine, short stories are fine, minimalist of both is fine.
But if you are going to claim a short story and try to cram some "moral" in there, you have to actually have a story, something to investment or enticement to keep players going, and something where the moral reflects in the story and changes the character. There is none of that. There is nothing to think on, nothing to question, no build up, nothing the character goes through or challenges anyone can related to.

You just slapped some random quote in the end there, that came out of no where, made no contextual sense, that came off as unwarranted and pretentious. I probably spent just was much time staring at the ending asking myself "what the **** just happened" as I did playing the game lol. I even had to replay it to make sure I didn't somehow miss something or screw it up.

I think more than art or programing improvements, you need to work on narrative if this is the goal you want to achieve.




Also this, never even touched my mind. It actually blows my mind that this is what I was supposed to take away from it XD
It's not even close to being too obvious. It seems far fetched. I only know your moral because you posted it, and I'm still confused....
How sweet of you. Glad you wasted 5mins of your life on my artsy fartsy prototype <3
 
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Roa

Member
How sweet of you. Glad you wasted 5mins of your life on my artsy fartsy prototype <3
Wasted 5 minutes??? I gave you an honest non-rude opinion, constructive criticism, and how to improve and you're telling me I wasted 5 minutes?

Nah mate, 💩💩💩💩 that.

You wasted countless hours making this and will waste countless more if you can't accept or get defensive over minor criticisms. -__-
But keep doing you. I'll be sure not to test anything else you make given you see people doing so as wasting their time. I happen to agree, I don't think you will learn much of anything with that attitude.
 
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