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Signs of Life is a 2D sci-fi survival action/adventure sandbox game, with a combination of procedurally generated and meaningful hand crafted content. Steam, Website, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube Here is our most recent trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw4-8hv8DUY Here are some sweet screenshots: And here are too many animated Gifs: We launched on Steam's Early Access, and we'd be more than happy to answer any questions you folks have. Lucid Dream fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Aug 4, 2017 |
# ? Jan 27, 2014 18:37 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 03:22 |
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Ok, here's the question I think everyone I gonna be asking right off the bat: what do you feel this has to offer over Starbound in terms of gameplay features?
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 18:50 |
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voltron lion force posted:Ok, here's the question I think everyone I gonna be asking right off the bat: what do you feel this has to offer over Starbound in terms of gameplay features? Starbound ain't got that
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 18:54 |
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voltron lion force posted:Ok, here's the question I think everyone I gonna be asking right off the bat: what do you feel this has to offer over Starbound in terms of gameplay features? Fair question given the similarities, in my opinion it comes down to breadth versus depth. Instead of going for the whole infinite procedural universe thing, we're focusing on a smaller but more fleshed out scope. Also, our bone-based animation system gives us way more freedom when it comes to making cool/wacky weapons/gadgets/whatever, and the resulting melee combat is orders of magnitude more fun IMO.
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 19:03 |
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I see you took the Ernest Evans approach to character animation. Those are some fine .gifs you have there.
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# ? Jan 27, 2014 21:56 |
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press V for animal kicking
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 08:14 |
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Request to add automatic GIF creation as a feature
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 15:42 |
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I think most games in this genre look pretty terrible, but the almost QWOP like way the avatar can flail about just elevates this.
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 15:53 |
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quote:
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 15:58 |
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I like the artstyle and for the price, why not? Just don't go mental with crafting recipes like Darkout and you'll be fine.
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 16:06 |
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Is this the bit before commander sheppard found his favorite shop on the citadel?
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 16:14 |
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Well, I dropped $5 on it and it reminds me of that game where you try to complete a stunt course with a segway as parts of your body fall off. When you die you drop everything you own, eating is an unfathomable trial and crafting / placing even the simplest thing like a torch is ???? I understand that you've made a lot of effort to distance yourself from other sandbox crafting games, but there IS a reason for making games playable without reading a manual or wiki. And everything is tiny as well. I don't like rummaging through a backpack for a torch that I can't equip or place because reasons. Seriously, make an effort. And get someone other than your immediate friends to test this game before you even put it on steam, because you seem to think its a lot easier to play and learn than it really is.
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 19:21 |
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xutech posted:Seriously, make an effort. Sounds like you need to take some of you're own advice. To build a camp fire, click the right most icon at the top of your screen. The Projects button. Right click any food you have to eat it. To place a torch, just drag and drop it from your pack to where ever you want to place it. Are you new to gaming? You make it sound like right clicking, drag and drop, clicking buttons and losing everything on you when you die are some new features that have never been used in a game... Stop making mountains out of mole hills. Anyways, I've been enjoying it so far.
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 20:18 |
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xutech posted:Well, I dropped $5 on it and it reminds me of that game where you try to complete a stunt course with a segway as parts of your body fall off. xutech posted:Seriously, make an effort. And get someone other than your immediate friends to test this game before you even put it on steam, because you seem to think its a lot easier to play and learn than it really is.
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 20:22 |
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Dropped about the price of a big mac trio on this, hopefully I'm not disappointed in what looks like an animal kicking simulator. Gonna edit this post after I play it a bit. EDIT: I honestly expected a janky piece of poo poo, no offense, but this is actually pretty neat. While there does need to be some more information (I was literally dragging and dropping items from the ground to my inventory for the first 10 minutes until I realized I can just pick them up with M3.), it's fun. I mean, I don't really know what I'm doing right now so I'm just running around trying to get better gear I guess. The hotbar, while being pretty cool, is kind of annoying thought - I'm sure most people would really rather have complete freedom over what they can place in their hotbar. Hell, is there even a way to put these sap torches onto my hotbar, because dragging them from my inventory all the time is getting to be a pain in the rear end. Also, the inventory system is cool at first glance but it makes finding poo poo quite a pain, dunno if I'm the only one to think this. The player moving mechanics and everything about the character and the way he handles is really neat though, I'd love to see more poo poo done with that (climbing, dodging, etc?), so overall I believe this is a pretty promising game, while still having a lot of work to do and some feature changes would really help it. Worth 7$ in my opinion. Plum Chaser fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jan 28, 2014 |
# ? Jan 28, 2014 20:41 |
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I've played a couple of hours and it's a pretty entertaining game thus far. I love the way you've made the character move, it feels really smooth. But the thing that keeps getting more irritating is the inventory, the fact that items can be freely positioned combined with the fact that icons are tiny makes it impossible to see what you have at a glance, and I keep finding things in my inventory I didn't even know I had. Also because I haven't figured out a way to actually see an item's name thats on the ground, when I hoover something up into my inventory it's lost in there because I don't know which 10 pixel item the new item is and which ones are the old ones. Tooltips appearing when you hover over an item would be great, having to click each gray rock to see what kind of gray rock it is is getting old. I like the idea of the inventory pouches, but you really need to either make everything much bigger, or add some kind of larger indicator around the items. Not allowing items to overlap could help a lot as well, I've noticed that what I've thought to have been one item has actually been 2 or 3 overlapping. I'd even consider going with a traditional grid-based inventory, it does have it's advantages. Another gripe is that text is way too small to read, but I guess you're working on that as I noticed the large font setting does change some of the text. Though the larger font is not actually much more readable, as the font only leaves one pixel of space between letters and is blocky, which makes all the words look like just blocks of color instead of text. I've noticed that there are some jagged rocks that aren't blocks that I can mine with a pickaxe, but then there are fairly identical ones that are actually just part of the background and thus not interactable at all. Also it's a bit confusing which small trees are real trees and which ones are actually background plants. For the most part I do really like the game, even though I'm just complaining here. I think it's got a lot of potential.
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# ? Jan 28, 2014 23:26 |
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Aryoc posted:I've played a couple of hours and it's a pretty entertaining game thus far. I love the way you've made the character move, it feels really smooth. But the thing that keeps getting more irritating is the inventory, the fact that items can be freely positioned combined with the fact that icons are tiny makes it impossible to see what you have at a glance, and I keep finding things in my inventory I didn't even know I had. Aryoc posted:Also because I haven't figured out a way to actually see an item's name thats on the ground, when I hoover something up into my inventory it's lost in there because I don't know which 10 pixel item the new item is and which ones are the old ones. Tooltips appearing when you hover over an item would be great, having to click each gray rock to see what kind of gray rock it is is getting old. Aryoc posted:I like the idea of the inventory pouches, but you really need to either make everything much bigger, or add some kind of larger indicator around the items. Not allowing items to overlap could help a lot as well, I've noticed that what I've thought to have been one item has actually been 2 or 3 overlapping. I'd even consider going with a traditional grid-based inventory, it does have it's advantages. Aryoc posted:Another gripe is that text is way too small to read, but I guess you're working on that as I noticed the large font setting does change some of the text. Though the larger font is not actually much more readable, as the font only leaves one pixel of space between letters and is blocky, which makes all the words look like just blocks of color instead of text. Aryoc posted:I've noticed that there are some jagged rocks that aren't blocks that I can mine with a pickaxe, but then there are fairly identical ones that are actually just part of the background and thus not interactable at all. Also it's a bit confusing which small trees are real trees and which ones are actually background plants. Aryoc posted:For the most part I do really like the game, even though I'm just complaining here. I think it's got a lot of potential.
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# ? Jan 29, 2014 06:31 |
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xutech posted:When you die you drop everything you own, eating is an unfathomable trial and crafting / placing even the simplest thing like a torch is ???? Right click on food to eat it when it's in your inventory, drag and drop torch from inventory to place it. Most everything else in the game works the same way. Pretty simple stuff here.
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# ? Jan 29, 2014 09:20 |
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Lucid Dream posted:We're definitely not going to switch to a grid based system entirely at this point, but one option we've been considering is a button next to the minimize button on containers that would auto organize/align all the items to a grid as best it can, which might alleviate the problem somewhat. Making the inventory bigger is an interesting thought though, it would conceivably be possible to just have an option to scale the inventory containers/items 2/3/4x bigger, and although it would take up a much bigger chunk of the screen, it would likely only be a problem if you were running a low resolution. An auto organize button could help a lot, especially if the items can be sorted by category so you have say all your weapons at the left followed by all your food and so forth. I think that and a scaling option might be all you need really.
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# ? Jan 29, 2014 10:04 |
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The game looks great. Starbound didn't entirely click with me (making a huge world doesn't necessarily equate to a very deep one), so I've been hoping a similar game might come out and do exactly what this is attempting. I especially love the art direction, the pseudo-realism is great and I quite like the animation. I wish more 2D games would go with smoother bone-based animation like this rather than framed animations. I think it looks pretty cool. Unfortunately I don't buy into the whole early access fad and won't purchase this until I can see a more completed game. But once you get there you've got my money. Will it support mods?
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# ? Jan 29, 2014 10:22 |
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# ? Jan 29, 2014 13:53 |
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Lucid Dream posted:We launched today on Steam's Early Access, and we'd be more than happy to answer any questions you folks have. Is there controller support or do you plan to implement controller support in the future? I prefer to aim weapons with a twin stick type of setup and I'm fine using a d-pad for navigating menus and crafting. I prefer using a conroller for 2D games in general rather than hunch over a mouse and keyboard. I was okay putting up with that for Minecraft and Terarria but it's weird how the console players are the only ones with the more comfortable controls.
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# ? Jan 29, 2014 14:14 |
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Lucid Dream posted:We launched today on Steam's Early Access, and we'd be more than happy to answer any questions you folks have. Where is the version on Steam at the moment? Not worried about bugs but whats in place feature wise especially related to goals/progression? Would you say it is more engine demo or game right now?
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# ? Jan 29, 2014 16:34 |
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Had about a good 6 hours of game time played before I kind of got stumped and not quite sure where to go, I've killed the giant robot chicken, got my card up to level 2, turned off the robot, powered the big station and watched the video of the guy blowing his brains out - now I'm kind of assuming I have to make the big antenna, but no real idea how to make steel (probably ignoring something really simple, ) and the batteries are a huge pain in the rear end to make. The story (or what I've got of it so far, as you kind of piece it together by finding logs) is pretty neat as well, if not kind of cheesy sci-fi.
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# ? Jan 29, 2014 18:17 |
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Well, I bought this on the strength of the GIFs and teaser video alone, but it crashes on startup for me. Probably my video card, just one more thing on the list of "Why I need a new video card".
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# ? Jan 29, 2014 20:22 |
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Heran Bago posted:Is there controller support or do you plan to implement controller support in the future? The inventory system really wouldn't work very well with a controller, which is why we never really went down that path, but after hearing about the valve controller its definitely an option with something like that, so we'll just have to see when it becomes available. Armitage_Shanks posted:Where is the version on Steam at the moment? Not worried about bugs but whats in place feature wise especially related to goals/progression? Would you say it is more engine demo or game right now? Seems like the story content takes people between 5 and 14 hours to get through, depending on how much exploring/hunting/etc you do. Personally I would compare it to a vertical slice more than an engine demo right now, it has a significant, polished chunk of most of the elements that we want to have in the finished game. Babyface Mingo posted:Had about a good 6 hours of game time played before I kind of got stumped and not quite sure where to go, I've killed the giant robot chicken, got my card up to level 2, turned off the robot, powered the big station and watched the video of the guy blowing his brains out - now I'm kind of assuming I have to make the big antenna, but no real idea how to make steel (probably ignoring something really simple, ) and the batteries are a huge pain in the rear end to make. Dareon posted:Well, I bought this on the strength of the GIFs and teaser video alone, but it crashes on startup for me. Probably my video card, just one more thing on the list of "Why I need a new video card".
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# ? Jan 29, 2014 20:26 |
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Aw yeah, getting in on the near-ground floor, maybe the mezzanine. I dig this chicken feeding simulator.
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# ? Jan 29, 2014 20:29 |
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Lucid Dream posted:Well shoot, what video card do you have? We're still trying to work out exactly what our current minimum requirements are as the game seems to run fine on all of our dev machines. You could also try running the game out of the installed folder directly, that solved the problem for at least one person (although we still haven't figured out why). An Nvidia GeForce 6150SE, it's pretty terrible. Most games that require a modern shader implementation run slowly and/or have display issues, when they don't fail outright. I'll try running it straight from the directory in the morning, once the game is installed again. e: Nope, still crashes. Dareon fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Jan 29, 2014 |
# ? Jan 29, 2014 21:45 |
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Do you plan to regularly update with new content? As in, can we expect shorter time between patches or long time? Not that it really matters, just interested in the games development.
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# ? Jan 29, 2014 22:39 |
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Dareon posted:An Nvidia GeForce 6150SE, it's pretty terrible. Most games that require a modern shader implementation run slowly and/or have display issues, when they don't fail outright. Dang, its possible that the graphics card won't support it, but we're putting some better error logging in soon, so once we get that in we might be able to figure out exactly whats going wrong. Babyface Mingo posted:Do you plan to regularly update with new content? As in, can we expect shorter time between patches or long time? Not that it really matters, just interested in the games development.
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# ? Jan 30, 2014 02:56 |
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Working on making the torch a thing you can equip so you can use them without having to open the inventory:
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# ? Jan 30, 2014 07:41 |
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Hitting the sheep with the torch and setting it on fire looks fun. The Inventory reminds me of Ultima Online. Its a bit of a pain in the backside as things get buried. The packs that auto sort things help a bit. The character animation and the chicken kicking is top notch. I don't regret chucking some dollars your way at all. Keep up the good work.
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# ? Jan 30, 2014 13:42 |
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HardKase posted:The Inventory reminds me of Ultima Online. Its a bit of a pain in the backside as things get buried. The packs that auto sort things help a bit. The Ultima Online similarities were very intentional. The devs are big fans of it, and intended for the inventory to be immediately familiar to those who played UO. Some people have been asking for it to be replaced with a grid like system. I happen to love how freeform it is, and how you can neatly layout items as you wish, or simply pile non essential materials into a corner. It also factors into player death. Either take the time to use the bags and tools available to keep a neat workspace, or suffer the consequences of all your items spewing everywhere and making a mess when killed. I can understand why some people would rather have inventory simply be a "set it and forget it" kind of thing, but for me it's another layer of gameplay that I enjoy. Dapper Man fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Jan 31, 2014 |
# ? Jan 31, 2014 00:17 |
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Lucid Dream posted:Our workflow seems to be frequent but relatively light patches, basically we've just been pushing updates whenever we feel like we've made good, stable changes, which over the last month or two has been multiple times a week. I won't make any specific commitments because who knows what parts we might work on that might take longer than others, but our workflow with frequent but lighter updates seems to be working well so far. Ahh yeah, I was mostly just interested in a kind of "what to expect". That's great though. Lucid Dream posted:Working on making the torch a thing you can equip so you can use them without having to open the inventory: That's amazing and I eagerly await for this to be in the main game now .
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 00:21 |
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Babyface Mingo posted:That's amazing and I eagerly await for this to be in the main game now . It was added in last night. You can find torches in the 4th slot on your toolbar.
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 01:00 |
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Dapper Man posted:It was added in last night. You can find torches in the 4th slot on your toolbar. Yeah, its not quite finished (it still has a couple issues, and you can't stick torches to blocks on the floor/walls yet with the right click while its equipped), but we figured it was too useful as-is to hold off on at this point, considering how often we got the complaint that it was annoying as hell to have to open your pack to place torches while exploring.
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 06:37 |
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Nice looking game man, I'll bite
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# ? Jan 31, 2014 06:46 |
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Working on bricks: Edit: Update notes: Version 0.18 - Capped the width/power of the laser pistol - You can now swing melee weapons through platforms - Project window amount font switched to the small font - Throwable objects rotate while thrown now - More craftable tiles (Mud Brick, Brick, some additional steel/wood/stone/brick tiles) - Changed brick crafting, bricks are now a material - Added a better crash logger - Fixed a crash Lucid Dream fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Feb 1, 2014 |
# ? Feb 1, 2014 06:08 |
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The strength of those gifs and the fact that Starbound is kinda disappointing to me currently as well has made me throw you $7 on Steam. Will post a trip report after I play it for awhile!
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# ? Feb 1, 2014 11:55 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 03:22 |
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Where the heck is the level two keycard dealy? I've enjoyed most of my time playing this game, but the 'story' could really use some tuning up. I spent most of my time mining with the wrist laser because I didn't even think to climb around the bases with dirt and break in until much later.
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# ? Feb 2, 2014 07:02 |