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A jam submission

Frog Bay MysteryView game page

Frog Bay community needs your help!
Submitted by misiak — 1 minute, 22 seconds before the deadline
Rated by 12 people so far
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Frog Bay Mystery's itch.io page

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Godot Version
4.7.2

Theme Interpretation
You need to follow radar signals to solve mystery.

Wildcards Used

Left Wildcard

The first wildcard (description pending)

Right Wildcard

The third wildcard (description pending)

Discord Username(s)
Specjalik / misiak

GWJ Participation Level
4

Team Size
1

Generative AI Disclosure

I confirm that this jam entry does not contain any AI-generated content

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Comments

Submitted

Okay, this was very fun! I liked the atmosphere and sound design the most

For some feedback, the controls do feel a bit stiff, but what really "bothered" me was the camera. I think it would benefit from some sort of interpolation or smoothing to improve the experience. I also think the waves affect the boat a tad too much, which might be why the controls feel strange (aside from the low turning speed). I found that sailing towards SE caused the boat to "misbehave" way more than when I sailed NW. I don't really know what that is about though

Anyway, overall very solid entry, I really enjoyed it. Good job :)

Submitted

This was the game I was most excited to play for the jam. I was really interested in all of the updates you were sharing in the server. It seemed like the boat version of the game I was making haha.

The controls were simple, but I wish the boat had a sharper turning radius. There was some glitch that happened when I was just holding A to turn left and just tapping W over and over to turn and the camera went like way over to the left, so the remainder of the game the boat was on the far right of my screen haha.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback and for following (and remembering!) my updates :) Indeed our games have similar mechanics, but using different vehicles :P As I wrote in answers to previous comments, boat should have 2x the steering power it has now (and also slowly turn even when not moving forward/backward, although slower than during forward/backward movement), I messed up some last day refactor that halved it... The camera bug sounds interesting, I actually also made some changes close to the end (previously camera was it's own "follower" node that chased player's global position with some delays and position smoothing, but I ended up attaching it pretty hard to the boat (it's basically a SpringArm3D child node of the boat with Camera3D as child of arm, and I only manipulate yaw/pitch/roll of the spring arm), which should make such behavior impossible, but I'll try to replicate that.

Submitted

The presentation is really nice and it's cool to see the sharp contrast between day and night and what it does for the tone of the game, but I found the turning radius of the boat too abysmal to try to do more than a couple signals. It simply took too long to get anywhere, and most of that time was spent trying to fix the direction of the boat

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing it and giving me feedback :) You are right, the steering force should be 2x bigger than it is, that's my horrible last-day mistake while changing the steering forces a bit (previously it was applied to 2 points, then I changed it to single point, but forgot to double it's value). I played with the lightning and day/night contrast a lot (and even cheated with the screen fading to black on some events to make it even more spooky, or at least try to make it so), so I am happy you compliment it :) 

Submitted

I was able to get it working in Chrome, and I’m glad I gave it another shot!

The audio is easily my favorite part. The ocean and village ambience, the different dialogue voices, and the radio effects all work really well together.

I also loved the skies, especially at night.

There’s a really interesting mystery here, and several moments had me questioning what was actually happening.

The boat controls were my biggest obstacle to enjoying it. Turning felt extremely difficult, especially when trying to recover after hitting an obstacle or reaching the world boundary. I wanted to explore, but navigating became enough of a struggle that I started focusing on reaching the next story event instead.

Collision also felt inconsistent. Some passages stopped the boat, while I could sail straight through large rocks and even an island.

The boat sometimes appeared well above or below the water, too.

More responsive steering and more consistent collisions would make a huge difference. The world, sound, and mystery gave me plenty of reasons to want to explore, I just wanted the boat to cooperate!

Developer(+1)

Thank you! In which browser it did not work for you earlier? I tested in on various browsers (both desktop AND mobile, as I implemented on-screen mobile touch controls this time!) and I only had issues on my friend's Mac's Safari (but it worked on another Mac's Safari, so I did not investigate it much further, as it worked everywhere else I tried). It's nice to read that you liked audio, I am always pretty stressed about it, as I just use asset packs (I look forward to team up with a composer and sfx person for one of next editions though) and am usually not sure if the sounds I combine and the music I choose will work well together. Skies are a bit modified version of Sky3d Godot's plugin (I modified shader a bit), it's pretty heavy (it made fps of the game when running natively go down on my laptop from like 800+fps to 120-150fps), but it's worth it if you want quick and good looking results. The player confusion was something that was intended (that's also why I dropped the map from ui which I even had coded before and left only the pulsating tag on the compass), so it's also good to hear (or read) :) The steering and collision shapes fell victim of my last day scalling and little remodeling changes (the collision shapes for the coastline is there, there's actually multiple collision shapes for various parts of it, they're just scaled down like 100x times or just in wrong place... and the whole boyuancy and steering was also tuned horribly wrong last second by me, the turning should be 2x stronger and the model of the boat was initially intended to be bigger in comparison to collision shape, so it would not hover above water or go fully underneath), I take full responsibility for it, it will be fixed after the jam (well, it already is, I just can't publish it during voting period). I need to give myself few more hours of testing on the last day before the submission period ends :) Thanks for playing and giving me valuable feedback!

Submitted

It was Edge for me originally. That’s what I use probably 95% of the time, and that’s where I was running into the issues. I keep Chrome installed for exactly this kind of thing, so I bounced over there and it worked fine when I tried it again.

And that makes sense on the boat controls/collisions. It definitely felt like one of those last-day things where the idea was there but the tuning just didn’t get enough time. I’m glad you’re already tightening that up, because the world itself made me want to explore a lot more.

Also, the audio absolutely worked. I wouldn’t have guessed you were unsure about it while building it. The ambience, voices, radio effects, and music all felt like they belonged together.

I actually meant to try the mobile version too, but I got so wrapped up in the mystery that I completely forgot. I’ll try to check that side of it out eventually and send you some feedback there too.

Thanks for the extra context, and I’m glad I came back and gave it another shot!

Submitted(+1)

Love the game! How did you manage to make the waves affect the ship? It feels so nice! The ship was a bit hard to control, but it actually feels right with those huge waves. You should consider capturing the mouse so the cursor doesn't fly all over the screen while playing!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for taking your time and writing a comment with feedback (and for playing my game)! Actually the waves are modeled using simple Gerstner waves (those are pretty simple equations that describe waves, I have 4 waves overlapping here in different directions), and I simply have the same (parametrized) equations - one inside shader (that calculates the positions of each vertex in water mesh - fully done on gpu!) and one replicated in gdscript which calculates the depth "underwater" of each of 6 "boyuancy probes" I have around the ship, and I apply the actual boyuancy force to each of those points pointing backward (and ship movement is just a result of 6 forces and gravity combined). You can see those boyuancy points in a screenshot from one of my earlier builds that I published on GWJ's Discord (below). During the WASD usage however the forces are a bit overriden also by a general central boyuancy point and averaging some yaw/pitch/rol according to the wave angle below the ship and current action to be more responsive (although I completely messed that up in the end by using a collision shape of different scale than the final version of boat model - I will however fix that in a post-jam update, as I have fixed it already locally and it looks and feels so much better). Not capturing mouse cursor was a conscious decision, I saw some comments under various games in previous editions from people who did not like that... I could make that as an option as well maybe, as it's braindead simple :P 

 

Submitted

The mouse is a necessary input, but you might want to consider capturing the cursor during gameplay and releasing it whenever the player opens a menu. In browsers, pressing Esc already gives players control of their cursor back, so you don't have to worry too much about that. Having the mouse pointer flying around the screen while playing can be a bit annoying and breaks the inmersion

Submitted(+1)

Dylan and I played your game and really enjoyed the neat little concept! We also really appreciated the accessibility options, which were a great addition to the experience.

Feedback: We did notice that the boat controls felt a little off while driving. We're not sure if this was intentional, but it did make navigating the water a bit challenging.

One suggestion would be to reduce the size or frequency of the waves, or alternatively, make the boat a little bigger or faster to help it handle the water more smoothly. :)

Developer

Thanks for trying it out together with Dylan and spending some time to give me some constructive criticism :) I wrote this as an answer to one of previous comments, but indeed the boat was initially intended to be a bit bigger and steering force (or rather the time it took to turn, as it was done using torque initially) should be twice as big as it is now due to an accidental last day change and it made the whole steering feel horribly janky... So you are right, it was not intentional ;) Will probably update it after the jam, maybe living as an option "use janky controls that I had set up for the jam" :P

Submitted(+1)

Very cool game except driving felt really bouncy and weird

Developer

Yep, as I said in answer to previous comment as well I played too much with steering during the last day and tuned it horribly wrong in the end. Thanks for calling it cool though <3 And for playing my game and taking some time to give me feedback! 

Submitted(+1)

Wow, this is such a good game! The story is engaging and very well thought out! The switch from a cute harbor in the day to pitch black at night definitely freaked me out lol. My only complaint would be the controls are a bit janky, but overall, this was super fun :) Great job!

Developer

Thank you! Yeah, I discovered (too late though, after submission) that I by accident used 1/2 of steering power (I was playing too much with steering code during the last day and switched from applying torque to applying "steering force" to 2 points and in the end to applying it to single point, although I forgot to double the value...). And the visual model of the boat ended up smaller than my initial plan and collision shape which also affects the visual part of steering feedback. Thanks for kind words though and for playing my game and taking some time to give me feedback!