Tear the Planks Down is a multiplayer 3D first-person melee combat game about WRECKING STUFF! Players must literally tear down the parts of an establishment or knock each other out for points while using food, trash, and other everyday objects as weapons.
Right now the game is just a prototype but I need feedback to improve it.
I’m looking for feedback on various things, including but not limited to:
Game performance
UI Art quality (for now)
Audio quality (all are currently stock from the Roblox library)
Clarity / confidence on what is happening in the game
Most interesting things to do in the game
Least interesting things to do in the game
How to promote the game? (I have no idea where to start)
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Extra Stuff
I wanted to make a game using the CSG API from Roblox, and what better way than a game about tearing things apart?
This prototype shown above specifically was for testing multiplayer and points earning, as well as practicing creating and animating hand-drawn UI. Since this is just a prototype, it does not yet have all the functionality I plan for the final game, such as original maps, randomized lobbies, randomized maps, currency / vanities, etc.
Also, for now, the prototype only has Wooden Planks that you can pick up, but I have plans to include more mundane objects to throw around.
I want to continue the development of this game further, but I don’t know yet if I’ll be able to work on it during the university semester, since I am working on a large student capstone at the same time.
Love the UI design, a bit laggy both frame rate wise and Server Wise it seems, also a bit janky, Try make it more fluid and put as much as you can on the client so the server doesn’t have to manage too much.
This game looks really good and smooth and I like the sounds, but the camera movement is a bit much. I can see the camera clipping through walls and into objects because of how much it moves around, and it makes it pretty hard to see what’s going on.
mainly in the camera movement, like I don’t know if your jumping but some fast movements move the camera in a weird way, im assuming because its following the characters head somewhat, and if the character does a shaky animation it gets a bit janky for the camera.
I had no idea that the game was on Friends Only Access this entire time. I am sorry about that. It should be open to public now! Please let me know if it’s still not working, thank you!
so for buggy, the camera movement is well uh, its not great. An example is somehow my camera went underground? And the fps varies alot while looking around, it becomes incredib laggy facing one direction and not laggy at all in the other (optimize pls)
I’m currently experimenting with optimizing the game, first by changing the Lighting mode to Compatibility and speeding up the Debris time of fallen parts. Hopefully this fixes at least some glaring issues in performance.
To add onto this post, if anyone has any game recommendations or reference videos for first-person POV melee combat, I’d really appreciate it! My main reference is Red Steel 2, which is a Wii game, and I’m currently taking a look at Elderborn.
I just played the game to test it and I think the reason the camera movement seems so buggy and somewhat disorientating is because its locked onto the character’s head (or changing its position dependent on it). I’d recommend smoothing the camera by toning down how much the camera follows the head. using something like :Lerp to make it interpolate towards the new position/offset, Ray Casting to make sure the camera doesn’t go through objects. I highly recommend the interpolation one considering that the animations don’t seem to have enough frames to lock the camera to it.
I forgot to put it in description, but I am using MaximumADHD’s Realism system, which seems to have a lot of problems lately and a lack of camera placement control, hence the attachment to the head. I wonder if there’s a way to fork it to have additional smoother lerp, although I may need to find time in the future to make a new camera or find a different open sourced one.
Do you have any resources for the raycasting method to prevent going through walls? I have seen a few on devforum here and there, but I’m not sure if they’re helpful for my specific case (unless I do indeed go the route of making a new camera system, which I can try).
Alternatively I can make separate viewport animations like a traditional FPS, but I want to avoid this since where the punches land in the animations is important in the gameplay (there is limb-based damage) and I can’t guarantee I can line up the world animation and viewport animation perfectly for that.
Also, I forgot to say, but if you also have resources for Lerping being used for first-person cameras specifically, please let me know, thank you!
