About a month ago (2023.02.25) I started working on my first Roblox project! I made a few 2D games using GameMaker before, but I’m very new to this platform and haven’t used Lua before.
Trap Arena* began with Deadly Lava tutorial and is turning out to be some kind of competitive arena platformer with focus on frantic running around, jumping and trap dodging. I now understand that it wasn’t the best genre choice for Roblox and currently is suffering from the “lack of something to do while you wait for other players”.
There’s no lobby and after death you can jump back into the game. Double jumps are available to everyone and I will try to add more movement mechanics in the future.
Shop is still being worked on, monetization is light and only cosmetic. I might add some items that players can use mid-game to mess up with others or get a small boosts (that everybody can get from pickups).
*The name did change from Snouty Tiles, because I decided to move the game from profile to a development group.
Plans for the future
More single-player activities around the map Shop items unlockable with in-game achievements Usable mid-game items (sticky mine, healing potion) Smoother respawn system (special zone that holds player for x seconds) Displaying server stats and global leaderboard Reworking some parts of the GUI (round over screen, especially) Secrets More content in general (traps, game mechancis, modifiers)
Feedback is very welcome!
What do you think about the gameplay?
Is there anything with game GUI that doesn’t feel right or is missing?
What kind of traps or mechanics would you suggest?
What kind of cosmetics or items would you like to see in the shop?
Hm, didn’t consider that, but I was thinking about ways to make running on the ground more appealing to players, so jump spam wouldn’t always be the best movement option. Also, planning some more mid-air traps (hovering mines, spinny blades or something like that).
But insta-kill might be a good default setting, for sure.
I finally caved in and added a few platforms for players to jump around while they wait for more players to join. I realized that I have no idea how to properly design these and spacing them out was a lot of pain. I plan to add some random spawn spots for in-game currency pickups to make map exploration (and staying in the server) more appealing.
I now spawn a few special pickups in random locations around the map that give players in-game currency. Might add more secret locations and harder to reach places.
I didn’t want to remove the players from the game until the round ends, but respawning them in the default location felt wrong too, so I made a glass box in the sky where they must wait progressively longer amount of time before being dropped back into the game.
Still trying to figure out how could I make the “death” animation nicer, now it’s just a basic explosion. I’m thinking about creating a clone of the player character and either playing an animation or breaking joints while the main character is invisible.
Roblox Datastores are still pretty confusing to me, but I think I managed to scramble a decent system together to save all the stats to ordered data stores for leaderboards.
Issue is that older players need to join the game to get their scores copied from main data store to the leaderboard one, but if they don’t - why should they be on the leaderboard. Updating it in real time is a bit more problematic, since I don’t want (and can’t?) to make too many database calls…
Added some new victoy animations and handstand is the first one that is combined from two (enter the pose, loop the pushups). I’m having a small problem which is a hiccup that is only happening first time animation is played. Not sure how to fix it yet.
Maybe a way would be secretly pre-play all of the animations on some dummy.
This is a bit of a different update, but I finally saved the project to my developer group with a different name and it’s been a week, but I still can’t find it in the search results, unless I scroll down for like for two minutes. At first I assumed it might be because of low plays or ratings, but I see experiences with zeroes and without even a thumbnail higher. What’s wrong? Is it the name “Trap Arena”?
Updated the thread with new links to the game, I think name Trap Arena is LIKELY to stay. Maybe I’ll add some more flair to it (Crazy Trap Arena) or something, but the base will stay the same.
Also started working on in-game items that can be used on the fly.
Engagement is quite disappointing, but I guess that’s my game design to blame. I watched multiple new people try to play and nobody knows what to do in this game
Hectic and fun to play though. Didnt realise green stuff was bad. Obvs coins = good. Not sure what to do with the shields and stuff. Also, I didn’t die instantly when I fell through the holes onto the lava. I enjoyed it even though I was the only person there.
Thank you! Glad to hear someone is actually enjoying the game, so… there is hope. I admit, I didn’t think about tutorials in the beginning, so currently trying to think of ways to make up for that. “Collect” labels over the coins (only until player collects some of them) is one step, will add similar labels to the traps and might create some kind of display of all the in-game items or dangers near the arena.
Bottom lava is something I’d like to re-do too. It’s not fun to fall down and I don’t really want to kill players instantly there, so might make some portals or jumppads instead.
Shields negate damage from the next trap, so kind of 1 more life. Clown item spawns a fake coin that explodes on impact
More single-player activities around the map
Shop items unlockable with in-game achievements
