Pacman styled game feedback

Help and Feedback Creations Feedback
#1

Hi all,

This is my first post (took an age to get access to do it) and I’ve just started my first Roblox project and looking for some feedback from some of the more experienced people around to help point me in the right direction.

I’ve been working on a PacMan styled game, this is purely a learning / exploratory project to find my feet in Roblox dev. I’d love any feedback people might be able to give me to help point me in the right direction in making better experiences in the future.

The basic premise is a normal PacMan type of game, but you get some power ups air drop to mix things up a little. Things like

Scary Mask - Makes ghost run away
No Clip - Walk through walls
Freeze - Puts all ghosts in a block of ice
Explode - Blows up all ghosts
Speed Boost - Run Faster
Magnet - Collect pellets from further away
Invisible - Ghosts can’t see you ( won’t chase you )
Power Pellet - Typical PacMan power pellet, but this does not come from drops, they are in the world like you would normally see in a PacMan game.

Lots of these were added to test out different AI methods, fairly happy with how these came out. Though AI in general isn’t TOTALLY polished, ghosts will communicate with each other if they are chasing the same person so as to not follow the same path (they will try and cut you off if there is more than one) but few little things like once you leave a ghosts site they will move to the last position and then go in any random direction, even if it doesn’t make sense. Think I’ll need to make it a bit more realistic and at least keep heading in the same direction to follow where they know the player would have had to have gone. Few little things like this I no need to be cleaned up.

I have been playing with my nieces who gave me feed back it’s pretty boring and slow playing on your own, so I have adjusted the power ups so they last longer the less players that are on the server, I also increased the movement speed of the ghosts and players, but feel like this could possibly still be tweaked. Would love some feed back on how people feel about the pacing!

I’d also love thoughts on what people think could be used as purchase for the game (Note: This is purely for learning moving forward. Not expecting to really make money from this.) I was thinking the mini map but my nieces said that it’s to much of advantage having that. I could possibly sell the ability to start with a limited number of power ups which they can use at any time during the game, or possibly something like weaker versions of the magnet and speed boost power ups. Really not sure what good options would be for this. Love some opinions on this as well!

I have thick skin and I know this is pretty rough so please feel free to give any criticisms / advice you have. I’m aware that music isn’t great and I need some more effects, still happy for advice for those things and what I could add in though. Would things like global leader boards be worthwhile for this type thing maybe?

A suggestion I have been given but holding off on is a tutorial screen or just some info on how to play. Figure I’m best of waiting to finish the game until then. So some small notes before you play to help out. The bottom GUI has icons for each power up, when you collect one a timer will tell you how long they have left to go. The number in the middle is how many pellets are left in the world. If ghosts are green they can hurt you, if they are blue you can hurt them, if they are white they are heading back to the middle to respawn themselves. There is a mini map on the side, the circles are the ghost and will match the currently colour of the ghosts, the black squares are air drops, the pale dots are a normal pellet, the bright dots are a power pellet. I’ll obviously go in a bit more depth once putting all this in the game though.

Thanks in advance for any feed back or suggestions!

5 Likes
#2

UI is pretty good but could use some improvement
AI works flawlessly
Mechanics actually work and are fun to use
No lag
respawn system
1st 2nd 3rd place at end
Retro themed

Very well made and thought out! I would think it would look cooler if the camera angle was from above.

GRAND SCORE: 94/100

1 Like
#3

I appreciate the retro-esque UI! My complaint is regarding the size of the halls—they contain 2 rows of pellets, although your character isn’t capable of retrieving each pellet from each row within a singular journey throughout the hall. Instead, you must zigzag left and right betwixt each row, collecting each individual pellet. Frankly, this bogs the experience.

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My character fits snugly betwixt each individual row of pellets. Either tighten the halls, increase the pellet hitboxes, or the character’s hitbox.

1 Like
#4

You aren’t the first person to say they would like it to be a top down view. I have just updated that now and published it. I haven’t tested this on anything but PC as of yet, hopefully it’s a pretty minor change so shouldn’t cause to many issues on consoles or mobile devices.

Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it!

1 Like
#5

Just tested it on a Iphone 6. Seems pretty smooth!

1 Like
#6

I think I agree with you, I mainly had these parts here to give the magnet power a bit more meaning to it. Not worth killing the rest of the experience just for this though. I’ve adjusted the level to mainly be single lane now, might have missed a spot or 2 but got rid of all the massive areas. Cleared the main ghost spawn area as well.

Hopefully this speeds the game play up and takes away some of the tedium which I was struggling to elevate.

Thanks for the advice!

#7

Awesome, thanks heaps for confirming that! I was a little worried that on the smaller screen it might be a bit hard to see. I adjusted it a few times to find what I liked on PC, had some concern this might not be the case on a hand held device.

I am finding the lobby and the respawn area is very plain and a bit off putting now as it’s just you standing on a black floor and can’t see anything else. Thinking I may set the floor to be partially transparent and people can use this to position themselves a tactical position before they are dropped in. This also gives them something to look at / do other than a blank floor whilst waiting.

1 Like
#8

only suggestion is to make the walls flat on the ground, then put invisible walls to stop the player, feels wonky when in 3D

#9

Thanks for the suggestion, I played around with this idea a little bit after you suggested it and just couldn’t get it to feel right. Still have a little bit of tweaking to go with the camera adjustment I made due to the earlier suggestion. I’ll keep playing with it and see if I can make it feel better.

Thanks!

#10

This game has some potential. Even though you said it wasnt going to be big with a few more details and something to keep players to come back this game can make it.

1 Like
#11

Sorry for the delayed reply, haven’t been home much for a couple of days!

Thanks for the positive feedback, if the game happens to do well I definitely won’t be complaining. Not expecting to make money, but if people play it and enjoy it I’ll be happy. I’ve added leader board that’s got daily, weekly and total leaders. I’m also thinking of adding something to players that are on the leader board, maybe putting a star at their feet so people can see who the leaders are whilst playing. Hopefully this is something that will help encourage people to keep playing.

I’m thinking of making the levels randomly generated as well, so it’s not the same level over and over again. But would love some more suggestions that would encourage repeat play throughs for people. Was thinking of making a level up / experience system but not sure what I could add per level up to make it worth while. Move slightly faster, slightly bigger collision box for pellets, slightly reduce the view distance required for ghosts to see you… I can’t see in my head how to balance it to be worth while for players to want to keep playing without making things to easy at the same time. Open to any suggestions to encourage replay ability that anyone has.

Other than that I’m still looking at fixing a few bugs I know ghosts sometimes get stuck in the walls at the moment, and the run away AI isn’t great and can sometimes make the scary mask not work very well. I also want to add in some animations like the ice shattering when it finishes, and a particle effect or mini explosion or something when the magnet / scary masks finishes. Need some music adjustments as well, maybe some sounds when different power ups are received.

Still looking for ideas on how to monetise the game as well. Few people have flat out said the mini map is silly idea which was the main one I was thinking. Maybe making it so people can purchase powers which are single use per game? So they could say buy the ice power and they can use that once every round they play? Good thing about that is it doesn’t give anyone advantage over others as the powers go to everyone that’s playing. Makes sense to help everyone as well as you don’t get your points added to the leader board unless finish the round so still makes sense for people to purchase it and use them.

Thanks to everyone that’s replied with feedback and suggestions, has really been helpful!

1 Like
#12

Really cool game, but there’s a problem my everything stopped working even tho my iternet was working and the ping was 65 ms so Idk if it was roblox or the game, but I’ll give it a 9/10 will love to see it fully developed.

1 Like
#13

Thanks heaps for the feed back!

There was a bug I thought I resolved on the Minimap that caused an error which made things stop working. For some reason the map randomly stops being able to see the humanoid part of the ghosts which ends up giving the error and halts everything else when you try to position the ghosts on the map. I put a check in to try and stop it but guessing this is where the problem still is. For the moment I’ll just be lazy and wrap it in a pcall and see if anyone else happens across this issue. It’s not something I’ve been able to replicate to figure out if it’s repaired or not.

I’ve also just noticed the daily leaderboards aren’t working. I’ll look into this now!

#14

Okay, I’ve hopefully fixed the ghost getting stuck issue. To make sure the ghosts get to the player, when they are chasing them they run towards 1 tile Infront of them. If they lose sight of you and 1 tile Infront is inside a wall they would get stuck in it. I’ve replaced this with aiming 1 stud in front. Doesn’t seem to affect chasing you from what I can tell.

I’m not sure what is going on with the daily leaderboards. I use os.date("%j%Y") to get the current date for the leaderboard. Not sure if this caused the issue. I’ve swapped to ("%d%m%Y") and it appears to be working. I’ll have to wait until I can borrow my daughter’s account to see if it’s working for other accounts as it was working just for me earlier.

#15

Had a group of people playing with me this morning which were super helpful with feed back, if any of you come back to read this, thank you very much. I’ve have to say, the community is much more helpful than I expected!

Some of the feed back I was given was the game felt a bit boring looking. I’ve also had comments that people like the retro feel to it. I did a little bit of playing and added textures to the walls and coloured the external walls a different colour (this also helps differentiate them in game as well) this makes it slightly less plain while keeping the retro feel at the same time. It’s going to be hard balance to make it right and people will always prefer something over others, hopefully this enough to get it somewhere in the middle. Happy for some feed back on this though!

They also pointed out a couple of things which were causing lag spikes. I have shifted a few things into different threads to try and help prevent that moving forward.

Another good idea was to make a reversed game, where you were the ghost and had to stop the players getting the pellets. I don’t mind this idea, but think it would probably need to be a separate game. A PvP version was mentioned as well where players can play as ghosts chasing other players trying to get the pellets. Not sure the game will be popular enough to do this though, would be pretty boring if it was 1 person running around with 1 person chasing them. Great idea if people play it though!