New Music-Based PC Game - Raycatcher

John Warner

[size=+2] WOO HOO!![/size]
http://www.impulsedriven.com/raycatcher

Hey folks! For the past 5 months or so, I've been making a casual game with a partner of mine called "Raycatcher".. It's a really simple, easy to pick up casual game that syncs up it's gameplay to music that you can load off your comp.

anyway. I could talk about it at length, but I'll not do that, as our website and videos are more interesting.

We're getting some distribution deals happening now.. so things are starting to look up, but we could use any publicity at all, so if you're interested and you like what you see.. send it to your friends and co-workers, will ya!?

our website is:

http://www.thinkingstudios.com

we think the full version should be out... march 17 or so?

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT8cGkwk-8E[/ame]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZMzaKYgXmA[/ame]

You can download a demo here: http://www.thinkingstudios.com/RaycatcherDemo.exe

it's certianly not perfect, but as a first try.. what the hell eh? i'm pretty proud of it. hopefully i get rich! rich!

(here's a dig article... just.. thought i'd leave that here. )

http://digg.com/pc_games/Raycatcher_An_innovative_music_based_PC_game#

Tulkamir

You're the man John! I love it, but you already know that.

rooster

its a big achievement! congrats man
will there be a demo?

John Warner

thanks guys!

rooster -- (sleezy salesman voice) Funny you should say that, sir!

there's a demo on our website! you can get it right here:

http://www.thinkingstudios.com/RaycatcherDemo.exe

(I'll add that to the first post. thanks for pointing that out)

bounchfx

so it's like a mix between audiosurf and Cyclomite.

looks neat, good job

John Warner

hmm interesting.. I've never seen Cyclomite...

thanks man.

Matroskin

looks very cool and i like the gameplay as it is seen on videos.

However, i don't feel the connection between music and gameplay. I know it is related and rays arrive depending on current tune but it is just not really visible.

Matroskin

btw, we have a Gamma event in Montreal.
It is a yearly event dedicated to indie games with unusual concepts.

For example two years or so ago participants had to develop a game based on incoming music. I palyed them at the event, that was pretty cool:
http://www.kokoromi.org/gamma01/01/

Matroskin

well, actually in the 2nd video the connection between rays and tune is felt not bad, sry, maybe before i had just a quick incomplete impression

rooster

hey man pretty good fun
my only crit is that I had no idea when I was about to die, no flashing stuff or wonky noises etc- it just ended. I did eventually notice my awesomeness meter was subtly glowing a bit, but I don't think its enough when you're focusing intently on the center of the screen. i think the same goes for those bars to the left, I couldnt pay attention to them, your eyes are glued to the center. could you use that center atom for some kind of feedback since it's redundant? or some background visualiser elements?

just my 2c, well done

MoP

interesting idea, seems pretty cool. nice work!

John Warner

WOW Rooster, good ideas!

man i should have done this a long time ago. talk about having my head up my ass.

Matroskin -- thanks very much.. that's fantastic. lemme take a good look here..

MoP -- thanks man! hopefully it's interesting enough to sell

Keg

Turns out Mr Warner was in a local paper today discussing raycatcher.

http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/Entertainment/2009/02/25/8520531-sun.html

John Warner

HAH! oh you!

thanks a lot keg!

I scanned the paper, wouldn't cha know...

killingpeople

Nice work!

Steve Schulze

Hey that's pretty schmick. I reckon I'll grab a copy when you release the full version.

It's probably a bit late for crits when you're this close to release, but I am inclined to agree with Rooster. There's a bit of a lack of obvious feedback. A sound effect or pitch bend or something when you miss a note along with some kind of really obvious visual indication that you're about to die would add quite a bit to the game, I think. Never the less, what you've got here is great and I look forward to playing the full version.

Farfarer

You're up on Rock, Paper, Shotgun now

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/02/26/no-ray-is-safe-tonight-raycatcher/

rooster

congrats!

Veko

is there any other visual use for the music besides the bpm ?
because i'm getting the feeling the music only controlls the speed of those rays

John Warner

good lord love me. I'm feeling pretty lucky to be getting some of this publicity. 4,200 youtube views! woo hoo!

Veko -- nope! there's practically no visual use for the music. the speed of the gameplay is more or less determined by the difficulty setting you chose. the music tech syncs up with the rays pretty damn well, but it's not driving the gameplay. we played with it for a while, but even audiosurf didn't manage to get it right, if you ask me.

it's a cool feature. it does interesting things... but it's not flawless.

oh, and thanks much for the replies, guys!

John Warner

holy christ, garagegames just came out with a way to port T2D games right into the iphone

holy shit on a stick that's awesome. i'm going to look into that.

bounchfx

bad ass! grats on all the exposure too! must be awesome

Joseph Silverman

It seems really disconnected from the music to me. I'm not totally sure what your goal is with this, but i'd like to see more visual elements tying in with the audio, if possible. The circles could pulse to the beat, background effects, etc.

Looks cool, congrats on the exposure!

warby

good damn you guys thats really similar to something i wanted to do !!!!!!*shacking fist*

as if its not enough that no matter what i come up with has already been done by popcap

00Zero

congrats on the publicity man.
looks fun to play. would be really sweet on an iphone.

warby, dont you know? popcap has rooms full of oompa loompas working 24/7 on game ideas.

John Warner

you lovely people, thank you.

bounchfx - thanks man. it's pretty exciting actually... enough to make you wanna keep doing this stuff.

SupRore - those are good ideas. we actually got that feedback towards the end of the project, but at that point we were so fed up with working on it that we wanted to call it a wrap. at that point, my programmer was i think at the end of his rope.. so we decided to call it quits and not add any complex visualization stuff. it probably would have added a ton of work, because of the way we set things up. having more visualization stuff would be cool though... and is something i'd like to see. perhaps we'll add it soon for a future itteration/sequel or something.

warby -- haha i hear you man. and yes, 00Zero, popcap.. man.. they've got their shit together...

Matroskin

congrats man - that should be really tough to get into so many articles
Good job!

Steve Schulze

I dropped a link on the forum I moderate on. Got a couple of crits though If you're absolutely done with this I don't know whether they're of any actual use.

Ok. Kinda fun. Slick presentation. Problem I see is there's no variation in gameplay ever. The music seems to have little to do with the light rays. Hitting the double ray thing doesn't increase the difficulty but is very helpful, as I discovered, so you pretty much constantly hit right mouse button to ensure a better score for little effort (it actually makes things easier, since you collect the colours twice as fast, and due to the symetry you develop your circle at a much more even rate). Would have been nice to play your own music. I know that's reserved for the full version, but it would have been better to cut down on the file size by not shipping four or five shitty electro tracks and just say "You can line up three tracks and then the demo expires" or something. Or not expire, but not let you choose any more tracks.

In short, it's a fun distraction but I wouldn't play it more than a handful of times and certainly wouldn't buy the full version.

Agreed. As far as I can tell, there's just not enough game in here to be worth any of my rather discriminating money. The idea of using your own music to play with is neat on paper, but unlike Audiosurf I just can't see it being added in an interesting way that actually has an effect on gameplay. Also, the mouse controls are buggered somewhat, it's possible for it to go outside some "zone" and then respond strangely, kinda like the Fallout 3 lockpicking.

John Warner

hmm interesting. thanks for the heads up. yeah, my biggest fear moving into this thing is that it might need more depth in gameplay. that being said, it's not a puzzle game... it's ment to be a fun, relaxing experience... not so much a deep, rich puzzle game with a complex mechanic.

but that sounds like an excuse.

yeah, we're pretty much done for the time being. we might release stuff in the future, but we'll see how that goes... i do very much appreciate the crits...

thanks!

JasonLavoie

Warner, you have a fantastic face of fur... not to mention a fine lookin' game

Must be crazy exciting man, really excited to see what spawns from this.

You da man John!

John Warner

[size=+3]WOO HOO!![/size]

We got picked up by Stardock's Impulse store! it's on there now.


http://www.impulsedriven.com/raycatcher

Jason- thank you. you can stroke my fur any time. yeah, it's equal parts exciting and stressful. this release hit me out of the blue so I've got to do a huge marketing push.. and we're at crunch time at work.. so I'm writing emails and modeling at the same goddamn time.

John Warner

First review!

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/03/review_raycatcher_thinking_stu.html

might be too much money.. AH! maybe he's right! maybe we should drop that sucker down.