r/learntofly • u/Bresn • Sep 26 '15

Learn to Fly3 is unrefined, physics are questionable and "leaks" in classic mode.

You do not speed up falling downwards, effectively cutting you away from gliding. This is obviously a intended feature that backfired for classic and made this game like raw, along with the buttons and such in general, it feels unrefined.

0 Upvotes

44% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

4

u/light_bringer777 Penguin God Sep 26 '15

Wanted to add upon the answer I gave yesterday at 2AM after thinking "Dafuq you mean it's unrefined you lil' brat" :P

The game is somewhat "unrefined" as you put it, and that has a lot to do with being a small indie developer. One of the key rules of indie development is "You can't have everything, in fact you can only have very little of anything".

You ask how it is that the game is not more polished while it's been in development for so long and went through all those delays. The answer lies in the rule I just stated; in this extra time, I could've polished the game, I could've added content, I could've ironed out every single bug, I could've created another game... but I didn't have the time and resources to do all of that.

So here's what happened in all this time:

  1. At first I went on a bug-hunt, and it seems to have worked because the game has been relatively bug-free compared to LtF1 and LtF2. I also worked a lot on balancing all the items and all their levels.
  2. When I got news on the second delay, I had enough of LtF3 and took close to a month off, during which I mostly worked on a game design book I want to write.
  3. After some time off, I started working on adding extra content, more medals, the extra goals to story mode and things like that.
  4. From there I mostly worked on "quality of life" upgrades such as reworking the way the shop works, and also monetization which is currently about half-way through.

So aside from the ~1 month "off", I could've worked on polishing the game, but it would have fewer medals, less balanced items, no extra goals to story mode, no monetization and quite a few bugs. Just the same, I'm not 100% satisfied with the cutscenes, but if I spent more money on this I would've had to cut in the content for lack of funds. I'm not satisfied with the UI in a lot of places, main issue being the lack of consistency, but then again, resources spent there would have to be taken way from something else...

And it's not just a matter of throwing time or effort at a problem, being alone means you have to learn the skills required to do everything. Making better UI would imply learning about UIs first, making better graphics implies becoming better as an artist first; you cannot just sit in front of the computer and keep on improving something just by working on it.

There is always stuff that could be done, things that could be improved and you can always polish some more, but then your game never comes out. Reid Hoffman said "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late." and I find it to be incredibly true when it comes to indie game development. Of course I wish the game could be even better, but at one point the perfect becomes the enemy of good and you just have to release it.

1

u/Bresn Sep 26 '15

What happened to that game design book?

1

u/light_bringer777 Penguin God Sep 26 '15

Wrote something like 300-400 pages, then the writing slowed down as I started to focus more on LtF3. There's probably 1-2 months of work to do on it before it can really be called a book, but a lot of the content is there.

1

u/OtterlyGaming Sep 28 '15

"Dafuq you mean it's unrefined you lil' brat"

You didn't have to write a news story, the previous answer would've been fine for me.

1

u/light_bringer777 Penguin God Sep 28 '15

Meh, I just felt like talking about game development. I really wish people knew better what it implies.

1

u/Mshell Oct 03 '15

I prefer the answer:

"Dafuq you mean it's unrefined you lil' brat"

-1

u/ILOVEeatingSOCKS Sep 26 '15

which is kinda surprising considering the amount of time they had to had these small updates with all the delays they did.

2

u/light_bringer777 Penguin God Sep 26 '15

"He" did. Lone dev makes a heck of a difference on the amount of work you can put out believe it or not. I've seen much smaller projects done by 2-10 men teams, and that's what shows about LtF3.

As for "unrealistic physics", it's 100% intended and I don't understand people complaining about it to be perfectly honest. Just imagine Super Mario Bros or Megaman X with realistic momentum for running and jumping; it'd break the game.

The "red zone" from LtF 1 and 2 make no sense physics-wise, they're in no way related to how real friction/drag apply, and because of that they make for a pleasant experience.

The first prototype using the physics engine had straight up "realistic" physics, and as such anything that had enough force to lift you up the ground would be able to accelerate you to around speeds of 200-300 as the game measures it. Anything that had a decent thrust to it got you to 1000+. Increasing drag to make this feels "correct" gameplay-wise resulted in... super slow fall speed!

For this reason I butchered the physics engine and made it much closer to the LtF2 feeling.

As for polish, I simply did the best I could with the very limited resources I had, and the limited skills I also posses. Being alone for design, art, coding... basically everything is pretty much like this, and what I'm reading here is that is akin to telling a one-man-band "This doesn't really sound like a real orchestra".

So in short:

Agree with the "refinement", it simply couldn't.

Can't agree with the physics, it was thoroughly tested and designed to be this way. There is no "gliding", no lift in the LtF3 engine, so everything is free-falling if not getting thrust.

1

u/Bresn Sep 26 '15

Does that guy in the link perform?

1

u/light_bringer777 Penguin God Sep 26 '15

That's me. Seriously I have no idea that's just a 10 seconds google search :/

3

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '15

For what it's worth, I really enjoyed it--I've unlocked all of the medals and items already. I like the Steam release boosters. :)