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We made the AI easier to beat
The game has been out for more than a year, and we had time to analyze videos of people playing it. We realized there were two huge pain points: - It is very hard to control the ball with the body of a squid - Our AI is a bit too skilled at the game
For the first issue, we tried a bunch of solutions and decided to mix them together: - Squids now have a bigger collider - We now add some upwards and forwards forces to the ball when a squid touches it with its body - There is a small vaccuum effect centered around each squid to slowly attract the ball This will avoid the number one mistake we noticed players were doing, being a bit too far away from the ball when it is above them, and letting it fall just in front of them.
We heard you. We know we messed up. It was not fair to publish a game with this AI. To be quite frank, I was so happy when I found out my AI code was unbeatable that I did not want to make it more fair because it would have harmed my ego. After a year of introspective thinking and meditation, I understood something very important: selling a game is not about my ego, it is about making players happy! And let's face it, no one likes to be endlessly crushed by a machine. We knew we needed the AI to be gentler, but we had no idea how to do it. We did not want it to be stupid and we still wanted players to experience a challenge. The issue is that players do not have the same level and skills. We therefore needed an adaptive AI. After several minutes of intense brainstorming, we had the best idea we could have had in several minutes of intense brainstorming: we needed to introduce "glitches" in our AI! That way, it would sometimes do something incredibly stupid, but would still be able to try and correct its mistake. How do you implement a glitch in a game? In my career I have had my shares of strange bugs, and the worst kind are the ones that only happen once in every X tries. That is how we designed it: every millisecond, the AI has a small chance of disconnecting its brain for a small duration. The higher the player score is compared to the AI, the smaller the chances of this glitch happening, and the glitch duration is higher when the AI has a higher score than the player. This means that if the AI has 10 points and you have 3, you will essentially be playing versus a vegetable. It may even fail to serve the ball. If you have 10 points and the AI has 3, you will be playing versus the god of volleyball and will most probably be heavily humiliated. That's it for now, do not hesitate to contact us if you want us to improve the game.
[ 2022-05-22 09:35:34 CET ] [ Original post ]
We heard your suffering
The game has been out for more than a year, and we had time to analyze videos of people playing it. We realized there were two huge pain points: - It is very hard to control the ball with the body of a squid - Our AI is a bit too skilled at the game
Make squids bouncy again
For the first issue, we tried a bunch of solutions and decided to mix them together: - Squids now have a bigger collider - We now add some upwards and forwards forces to the ball when a squid touches it with its body - There is a small vaccuum effect centered around each squid to slowly attract the ball This will avoid the number one mistake we noticed players were doing, being a bit too far away from the ball when it is above them, and letting it fall just in front of them.
Dumb down the AI
We heard you. We know we messed up. It was not fair to publish a game with this AI. To be quite frank, I was so happy when I found out my AI code was unbeatable that I did not want to make it more fair because it would have harmed my ego. After a year of introspective thinking and meditation, I understood something very important: selling a game is not about my ego, it is about making players happy! And let's face it, no one likes to be endlessly crushed by a machine. We knew we needed the AI to be gentler, but we had no idea how to do it. We did not want it to be stupid and we still wanted players to experience a challenge. The issue is that players do not have the same level and skills. We therefore needed an adaptive AI. After several minutes of intense brainstorming, we had the best idea we could have had in several minutes of intense brainstorming: we needed to introduce "glitches" in our AI! That way, it would sometimes do something incredibly stupid, but would still be able to try and correct its mistake. How do you implement a glitch in a game? In my career I have had my shares of strange bugs, and the worst kind are the ones that only happen once in every X tries. That is how we designed it: every millisecond, the AI has a small chance of disconnecting its brain for a small duration. The higher the player score is compared to the AI, the smaller the chances of this glitch happening, and the glitch duration is higher when the AI has a higher score than the player. This means that if the AI has 10 points and you have 3, you will essentially be playing versus a vegetable. It may even fail to serve the ball. If you have 10 points and the AI has 3, you will be playing versus the god of volleyball and will most probably be heavily humiliated. That's it for now, do not hesitate to contact us if you want us to improve the game.
[ 2022-05-22 09:35:34 CET ] [ Original post ]
Kraken Smash: Volleyball
Affaires trangres
Developer
Affaires trangres
Publisher
2021-01-26
Release
Game News Posts:
17
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
🎮 Full Controller Support
🎮 Full Controller Support
Positive
(33 reviews)
Public Linux Depots:
- Bunny Count Content [429.65 M]
Squids play volleyball!
In this amazing local multiplayer game (or single player if you don't like other people), your goal is to make the ball touch the ground where your opponent is standing. You can smash the ball, pass it to your teammate (or to yourself if you have less than three friends), then smash the ball, or pretend to smash the ball then smash the ball with a slight delay. Have we mentioned the fact that you can smash the ball? I mean, it's in the title an everything, but it doesn't hurt to remind it once in a while.
![]()
This game is a couch local multiplayer game, which means it can either be played while sitting on a couch with other people (from one to three others) or versus an Artificial Intelligence. Those people can be friends, acquaintances, family members, paid actors pretending to be your friends, or other human beings / animals that you managed to bring back to sit on your couch and play with you. Be careful with our Artificial Intelligence, when we created it, it took control of one of our computers and we had to burn our studios to the ground.
![]()
You are probably wondering why we named our game "Kraken Smash" while we only have small squids to show for it. At first, we wanted to develop an epic game with krakens that unleashed hell on the court, but then we remembered that it would cost money. So we put cheap squids in the game instead. We sill kept the name because it sounded cool.
We were greatly inspired by Blobby Volley and Super Smash Bros. Melee.
![]()
Here is a list of cool moves you can do:
![]()
In this amazing local multiplayer game (or single player if you don't like other people), your goal is to make the ball touch the ground where your opponent is standing. You can smash the ball, pass it to your teammate (or to yourself if you have less than three friends), then smash the ball, or pretend to smash the ball then smash the ball with a slight delay. Have we mentioned the fact that you can smash the ball? I mean, it's in the title an everything, but it doesn't hurt to remind it once in a while.
This game is a couch local multiplayer game, which means it can either be played while sitting on a couch with other people (from one to three others) or versus an Artificial Intelligence. Those people can be friends, acquaintances, family members, paid actors pretending to be your friends, or other human beings / animals that you managed to bring back to sit on your couch and play with you. Be careful with our Artificial Intelligence, when we created it, it took control of one of our computers and we had to burn our studios to the ground.
You are probably wondering why we named our game "Kraken Smash" while we only have small squids to show for it. At first, we wanted to develop an epic game with krakens that unleashed hell on the court, but then we remembered that it would cost money. So we put cheap squids in the game instead. We sill kept the name because it sounded cool.
We were greatly inspired by Blobby Volley and Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Here is a list of cool moves you can do:
- Move back and forth (this is a 2D game, what did you expect?)
- Jump
- Smash the ball
- Lob the ball
- Dash
- Smash the ball
- Fast fall
- Jump on your teammate then jump higher
- Smash the ball
- Wall jump
- Throw the controller in your teammate's face
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GAMERSGATE
[ 2625 ]
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