[devblog] Pixel Tennis – menu & online gameplay

[WongKit]

Hi there,

first of all - yes, I am slow .-.

However, before the year ends, I wanted to give you a quick look on the "live" version of the user interface and also share some gameplay material. If you followed the news section, you should already know some of the elements shown in the video.



There is so much done, but there are even more things to do to even think of making Pixel Tennis available for public testing.

I want to thank all of you for supporting this project in any way. It does not matter if you can provide game related resources like textures & music or just give your feedback on certain topics on pixeltennis.de and Discord. Every help and every user interaction is welcome and shows that there is a community out there.

It is also very cool to see other projects rising like from muqve and Saraceno. Think about it - we all want to bring back some memories from a game that went offline 6 years ago!

See you in 2019!

[Thewimo]

Multiplayer looks pretty fine to me. I mean this looks really well polished. Only things missing are textures and tweaks to the GUI. From a gameplay standpoint, yeah there are only bugs but i guess you can handle it, since its nothing gamebreaking.
Not sure what else i could give feedback to at this point. If you want any specific feedback just ask
Good Job you two !
And yeah i also follow the other two projects really close. I am excited.

[Sui]

Following all projects and I must say all of them look so promising, you guys do a great job. This one looks so clean - menu, lobby, the arena, just like the old days in FT.

Even though it's early I wish you a happy new year and best of luck for your projects and plans.

[Yumari]

This
Looks
Great!

Can't wait to test a version!!! (Write me on the List please!)

Thanks for the hard work this year @WongKit!!!

And a happy new year!

Greetings

[Fallermagie]

Looks so close to a polished version of FT to me, i like it.
I'm sorry that i still didn't gave any support content at the moment.
But you did a good job, keep up there and also happy new year in advance.

[matt090]

Hey, happy new year!
This look very promising indeed as other have said! Login and P2P working? awesome job

...but there are even more things to do to even think of making Pixel Tennis available for public testing.

I'm curious, what is your main concern for a public playable release? (other than bugs and content)

[Cristian]

Looks amazing.

In 1 way I'm happy there's 2-3 projects, because it can push all of them to work harder/faster, but I don't understand why you guys don't want to "merge" and work on 1 single project, even create a company. There's many people waiting for this game since ~2011...

Also, public testing is the best way to go at it, it's the fastest way to develop anything (more man-power = more results), easier to find bugs and a great way to advertise yourself since alpha stage (will result in having a bigger playerbase in the future).
Oh yeah, please don't make it Pay2Win, I'm pretty sure Play2win with skins (similar to CS:GO, Dota2, etc.) is the best way you can have alot more profit.

[WongKit]

Thanks all!

I'm sorry that i still didn't gave any support content at the moment.

That's ok. Do you have an idea, when you can provide some basic examples? Based on that, I would make a note in the support topic that also other contributions are still welcome.

I'm curious, what is your main concern for a public playable release? (other than bugs and content)

Bugs would be my main concern, but as you exclude them:

Playing rewards
Currently, there is no reward for winning or completing matches. That means: No exp, no currency, no stats, no character progression -> no long term motivation

Networking
As all multiplayer matches are based on peer-to-peer, there is the windows firewall, the router firewall and external port forwarding that can make the connection break. For that, I purchased a 3rd party Unity addon which works well, but even with it, there are still cases where clients are not able to host matches because of their network configuration. So some kind of fallback or host negotiation is mandatory to be implemented.
Lag compensation is also completely missing.
The worst of all, Unity "recently" deprecated their network api which means, that Pixel Tennis is stuck on an engine that becomes more and more outdated. It is possible, that all match related network communication need to be rewritten at some point.

General polishing
Some UI elements for example are just dummies or simply missing. For video demonstration purpose, this is no big deal, but requiring you to Alt+F4 to close the game from fullscreen is not that ideal from a usability perspective.

but I don't understand why you guys don't want to "merge" and work on 1 single project, even create a company.

I am no professional game developer and therefore often tend to try something and discard or completely change it afterwards. If you are developing in a team (which I do on my full time job), you do not have that much freedom as you need to make sure not to break something another person is currently working on. This also requires constant communication, transition and management between all team members. It is not like 10 developers would be able to achieve something in 1/10th of the time.
I also had a short talk with muqve about this topic and he agreed with me.
Creating a company would also only add another layer of complexity with no advantage at all.

Also, public testing is the best way to go at it, it's the fastest way to develop anything (more man-power = more results), easier to find bugs and a great way to advertise yourself since alpha stage (will result in having a bigger playerbase in the future).

There will be public tests, but as I pointed out above, it needs some work on before. I also no not want to disappoint you by publishing a game that is clearly unfinished, even for its base elements.

Oh yeah, please don't make it Pay2Win,...

Don't worry. Back then, I was one of the loudest voices against the pay to win strategy that the publisher was doing.

[Fallermagie]

That's ok. Do you have an idea, when you can provide some basic examples? Based on that, I would make a note in the support topic that also other contributions are still welcome.

I don't know. I would say 1 month or less but that's too much ambitious imo.
Didn't finished my sketch of concept art or even started modeling...let's say this when i have something ready, i'll let you know and share it.

[matt090]

Thanks for the detailed answer

The worst of all, Unity "recently" deprecated their network api which means, that Pixel Tennis is stuck on an engine that becomes more and more outdated. It is possible, that all match related network communication need to be rewritten at some point.

I feel your pain, i was developing in Microsoft XNA when they decided to deprecate the entire framework

[Cristian]

but I don't understand why you guys don't want to "merge" and work on 1 single project, even create a company.

I am no professional game developer and therefore often tend to try something and discard or completely change it afterwards. If you are developing in a team (which I do on my full time job), you do not have that much freedom as you need to make sure not to break something another person is currently working on. This also requires constant communication, transition and management between all team members. It is not like 10 developers would be able to achieve something in 1/10th of the time.
I also had a short talk with muqve about this topic and he agreed with me.
Creating a company would also only add another layer of complexity with no advantage at all.

Also, public testing is the best way to go at it, it's the fastest way to develop anything (more man-power = more results), easier to find bugs and a great way to advertise yourself since alpha stage (will result in having a bigger playerbase in the future).

There will be public tests, but as I pointed out above, it needs some work on before. I also no not want to disappoint you by publishing a game that is clearly unfinished, even for its base elements.

Oh yeah, please don't make it Pay2Win,...

Don't worry. Back then, I was one of the loudest voices against the pay to win strategy that the publisher was doing.

I'm sure both of you have your strong and weak points, good and bad ideas and thus why I proposed that you should merge and work on a single project rather than 2-3 for a few reasons:
1. All of you have the same concept of what you want to do. You succesfully replicated Arena from fantasy tennis and if my ears don't fail me, it might even be the same menu music. You managed to create/reproduce more or less the same hitting patterns from FT (if you want to try, please do the "long-slice": https://youtu.be/Z1DL7ZeFeKw?t=59).
2. For now you don't have a character design, not sure if intentional or because you lack the skill to do it (note: don't take it as an insult, I highly respect you guys), but muqve seems to have something going on there (doesn't look too nice, but it can be worked on).
3. One of the most important one, you do not want to split the player base (old + new). I'm pretty sure you do this out of passion for the game and for us, the players, but you would also like to succeed in doing so. We all want you to have success with these projects and make some money out of it while you are at it for your hard work, thus why I proposed play2win with skins, similar to other games. It is an incentive for us to pay for something (mostly for your services) and for you to continue working on the project even after it's done. Many games need updates, new stuff, I'm sure there will be people coming with better ideas, etc.

[mangoyogurte]

I guess 'Cristian' mainly wants to say that you can make your project open source to github instead of creating a company. People who share your interests can contribute code together, develop together, and many hands make light work. (Of course you can choose not to Merge their code). As far as I know, there are two similar projects under development in my country(China), and the character models and maps are all taken from the FT (the current progress is that the character Nick can run in the Nether Temple). We have discussed your project long ago in our group. They are very willing to contribute their power to your project.
Finally, I want to say that you and your insistence are really very cool. Hundreds of brothers in our group are looking forward to your Pixel Tennis. Good luck and respect!

[WongKit]

@Christian: I think, I made myself clear, why there is no initiation to merge our projects at the moment

The replication of certain elements from FT were somewhat intentional and somewhat not. The gameplay should feel like the FT one (the long slice along with its awkward input is already part of the core mechanics although not shown). The visuals however should be different / more basic as I am lacking 3D modeling power. That Pixel Tennis received an Arena replica was coincidence when matt090 offered his textures.

The missing character design is also because of the lacking 3D experience. muqve uses "Unity Chan", a premade character model from the asset store. She is also more or less a placeholder as she cannot be customized well regarding clothes and gear.

The financing thing might become important when the game is near its finished/release. If developing/maintaining the game forces me to invest bigger amounts of money, I most likely would try to get at least these costs covered by donation requests or ingame items (no, nothing gambling like!) From FAQ. Ingame items would be cosmetics or non-cosmetics which can also be bought with ingame currency.

@mangoyogurte: Thanks and welcome to the forum! Open sourcing the project and merge contributions is something I do not prefer right now due to the reasons I wrote in my previous post. However, this does not mean, that I will not accept any help. BoneD is working on the backend/server programming and I am still looking for 3D modeling and animation support.

I did not know, that there is also an active Chinese community around FT, that's really nice! It is also very interesting that your projects managed to use actual resources from the game. Is there a public group or a link you can tell us? I guess, we would only be able to navigate through with Google translator, but it would be still fine, though. I never thought, that there were still so many old FT-people in 2018/2019.

[Sui]

There's no need to rush things. I trust Wong and believe that he will take every step he can to make sure he puts out a game that makes us remember the times we had with FT. Even though it's a "solo" project and the updates take a bit to come, good things take time. I'm just more than happy to see these projects and they look awesome.

And hopefully someone shows up who can do that 3D stuff required to make the character look good & customizable with costumes from the shop.

[mangoyogurte]

@Christian: I think, I made myself clear, why there is no initiation to merge our projects at the moment

The replication of certain elements from FT were somewhat intentional and somewhat not. The gameplay should feel like the FT one (the long slice along with its awkward input is already part of the core mechanics although not shown). The visuals however should be different / more basic as I am lacking 3D modeling power. That Pixel Tennis received an Arena replica was coincidence when matt090 offered his textures.

The missing character design is also because of the lacking 3D experience. muqve uses "Unity Chan", a premade character model from the asset store. She is also more or less a placeholder as she cannot be customized well regarding clothes and gear.

The financing thing might become important when the game is near its finished/release. If developing/maintaining the game forces me to invest bigger amounts of money, I most likely would try to get at least these costs covered by donation requests or ingame items (no, nothing gambling like!) From FAQ. Ingame items would be cosmetics or non-cosmetics which can also be bought with ingame currency.

@mangoyogurte: Thanks and welcome to the forum! Open sourcing the project and merge contributions is something I do not prefer right now due to the reasons I wrote in my previous post. However, this does not mean, that I will not accept any help. BoneD is working on the backend/server programming and I am still looking for 3D modeling and animation support.

I did not know, that there is also an active Chinese community around FT, that's really nice! It is also very interesting that your projects managed to use actual resources from the game. Is there a public group or a link you can tell us? I guess, we would only be able to navigate through with Google translator, but it would be still fine, though. I never thought, that there were still so many old FT-people in 2018/2019.

Sorry for so long to reply.
First of all, I am sorry that I can't help you with what you need. I am a web developer. But if you need a website someday (such as the pixel tennis official website -haha), I am very willing to make a cool and easy website for you.In addition, I have some related documents of Helen model (provided by group friends), I can send you an email if you need it.
Regarding the two projects in China I have mentioned, I am afraid that the situation is not as good as you think, because there are only a handful of game developers in China who used to play FT, and they still need to work and support their families, so the development progress is very slow(Even, I sent him a message and he replied to me after a few months - -). . .Here is a link to the author's post that records the status of his project.http://tieba.baidu.com/p/5555107068?pid ... 8114868105
Regarding the things you want to add to our group, the communication tools for Chinese users are almost all Tencent QQ (similar to the messenger of facebook), so you may not be able to add the group.But the brothers in the group all welcome you and looking forward to your project.
We all miss the days of waving a racket after school or work. Not only do China have fans of FT, I believe that South Korea, the United States, and Thailand all have (after all, Thailand server is the last one to close). FT runs through the youth of countless people.

[onigiri]

Hey man, do you remember me? The guy who from China said he can do some help about dubbing or music. Here I post something about it to show you, I hope you'll like it.

https://youtu.be/kjH88ejglYk
https://youtu.be/6xagqcqH0kM
https://youtu.be/ZROU2IGKbds
https://youtu.be/k-I_oG9yobI

Feel free to email me if you need any help.
BTW, my email: yhjie66@foxmail.com

[MrJivoirien]

it looks like we can't listen to your link man ^^

[onigiri]

it looks like we can't listen to your link man ^^

I fixed it. It's okay now

[WongKit]

Hi onigiri,

sure, I remember you :)

I like your first short music track. If you like to compose something similar for a court or menu, please go ahead!
You can post your results either at the support area or via private message.

About the dubbing part - this is a topic that has a low priority right now as there are many other essential topics to be handled first.

Thanks for offering your help!

[onigiri]

Hi onigiri,

sure, I remember you

I like your first short music track. If you like to compose something similar for a court or menu, please go ahead!
You can post your results either at the support area or via private message.

About the dubbing part - this is a topic that has a low priority right now as there are many other essential topics to be handled first.

Thanks for offering your help!

I am very happy that you like it. I'll keep going. And I will do as many versions as possible. ^_^ When I finish it I will tell you.