Nix Devs: One Year Later

Hello to anyone reading this! Jackson here. Congratulations on behalf of the Nix team to this years Off the Map winners. With Game City over we are now a year down the line from winning ourselves in 2014 - so we thought we'd post a small update detailing what we're all doing now, as well as some of our current creative projects.



Faye
Faye is now living in Cardiff and working for the virtual reality company Atticus Digital. She recently took part in a 48 hour Gamejam, helping create Dig Up, a game with mechanics similar to Snake.

 

Faye still aspires to create more VR games, and hopes to one day start her own company to do this. Her other projects include Comet's Tale, a puzzle game with some unique & interesting mechanics.

You can follow Faye on twitter here. here. But it might be better to email her. (Contact details are on this blog's side menu)

Seb
Seb also worked on Comet's Tale before graduating with first class honours. Now back in England, Seb is helping to create a variety of projects, including his own; Leaving The Nest. A game about being a pigeon in a near infinite city.

 

Follow Seb on twitter for more!

Jackson

As for me - I've moved to Cardiff, and am currently looking for work whilst also working on my own project Tempest (soon to be renamed probably!).

Tempest is a multiplayer open world exploration game about sailing a ship with friends in pursuit of adventure. Helping create Tempest alongside Seb is also Gary Kings; writer, runner up in last year's Off the Map, and all round cool guy. His current game project is The Old God's Are Dead. Check it out!

That's all from us for now. We showed everything listed here at Game City 10 this year and had a great time doing it. If you liked Nix, please do check out some of our other projects!  

Game download

Nix is ready for download from here

Rift & controller strongly recommended though the game is playable without.

Install instructions:

Download and unzip Nix game

Open either bin32 or bin64

Open GameSDK and launch @ui_Nix

Note: Do not run the game on low settings it causes issues with fog which makes the game unplayable.

Rift instructions:

Make sure rift is switched on and your screen is set to duplicate mode.

At game launch change the graphics settings to fullscreen mode (you will need to this or the rift will not work) then in game press either select on an xbox controller or - if you're using keyboard.

Note: If you're having issues getting the game to open try opening through bin32 version instead.

Nix wins Off The Map 2014!

So! Last night we attended the awards presentation for Off the Map 2014, and we were all completely blown away by the fact that we were announced as the winners! We're all very busy at the moment as we're all still at GameCity, but hope to post more information soon about when and how Nix will be available to download and play. Thank you to everyone involved, and especially to those who played our game on Wednesday, the feedback has been great!

Nix Trailer

Nix Development Video Series: Interior block puzzle

This video is a little bit late in making, the fix to this level was actually made a little while ago before the off the map opening event so since this fix we've had many new play-testers at both Nottingham and Cardiff to confirm that this new "non slippery" fix works.

WGDS 2014

On the 11th we tested our most recent build of Nix at the Welsh Games Development Show in Cardiff. We were there with another team entering for the off the map contest from our university (Shady agents). The event was fantastic and again we got a lot of great feedback, we had a lot less bugs this time around but still found more fixes that we needed to apply. There were quite a lot of children who ended up playing our game and their honest feedback was really great to hear.

We found we had a few more collision issues and our main issue was people getting stuck in the starter cave as well as not knowing what to do next. At the show we would explain that players should look for two things "blue orbs" to collect and "orange glows" to lead into new areas which we later shortened to swim to anything that's blue or orange.  

To fix the goal confusion after the show we added a second menu to come after the control menu which very briefly explains the main goal of the game.

To remove the confusion of the first cave we decided to change our first teleport in that cave to orange to reinforce that orange portals lead to new areas. 

[Before]                                                                                                     [After]

As well as this a problem that has plagued us since the beginning (swimming down at slow speeds) was fixed soon after the show so the players hopefully should no longer be discouraged from swimming up too high. 

All in all WGDS was a fantastic play-testing opportunity and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there. 

GameCity 09 Launch party

Last week we traveled to Nottingham for the Gamecity launch party, where we got to display our game and have a few people test it, this experience was immeasurable for us playtesting wise. We got feedback from people with different experiences of play, some never having even held a controller before, most never having used a rift before.

We found a few bugs we hadn't expected which we will be working on over the following weeks, the main issues we picked up were as follows;

Certain areas didn't have collision (this allowed players to break out the map)

Glowing around spire confused players (most players went towards the large glow on the tower and were disappointed when it didnt lead anywhere)

Glitches with teleports in library level ( if the player chooses wrong sequence they cannot try again)

Missing textures

Player confusion with what their goal is (considering fixing this with a map of the area showing numbers of collectables)

Player struggles to climb waterfall in interior level (considering having the water level rise higher to help player get out)

We had positive feedback from everyone who played and thankfully had no nausea from anyone who played even after prolonged play. We will be aiming to get a lot of these bugs removed by July 11th as we will hopefully be showing Nix again at the Welsh Games Development show in Cardiff, this should hopefully give us even more player feedback so we can make Nix a more enjoyable experience for the off the map contest.