T w e n t y S i d e d
Arvind and I are planning an update for Good Robot. There are a few lingering balance changes that have so far only been available on the beta test branch, and we want to make those public. But we thought we should add some fresh content to the game while we’re at it. We’re still working out what those changes will be. Ideally we’d like a little of everything: New music, levels, weapons, foes, etc. We’ll see what we can do. It’s a busy time of the year and we don’t want to put this off until spring.
But let’s go after some low-hanging fruit first. I’ve made a poll where you can vote on whatever kind of hat you’d like to see in the game. It’s a fill-in-the-blank, so go nuts. Just remember that we’re going to be looking for popular choices. If you’re the only one that votes for a particular hat, then it can’t really rise to the top of the pile.
So go nuts, but not TOO nuts.
Once again I have to commend the folks at Google. I wouldn’t have thought it possible to waste 700×750 pixels on a one-question, one-line survey, but they somehow pulled it off. I know Google likes their whitespace, but this form wouldn’t fit on an 800×600 monitor without scrolling, and it’s ONE QUESTION. I distinctly remember the 90’s, and having more than one sentence on the screen at a time. This thing is so wasteful it looks like satire.
Note that this survey requires you to be logged into the Google Overlord. If you don’t have a Google account, you can’t participate. Sorry, but it was a practical necessity. This is the only way to limit votes to 1 per person. We have to read these by hand, and we don’t want to wade through hundreds of ballot-stuffers and joke entries.
EDIT: Poll closed. I usually publish the results right away, but this one will take some time to digest. Thanks for participating.
Shamus Plays WOW
Ever wondered what's in all those quest boxes you've never bothered to read? Get ready: They're more insane than you might expect.
Dear Hollywood: Do a Mash Reboot
Since we're rebooting everything, MASH will probably come up eventually. Here are some casting suggestions.
Pixel City Dev Blog
An attempt to make a good looking cityscape with nothing but simple tricks and a few rectangles of light.
Overused Words in Game Titles
I scoured the Steam database to figure out what words were the most commonly used in game titles.
Fable II
The plot of this game isn't just dumb, it's actively hostile to the player. This game hates you and thinks you are stupid.
“Yeah, that’s a good one.”
Just out of curiosity, is this a default form response, or did you add it manually? And is it in response to everything, or just something like not having found a duplicate?
I put in “Spooky Castle.” A little thing with turrets and minarets, maybe a bit like this (sans moon and bat, etc):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spooky_castle_in_full_moon.svg
I made that response manually, because the default was boring.
Uuu,I member that too!
I always think that a lot of this UI nonsense, could be helped if we didn’t tightly couple both screen size, and image resolution, into one setting called “resolution”. I mean, we can get both numbers for a given display, and it’s possible to do some CSS/HTML magic, to keep the text/buttons/things the same size, but just change the amount of detail / extraneous things on the screen. i.e. Show extra fiddly bits for high-res displays, and cut it down to the basics, if it’s low-res.
Okay, “Butt Hat (Hat that is a Butt)” coalition, LET’S DO THIS.
You got it ButtSkarn. Who let you out of the castle anyway?
You might be kidding, but I’m not. Forcing Shamus to put a Butt Hat into his game sounds hilarious, let’s do this everyone.
In fact, I had no good suggestion so I just rolled with it. I think Ruttskarn may have rigged the poll!
Originally I just suggested something simple but this is the best. For the coalition!
Description: Only Buttskarn can truly understand the magnitude of power this hat offers you.
How about a butt shaped hat,with a tattoo of a butt,that you wear on your butt?
I wish I had read the comments before voting. And here I thought “VR Goggles” would have been funny.
You should be able to modify your answer, that’s what it said for me on this page.
Nooooo! Now I want to change my answer to asshole mullet from the Human Revolution season!
I agree, but only if it gets cheek jiggle physics.
I hate the MOAR WHITESPACE school of design as much as the next guy, but it is worth mentioning that Google Forms is really not designed for the “single-question survey” use case. That’s why it’s called Google Forms and not Google Simple Surveys.
Sure, but they could easily detect when the form is embedded with the magic embed-tag, and adjust the styling appropriately. Like, I don’t understand what they thought it would be embedded into, where the huge whitespace would be good. Also, the thing has a scrollbar. That’s just bad UI; Unless you’re doing something specific, it’s usually better to just fully expand the content vertically, and let the user use the single scrollbar built into their browser, so they don’t have to fiddle around with accidentally scrolling the wrong one. (depending on if you hit the top/bottom of the inner bar, or if your OS handles inner/outer/currently-under-the-mouse differently from other OSs, etc)
Maybe Google is moving toward the kind of interface used by characters in visual media, with one large sentence on the screen so the audience can read it.
It’s how Google spies on you.
I voted Deep Sea Diver Helmet. Not sure if it’s practical but I think it would look cool.
Ooh ooh, Shamus, Shamus *jumps up and down waving his hand*
Are you gonna call the new release:
Good Robot “Remastered”
? *laughs*
On second thought, that would probably go over most new sites hats.
Maybe call it Good Robot Director’s Cut instead?
Or Good Robot Special Edition perhaps (that actually sounds better to my ears).
And then you could probably make a little (re-launch) video for it:
“Narrator: Good Robot Special Edition, because you are special… And you are special… and you are special… you are all special… especially you!”
Send out a few emails here and there, update the video on steam etc., rely on the fans to help spread the word and you might end up with a nice “soft” second/relaunch of the game, poke GOG about the Special Edition and see if they’ve changed their mind about the game i.e. point them to the steam reviews etc. so they can see it’s not shit like most things on there (steam/greenlight/etc).
Good Robot: The Director’s Hat.
Gooder Robot
Good Robot: Reboot Edition
EDIT: Good Robot: Anniversary Update.
Good Roboot.
I voted for a recursive “Robot Hat” Hat. Clearly there was a need for more robots and thus the robot hat adds more robot to your robot.
I went a step further: robot-wearing-a-hat hat.
But that breaks the recursion! Although it would be cool if the hat-robot was wearing your previous hat…
I put in “iconic cap”, because I can’t play my video games without being told that something in it is iconic.
I have to admit, this would actually be funnier than a Butt Hat (Hat that is a Butt).
Iconic iconic butt cap.An iconic cap that is in the shape of an iconic butt.
Good one! You definitely have my vote!
Oooh, that’s a good one. Voted.
I voted for “No More Hats”, the hat that isn’t a hat.
“I Can’t Believe It’s Not A Hat”?
No-Man’s Hat?
The Emperor’s New Hat.
It’s Hat Or Be Hatted
I know there’s already a “samurai helmet,” but why not an eboshi?
I’ve already made my suggestion but can I make another one? I’d like to wear a freudian slip for a hat. TIA.
Voted for PS4-controller-support-hat. I still havent completed a single run of the game, because I wanted to wait till I can play it with my controller.
For reference, this is what the PS4 controller currently does in the game:
– Left stick works perfectly. Thats a start…
– The robot constantly fires to the left. I can aim up and down up to 45° using the right stick (up and down); right stick does nothing.
– R2 (equivalent to RT) opens the main menu AND aims/fires to the right
– R1 (RB) also fires secondary
– L1 fires primary with the alternate button scheme
– L2 does nothing
– square (equivalent to X) is accept (not a huge deal, but usually that is what X does, and according to the button-layout in the options menu, these functions are placed ‘correctly’ on the XBox controller)
– X (equivalent to A) is cancel (as above, usually for the circle button)
– triangle and circle (Y and B) do nothing
– d-pad seems to work, it navigates the menu. The button layout implies that I should be able to move the robot using the d-pad, but that does not work and might be a remnant of an earlier build
As a sidenote: In the Hat menu there is this ‘Tip of the Hat’ box (or the ‘Braking News’-ticker), which you can navigate with RB and LB. This works perfectly on the PS4 controller. But there is a bug where it queues a button-press when you reach the end of the messages. When you scroll completely to one end, hit the button one more time and then scroll back one, it immediately jumps back to the end. Not high priority, but it should be a simple fix. Or make it wrap around and start at the beginning again.
Sorry…not a hat…I’d just like to play the game…
I have a 10+ year-old usb controller that is clearly too old to understand what’s going on. I feel your pain, but OTOH it gives me an excuse for sucking at the game.
Similarly, the Steam Controller doesn’t work (For similar reasons – you can make the right pad pretend it’s a thumbstick but it doesn’t help)
If that were true you would have told us before presenting the survey.
I went with beer-muffs. Objectively worse than the stuff already mentioned in the comments, but I’m not changing it because I’m stubborn and/or lazy.
Where can we report bugs? I’d swear warranties just stopped working a week or two ago.
I love the pat on the back after you submit, was feeling all smug like I had the best idea ever and then you agree with me!
This game seems like it could also be an… appy game.
And I chose my hat. It was such an original decision… a hat with… ornaments.
I want Shamus to research, then implement, the most ridiculous Kentucky Derby hats there are. They are magnificent in their ostentatious bad taste.
I legitimately don’t know if the butt hat would get the game flagged as 18+, which requires people to go through an age warning (and lowers the number of visits you get by a bit). That’s my biggest concern about that hat.
P.S. Please stop voting for Butt Hat!
Never!
Call it a posterior hat and you’ll be fine.
Or a butt-skarn hat…
While you’re out for LIBERTY and stuff, why not wear a latest-1790’s-fashion bicorne? Also called “that hat Napoleon always wore”.
I don’t know why you would add new weapons, music, foes etc to an existing game as an update instead of adding them to Good Robot 2. How do you expect to make money for your time? Do they buy the update? I hope I am missing something.
They’re going to be released as Pyramid DLC.
It’s like regular DLC, but you can’t buy it with money – only by getting enough referrals from new buyers. 5 referrals gets you 1 new weapon OR hat OR zone type; however, you can get replicas of ones you already got. Alternatively, you can save up and choose which one to unlock for only 20 referrals!
Thank you.
The idea is to make people think “Hey, I liked the last game they made and they fixed the things, so I’m going to buy this new game!”
One could perhaps call it the “Reverse-Bethesda”.
Reverse-Bethesda? And adding hats?
So we could have a Sky Brim Special Addition?
Sky Brim apparently is an actual brand of hats, so: 1.you could totally add one to the game, and 2.maybe you shouldn’t for legal reasons? I don’t know.Or if that doesn’t work out, you could have a Wide Brim (Widebrim?) Special Addition.
“Make **** Great Again” hat
suggestions for the ****:
Robots
Bullet Hell games
Lasers
Rockets
Explosions
“Go nuts, but not TOO nuts,” eh? We’ll see about that when everyone votes for my suggestion, ‘hat that is a small, fully functional computer, upon which an AI plays another instance of Good Robot’.
Id like to think that a low hanging fruit is, a way to skip the slow into and get to the action. Id love to be able to just skip to levels for a quick 5 min of exciting game play rather than 5 min of build up to exciting game play. Give me a handful of $ and 2 vending machines at the start of a level and away you go even if it is just one level (As in several zones until you kill the boss).
Only one response allowed?
How do I choose between Akubra, Slouch hat, Beer Helmet and Cat In The Hat hat?
All four, a la the Towering Pile of Hats?
Let me know when I can add “hardcore=false” to the game’s config files and then maybe I’ll be able to care enough about hats to come back to the game.
About the resolution of the form: it seems to only use 500px of vertical space when I have Forms generate a form with a single short answer. Testing by messing with your page on my browser indicates that changing that 750 to a 500 doesn’t mess anything up or introduce weird scroll bars. I’m not sure why it gave you 50% more pixels.
As a bonus, at 700×500, it would sort of fit on an old 800×600 with loads of pixels to spare. Why, you’d have all of 1300 pixels to spend on your browser and system tray and whatnot.
I set it to 750, because when the form was still open (it’s been closed for a few hours now, which is probably the version you’re seeing) it needed all of the 750 to avoid the scrollbar. And even at that some people STILL complained they were seeing a scrollbar. (Probably someone on a different browser than me.)
Yeah, the whitespace problem bothered me for a while before I went to actually check, so I made a new form with the same question type on Forms to see if that was the absolute minimum that it would allow. Then I messed with your site’s form (which had already been closed, as you note), replacing it with the one I generated. I did not test with multiple browsers, only Chrome.
I suppose that the problem is that Forms is designed with the possibility that it may be accessed as a standalone page and therefore sets its design accordingly.
A company I’ve worked for used the form service Wufoo to pretty decent effect. I think they have a less wasteful embed that allows you to inline a form with minimalist responsive design. Sadly, while there is a token effort at a free version, they charge money for the service if you use it more than modestly.
I’m pretty sure that the pixels decadently wasted by a Google Form are the best option I know of at the moment.