L3 or L4 button in controller to slide dash (fast start and go slower and slower if holding)

[Idiota125]

It would be easier to get close to the ball. And it would look more like real tennis too. If the the total length of the dash from start to finish would be half of the length of the court. or shorter... What you think?

[Brainburn Studio]

Yeah I agree sliding/dashing would be really cool. I have tried about five ways to implement it, but in practice all ways where to difficult to control and only made hitting the ball much harder. So the only way i think it would work is if it would calculate where you should end up, I did not try that because if feel that would make it to easy.

On the other hand, I could add your solution to bind it to l3 or l4 as it does not really hurt and it would be completely optional to use. Then i guess I would make the start speed the max running speed and play around with the slowing down to make it feel right. My gut feeling thinks starting with a higher speed then the run speed would look/feel weird. What do you think?

[Idiota125]

Sorry I meant L3 or R3 buttons. But yes! That could work. And yes, I really understand the problem there. The starting speed should be close of the max running speed, not much faster. Maybe 10%-15%, we cloud test that starting speed could = max running speed.

[Idiota125]

The sliding mechanism could be short boost which is slowing down to stop pretty soon. (have to test) Something 115%-120% from max running speed to 0%. And buttons R3/L3? And it could be stoppable, when you press button it start and it stop when you release pressed button. And what you think if reachability will increase during sliding too? Like 10-30%? I don't know how this could work, but it feels it need something like that.

[Idiota125]

Also it could be mechanic to turn off in the settings.

[Idiota125]

I am not sure about sliding/boost anymore. I think the feeling of something is missing - it's the movement of the player. It's so monotonic now without any acceleration in any direction. There is many tennis game in steam where is already good movent. But thanks to one friend, I tried TENNNES and I would recommend something like that to this one also. If you want to try that too, let me know :) maybe my friend can help you to test it too.

[Idiota125]

At the moment this kind of player movement is the easiest one to play I think. It's good to be there for option too, not to make this game too hard. But slide effect with out any boost (maybe just slowing down like you said before) would be still nice. It would be closer feel like the real tennis game. This kind of stick swing already feels more real. The speed of the swing of the racket could affect the departure speed of the ball itself even more than now.

[Idiota125]

There could be a bit shorter animation and pause of the game when miss the shot or hit the net. It feels like it's breaking the flow of the tennis game.

[Brainburn Studio]

Sorry, i forgot to subscribe to this discussion. So I did not get notifications. I really appreciate your passion for my game!

Yeah i think it should be fine to have it always on. Still did not get a change to play around with it. Might have some time this weekend. I agree with you that movement is very hard, as i tuned down the acceleration to only a few frames, and turned of the deceleration completely.

Ah yeah i heard about Tennnes but never tried. That game is not on Steam right?

about the pause: you can press the cancel key, when I play myself i often skip them. So you can play at a very high pace. One thing for the final game i want do to is polish these animations a bit. So i put the length on my list to tweak.

And your right about the swing speed. it should control the ball speed more. Ill tweak that too!

[Idiota125]

No problem at all! And yes, I really like this gameplay! I have always thinking why there isn't games with racket/stick as twin stick sport games for pc. Like icehockey, or tennis. :p It's a bit harder to play, but it's so much more intensive and get to feel your are really doing something.

Yes, tennnes is not available in steam. Only in itch.io. But you could check that movement in youtube. But if you want to try it free, just let me know, I can try to get it to you. One another game where is pretty good and real movement is Tennis Elbow 2013. Have you tried that? I think the movement is now good for arcade and quite easy, it's so monotonic that controlling is very easy to learn. (good to be option for beginners) But it doesn't feel like real tennis. If you make it more like tennnes/tennis elbow 2013 - there would be more meaning where do you hit the ball and where do you settle to waiting next serve. Because acceleration must be taken into account.

And what about the pause animation, it could be more responsible - always the first pause animation in game you had to press "B"-cancelbutton 2 times before skip. Every other time it works from the first press.

And what was there other comments, different size of racket for every player would be nice too! Then you could play with beginners and a bit more experienced players together. And there is already all kind of assists to make it easier. But could they be more like player based too? And maybe a bit more
forgiving hit on the ball, and aiming for the opposite side, like aim assist for beginners too. At the begin this game feels hard. But after 20mins it was pretty easy to win pro cpu without any assits.

Thanks for the attention! :)

[Idiota125]

One extra thing for balancing could be movent speed too. Of course there could be different characters to play. Some faster, some better acceleration, some slower, bigger or smaller body and so on. And same for rackets, larger and smaller. More easy to aim "aim assist" and harder to aim and hit the field but it could be more powerful. There should be options to pick up but in addition these balancing options to play with players of different skills.

[Idiota125]

What you think of this kind of skill level and balancing system?

In the lobby every player/team have to choose first one of them:
novice-normal-experienced-pro
(if you want balancing match with different skill levels - one player take novice and another one pro, if you just want to play like pros, both pick up pro)

In the same lobby next thing to do is use points for features, assistant, skills:
The points are:
Novice 10 points
Normal 7 points
Experienced 5 points
Pro 3 points

How to use them:
- it must be pretty easy menu bar for gamepads - and to get play fast asap, and there could be random-button, preset button and save button for preset (one for every skill level), and default should be something clever that it's not necessary to edit points at all every time. And after everymatch you can start next game with the same settings without changing these again. Just to select rematch or something.

Body:
small-normal-large -> every one are 0 points - this is only select which one you want
Differences: small has smaller body, harder to get body hit, but range is smaller like example -15% or -20%, normal is like at the moment in the game, large has bigger body, which is easier to get body hit, but range is +15% or 20% from normal

Shoes:
boots-normal-sneakers-flying shoes -> 0 point - 1 point - 2 points - 3 points
Differences: boots are slow speed and slow acceleration, normal are a bit better, sneakers are pretty close of this moment movement speed, and flying shoes are even faster. (I don't know of percentages - have to be well balanced)

Racket type:
straight-medium-angles -> every one are 0 points - only to select which one you want?
Differences: like in the different rackets now

Racket size:
small-normal-large -> 0 point - 1 point - 2 points
Differences: its a bit bigger range and larger hit spot in the large racket
And smaller one shorter range and smaller hit spot

Racket power:
low-normal-max -> 0 point - 1 point - 2 points
Differences: like in the different rackets now

Aim/hit assistant:
Hardcore-experienced-normal-forgiving -> 0 point - 1 point - 2 points - 3 points
Differences: like in the different rackets now, at the moment in the demo, the racket to play is forgiving, but it's still pretty hard for beginners - maybe that one should be normal and get even bigger assistant for beginners for forgiving option.

Incoming ball path assistant:
off-on -> 0 point - 1 point (maybe 2?)

Racket hit spot assistant:
off-on -> 0 point - 1 point

Serve help assistant?
maybe not? It's not worth of 1 point, right?

So max points are 12, novice player choose 10 of them. Default is some good picks from them - and then you edit that with menu bar buttons "-" or "+" for every category.
Normal choose 7 points, and for default there is 7 picked up already, good ones - we have to test them and choose!
And so on...

If you like one of the selections, you can save it for the preset. It's faster to pick up next time. And then you could press random button - which just pick up these points randomly. (it could be fun way to play)

Then sometimes in the future, there could be option to select color of the shirt and hat for the player, maybe color of racket too. And these could save in the same presets too.
And if you will make that 2v2 mode, the points could be per teams, not per players. And points would be something: 6-10-14-18 (pro-experienced-normal-novice). Then you can balance inside of team, some player get more points than another. There would be own presets for savings.

And most important: all must be very easy and fast to control with gamepad, in the same lobby (where you select players and teams) And every points have to be worth of it and balanced which each other as good as possible. It need testing - but it could be easy to also update according to feedback.

This is just a example of points, they could be anything, with bigger scale or whatever. And this is just one suggestion that came to my mind when I was thinking how to add mods, skill levels, balancing, assistants and features for easy to use.

I don't know, maybe the idea still needs to be developed a bit. But what are your thoughts about it?

[ChunKyPiglets]

Hello, if you would like to try Tennnes, accept my invite

[Idiota125]

Thanks! :)

[Brainburn Studio]

Good find that you had to press twice to cancel the first time, never noticed that. That was a bug, it will be fixed in the next update.

Yesterday I played around with the size of the rackets and reach. I tested this before a long time ago. Then I found that it a longer racket made it more difficult. Now actually it works fine. So I will have a look at how to balance extra rackets that are longer. All rackets have a bit of aim assist, as without it is virtually impossible to get a normal shot. In the demo is only one racket, but in the full game there are more which reduce the aim assist and increase the power of the racket.

Also yesterday i played around with the movement code. Actually I found that I turned off the acceleration completely. So I turned that one again, and made it feel more natural. I have to do some further testing, but i think the movement will be more interesting this way.

Also I found a way to make the sliding feel good. Still need to record a sound for that though.

About the balancing:
The point system could work, at the moment i have balancing done by coupling every advantage to a disadvantage. As explained below.

I like the idea of making player speed variable, but that needs to be coupled to a disadvantaged. So I guess like you said a way to do that would be to couple it to the player size. So that would then be:
smaller: higher speed, less reach, less power
bigger: lower speed, bigger reach, more power.

Character design:
Good news, I have designed the character code so that i should be relatively easy to implement custom character design. As in, you can choose different shoes, shirts, hair, hats etc. And customize the colors. Still have to make an editor UI and a save system for that though. The above would be a perfect addition to give it some actual meaning other then that you can look cool.

one note: increasing the player speed does not necessarily make it easier to play. As it is more difficult to position your player perfectly.

Beginner balancing:
I agree that it would be nice to have some balancing to have players of different levels play each other. To achieve that I think the best way is to do it via the racket.
So for beginners: longer racket, with high aim assist and with lower max power.
for the experienced: normal size racket, with low aim assist, and normal power ( this racket would then not really serve any purpose other then to make the game more difficult)..

Final note:
I have a full time job, and i am making this game in my free time. So that limits what i can do. At the moment there is not enough interest in my game to justify the effort required to implement online multiplayer (which is no trivial task). If the interest rises significantly I will implement it though. As i think that the game is a perfect fit for an online skill based competition. I might do a kickstarter campaign to see if i can collect the funds to implement it.

Anyway the game beta build already has local multiplayer and that works perfectly! I also tested steam remote play with a friend, and that also works. Also a friend tested it on SteamDeck and he said it played even better on the steamdeck compared to his PC.

Lets see what the future will bring for Twin Stick Tennis !

So if you have good ideas how to find potential players let me know!

[Brainburn Studio]

Originally posted by ChunKyPiglets:

Hello, if you would like to try Tennnes, accept my invite

thanks i accepted your invite!