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Hi, I'm one of the developers of the game. Feel free to post questions.

Also, be sure to try the mobile version with your phone or tablet.

More info on the project here: http://littleworkshop.fr/keepout.html



Congrats for this great game, really nice implementation!

I'd be interested in some development facts: - How long did it take you to create the game to it's current state?

- What was your budget? If you don't want to answer precisely: How high do you reckon must the budget be to realize a game like this?

- how big is your team and which roles did you have in that team?

- which frameworks/engines did you use? Did you create your own?

Thanks, and Keep it up!


Thanks! Nice pun. :)

It took us about 3 months to create this game as a two-person team. Budget was actually pretty low since we only had to buy several 3D assets (they were not created specifically for our game), a few textures and some sound effects. We used the three.js library.


What means "pretty low budget"? 20k? More? Less? :)


Much less than that. I'd say under $1k in this case, but that doesn't mean anything because a huge part of your budget would be development cost, which was done in-house on this project.


Wow, stupid question, but why did you do that, if there's no margin? :) As a showcase to promote your other products or your company?

I'm interested in this because game developers obviously tend to be satisfied with little budgets, which is, in my opinion, harmful to the industry, if you do it for a living.


Like you said, as a way to promote our web agency.


I couldn't play the game because of hardcoded movement keys. I'm using Colemak layout, and I'm sure Dvorak people would feel the same.


Dvorak user here, though I'm used to temporarily switching layouts for hardcoded games.

My hopes were raised when I saw the keyboard type dialog, but dashed when I looked at the options.


I wonder it's possible to make a browser extension that grabs incoming keystrokes and maps them from one keyboard layout to another? I know I've seen extensions add new keyboards shortcuts to webpages, but I'm not sure about sending custom key input to a page or blocking the original presses from going through.

And it's also possible that a game like this directly grabs input in a way that an extension couldn't intercept. Web dev is really not my thing.


Same here.

Would recommend a text change: 'keyboard type' to 'keyboard layout'.


I'm using Neo, and though I'm also used to keyboard switching, I'm very much accustomed to leave my fingers on the default position (i.e. my left index finger on qwertz [f], where the little marking is). Because of this I haven't gotten the hang of strafing for the ten levels I played and then it got very difficult to avoid.


Oh wow - thanks so much for this!! I just got a huge nostalgia hit back to the days of The Shadow of Yserbius/Fates of Twinion, which were some of the earliest games I played. I think both your game engine and art style have somehow captured the core of this type of game, even being realtime, and without the multiplayer or RPG elements.

I'm a big fan of web first development and I'll be sure to use this as an example of what's possible.


Is there any particular reason you decided to go with q-e for turning instead of mouselook?


It's a decision we took in order to stay true to the genre of classic dungeon crawlers. We're planning to add mouse-look control because many people are asking for it.


rotation by only 90 degrees left/right is cumbersome for me... :/ I feel like I'm steering some weird stupid robot instead of dungeon warrior.

but I like overall feel and GUI, the way you give hints to user about keyshortcuts via dialog windows etc.


Please do. The nostalgia factor of this game was limited to, "oh right, I remember when controls used to be shit" for me.

Otherwise pretty fun. You could get more out of it by having higher upgrade paths, and using standard controls would make the top-tier upgrades less necessary.

The game is cool, the tech is impressive, but the controls are shite.


>Also, be sure to try the mobile version with your phone or tablet.

This. On desktop is nothing impressive, but on a phone it really amazed me - works very well, looks nice. And it's running in Safari. Good job. Will play it on my next bus ride, cheers.


Game is practically unplayable in Firefox Developer Edition on OSX. The first key I press works but then triggers 'Find' and focus shifts away from the game screen to the 'Find' input field. Any workaround?


Go to Preferences -> Advanced -> General

Uncheck "Search for text when I start typing"


Thanks for the bug report. This has not happened to me last time I tested it on Firefox. I will investigate the issue.


same here on Firefox ESR 38.2.0 on Windows


Could you please add it to the Firefox OS Marketplace here? https://marketplace.firefox.com/


This is a really fun. Been playing around with this on Firefox on Android an Chrome on Android. Great to see a game that transitions smoothly from desktop to mobile.

Noticed that on mobile once you exit fullscreen by pressing the Android back button there is not a way to get back into fullscreen using both Firefox and Chrome on Android.


Congrats! You've done a very good job, the game is really visually appealing.

I've noticed a slight delay between inputs and execution (<300ms). It might be the animations length, or just the fact that I've racked up the key repeat frequency of my keyboard, or simply that I usually play faster paced games :)


The keyboard handling seems a bit off. If you hold S and then press C, you'll stop moving backwards even though you're still holding S. I often thought I was running into a wall or some other obstacle while in fact my input was simply being ignored.


Found a bug (I think): it seems like the cooldown on the attack of the red guy who shoots fireballs resets when he moves. If you strafe to dodge a fireball at close range, he strafes and fires instantly again.


I got really, really excited when I saw the 'select your keyboard' option! I got sad again when there wasn't a Dvorak keyboard option. Is there any chance you'll be adding a Dvorak option?


Yes, several people have requested this so we'll add it soon.


Really great job. Is there something I need to enable in chrome to use hardware for graphics? The macbook with iris sounds like it's about to take off. Thank you


It's already using your GPU. Iris is just not a very powerful one, so we can't do much about it. We've actually noticed a better graphical performance on an iPhone 6 or iPad Air 2 than on a 13-inch Macbook Pro with Iris.


Great game, thanks!

One thing I noticed was after level 8 or so the sound started to stutter really badly.

FYI I'm using Firefox 40.0.2 on Arch Linux


Dvorak?


Bravo. keep it up.


Controls/movements are horrible... it makes the game unplayable. Why not Wolfenstein 3D like movements?


Sorry you felt that way. Keep Out! takes inspiration from dungeon crawlers (like Legend of Grimrock) which have similar old school controls.




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