Love that music Think you should keep it in. Space Farming FTW. :-D The parallax scrolling is is very cool and already it has that action feel to it. Speed of bullets, rotation etc perfect.
Have to repeat: I'm not sure what's wrong with the music, I almost think it would be better to adjust the game's aesthetic to something more like the music instead of vice versa. It seems to suit the Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime inspiration aesthetically :)
I should emphasize that this build is very shitty compared to the version I have in my head. But you can't play the version in my head yet so this will have to do.
Wow man, really like the demo so far. I envy your ability to add juice to simple shapes like that. The pulsating menu item and select ship arrow. I wont even mention the blackhole sucking in objects.... Gaaaaaaah.
And that's just the menu... I shall try the actual game next...
@Kobusvdwalt9 This is so you....especially the art, which really reminds me of thumper and cluster. I've been working on something similar to this for months, and feel kinda hurt that you managed to get the game too feel this good and juice it as much as you have in such a short period. My hat comes of to you good sir. I really liked the drift on your ship, which makes that you can float into a direction with enough speed to turn and fire, while still still moving in the direction you wanted too. Also like the small touches like the bullets exploding on the planets and the look of the pick ups. Can't wait for the next version of this.
Hey @Kobusvdwalt9 I gave this a play. It's feeling pretty great, loving the parallax and the bouncy planets. Only input I have is to consider using a different color for enemies and their bullets, when in the middle of a fight with 3, 4 other things all shooting at the same time I found it difficult to see whats happening, otherwise I quite like the controls. Keep on keepin' on!
I think it will be fun if I write out my design thoughts and look at it when the compo ends. So here is whats going on in my head atm : I am adding health that regenerates because I found that there are moments that players have low health and they don't want to engage in epic battles because they are afraid of a game over.
The game needs some kind of reward for killing enemies. Initially I thought that the motivation for killing the enemies would be that the player would want to progress to the next level. This is cool but it means that there would need to be a fixed number of enemies, which means that the player could just blast of into space and come back to pick off the enemies one by one until they are gone. That isn't really fun.
So I decided to add planets/ships that randomly spawn no matter where you are. So there is no center of a level. I also decided to add a score counter to the game to be the medium range motivation.
Now we have a problem.. If we destroy all of the spawners and cannons on a planet/ship there will be a bunch of planets that have nowhere to go. Sooo I decided to let the player be able to destroy the planets but only after all of the subsections have been destroyed. The planets will get smaller every time it is hit and will eventually vanish to spawn a powerup.
I will probably have this version up by the end of tomorrow.
Hi there. I just gave it a try. I really like the control of the ship. I like that you can turn faster when your thrusters are not firing. It makes it feel like you are drifting around and shooting while going backwards like a real bad ass! :) I would like the shooting to be a bit more accurate. I struggled to make well aimed shots the bullets' trajectory varying so much. May the Accuracy is something you can upgrade later on in the game by collecting stuff.
@Kobusvdwalt9 This is spectacular. I do miss the "Old McDonald" soundtrack though ;-P (not really)
I really like how once you take out planetary defenses, you can attack the planet and take it out. It shrinks with every shot. The geometry getting in the way is also interesting. There is a lot happening at any given time and I sometimes wish I could turtle behind a shield and just watch all the mayhem unfold.
I would love to see an alteration in speed. All bullets fly at a predictable constant frenetic speed. It would be nice to see an alternative like a torpedo flying at a different/slower speed to mix things up, but inflicting more damage. Maybe some slower but more damage resistant ships protecting planets and resources would be cool too?
This feels awesome. I was looking for the slot where I can insert coins, but my CD player already serves as a coffee cup holder...
Awesome work Kobus. I can't wait to see where you take this next.
Looks like a lot of fun and you followed the spirit of the competition supremely well.
In the video when you bounced between the planets, I was hoping to see a scene where you have to fly through a tunnel or string of planets with rotating pointy and sharp things so that the alien noobs die behind you during collision like in the movies...
New build is up. Ive made some substantial progress by adjusting my scope. The game feels like a game now and there is a distinct game loop. I was having some trouble with the game loop but I just reverted to what I know reasonably well. If this comp has thought me anything is that : juice cant fix a broken game. I need to make more games with more variety so that I can learn more about what makes a game loop work.
I will be making some small changes and perhaps adding a enemy or two but the game is basically done.
FYI, you can more than half your download size by deleting the .pdb files in your build directory. They are the .net-code-to-intermediate-language databases, useful for debugging and your audience doesn't need them. (I see you deleted them for the final build)
@Fengol That is a great idea !!! I will do the same when I play the other entries. And yes the damn pdb files are back. I don't know why but for a while they weren't there so I kinda got used to not having to delete them.
Thanks again for the video and for playing. I will write my post mortem tonight ;)
So I had to remove the music because I screwed up and waited till the last day to ask for permission whilst stupidly assuming that it would be ok to use that particular track. Ive removed the music and sorted it out with @francoisvn
Just played the final build for the competition. It's brilliant! Love the cool little effects like camera shake and pulsing buttons, music is great too. It's so much fun to play. I'm not the most experienced gamer but I haven't played a non-linear arcade shooter ever, I think it's a solid concept with room for expansion if you wanted to go there. Looking forward to playing this weekend!
- Didn't see any of the pickups mentioned in previous comments... Did you remove those or am I just not good enough? Pickups would be awesome - like a shield, speed up, some different weapons...
- As far as scoring goes, seems you get more points for bigger planets, even if they're not well defended. Which is a pretty cool mechanic cos you can go looking for big planets with small defenses, but might also be nice to be rewarded when you've done the hard work of destroying lots of subsystems. Maybe the amount of subsystems on a planet could act as a multiplier for the points you get when destroying that planet?
- It's a bit harsh when a new planet spawn right next to you or on top of you and it kinda ruins my sense of achievement when I've just cleared a certain area. It also breaks the sense of an open world that you're exploring when you see a planet spawn. Maybe it would be better to always spawn new planets off screen and leave an area clear once a planet has been destroyed there? But that might not be what you're going for.
- Art-wise the only thing I'm not sure about is these spiky things - they kind of don't seem to fit in the world - could these maybe be asteroids or alien ships or something?
But overall so enjoyable and it just works. Still haven't hit that high score of 20 000! But I will...
What went wrong : The fact that I didn't have a gameloop in mind when I started was troublesome. It meant that I didn't quite know where I was heading. I tried to cover this up by adding juice and more juice but it didn't really fix anything. This is a pattern in my games that ive recognized so I will try to address this in future games. There was about 7 days where I couldn't work on the game because I hosted a house party and then got sick afterwards. So it would have been great to have that extra 7 days.
What went right: I am really happy with how juicy the game is. I also played around with post processing effects which is something I haven't done before and it looked great compared to the vanilla game. This is also my first time using hitpause which is a subtle effect that has a rather large influence on the "game feel".
Things to differently : Find more sources of potential music. Ive been using Jukio's music quite a bit (because its just so fucking amazingly good) so this time I didn't even think twice about using his stuff. In the end I couldn't use the particular track I had in mind and thus the game now has no music. So I will start reaching out to some local musicians to collaborate on some projects and hopefully in the future I will have more options available to me.
To Be honest, I preferred the version with health, and health pick ups, but also completely understand why you decided to make the changes. The spikey circle things felt rushed and unnecessary. A missed opportunity perhaps. All in all, I really enjoyed this little game, and probably spent way too much of my time playing this.
Comments
I should emphasize that this build is very shitty compared to the version I have in my head. But you can't play the version in my head yet so this will have to do.
As always, any feedback would be appreciated.
And that's just the menu... I shall try the actual game next...
I think it will be fun if I write out my design thoughts and look at it when the compo ends.
So here is whats going on in my head atm :
I am adding health that regenerates because I found that there are moments that players have low health and they don't want to engage in epic battles because they are afraid of a game over.
The game needs some kind of reward for killing enemies. Initially I thought that the motivation for killing the enemies would be that the player would want to progress to the next level. This is cool but it means that there would need to be a fixed number of enemies, which means that the player could just blast of into space and come back to pick off the enemies one by one until they are gone. That isn't really fun.
So I decided to add planets/ships that randomly spawn no matter where you are. So there is no center of a level. I also decided to add a score counter to the game to be the medium range motivation.
Now we have a problem.. If we destroy all of the spawners and cannons on a planet/ship there will be a bunch of planets that have nowhere to go. Sooo I decided to let the player be able to destroy the planets but only after all of the subsections have been destroyed. The planets will get smaller every time it is hit and will eventually vanish to spawn a powerup.
I will probably have this version up by the end of tomorrow.
I really like the control of the ship.
I like that you can turn faster when your thrusters are not firing.
It makes it feel like you are drifting around and shooting while going backwards like a real bad ass! :)
I would like the shooting to be a bit more accurate. I struggled to make well aimed shots the bullets' trajectory varying so much.
May the Accuracy is something you can upgrade later on in the game by collecting stuff.
Well done so far!
Karl
Feedback would be appreciated !
I really like how once you take out planetary defenses, you can attack the planet and take it out. It shrinks with every shot. The geometry getting in the way is also interesting. There is a lot happening at any given time and I sometimes wish I could turtle behind a shield and just watch all the mayhem unfold.
I would love to see an alteration in speed. All bullets fly at a predictable constant frenetic speed. It would be nice to see an alternative like a torpedo flying at a different/slower speed to mix things up, but inflicting more damage. Maybe some slower but more damage resistant ships protecting planets and resources would be cool too?
This feels awesome. I was looking for the slot where I can insert coins, but my CD player already serves as a coffee cup holder...
Awesome work Kobus. I can't wait to see where you take this next.
In the video when you bounced between the planets, I was hoping to see a scene where you have to fly through a tunnel or string of planets with rotating pointy and sharp things so that the alien noobs die behind you during collision like in the movies...
I will be making some small changes and perhaps adding a enemy or two but the game is basically done.
Feedback would be awesome !!
This has been great fun and ive learned a ton, looking forward to the next one.
Also, don't forget to do a postmortem.
Thanks again for the video and for playing. I will write my post mortem tonight ;)
Another lesson I can attribute to compG !
- Didn't see any of the pickups mentioned in previous comments... Did you remove those or am I just not good enough? Pickups would be awesome - like a shield, speed up, some different weapons...
- As far as scoring goes, seems you get more points for bigger planets, even if they're not well defended. Which is a pretty cool mechanic cos you can go looking for big planets with small defenses, but might also be nice to be rewarded when you've done the hard work of destroying lots of subsystems. Maybe the amount of subsystems on a planet could act as a multiplier for the points you get when destroying that planet?
- It's a bit harsh when a new planet spawn right next to you or on top of you and it kinda ruins my sense of achievement when I've just cleared a certain area. It also breaks the sense of an open world that you're exploring when you see a planet spawn. Maybe it would be better to always spawn new planets off screen and leave an area clear once a planet has been destroyed there? But that might not be what you're going for.
- Art-wise the only thing I'm not sure about is these spiky things - they kind of don't seem to fit in the world - could these maybe be asteroids or alien ships or something?
But overall so enjoyable and it just works. Still haven't hit that high score of 20 000! But I will...
What went wrong :
The fact that I didn't have a gameloop in mind when I started was troublesome. It meant that I didn't quite know where I was heading. I tried to cover this up by adding juice and more juice but it didn't really fix anything. This is a pattern in my games that ive recognized so I will try to address this in future games.
There was about 7 days where I couldn't work on the game because I hosted a house party and then got sick afterwards. So it would have been great to have that extra 7 days.
What went right:
I am really happy with how juicy the game is. I also played around with post processing effects which is something I haven't done before and it looked great compared to the vanilla game. This is also my first time using hitpause which is a subtle effect that has a rather large influence on the "game feel".
Things to differently :
Find more sources of potential music. Ive been using Jukio's music quite a bit (because its just so fucking amazingly good) so this time I didn't even think twice about using his stuff. In the end I couldn't use the particular track I had in mind and thus the game now has no music.
So I will start reaching out to some local musicians to collaborate on some projects and hopefully in the future I will have more options available to me.