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Ant Slayer
Ant Slayer
By kharza
View on Wayback Machine
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Coolness | 3 | 71 | | |
| Fun | 232 | 3.18 | | |
| Graphics | 236 | 3.33 | | |
| Audio | 259 | 2.91 | | |
| Humor | 308 | 2.48 | | |
| Overall | 349 | 3.12 | | |
| Mood | 437 | 2.67 | | |
| Theme | 770 | 2.27 | | |
| Innovation | 815 | 2.00 | | |
Comments
The game was alright. It was very brief and straight forward, and the sounds weren't very good, but I found it funny that an ant will always point towards you, and somehow walk, even when you are on a platform MUCH Higher than their current Y, so it looked like they merged with the floor. That made me laugh my ass off!
With the theme I kinda did the same thing you did with your submission, a very small level with tons of dudes, especially the last level. Weird how the enemies don't have collisions for themselves, so they all died after I grouped them all together and shot a few times.
I think this game is victim to the 'over-ambition' syndrome, in which developers have this awesome idea for a game, but ran out of time and had to submit what was finished of it. This is better than giving up, however, so I'm glad you pulled through, because this has potential to be a fun mindless shooter!
Overall it wasn't a bad game, but i'm sure if you had more time it could of been much better. But now that the entry is in, you can spend some time fixing it up a bit, and make it an awesome game! ;)
kharza
2012-04-24 04:15
Yey a comment! Thanks! Yes I wanted to do 5 levels and introduce a new weapon on each with a boss at the end. But really the whole time I was hoping I'd think up some clever idea that fit the theme.
I'm actually fixing up my ludum dare 21 game for xbox live indie games. It doesn't use this code-base, as it's full of license confusion.
By the way a friend is seeing a crash. Trying to figure out what it is, maybe ATI related?
kharza
2012-04-24 05:15
My friend Dragonsix helped me track down the problem (we think). It has something to do with having windows in french, and is some sort of text problem. It fails trying to grab a camera entity from the map (the entity stuff is all text). I'm currently trying to make my windows french to try it out and fix it. If I find it I'll put a new link to a different exe. Big thanks to Dragonsix for helping me with this!
kharza
2012-04-24 21:58
Yes I got french installed and my material system works with strings a lot, feeding vectors into shaders as like "" + vec.X etc... The .net string stuff would convert the decimals into commas and the shaders would get very confused. I'm uploading a fix slowly, when it's done I'll edit with a second link to ... a decimalfixed version
murrayl
2012-04-25 00:05
That was pretty fun - I played through it a few times.
There's nothing wrong with the graphics (aside from the ants pointing directly at you all the time, as Phobos001 said), but it would've been nice to have some more visual feedback on the damage I was doing. Obviously you hear the gun fire, but unless an ant actually died it was very hard, if not impossible, to tell if I'd actually hit them or not.
Something as simple as a blood particle system, a 'damage dealt' number (ala Borderlands) or a 'hurt' animation on the ants would've done wonders for the feel of the game.
chtulhu
2012-04-25 00:09
I downloaded your game.
It crashed.
I read that XNA was need.
I downloaded XNA.
Your game worked during 5 seconds but it crashed again.
I downloaded .NET again
Your game crashed again after 5 seconds.
:/
It let you some informations. Sorry windows gave it to me in french. Maybe "System.ArgumentOutOfRange" will help you...
Signature du problème :
Nom d’événement de problème: CLR20r3
Signature du problème 01: ludum23.exe
Signature du problème 02: 1.0.0.0
Signature du problème 03: 4f94bb43
Signature du problème 04: mscorlib
Signature du problème 05: 4.0.0.0
Signature du problème 06: 4e181ae3
Signature du problème 07: 222
Signature du problème 08: 18
Signature du problème 09: System.ArgumentOutOfRange
Version du système: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Identificateur de paramètres régionaux: 1036
Information supplémentaire n° 1: 0a9e
Information supplémentaire n° 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Information supplémentaire n° 3: 0a9e
Information supplémentaire n° 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
devwil
2012-04-25 00:28
***I'm posting this on all non-browser games I bring up in an attempt to encourage folks to make browser games next time around. Do not take it personally.***
When hundreds of people make non-browser games, that means that, to play all of the entries, I would need to download hundreds of games to my computer. I typically use OS X, so Windows-only entries are particularly inconvenient.
Please consider making a browser game next time.
kharza
2012-04-25 00:32
Chtulhu, yep that's the european decimal problem, it is fixed in a link in my description text. And devwil, find me a development environment for the web that could produce the game I just made and I'll be happy to use the web.
benw
2012-04-25 00:53
It really needs some sort of projectile animation to provide feedback to the player. Also I couldn't find out how to get the ammo pack behind the flashing light.
parthon
2012-04-25 00:56
This game was kinda fun, but over way too fast. Not very original, but I liked the clean/retro art style, and the music was enjoyable. There could be some potential here.
kharza
2012-04-25 00:58
I agree with the feedback. There is an ant hurt sound but it is overpowered by the gunfire noises. If you hit a big ball of ants with a rocket, you'll know though :)
I feel silly for making those boxes. I was going to make an ant hill type world, but I forgot what I was doing and started making standard fps geometry haha.
I'm only playing Web or OSX games, but your screen shots and time-lapse look really impressive!
Haha, that was fun! Really enjoyed it and I liked the over-the-top ending. Neat music as well! Just wish I could see whether a bullet hit or not :P
envy3d
2012-04-25 05:36
Cool short game. I'm sure this must have been difficult to finish in time and I don't even want to imagine how long it must have taken to model everything!
kharza
2012-04-25 05:54
I did the ant quickly, and the gun models I flew through, but the levels took awhile. I was having problems with quark repainting the window so I couldn't see what I had selected. If you check out my timelapse you can see I barely spent any time in max compared to quark.
I need to expand my level building tools to read collada format, but it's difficult to do, as you have to try to build convex volumes from arbitrary geometry.
The music seems really pro and the level design isn't too shabby. One question - why does Lord British want to know about my feats? It's true I'm a mighty ant slayer but he's been to space and looked down upon us like we were ants. What I'm trying to say is, nice job!
kharza
2012-04-25 08:06
Haha thanks!
Really impressed with this one. Great work!
piman
2012-04-25 12:11
I can't rate this because I don't have a Windows system. Sorry.
I was unable to play because it could not find a suitable graphics card.
The ants scared the shit out of me. No joke. But pretty fun! Some things. You should be able to move while in air. Also the player only jumps when you let go of the space bar. I'm sure others have said that though up above.
kharza
2012-04-25 18:59
Sorry about that Susan, I had planned on attempting to switch to the reach graphics profile, but I forgot about it. Using hidef means that it won't run on netbooks and the like.
I am glad it actually tells you what is wrong though. That must be automatic. If you are missing the redist or framework it just unceremoniously crashes with no clues as to why (they should fix that).
kroltan
2012-04-25 20:44
Nice game, but could have visual feedback on damage and be a little longer.
"...find me a development environment for the web that could produce the game I just made and I'll be happy to use the web." Unity.
sirpalee
2012-04-25 21:23
The graphics worked well for me, the movement, level design, the enemies were also fine. But please, add some visual feedback next time, I didn't know if I'm hitting them with the shotgun or not. Otherwise, it's pretty solid. Great work!
kharza
2012-04-25 21:29
I've attached all the raw source art I used to make this. Some of the weapons I never saved (oops), I just have the collada exports.
omaha
2012-04-26 03:52
couldn't run it on my mac or linux boxes :(
The look controls were really sensitive while using the Xbox controller-- if this could be adjusted, that would be great :P. Otherwise, it is a pretty solid start (especially in just 48 hours).
vilborg
2012-04-27 03:07
I can't run your game. If you go into Project Properties and change the Hi-Def profile to the Reach profile, it will be more accessible to those of us with older computers. I'd love to play another game made in XNA, but the graphics option seems to prevent that.
kharza
2012-04-27 17:05
Yea sorry about that. It's not an easy switch for me as I use some shader model 3 stuff, and 32 bit indices everywhere. I'll be sure to do that before next ludum dare though. And hopefully by then I'll have a web option.
I wish the jump happened on keypress and not keyrelease but overall it was pretty fun! Killing ants sure got a whole lot tougher! How do I report my win to Lord British? xD
jeffz
2012-04-30 01:31
reminds me of doom, i fragged and i had fun.
datamosh
2012-05-03 08:03
In gameplay didn't drive me crazy, but it was good and I feel like it has a lot of potential! Graphics are stunning as they are, I liked them. But I had to install a bunch of stuff to play!
I enjoyed playing it, would have liked to have more levels. But the weapon variety was good.
ace
2012-05-06 20:11
A nice entry, although I found the fact that weapons don't have any shoot/hit effects kind of confusing. You have no idea if you're actually hitting the ants or not.
Could've used a way of switching control setup though, I had to unplug my 360 controller if I wanted to use mouse+keyboard.
What the... at the end I blew up some ants and loads more appeared! Hell! Chaos! At least I killed them all! Funny ants.
More feedback on shots and more ammo would be better, but overall a very nice game! Good work! =)
kharza
2012-05-06 20:46
They pile up at the doorways so it seems like it is just one ant with a bunch of legs but it's really a whole bunch :D No pathfinding or collision. Thanks for all the ratings and comments! Most I've ever had <3
It was okay, I liked the graphics,the guns didn't seem too different, none of them were really any better than each other.
cmo7
2012-05-07 17:12
Nice lighting!
icefox
2012-05-10 09:02
Pretty cool! I like the engine and lighting for some reason. The game itself is a little underdeveloped (weapon hit effects would have added a lot), but fighting giant doom ants was fun. (I wish you were an ant as well, taking on other ants in deadly mandible-to-mandible combat... am I weird?)
raptor85
2012-05-11 21:54
cant test due to XNA4 dep