FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD24 → Cannibal Slugmage of Eden

Cannibal Slugmage of Eden

By triliyn

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness374
Innovation973.06
Theme1292.79
Humor1332.23
Audio1961.69
Mood2341.84
Overall2472.26
Fun2621.76
Graphics2711.48

Comments

djtjj 2012-08-28 12:35

Opens but freezes or crashes after a few seconds.

Windows 7 64 bit

triliyn 2012-08-28 13:45

djtjj: Uh oh! Unfortunately I only really had time to test it on one other computer. Are you sure it actually crashes? The executable I currently have spawns a cmd window and spits out a LOT of errors, but runs fine after that.
If it is actually crashing, I have no idea what might be causing it, but I'll do some more testing and get back to you!

screamrawr 2012-08-29 19:28

It froze :/ And I didn't really understand how to play.

gidaio 2012-08-29 19:36

A very interesting idea, though the CMD window with errors is a little disconcerting... It needs a LOT more polish, but don't give up! I could be a great strategy game, especially multiplayer.

triliyn 2012-08-29 19:39

Sorry, I don't know what might have made it freeze.
There's not really a goal right now, but you can interact with the slug ecology by killing the slugs you don't like.

pickledbrain 2012-08-29 19:44

Bonus points for the name. It's a complicated game and without graphics it's hard to understand what is happening. I think I can see where you want to go with this game and it has potential. You just need to put more into the presentation and slowly teach people your magic system, which I understand was probably in your tutorial.

zx81 2012-08-29 19:46

It froze after a about 3 minutes, however the idea is pretty cool, and keeps up with the theme. It has somekind of a mood...
However there is no audio, and the game is barely started! It lacks colours, at leas the background, for an examole green background could represent grass.
It looks promising! ;)

triliyn 2012-08-29 20:10

Gidaio: I agree that it needs much more polish. I was SO disappointed that I didn't have time to add animations for spells, combat, and slug mating. :(

PickledBrain: Thank you! I am actually quite proud of the name. And yeah, I realize the presentation at this point is terrible. I was scrambling by the end and I was like an hour late for the Jam.

zx81: Sorry about the freeze. I really should have tested this on more computers, because its behavior doesn't seem consistent at all.
The graphics are intentionally minimalist, but I agree, a background would have been nice. I'm not sure how I feel about audio because I'm mainly in this for the programming, but maybe next time I'll try to have at least placeholder sounds.

tompudding 2012-08-29 20:30

I also got a freeze, but I was enjoying myself in a very confused sort of way before that. Good job.

infinitedog 2012-08-29 20:43

When I enter into the "magic" mode with m key I cannot do anything :/.

triliyn 2012-08-29 20:55

infinitedog: Unfortunately, magic mode kinda sucks right now. The biggest issue is that you can't really cancel; you can only get out by casting a spell (which is impossible if you have no slugs in your inventory). What did you try while in magic mode? You're only supposed to be able to click slugs (to eat them), click spells (to select them; this only works if you have enough mana for that spell), and click the ground (only after you've selected a spell; this casts it).
If you can't do any of these things, that is genuinely a problem. I'm planning to upload a post-compo version in a bit, but I don't know how much I'll be able to fix.

aarongordon 2012-08-29 21:30

Good ideas, and I'd like to see this polished up. But i think you guys bit off a bit more than you could chew for a 72 hour game jam. Learn from it and come back stronger!

triliyn 2012-08-29 21:52

AaronGordon: Thanks! Actually, I'm only one person, which explains why I was so rushed. I do plan to do a remake of Slugmage though (at this point I feel like that would be easier than to improve the mess I made of it at the end). I'm also about to release the source and a post-compo version with some minor improvements in a bit.

science4cake 2012-08-29 22:06

Reminded me of my college sims, hehehe. Well done.

x-0ut 2012-08-30 08:57

I played until my character was the only thing left and I had no idea what I was doing :D
It did freeze for me closing down.
Really does need some sort of tutorial.

norgg 2012-08-30 09:12

Interesting idea. There's a flaw in the game mechanic at the moment, in that to "win", you just need to grab a few slugs and cast the spell, which doesn't require using any of the other game mechanics at all. One way to fix this would be to have an inventory limited to 5 or 6 slugs (or limited by weight like you'd intended I guess), so you'd have to find a way to breed better ones before you can win.

triliyn 2012-08-30 13:20

X-Out: Yeah, even I have a hard time keeping the fonts alive. It's slightly better in my soon-to-be-released post-compo version; slugs have a small chance under certain conditions to spontaneously become fonts, but due to the way they behave in the compo version it almost never happens.

Norgg: Exactly. I hope to fix that in the post-compo version by adding the weight limit and hopefully also implement the win condition itself. (Right now when you cast Dawn, it sets the game state to "win", but after every spell it sets the game state back to "end-turn".)

josh-dreamland 2012-09-01 21:03

This is experimental prerelease support for the Windows platform: use at your own risk. "Your Kitten of Death awaits!"
WARNING: Error calling finalizer #<CLOSURE (LAMBDA # :IN INITIALIZE-INSTANCE)
{22981085}>: #<SIMPLE-ERROR "EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION" {24B6F3F1}>
VirtualAlloc: 0x1e7.
fatal error encountered in SBCL pid 55: handle_exception: VirtualAlloc failure

Welcome to LDB, a low-level debugger for the Lisp runtime environment.

jarnik 2012-09-02 15:13

Grabbing into empty space filled my inventory with green slugs (?). Pressing T and clicking dumped the whole inventory (and not just one slug). Clicking nearby slugs in magic mode did not work (a slug was not collected). Sounds like an interesting idea, would love to play that.

triliyn 2012-09-02 15:35

jarnik: currently you can only eat slugs from your inventory, so the last thing is not a bug (although I agree it would be nice if you could eat slugs directly if they're next to you).
The first two bugs are... interesting. Which version are you using? Did the multidrop thing only work with the green slugs from grabbing an empty space? Are both of these things replicable? I think I understand the drop thing given the grabbing bug, but I have no idea what could be causing the grabbing bug.

marudziik 2012-09-03 15:29

Pushing G twice spawns a green circle in the inventory, but it doesn't look like a slug. Game tends to freeze after various amounts of time. The idea is quite interesting, but it needs some more work. Would like to see a post-compo version.

triliyn 2012-09-03 20:19

Marudziik, I will probably not be developing the original slugmage anymore, but I plan to do a sequel with a more manageable codebase. I haven't started development on the sequel yet, but today I finished the first version of the UI library that I will be using. (I also have one more version of Slugmage that I've been meaning to upload that should fix a crash or two, but I'm not sure when I'll get around to that.)

repstyle 2012-09-07 12:56

Too too too complicated to play and understand this game for me. I never played this kind of game then i don't get it.

mohammad 2012-09-07 22:48

Wow good job!

goerp 2012-09-11 19:42

I like minimalistic games (dwarf fortress!) and from what I read there is al lot of depth> I was too tired from all the other entries to really try it so I wont rate it. Maybe later.

demonpants 2012-09-11 20:02

Any chance or a Mac version?

triliyn 2012-09-12 21:09

demonpants: unfortunately I don't have access to a Mac and I don't know any way to cross-compile lisp (although I'm working on getting a new lisp implementation running that can compile to C). I'll try to upload the source soon though. If anyone wants help compiling it, feel free to ask!

kibertoad 2012-09-14 21:12

Controls were kinda clunky, but I like the concept.

robcozzens 2012-09-15 04:48

I would try it if there were a web version.

rawbits 2012-09-16 07:00

Pressed 't', there was no slug in my inventory -> stuck -> no restart button - > quit...

triliyn 2012-09-16 12:37

RawBits, in the post compo version you can press escape to end your turn in emergencies like that. My fault for being uninformative, sorry.

jonathang 2012-09-17 16:07

I couldn't see what the challenge is - the slugs never attacked so I was free to just roam around and eat them until I could cast the Dawn spell