Convulx

Category	Rank	Score
Coolness	1	100
Graphics	180	3.72
Audio	350	3.04
Humor	381	2.52
Fun	526	3.02
Mood	651	2.78
Overall	717	3.02
Innovation	958	2.55
Theme	1298	2.40

cybearg 2013-04-28 23:02

Neat game, though I think the gameplay needs some balancing or expanding. I played Master and didn't even notice that I had a limited amount of ammo. I would just spam the spacebar and kept pretty much all the astroids off me with lots of shots wasted. Finally, I ran out of shots and fairly easily kept dodging the asteroids until the time ran out. It didn't take any skill to win even on master.

It's an interesting idea, although since the perspective on the ship is bizarre, it can be tough to tell the trajectory of an asteroid and how close it will come to you. It's certainly unique because of that perspective, but it can be visually unintuitive.

chman 2013-04-29 07:02

Interesting game, but as Cybearg said, you have some balance issues to fix. The perspective is fine once you get it. More asteroid types and behaviors would help.

xeke_death 2013-04-29 12:10

Looks nice, and interesting perspective.

fabienporee 2013-04-29 12:13

I really like how you move in this game.

kewry 2013-04-29 12:14

I like how the game feels but you definitely need to add more it ends way too fast, some upgrades, more enemies

depp 2013-04-29 12:15

Love the sparkling stars in the background, lovely sprites too. Couldn't figure out what all the bars meant, or what the numbers meant.

caranha 2013-04-29 12:15

This looks really cool, but I couldn't get it to run on Windows7 with Java7... Clocking on the executable Jar results in nothing. I will try again later from my linux box.

Cheers!

tiffi 2013-04-29 12:15

kind of love the grafics and its a bit easy (even on master).

Jeremias 2013-04-29 12:18

Very solid and fun game. I beat all the difficulty levels except the last one (without dodging the asteroids instead of shooting :P). The second weapon type is a bit to weak in my opinion. It should have area damage or you can make it explode where you want. Different asteroids would be nice too. The problem of a player who dodges instead of shooting could be fixed by making not the ship but only the cannon movable. Keep up the work!

exergy 2013-04-29 12:22

Fun with the turret "hanging" along the side of the ship.
Nice music!

yezu 2013-04-29 12:25

Crashes instantly "SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0x449fabff, pid=5402, tid=3063802688"

OpenJDK 1.7.0_19, Fedora 18

syre 2013-04-29 13:28

too much review:
it's pretty easy, i only died on the ballsofsteel difficulty, and i didn't remember the force reload button. i guess the difficulty is more in getting high scores, but your score disappears really fast after you win, and instantly after you die. jeremias said dodging was a problem, what's the deal with that? you want all these passengers to die?
the only bug i could find was a graphical menu thing: options don't become un-highlighted if you move the cursor between menu items below or to the left and go fast enough to skip the gap. man that's a pointless bug report. it works, that's what i'm saying.
i thought that the mines were useless but i was wrong. they're good for asteroids that are too close and to help avoid running out of ammo. i don't understand why you'd get paid more to destroy more asteroids. maybe it's a cruise ship and they want to put on a show for the guests?
final score: 'salright

griz 2013-04-29 14:52

Thanks everybody for all the comments and suggestions!

@Caranha
Have you tried running the game with debug.bat?
If still nothing happens, try typing "java - version in the windows command window. Do you get any output then?

@Yezu
http://slick.javaunlimited.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4812
This might be related to your problem. Please answer if you'll try this solution and if it works for you.

josefnpat 2013-04-29 15:41

I got the same error as the other folks.

http://slick.javaunlimited.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4812

Unfortunatly, I realllllly don't want to install the oracle drivers, as the last time I did that, it was a total shitstorm.

kreddor 2013-04-29 15:42

Nice game, cute graphics (I like how the guy is hanging outside the ship), but a bit too easy and repetitive. I beat it on master on the first try. Maybe some more variant in incoming rocks and obstacles?

invaderjim 2013-04-29 15:50

Great job! Love the graphicals.

griz 2013-04-29 16:20

@josefnpat
I've uploaded the game *.sh file and added it to the links. Hopefully that'll fix it for you.

agmcleod 2013-04-29 17:15

Heyo, getting an error myself on osx. I know distribution with slick2d on various natives can be a pain. I installed jdk 7, and ran: java -jar Convulx.jar. Error received was: _NSJVMLoadLibrary: NSAddLibrary failed for /libjawt.dylib

comrad_gremlin 2013-04-29 17:33

I wouldn't call it minimalistic :) Looks very nice though, although, as noted above, asteroids could use a bit more different behaviors.

cake_catastrophe 2013-04-29 17:44

Love the visuals here, the awesome ship sprite (right down to the little blinking consoles in the cockpit) gives it a cool industrial future feel. The gameplay is a bit basic, could have done with more than just asteroids to shoot at, but the way the ship moves is fun.

kannas 2013-04-29 17:53

It was interesting, though too slow. I think a mouse controlled turret could have been a better choice, opportunally raising the speed of the asteroids and the ship. Also, Congrats for the cool sprites, i like them :D

griz 2013-04-29 18:34

@agmcleod
You could try editing the bat file to:

cd directory
export JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
java -jar Convulx.jar

Just make sure to input the correct java directory, as it might be different for you. This method might make a copy of the game in your jdk folder so don't forget to clean it up later on.

Again thanks for all the comments and suggestions!

kochb 2013-04-29 20:40

Very short game play.

kortuga98 2013-04-29 20:46

Neat game, although I'd liked to have seen more expansion on certain aspects. This seems like the start to something awesome!

nicealexanderas 2013-04-29 23:40

Very fun bro nice work! ... i was like: "NOOOOO, GO DOWN GO DOWN, GO UP GO UP" XD also nice music :D

aare 2013-04-30 00:18

I really like your aproach to the design of the space ship. Quite innovative.

deathray 2013-04-30 01:22

Graphics were great. I liked looking at this man's work environment.

stryphe 2013-04-30 01:22

Nicely done!

merkoth 2013-04-30 01:23

Nice game, I really liked the music :)

pinothefrog 2013-04-30 01:25

Tried to run it on my mac but the screen just convulx'ed and the game closed.

phocker 2013-04-30 04:42

that was very fun -- nice graphics and very simple to play -- nice effort

richtx 2013-04-30 04:44

Liked it. Like a sideways astrosmash. Could have perhaps been easy to add progression by breaking the asteroids in smaller pieces that head in predictable paths. I only say that because I wanted to play more. Good job.

geoege 2013-04-30 16:54

The game is quite simple but works well.
Pretty love the graphics and shooting on meteor.
But what does the Blue bar in the bot of the screen ?

t800 2013-04-30 16:57

really enjoyed it!
check out my game ppl!
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=18650

griz 2013-04-30 17:11

@T800
Well done with cheap advertising your game in comment section of other people submissions.

umu 2013-04-30 22:04

It seems like the core unique here is that your hit box is significantly larger than the thing that you directly control. I actually like this: I would like it if some AAA developers adopted this for their turret sections. The movement of the turret against the ship looks great.

It would be nice if the ammo counter and other meters were a bit larger. Beyopnd that, it's jsut a matter of some mechanical expansion and maybe making everything a bit faster.

P.S. Is the spaceship in any way related to Spaceballs?

griz 2013-04-30 22:57

@nintendoeats
"Is the spaceship in any way related to Spaceballs?"

Haha, not at all. You got me curious enough to check it though. It's not similar at all for me, maybe besides the amount of back thrusters :).

benw 2013-05-01 01:13

Neat little game, I was confused by the ui, health was relatively easy to figure out but since I didn't run out of ammo on the lower difficulties I had a hard time figuring out the ammo bar. I'm still not sure what the lowest bar is for. Also it looks like you're collecting money or currency but I think they may just be points. I think it would be a fun game if you expanded on it a bit.

mikeware 2013-05-03 07:37

The movement aspect of pushing the ship at the limits was interesting, but with all the numbers and bars on the screen it was hard to coordinate how everything was related and what my main 'mission' was. I didn't feel that sense of danger from the oncoming asteroids nor reward for destroying them.

john_conder9 2013-05-05 22:20

That was pretty fun! Took a bit of trying to aim properly but that was cool - the HUD had some button-looking things / selectable-looking things below the ammo but I couldn't figure out if it was possible to select them - I'm guessing not. I liked the different difficulty levels and the "cheat" codes to get scan line mode / the hardest setting. Awesome job overall!

berkano 2013-05-08 22:28

Beautiful GFX, SFX + music! Would love to have more levels.

garethiw 2013-05-15 13:00

Nice little shooter!