FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD29 → Shadows Below

Shadows Below

By heroesgravedev

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1503.56
Mood1753.52
Fun2103.27
Humor3202.70
Graphics3213.52
Theme3513.20
Innovation3563.04
Coolness131449

Comments

twelveplusplus 2014-04-29 02:32

times like these, i wish i had a linux box... your style looks cool though.

arrogant-gamer 2014-04-29 21:55

I do have a linux box, and tots want to play.

./Shadows Below: error while loading shared libraries: libfreeimage.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

arrogant-gamer 2014-04-29 21:58

Also, after installing libfreeimage-dev:

./Shadows Below: error while loading shared libraries: libglfw.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

sk16games 2014-04-30 16:38

Don't have Linux D': it just looks so cool, I want to play it :D

heroesgravedev 2014-05-02 06:02

arrogant.gamer: Try installing GLFW3

pyrogames 2014-05-02 23:38

I like this game. Good story, nice dialogue, cool graphics. When I first saw it I thought that it was zoomed too much, but it turned out to be okay. It's a bit annoying how fast the screen scrolls when he moves and how I can't keyboard repeat the arrow keys, but all in all a really good game

dreii 2014-05-02 23:40

Looks really pretty, wish there was a windows version :(

pvwradtke 2014-05-03 00:04

Nice action RPG, the control scheme reminds me of the original Y's game. Had some trouble to install all required libs, but once that was fine, I could run with no problem. I'm used to cross compile my games to Windows, but that's with C/C++. What did you use to make yours? Maybe i can lend a hand.

heroesgravedev 2014-05-03 00:47

pvwradtke: I'm using Rust (rust-lang.org), which due to being in-development, is quite tricky to get working.

I've tried both cross compiling from Linux with Mingw-gcc (which failed because Rust itself doesn't cross-compile correctly between some platforms yet), and building on Windows with MSYS, which failed because it doesn't pick up some libraries.

Next up I'm going to try building an SDL backend to the library I used and hopefully that'll work.

mjau 2014-05-03 01:03

You should include libfreeimage.so.3 and libglfw.so.3 in the download to make it easier for people to play your game =P (and maybe some of the things they depend on, too, if it's anything nonstandard. objdump -x file | grep NEEDED to check deps. don't include system stuff like glibc)

You can get the runtime linker to look for libraries in the executable's location by setting the executable's rpath to $ORIGIN when linking it*. Or if you can't set an rpath, provide a wrapper script that people run instead of the executable that sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH**

It's better that you fix that once for everyone than everyone having to hunt down dependencies before they can play your game

(I didn't try your game yet because Ubuntu doesn't have glfw3 in the default repos and i didn't feel like downloading and compiling that from source right now. Might try again later.)

* with gcc, you do that by passing -Wl,-rpath,$ORIGIN when linking, but you'll have to escape "$ORIGIN" from the shell and maybe your build system too depending on what you use. you can check if you got it right with ldd. in a makefile, you'd write -Wl,-rpath,'$$ORIGIN'

** here (if the executable's called "Shadows Below.bin"):
#!/bin/sh
cd "$(dirname "$(readlink -e "$0")")"
env LD_LIBRARY_PATH=".:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" "./Shadows Below.bin" "$@"

joao-kucera 2014-05-03 01:58

Plase, build to win or mac

heroesgravedev 2014-05-03 03:31

mjau: That's strange. freeimage and glfw aren't that uncommon libraries.

I'll look into it once I get the Windows build working.

heroesgravedev 2014-05-03 05:23

Okay, updated the GLFW build to include GLFW and freeimage, and uploaded a SDL version that can hopefully be ported to windows.

Unfortunately, I can't access my windows box right now so the wait will be a bit longer.

byexlusive 2014-05-03 05:47

good

zorfmorf 2014-05-03 10:14

Ran the gflw version without a problem. Cool game! Played through until the end. Works very well and it's good to see a ludum dare entry with a little bit more content that still seems finished.

fritzendugan 2014-05-03 13:23

Looked at the source to try and compile on windows, but it looks very incomplete. Where's all your hgutils stuff? Would be nice also if you included the libraries needed and such

x1212 2014-05-03 20:00

hmm ... tried both SDL and GLFW version ... but sadly the distro I'm using seems not to provide the necessary libs (SDL but no SDL2 and GLFW2 but not GLFW3) ... this looks really interesting, too bad I can't get my Linux to run it :(

x1212 2014-05-03 20:11

ok, renaming the libglfw.so provided into libglfw.so.3 did the trick.
nice game (as far as I played), especially a very consistent graphicsstyle

dreii 2014-05-03 21:23

:( program cant start because libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll is missing.

we just cant play each others games can we? lol

v3games 2014-05-03 21:55

I want to play your game but I'm missing the DLL mentioned above. I'll check back in a few days. Looks cool from screenshot.

heroesgravedev 2014-05-03 22:08

Damn. I didn't know it was going to require that.

I'll package it in as soon as I can.

konrad-zegis 2014-05-03 22:37

Woah, real roguelike in 72h, that's something!

Writings on tombstones were funny :)

But I found quite annoying those log messages. I have feeling like they hid something useful from me. Cleaning option, or making them fade away after some time would be great.

depp 2014-05-03 22:52

"The program can't start because libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll is missing from your computer..." I had the same kind of problems when porting my Linux game to Windows :-)

cosinep 2014-05-03 23:00

Same DLL error. Sorry!

someone 2014-05-03 23:27

That was great.
Interesting disparity between the stepped movement and smooth camera.
Pressing escape to close dialog was an odd choice. Closing it when you move would make more sense.
The SDL version looks for libfreeimage.so.3 and your included lib is libfreeimage.so, renaming it works.

heroesgravedev 2014-05-04 00:08

Okay, I've fixed up the windows build (or at least I hope I have)

dreii 2014-05-04 02:08

Nice little game! finally got to play it lol, Liked the old school style and the sword mechanic was sweet :)

btw my games web link is up...again! I promise this time lol

sk16games 2014-05-04 14:20

Thanks for letting me know about that it was for windows now, but I can't get it to work, it just opens up very quick a command prompt window and closes again, and nothing happens :(

hybridmind 2014-05-04 15:45

I really enjoyed playing this through to the end. The NPCs helping out during battles were a nice touch. I also found the health/energy balancing mechanic interesting. Nice work!

fritzendugan 2014-05-05 05:57

Debating about the genre of a game is kind of asinine, but to those calling this a roguelike I couldn't resist but say it hardly qualifies as one. The term is over-used anyway.

But anyway! Onto the game itself. Moving around feels very tedious, especially to start over again, partly because the content is all the same (so I'm not exploring anything new), but mostly because I don't know why there's that delay when I try to move. Basically, as soon as I tap the key I should move instantly, and if I hit it again I should move as soon as I hit it. If I hold in a move key, then you can introduce a small delay, but it should be smaller than it is.

Lots of areas to explore and a fair amount of text to read, which is fun. I like exploring and reading all the little messages and such. Combat however was severely lacking. There are basically no choices to make, I'm kind of just sitting watching a random number generator. The hp or damage mechanic is hardly interesting, because I basically just hold onto energy until my HP is low, and rinse-repeat, but it's a start. Even something as simple as choosing what equipment to wear at least gives me the opportunity to game the stats. Or if I could spend the power on different types of damage and different kinds of defenses (dodge-rate, armor, attack accuracy, minimum damage, maximum damage, crit chance, etc.)

Graphics were cool, reminded me of "Realm of the Mad God." Has that pseudo-retro feel. Really wish there were some music or sounds though. Not really seeing how the theme fits here? I guess because at some points you go underground, but it's not the strongest entry in terms of theme.

Parting words I'll just say that in order for this to really be fun there's definitely something missing, you need more interesting character development at the least. As it stands, it's pretty impressive in terms of content for 72-hours but the mechanics are simply lacking. Something to think about for next LD, I suppose.


Oh, and btw, if you're gonna plug your game on my page, the least you could do is give me a little more meaningful feedback than "interesting and fun mechanic." What that said to me was "yeah, I kinda played your game for a bit, but really I just want you to come back and play mine." Doesn't exactly give me a whole lot to work with in terms of trying to improve, ya know? ;) Anyway, thanks for playing

twelveplusplus 2014-05-09 18:06

I loved the graphics and all the text and stuff. the controls were unique but a little bit weird and a little too simplistic maybe.

main thing i didn't like was dying and having to start over from the beginning. :P :D

cosinep 2014-05-09 19:54

Really really fun adventure game! Loved the in-depth storyline. Liked the turn-based D&D-like warfare. When I died after coming all the way down the tunnel, hunting all the skeletons (which I found gave me less energy than they lost me health) and faced the king skeleton guy, and then died, I was extraordinarily frustrated to find that you did not checkpoint when you switched levels.

heroesgravedev 2014-05-09 22:28

I thought I had it balanced so that the skeletons would make you more powerful than losing you health, but it seems I was wrong.

Now that I think about it, checkpoints would've been a good idea, regardless.

I did realise the gameplay was very simplistic. I just didn't have enough time to make it more complex.

jiddo 2014-05-18 16:41

Of course. The first time I've bothered booting into Windows to rate LD entries I come across one of these very rare proper Linux entries. Oh well, the Windows build works great. :)

Graphics looks really nice and I'm very happy to see a game that feels as complete as this one. Much respect for that!

Gameplay wise the game is very nice, but I also ran out of health/energy once I had cleared out all the regular skeletons and started to attack the skeleton king. Perhaps I let myself be attacked by multiple enemies at once too much?

Anyways, great job!