FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD30 → WorldLink

WorldLink

By mikethewayne

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness289
Theme7902.89
Humor9031.71
Audio9751.56
Mood10302.29
Innovation10872.30
Fun11192.16
Overall11452.40
Graphics11801.78

Comments

uprightpath 2014-08-25 17:21

You can package your game and upload it as a 'Porting' to make it easier.

mikethewayne 2014-08-26 09:41

Ok, done. Thanks for advice! I'll be honest, I was confused as how to upload the whole folder as it wouldn't let me, but then I discovered I could just package it with WinRAR.

rustybroomhandle 2014-08-26 10:20

Really like this concept. I love sim/management games and I'd love to see this continued. :)

ofursnati 2014-08-26 10:21

Fun game. Some sounds would have made a huge difference for the vibe. Solid entry.

kigurumidevs 2014-08-26 10:23

I really like sims like this ^^ But I am pretty unpatient and the game forces me to wait while traveling :)

mikethewayne 2014-08-26 10:33

I'm glad you like this! Sorry about the waiting, It was going to be a dodge/shoot the asteroid minigame while waiting, and have a travelling animation, but, you know, time.

bob_fish 2014-08-26 10:46

Quite fun, but you should reduce wait time. Keep working on this! add a Post-Ld version here so people can play it but not rate.

webfreak001 2014-08-26 10:49

ive bought 2 fast engines and cant do anything now. Did I win? :D

mikethewayne 2014-08-26 10:50

I'd refresh and only buy one fast engine, and a way to make money :D

vytheros 2014-08-26 11:22

Waiting was a bit ridiculous, although, it's a really good game.

sunflower 2014-08-26 12:37

Alright, after playing around a little and moving the game to a different folder (I guess web addresses dislike "#" in the middle of URL ^^"), I got some thoughts. They are mostly critical, but please don't let it discourage you, but rather learn from that.

First of all - instructions and interface! At the very beginning, I was completely confused and had no idea what to do. Later I've finally found out that I can buy seats and beds, and then accept passengers, but it still should have been explained properly in game, IMHO.

I won't really comment on the long waiting time, just a hint: if lack of features (like asteroids minigame) would make some aspect too annoying (like the waiting time), focus on quickly fixing that aspect (like setting the times to much lower values). I had to do similar thing in my game: slow movement would make walking through empty spaces terribly, terribly boring, so I added speed-up button.

Another thing are the options in requests selection screen. You pretty much have occupied whole space with 2 planets data, leaving no room for more. Having e.g. some list of planets to the left could make the game much easier to add new planets to, generally, and I doubt many people would find a sim with 3 planets all that fascinating. ^^"

Also, after looking into Main.js file (to fix the times, yes ^^") I've noticed that w8 function had 6 if/else blocks that did basically the same except for the first line. To save some copy-pasting, I recommend (easy version) remove all the lines from if/else blocks or (harder version at first, but greatly pays off later) make the distances configurable in some arrays of arrays, or even (very logical and easily manageable version) determine planets x/y/z coordinates in space and calculate the distance from 3d version of Pitagoras formula.

I guess you aren't very experienced programmer at the moment, are you? Well, keep improving; I'd like to tell "feel free to ask if you'd like some help", but so far I haven't found a system on this site that would allow communication between two members (like private messages); maybe I haven't looked hard enough? O.o"

(sooo, my longest comment so far is on a game of a genre I even don't particularly like; well, things like that happen, I guess...)

sunflower 2014-08-26 12:40

Uh, in my previous comment, in the "I recommend (easy version) remove all the lines from if/else blocks" part I meant:
"I recommend to (easy version) remove all the lines from if/else blocks except the first ones, copying the removed lines after the if/else blocks beforehand"
or something similar.
Sorry for the confusion. ^^"

mikethewayne 2014-08-26 13:03

Yeah, I get what you mean, thanks for feedback :). When I was creating the w8 function, I was quite tired (as most people are during ludum dare), so when looking back on it, I realise how inefficient it was. But at least it works. I'll change the variables now, so long as it's not cheating. Problem is, if you upgrade to max engines, there would be no wait at all, so therefore the minigame wouldn't be.

mikethewayne 2014-08-26 13:10

By the way, basic instructions are in the description. I might develop it further as a few people have requested a Post-LD version, and definitely include instructions.

doomista 2014-08-26 13:39

Nice entry, I am not into sims much, but I took my time to understand your game. Some error messages would be nice replace to a tutorial. For example you try to accept a passenger, but the message will tell you that you have to buy seats first. Also some sounds and no waiting time will be splendid

miwuc 2014-08-26 14:38

This has the potential for a good incremental game. Right now it's too basic but I'd like to see it expanded.
There are some big bugs. I made lots of money because when I landed somewhere, I had a negative number of cargo/passengers, and so I could fit a lot more than I had space for :) The UI was pretty intuitive but it needs some "max" button to fill to capacity, I had to do *a lot* of clicking.

xandy 2014-08-26 19:19

cool little management game. perfect to run in the background ;)

umu 2014-08-26 23:20

There have been interesting space trading games, but stripped to the core like this there isn't much to it. With the planned features I could see it being entertaining but I feel like it needs something special to put it above things like Elite.

43iscoding 2014-08-26 23:23

Interesting concept! If only graphics were AAA :D

mikethewayne 2014-08-26 23:35

Thanks for all the feedback! Due to the fact I spent less than 24 hours (read description), this ended up being more a concept / basic functioning core game. But as people like it, I've decided to work on it further for a Post-LD version. I opened a new Twitter account if you were interested in the concept and would like to check on the progress of a Post-LD version. All feedback helps!

lkr 2014-08-27 19:59

I'd love to see a more fleshed out version of the concept :)

As already mentioned, I didn't enjoy the waiting either (I ended up switching to a different tab while waiting). Maybe better engines could have a different gameplay value instead? Something like maybe using less fuel, thus saving money (assuming fuel would be a purchasable resource.)

joror 2014-08-27 20:01

Nice simple thing, liked the 'wait' to reach stuff. I am playing the game as I type this. ;) Music would have been great. Messages when you arrive to say how much money you made are needed. Loved to have messages when you first visit planets. :)

mikethewayne 2014-08-27 20:19

Once again thanks for the advice and feedback! Will start working on a Post-LD version soon!

rantt 2014-08-30 00:23

cool concept, I think it has a lot of potential.

vividhelix 2014-09-06 03:46

I liked the concept, but decided the waiting times are ridiculous. For future folks, if you read this, download the "Web" version and go into Main.js and modify this line: speed = (nengQuant * 1) + (fengQuant * 5) to something like speed = (nengQuant * 10) + (fengQuant * 50) to make the travel ten times faster :)