FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD35 → System Shift

System Shift

By edve98

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness371
Mood3063.15
Graphics5412.86
Innovation5822.92
Fun5922.94
Overall6363.00
Theme8082.71

Comments

redpanda_ua 2016-04-18 18:50

Is your custom text based game engine, open source? Could others use it before LD? Coz you can't use that otherwise in compo.

edve98 2016-04-18 21:44

Yes, my engine is open source (on GPL3 license, that's why my game is on GPL3 too) and is hosted on GitHub (so anybody can use it as long as their game is also open sourced with GPL3). I just forgot to add it because I posted this submission really late at night - sorry!

linver 2016-04-19 14:29

Sounds like a nice Old School game!
But I amn't having Linux in my hands at this moment to play and score :'(

edve98 2016-04-19 14:57

Just uploaded a project .zip where single 'make' command will build and run the game. If you are on Windows you need to have Cygwin installed though (not sure if MinGW would do it). I should have done this long ago but I was kind of busy. Oh well...

diebackstudios 2016-04-19 15:18

Good game m8 i loved the old classic theme :D

holyblackcat 2016-04-19 16:00

Nope, sadly mingw-w64 does not work, it lacks proper libraries.

It would be nice if you would make a windows version for us.

Btw, RedPanda is wrong. The rules no longer say that you need to share your engine before the compo.

edve98 2016-04-19 16:20

Sadly my engine does not support Windows yet - I'll get to work on it pretty soon though. Hopefully I'll finish Windows support until voting ends.

About the rules: it is said "If you’re using an internal library, to participate in the Compo, you will be required to share it." My engine would probably count as "internal library". But I'm not really sure, correct me if I'm wrong.

upwily 2016-04-19 16:27

Unfortunately I was unable to play "version `GLIBCXX_3.4.21' not found" on Linux Mint

prudiiarca 2016-04-19 16:58

Better put some time into exporting the game next time. I really wanted to play it, but honestly am too lazy to deal with compilers and stuff...

edve98 2016-04-19 17:08

@Prudiiarca Yeah I know. I'm planning to add Windows support on my engine until voting ends. OS X version is not coming though - I have nowhere to compile it from (and compiling from Linux looks messy, I'd rather get Windows version going).

Also, if you're on OS X and have dev tools already installed all you have to do is run single 'make' command :)

remmy 2016-04-19 17:08

Heh, i liked it!

One complaint: An info how to win would have been nice, at my first run i got bored after a while and then killed myself on purpose, only to see that my score wasnt saved because i lost. Then i looked into the source and saw that it was rng-based (the chance is 1/30 [1/3 for no door, 1/10 for win], so on average you have to walk into 30 rooms to find an end which is quite a bit).

I found a win in the second run, but i think the score/win system isnt optimal, because now the score just says "enemies i killed before i finally found an end" ^^

edve98 2016-04-19 17:10

@Upwily huh, I have no idea why would it do that. I'll have to look into that!

edve98 2016-04-19 17:17

@remmy thanks for you comment! Yeah, the help page was a bit rushed and I forgot winning conditions. I also wanted to get something more done with score and gameplay but I just ran out of time. I'm thinking about participating with the the same (improved) engine on next LD. I'm sure my next game would be much more enjoyable :P

bobismijnnaam 2016-04-20 19:17

Very cool! A simple but intuitive and fun game :-) Could've used some more in-depth mechanics but the nethack style make up for it. Maybe next time add a storyline?

thecain 2016-04-20 19:29

One of the very few games in existance that is Linux compatible, but not Windows compatible.

megabrutal 2016-04-20 20:02

And the first game I get to rate is a Linux-native game running in a terminal... This is so awesome!

The graphics are NetHack-like, lovely. (I actually gave 5 stars for graphics.) The only problem with this game is that I think it needs some fine-tuning: you die too quickly, it would nice to have more health to begin with. Also, it is hard to play on a laptop, where you don't have a numpad (yeah, I have a Num Lock which makes some of the letters to function as numbers, but still hard to sense the directions). Finally, I think it does not stick to the theme very much. Yeah, it's open to interpretation... shapes... shifting... still, by my standard, moving shapes are not enough for "shapeshifting".

But once again, I'd like to emphasize that I found this game lovely, and having a custom text-based game engine is a cool thing, and maybe I will build a more-health version of it for myself – since it's open source, I could do that. ;)

edve98 2016-04-20 20:25

I must admit that there isn't much game depth. Most of my time went into making room generation (it's my first time doing somewhat proper procedural generation)

pixelpotions 2016-04-20 20:34

Interesting concept! Deserves a bonus point for the criativity and boldness. Congrats!

marmpa 2016-04-22 10:08

I was going to compile it for windows but i thought better to play it on linux. Nice concept! It remembered me some old school times that those games where popular nice

walnoot 2016-04-22 22:48

I got a missing dependency when trying to run the game. The game sounds interesting, but you should've put a bit more time in packaging it :)

ogre 2016-04-22 23:29

Has build errors on Mac.
src//Graphics.cpp:148:40: error: variable length array of non-POD element type 'std::string' (aka 'basic_string<char, char_traits<char>, allocator<char> >')
std::string textToPrint[terminalSizeX][terminalSizeY];

josefnpat 2016-04-23 00:36

Neat idea! I had a few problems (refresh of terminal was an issue, and I didn't have a numpad)

Regardless, awesome game worked nicely on linux!

gelisam 2016-04-23 03:41

I couldn't run the game on OS X. It built and launched properly, but it didn't respond to any key so I couldn't get past the menu.

edve98 2016-04-23 12:42

It's weird that it doesn't work on Mac. It builds and works on Linux and Windows with Cygwin. I'll try to take a look at it!

mayank-technical 2016-04-23 16:11

Nice concept, sound and artwork.Simple fun game.Try to make a window executable too or online

eemmbbeerr 2016-04-23 16:16

I can't run it on Ubuntu 14.4

~/Downloads/System Shift$ ./game
Enemy count: 0
Enemy count: 0
./game: relocation error: ./game: symbol _ZNSt7__cxx1112basic_stringIcSt11char_traitsIcESaIcEEC1EPKc
RKS3_, version GLIBCXX_3.4.21 not defined in file libstdc++.so.6 with link time reference

eemmbbeerr 2016-04-23 17:32

Nevermind, compiling from source works

rnanoware 2016-04-23 22:51

Having never played a terminal-based action game before, I greatly enjoyed the elegance and readability of the interface as well as the responsive controls! I'm not sure how this game fits with the theme, but I commend you for delivering such an entertaining and polished product.

h2n0 2016-04-24 08:36

Why did it take me so long to find a true Linux game, I tip my hat to you for this. I really liked playing this, I lost my self in the game for a good 20 minutes, brilliant little game. The only flaw that I found was that the high score system didn't work, I overlooked this when I rated the game.

srakowski 2016-04-26 00:42

Well, I downloaded cygwin, gcc, make, and did everything just to play this :-). It was very flickery? in cygwin, but I wouldn't hold that against you. The shooting mechanism was really very cool. You've got the seed to an awesome game here if you add some progression/story. Very well done :-)

watashiwanekodesu 2016-04-26 14:17

Good and fun game !
Go vote mine ! :)
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=90478

mcbeef 2016-04-27 20:39

Two positives:

- Nice to see a ASCII based game.
- I think the idea of exploring a "shapeshifting" environment really cool.

One negative:
- In cygwin, I experienced some flickering. I had to mess around with the terminal resolution to reduce it.

notime4games 2016-05-07 16:32

Why no windows version? :(
Read comments and people seem to have problems, so I'm not gonna try messing around with cygwin and stuff

edve98 2016-05-07 16:45

It's because I didn't have enough time to implement Windows terminal API into my engine. Who was responsible at Microsoft for not supporting ANSI escape codes?? (there's no compiled OS X version because I don't own a Mac or hackintosh)

hazzahazzam 2016-05-08 02:41

That's a nice little engine you have there! You picked your colors well. It reminds me of the old school text dungeon crawlers!

maekeruu 2016-05-08 05:55

awesome!!! i like it ! :) cool take on the concept xD

nlbi21 2016-05-08 19:53

lol this remember me dwarf fortress, i love the ascii games. Very nice concept good job.