The Aliens

danbolt 2017-05-01 06:23

Cool upgrading scheme! I certainly went for acceleration/speed, but I liked all the options available. The growth curve made a lot of sense. I liked the pixel art and style of the game.

The compo has a short timespan, and figuring out an ideal solution with Java games can be tricky, but I if you had an extra day, I'd suggest avoiding Java dialogue boxes for when the player wins or loses, as they can seem a bit jarring and take away from the experience.

Just as a heads up, running the jar on Linux didn't activate sound! Perhaps it was an issue with my machine? I'm using Lubuntu 17.04 on a ThinkPad T430 if that helps. I opted out of rating audio because of it.

``` $ java -jar TheAliens.jar Sounds are not workinga 60 ticks, 60 frames 60 ticks, 60 frames 60 ticks, 60 frames ... ```

Otherwise, awesome stuff! Keep up the good work!

rombus 2017-05-01 14:24

I have sound on linux, although I break the sounds when I killed the first alien :o

``` Sound not working!b javax.sound.sampled.LineUnavailableException: line with format PCM_SIGNED 44100.0 Hz, 16 bit, mono, 2 bytes/frame, little-endian not supported. at com.sun.media.sound.DirectAudioDevice$DirectDL.implOpen(DirectAudioDevice.java:513) at com.sun.media.sound.DirectAudioDevice$DirectClip.implOpen(DirectAudioDevice.java:1304) at com.sun.media.sound.AbstractDataLine.open(AbstractDataLine.java:121) at com.sun.media.sound.DirectAudioDevice$DirectClip.open(DirectAudioDevice.java:1085) at com.sun.media.sound.DirectAudioDevice$DirectClip.open(DirectAudioDevice.java:1175) at game.SoundEngine.play(SoundEngine.java:93) at game.obj.ship.SpaceShip.update(SpaceShip.java:80) at game.obj.Entity.tick(Entity.java:25) at game.state.Tester.tick(Tester.java:89) at game.Game.run(Game.java:247) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) ```

You went hardcore synthesysing your own sounds? that's awesome And the building ship part adds more depth

Rated!

nnnnneeeedddd 2017-05-01 15:37

Sounds on linux is a known issue everyone, Sorry...

steve-johnson 2017-05-01 18:09

I'm on OS X. The game crashed when I killed an alien. I had 21 coins and 3299 height.

This is one of the more fun games I've played in LD38 though! Decent sound, fine gameplay. I do wish the field of view was bigger, it feels unfair how little time you have to react to enemies.

It's not often I see a metagame, so nice job on that! It feels appropriate.

khorm 2017-05-02 22:41

This was great fun, very nice upgrade scheme that made sense and made it fun to play a good while. I agree with steve that a bit bigger view would have been good, not enough time to see enemies and I resulted in just prefire and steering back and forth to not take any damage. Overall very good though!

krylos 2017-05-02 22:42

Also on OSX, I had a crash killing an enemy at some point.

Other than that, this game was really enjoyable. The upgrades kept me motivated and the rocket felt quite nice to handle. The gameplay is certainly the strong point of this entry. But it could get a little boring waiting for new enemies to arrive.

The graphics were really appropriate for the gameplay, as was the sound. But both of them didn't really stand out to me.

I suppose the theme wasn't tackled that explicitly, which is a bit of a weak point for this game.

But overall, I'd say that you did a very good job on it. It's an enjoyable way to spend 15-20 minutes.

listonos 2017-05-02 22:47

The gameplay is lacking (played the original version), you just spam fire button and go up. Upgrades are good, I'm glad you managed to do those.

fakefrogsonly 2017-05-02 22:48

Interesting concept, would be cool to see it developed further.

el-flex0s 2017-05-05 14:40

Awesome game! It was really hard at first, but I realised whenn flying straight and spamming spacebar, you can win the game quite easily. But it made quite fun! Very good work, you even had time for sounds!

bentglasstube 2017-05-12 06:47

Seemed like a pretty neat concept but unfortunately whenever I got hit the game would freeze up (linux) so I didn't get to play the upgrade parts at all. I enjoyed the art of the rocket flying around when I pressed left and right.

dusted 2017-05-12 10:00

Works perfect (and with sound) on Archlinux, I like the funky controls and how you've put this together! :)

manolo-rei 2017-05-12 14:03

This game reminded of a lot of newgrounds "infinite climbers"! I have really fond memories of games like Hedgehog Launch, thanks for bringing it all back.

Loved the particle effects. So simples, and yet really add up to the experience. I like the amount of things you can upgrade and the choices to make, but it is all really unbalanced. I choose the best cannons after two playthroughs and it was enough to beat the game. It would be good in your next project to save some time in the end to balance everything. A good idea is to limit the amount of mechanics/upgrades so there is less stuff to balance in the end, but the choices become more meaningful. Still, it's a fun experience and works great as a proof of concept prototype.

But 17 man! KEEP GOING! You're going far, just like my overpowered cannon rocket \o

ben-mceldowney 2017-05-12 15:57

Great work! I'm amazed at the quality for a compo game. The audio gets a little repetitive after a while, but it fits the mood of the game perfectly. I was able to fly backwards down through the earth and outrun all the aliens while my height kept ticking up, but playing the game correctly was a lot of fun.

Also on OSX with a crash on killing. I think I had 36 coins and was at a height of ~8000.

bomb-x 2017-05-12 18:07

A pretty good game !

I liked graphisms, and the upgrade system a lot !

I just think it lacked of a bit more difficulty since you just have to get second weapons upgrade and spam button to be totally safe and then just upgrade your motors to go as fast as you can !

But you got a very nice base on which you can construct something very cool ! With some balancing and more diversity on ennemies i would totally play it ! I was surprised steps didn't give money ! Since you count them i think you should do something with it ! And in my opinion, it would be very cool if an ending would be reachable but very far to give a real objective to the player !

I didn't really liked music and i'm sorry of it, i just find it too much dissonant to be enjoyed, but it must be my only opinion !

Anyway, great job, it was a very nice experience !

mar3k 2017-05-12 20:40

Cool game! First of all I would like to say, that I glad to see some more devs using Java and making their own engines as well and have to give you a big thumb up for the particle effects I really like those and know how hard it is to make a good ones.

I quite like the game, it was simple but fun, the controls were a bit wonky and by that I mean the way the ship flew and also I found an exploit where I just was spamming the fire and never got hit, so maybe that could be fixed with making a longer cooldown on firing. Also one more thing I would like to point out is that it would be better if the enemies spawned right away after the 1st one died, cause there were a lot of time where nothing was happening and I was just waiting for the correct distance to get an enemy.

But overall it is a nice entry...Oh also the music and sound effects were nice as well! Good job!

internetpaulicy 2017-05-12 21:01

I really enjoyed playing this game. It took me a few deaths to figure out that clicking on an item means buying and not looking but after that I had a blast. The ship is awkward to fly at first it steers like a super agile sail boat. I found I could "tack" upwards in the sailing sense which allowed me to shoot the enemies side on while they could only shoot down. I liked being able to evade freely I found it really fun. I upgraded my ship a bit. I maxed out the guns and the nose cone. The challenge seemed flat(always hard) and that's a good way to go. I found it compelling, you just can't make mistakes. The music loop is great. There are lots of little touches like animating the side thrusters, making the sky get darker as you go higher, showing damage on the aliens. I think this is a really great entry :)

teammonumental 2017-05-12 21:10

I like the upgrade and currency system, however, the aliens shoot really fast which often result in a cheap kill on the player which are random. The horizontal movement felt kinda weird and I would of like wasd implementation. I appreciate all the time and effort you put into to this and props to you for making a cool game!

rother-games 2017-05-12 21:35

I play the non Post Compo Version. Solid core mechanics, but at some points I was a bit hard to control the rocket. As I bought a new gun and tried to compare it to the old one, I lost the new gun

init-py 2017-05-12 23:43

cool game! I found it a bit too easy, and I had the game crash on me a few times.

nbilyk 2017-05-13 00:31

I liked the upgrade scheme. Overall it was a fun arcade shooter :)

mryamz 2017-05-13 01:22

Anyone notice you can travel below the ground? Haha cracked me up. Nice game overall. I wanted to make a game similar to this. I just fly straight up and spam the space bar, works like a charm.

jerm 2017-05-13 05:00

Neat game! The gameplay was a bit repetitive, but the upgrade system gave you a reason to keep trying after getting killed, which was really nice. Although it seemed only upgrading the gun made any difference to the gameplay. Also I think it would be better if the upgrades were more expensive as it didn't take long to get them (but maybe it's just me who likes grindy games :smiley:).

I found the alien ships quite difficult at first because the small view meant they would appear right above you so you didn't have much time to react and they would kill you in one shot.

The particle effects were neat and I also liked how the background sky got darker as you went up. I managed to get to level 9 and also got max upgrades on my ship.

ashdnazg 2017-05-13 07:19

Mostly what everyone else said. Personally I really liked the particle effects!

Music could use a slightly lower volume :P

stefvanschie 2017-05-13 07:27

I really liked the game, although it was a bit simple. I just pressed launch and started spamming spacebar. If you've upgraded your health and damage a bit you are practically undefeatable. I reached level 34 using this technique. Also, your game consumes insane amounts of RAM. After 15 minutes of gameplay, it was using 2.1GB RAM, which is over half of my total RAM, leading to my internet browser crashing and the SFX in the game stopped playing. But the fact that you kept me entertained for 15 minutes is quite good (I usually stop after 5 minutes of gameplay on these entries), so good job.