matt-fabius 2017-04-30 04:57
Fun game! Although, I was a little confused about how the warping worked. Other than that, the gems were really satisfying to collect and the game felt complete.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Planet Hoppers
By snowdrama
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 520 | 3.13 | 24 | |
| Fun | 418 | 3.09 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 546 | 2.82 | 25 | |
| Theme | 221 | 3.73 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 637 | 2.69 | 25 | |
| Audio | 327 | 3.04 | 24 | |
| Humor | 467 | 2.35 | 22 | |
| Mood | 560 | 2.90 | 22 |
Fun game! Although, I was a little confused about how the warping worked. Other than that, the gems were really satisfying to collect and the game felt complete.
The first time I played, I beat it really really quickly. I was very happy about that. The second... third... fourth time.... I couldn't find a second gem. I needed so kind of guidance to know where to go next, the mini map didn't really work too well explaining that to me.
Pretty cool game! The balancing seemed to lean a bit too easy, I had to try not to escape from the black hole. Also, it was hard to tell if the non-warp gems did anything. I watched a bit of your stream, where I recall the gems being used as a resource used to activate the planet jumps, but I couldn't tell if that was happening in the final build. Good idea overall, though, and I could definitely see this being really cool with a bit of polish.
Hi @snowdrama i finally played your game! (i was waiting for ratings to be up to start rating games). I liked the game mechanic, i could beat the game the first try and i liked that i understood what to do pretty quickly though as other have said you could get lost quick as the minimap doesnt show where the things are (i think?) though one could argue that if the mini map showed the Ship and the Warp Gems it would be too easy?
The second time i played i could find the 4 Warp Gems but i could not find the Ship im pretty sure the Black Hole already ate it, is that possible? What happens if you lose your ship to the Black Hole does another spawn?
One thing i did not like is the planet spinning for some reason i get pretty bad motion sickness with spinning things =S
@Matt Fabius, Thanks! Yeah I wanted to do a tutorial or something last minute but I was cooked on time for the last day.
@MrTroy Yeah the random generation sometimes makes levels really easy and sometimes really hard. I would need more time to refine that so that it doesn't happen as much. A Locator would definitely help but might make the game too easy. One of the challenges in the game IS finding the gems, with a radar or by showing them on the mini map you essentially get rid of any challenge. The fact you don't know where the gems are and need to explore each world to find them is the main challenge. If I were to update it, and rework this I would have a map that automatically marks planets you've already been to therefore making finding planets you haven't been to easier. I wouldn't want to take away the need to explore and find them naturally because that's the core of the challenge.
@jasperarmstrong Yeah I rebalanced things really late in the development(a few hours before submission) so the random other gems do nothing. They were supposed to unlock the gates as you mentioned, but there were permutations of the random generation that would basically be a soft lose because no planets you could get too would have a type of gem needed to continue so I scrapped it.
@sachos345 Thanks for playing! Yeah the mini-map was mostly for spatial awareness, so you could mentally check off planets you've already been to. Similar to what I mentioned in the comment to MrTroy, the challenge comes from finding the gems, and the randomness makes it harder or easier sometimes. I wouldn't want to get rid of the challenge by showing the Warp Gems or the Ship on the map, but as I mentioned If I were to update it, I would have a map that automatically marks planets you've already been to, so you don't end up searching planets you know the gem isn't on.
As for the warp gems ending up in the black hole, that can happen, I realized this near the end but didn't have time to make a lose state for the ship or the gems falling into the black hole. for now it's a soft-lose state which given like 4 more hours would have been fixed. The random generation algorithm prefers planets be created in a tree pattern to the right fanning out 60 degrees from the planet before it, on one of the final nodes in the tree pattern is where it likes to place the ship, however there's a bug that causes it to sometimes be on the first planet when one of the tree branches ends on the first planet.
Finally That last thing I TOTALLY understand, I wanted to add a toggle for it, and ran out of time, I had put it in originally, then took it out and people in the chat complained because they liked it, so I put it back in, but didn't have time to edit in a "Press button to disable rotation" feature. That was like the next thing to be added.
I Live-Streamed this game this past evening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfvbUFJnui4
I found the character controller incredibly frustrating to use, the jump gravity was way too low and the movement speed was a crawl. I had further notes but it boils down to that.
@OccultOne Weird I gotta check to make sure that's not a bug because that's the first time It's done that. Huh... What were you using for a controller? Arrow keys+Z+X? Also what hardware are you running? It seems the physics simulation is going weird, probably because of a low framerate or something.
The other gems were supposed be currency to use the warp gates, but they got cut last minute(within an hour of submission) The Black Hole was slowed down to make the game easier because it was too fast and the people on my stream who played it said it was too fast. Unfortunately none of them ran into the slow controller bug.
@snowdrama : Win7 on Intel i7 @ 4ghz, 32gb DDR4 RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. I'm using a Keyboard. Good to know about the gems, I was very confused and was wondering if there was a component of the game I was missing (Like an upgrade system to speed me up).
UPDATE: Okay version 0.0.8 WebGL is up and should hopefully fix those issues.
* Added ability to toggle off camera rotation(For those with motion sickness R on keyboard Y on Xbox Controller) * Fixed a few physics bugs that would cause the running and jumping to be weird on different machines. * Fixed a bug where the game would not end if the player climbed in the ship. * Fixed a bug where the camera would tweak out * Fixed a bug where the Ship would end up on the planet closest to the black hole.
@OccultOne Weird that should be fine, I'm on an i7 with a 1050 and I haven't had any issues. I do know one bug that might have an impact, if you have very high OBS settings, then the CPU on OBS will slow the game down just enough to cause issues... Which has an issue because of an oversight on my part where I don't timestep the physics. So if the game is running slower than full speed it throws off the physics. I'm working on a bug fix for it and will update when it's fixed.
Pretty fun! It's difficult to maintain a sense of direction with all that rotation, but I enjoyed just bouncing between planets anyway. :)
Love the tunes.
@the-jahn Thanks! We actually thought about that, there was mixed feelings about the camera rotation overall. Did you know that you can disable camera rotation with the R key on the keyboard or the Y button(or equivalent) on a gamepad? If you could, try playing the game with the rotation disabled, and see if you like it better!
Anyway yeah I love the music as well, I super appreciate @DanielJMus for hammering those out during my stream. They work super well.
I really love the music of this entry, good job!
Very cool! I'd like it if you could jump with the Up arrow key as well--actually, come to think of it, you could probably take jumping out all together!
Nice job with the gravity!
Nice music and ambience! The concept is also great! I like the idea of running away from black holes while jumping from planet to planet! My only concern is that the moving around the planets is making me a bit dizzy, maybe with a fixed camera it would work better, but I'm not sure :P Aside from that, the game is great!
Keep up the hard work! :)
@feips Thanks! I'll let @DanielJMus know you liked it!
@secret-tunnel Yeahhhhhh Originally there was going to be platforming challenges on each planet hence the jumping but it got scrapped for time, and to keep the world sizes as small as they were.
@multiplexor There actually is a fixed camera(assuming you played it recently) the R key or the Y button on a controller toggles on and off the camera rotation, I left the default as on because the game released with the rotation on but I totally play it with the rotation off.
Awesome game! I really enjoyed it! I felt a bit dissoriented with all the turning but it felt good to have won from the black hole. Solid entry! :)
Great game. I like the feeling when the blackhole got closer.
The music should then change and played darker :) Cute art!
Keep up the great work congrats for your entry.
Many thanks to play our game on your twitch channel.
@sparrow, Thanks! I also felt the camera was kind of disorienting, as a last minute change we added a toggle for the camera rotation due to possible motion sickness.
@puppetmaster Yeah I wanted to make the blackhole to become more menacing but that was something we didn't have much time for. The music is great another shout out to @DanielJMus for the music.
Quite short but really nice. Everything functioned which is a big plus for every ludum dare game. The music sadly enoyed me after a while and the graphics seem to not fit together much.
But I still enjoyed it! Thanks for making this game :)
Nice entry, but I think the game needs to be more challenging, also what's the point of collecting so many different colored gems? A highscore would be cool, the more gems you have collected, the better your score, in order to create some kind of risk-reward mechanic.
If you are going to continue your game, then you should focus on route planning, because in my opinion, that was the funniest part of the game.
Also, I don't think jumping is really required( it actually makes you move slower)
Could be a fun game with some polish -- tighter controls mostly
Nice game man. You seem to understand games.
Rate us https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/deep-bottom
I think this game could be improved by making the player move and change direction more quickly. Also, it would be a lot easier to keep track of where I'm going if the minimap, or the red arrow on the minimap, rotated with the actual map. That way, I could see which planet the warp thingey would send me to. If you put those two changes into a post-jam update, it could be a really fun game.
Gonna be a long one so I gotta make 2 posts!
@diknows "Everything functioned which is a big plus for every ludum dare game" true, I axed a LOT of features to make sure the ones that got in worked correctly, in fact since you mentioned the music, the music was actually intended to have a completely different purpose then how we used it, it was the theme for an axed Merchant character which is what the non Warp-Gems were for. Last minute we didn't have any overworld music so we went with it.
@simonreiser The colored gems were for an unused system, originally the gates were going to cost colored gems to use, it would consume the colored gems to unlock the warp pad, but I axed it last minute because it could make the game unable to be completed under certain circumstances.
I do want to continue working on the game, but the final game will look very different than this, as I'm probably taking the game in a significantly different direction. I was hoping to make something closer to a platformer combined with a point and click adventure game, so a lot of the arcade-y elements I shoved in for time, will actually be removed, for some more involved but slower paced gameplay, with a heavier focus on exploration.
Finally the jumping was originally going to be necessary but a lack of art assets, a lack of design direction and a lack of time, meant in the end all the platforming elements we had planned had to get canned in favor of completion. Originally the gems would be stacked on buildings and floating platforms and jumping would be required. The jumping is slower due to the way the planet gravity works, due to having to rework the controls so many times, I didn't have too much time to clean it up so when you jump the gravity pulls on you a bit more than it should and basically causes drag.
2/2 @stevie-bushman Yeah controls were hard because I actually had to rework them 3 times over the course of the whole thing due to lack of planning, I didn't know what the goal of the game was until day 3. For example the character at one point had a jetpack and could just fly around in space freely, and that was axed for the ship idea, which was axed again for the bunny character design.
@tuteupaituamae I try to understand games hahaha, if I didn't it would be hard to make games! I'll definitely check it out!
@narve I totally agree, the problem we had was that the gravity system wasn't well built as I've mentioned in some of the above comments, I had to rework the controls 3 times during the course of the jam. Due to the weak gravity on the planets, if the player was to run much faster than he did, he would actually lift off the ground and start to orbit until he left the atmosphere, which would have been a soft lock since once you left the atmosphere, you would be unable to move(the controls for movement only work inside the atmosphere due to one of the 3 control reworks)
The Minimap was also added late, the map is simply another camera that's farther away that also points at the character just like the main camera. The minimap was rushed, and only placed there because of the camera rotation, people who play with camera rotation off don't seem to use the mini map because with rotation off, you don't loose sense of direction. I planned no having a map, but not so much a mini map, one where you could set waypoints and mark planets as explored. Originally I was trying to make it more of a platformer crossed with an open world exploration point and click game. so instead of a mini map, it would be more like a compass, pointing at a waypoint you would set on the next planet you want to go to(This aligns nicely with whats next)
The warp pads were also introduced late, they were hacked in to make the game playable, as the idea wasn't to warp between planets but your character would actually be jumping between planets(hence the bunny shape to the main character) The problem was that in early tests of the jumping system, trajectory problems became SUPER apparent really fast as you would be off by 1 degree and miss the planet entirely and fly off into space.
In the final game, I was thinking about adding some kind of a tether or something so if you fail to touch down on a planet and reach some max length, it would pull you back in. Warps weren't supposed to be links between planets but more along the lines of markers that said: "Jump here and you might not miss the nearest planet" I want to highlight the main character's comical super jump that's so strong he can launch himself from planet to planet, so in a post jam version, I wouldn't even have the warp pads any more.