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For Eternity
For Eternity
By holgk
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 233 | 3.63 | 40 | |
| Fun | 383 | 3.15 | 40 | |
| Innovation | 618 | 2.65 | 40 | |
| Theme | 654 | 2.71 | 40 | |
| Graphics | | | 1 | |
| Audio | | | 1 | |
| Humor | 600 | 1.97 | 36 | |
| Mood | | | 1 | |
Comments
I attempted all builds, and while I was able to get a year or so, things didn't quite work. It got laggy fast, and locked up within 10 minutes of starting for all versions. I really wanted to play - since Egypt and building games are my favorites, this hit my sweet spot. My playing may not be what your testing was like, since I wasn't sure what to place where - so dropped some houses, farms, saw mill, quarry and needed a warehouse and probably didn't have the manpower to support it all and things just got all confused. A bit more help in game would help.
Memory errors message came up on the WebGL version, so maybe there is some issues with Object clean up routines?
I really liked the graphics, and loved the idea, and actually think it was very visually polished for a 48 hr game. Sadly didn't get far into the game to see how it all worked. But REALLY good potential here.
Never saw if the Nile flooded yearly, and my farms would be flooded or not, was hoping to experience that in the game. If you got Nile, you got the Inundation to deal with.
wujood
2017-04-28 20:21
This game looks good, but I think that you should mention that this game is super simillar to "Pharaoh" "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharaoh_(video_game)" . I would love to see a remake though, because i love that game!
holgk
2017-04-28 20:53
@wujood Yes that was my inspiration.
holgk
2017-04-28 21:08
@unclechris sry that you had such a bad experience. i have a quite beefy system so i can't say how it looks like with an old i5 or i3 kind of cpu. with my Ryzen 1800 and an i7 4770 everything was fine with the standalone version. but the WebGL version had framdrops on my systems too. i guess with a weaker system this version isn't playable at all. i used multi-threading for pathfinding but that's the only optimization i made for improving the performance. btw to be clear i'm entering the jam not the compo so i had 72 hrs. and i'm sorry to tell you that i had no time for floods, so Nile will not flood the farms (i really had no time for such a feature).
Really impressive for a jam, i also went for a town building game, but only in 2d and still didn't find time for half as many features as yours so well done. I tried the multi threaded version but found that after not that long into the game it hung and i had to kill it. Played the single threaded version for quite a long while with no major problems, then played it again and at some point it froze completely and had to kill it. I am running a quad core i5 and r9 380x so performance wise should be fine. I was a little bit confused by population all suddenly leaving at some point but could not see what I had failed to do to keep them happy. I liked the concept of working towards building the pyramid and the trading as a way to generate money, all felt pretty polished also. Probably the jam game I have spent the most time playing so was obviously enjoying it. Overall excellent work, just shame about whatever is causing the hangs.
holgk
2017-04-29 15:00
@everyone I tried to force this crash/freeze but i wasn't able to replicate the situation. I made 5 etire games without any crash or freeze. So if you experienced a crash or freeze please tell me what you did and/or what happend last. Maybe i can figure out what is causing this problem with this info.
@holgk - Tried again on single threaded version, managed to it to hang without doing anything special - put down some houses - put down some road - put down some farm. Some people started to appear - crash. Image of the state when crashed. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2PhbR7agvTGdGt5QlRlbk5TZ2M/view?usp=sharing Just guessing, but personally I have found pretty weird behaviour in unity if anything goes wrong in a coroutine, Often bringing down the whole editor, even when i put try catches round everything in the coroutine. also FYI if you reference a user with e.g. @holgk they will see it if they look at the [feedback friends site] (http://feedback.ld.intricati.com), maybe one day even in the main site. Good luck tracking down the bug
holgk
2017-05-01 16:21
@automatonvx Thank you! I was able to find the bug.
New Download links (can't change the old ones)
**Win32 (Multi-Threaded):** [Windows](https://developer.cloud.unity3d.com/share/-JP-BNJ6Ef/)
**Linux32 (Multi-Threaded):** [Linux](https://developer.cloud.unity3d.com/share/WkcVBVJ6EM/)
**OSX32 (Multi-Threaded):** [OSX](https://developer.cloud.unity3d.com/share/ZyGqS416EG/)
**WebGL (not recommended): ** [WebGL](https://developer.cloud.unity3d.com/share/-1xOS4kaNz/)
I have tried the WebGL, single, and multi-threaded versions. Ironically, the WebGL worked best for me. Both the single and multi-threaded locked up toward the beginning of the game. I had a few farms, some houses, and was building roads when they each locked up. The WebGL version never locked up on me, but I also did not have an extremely large empire like in your screenshots. Also, a little curious why you have a WebGL, Linux, and Windows builds, but not a Mac build. I would have tried it on my MacBook if you had a version for it, which Unity will create for you.
I like the graphics style and the sound effects. Appropriate music would be nice. I also noticed that the camels do not animate, but just slide unlike the people. I am sure that you probably used Fuse to create and animate the people, but it doesn't do camels! :wink:
This game was quite extensive and well done given the 72 hour limitation that you had. I would like to see a further developed version as this is the type of game that I really like.
holgk
2017-05-01 19:09
@james-dunlap can it be that you played the game before? i uploaded a fixed version including an OSX build about two hours ago.
@holgk I may have not refreshed the page after viewing it last night. I will give the Mac version a try.
ratking
2017-05-01 20:46
Solid entry, but I missed a lot of feedback. I never knew what was happening - probably because I usually don't play such town building games and would need a better tutorial.
Very nice game! Graphics good and the gameplay is very fluid. good job!!!
epicsoft
2017-05-01 21:08
Great job, I like this ☺
Excellent job. Really eats up the RAM for such a simple game though. Could do with some optimising.
Oh man, such a nostalgy!! Used to play pharaoh a lot when I was young! Great game, awesome for a jam!! I played the webgl version at first but it ran out of memory, no problems with the windows one!
Great job! Keep up the hard work!
Played the game for a while, and finally was able to get the pyramid on my third playthrough, since there were a lot of things I missed on my first two playthroughs. Although there was a lot of stuff I didn't really get by the time I was able to complete the game's goal. It's amazing to know that someone tried to do a full-fledged city builder on the jam's limited time frame, but you can also see this was a pretty harsh limitation for a game of this scope. :disappointed:
I have to say that the instructions and tips and tricks didn't really help me much while building up my city. I was honestly confused about what counted for _Quality of Life (QoL)_ and what did not, although my suspicions by the end led me to the conclusion, that I needed workers to work at my cisterns and other buildings in order for them to count towards _QoL_, however, since my _QoL_ was low, I wasn't getting enough new citizens to satisfy those worker needs, therefor resulting in a loop-hole of not being able to get my _QoL_ up no matter the situation.
It would be nice to get a streamlined explanation of how _QoL_ works, together with more clearer instructions of what each building does. I saw in the instructions that you we're supposed to get some info if you hovered the icons, but I don't know if just seeing the _Name + Price_ was all that info, or if there was more to it. I also didn't really get the benefits of turning off trading in the trading menu, as it didn't seem to have any impacts on the prices whatsoever.
There were a few more issues, but I have already hit the character limit. Overall, I admire your bravery to tackle a game of a scope like this in a Jam, but honestly, it's a game that would require more time in order to really show it's true potential. I hope you pick this up after judging ends (or even during it) and give it a bit more polish, instructions, and streamlined systems. After all, even with all it's issues, it still grabbed me for a while. Imagine how it would be if all the previous issues were fixed. :wink:
zondarg
2017-05-01 22:08
Even if I did not manage to build the pyramid in time and will probably be fed to the alligators to please the gods :) I liked it. A bit more of tutorial or help would be nice though. A lot of content for the short time, well done!
listonos
2017-05-02 01:32
Oh building games, always fun :) More feedback as to what produces what would be nice and while people running around is certainly awesome, again if I don't see why, it's just an effect.
holgk
2017-05-02 13:17
@listonos I thought what produces what is clear. If you click on a production building (farm, sawmill and quarry) you see a icon of the product this building produces and how much is in the stroage of that building and the buildings max storage capacity. If you hover over those icons a tooltip/description of that icon will appear. Each production building has a transporter and if you look closer you'll see that he'll transporting different objects (A box of food for the farm, a palette of wood for the sawmill and block of stone for the quarry).
wtoa
2017-05-02 16:00
I love city building games! Reminds me when I used to play Emperor a lot back then. This was very impressive work for 72 hours!
sebasrez
2017-05-02 17:31
Yes! A city building game! Thanks for making this! So I followed the tutorial but I was able to build anywhere I wanted regardless of what it says so I am not sure if that was okay or not. Still very cool, and a great amount of work for the time provided. Very impressed!
Love city building games! Quite impressed with what you've accomplished in a short amount of time.
It is in dire need of a tutorial, though, as I had absolutely no idea what I was doing for quite some time. I had a lot of people just standing still on the roads... still not quite sure why they did that when there was work to be done. Would also be nice to have some stats that show number of citizens, stored food, wood and stone.
Graphics are nice (especially on the menu side of things), and it's impressive that you got the people animated as well.
Failed to win the game at the end, since I missed that I had a time limit. Will give it another go later.
Great work!
I really enjoyed your game. It was really well done in the time you had and the game followed the theme well. It has a good end goal and a balanced difficulty. Well done!
bunnery
2017-05-03 13:39
I was enticed by the fab look of the graphics and cover. I'm not used to building games myself - so would have appreciated a bit more help. But, for a game jam - this is fabulous - and I had fun even if I wasn't doing it right!
thendash
2017-05-03 16:51
This video game is great, I'm such a sucker for city building games and Pharaoh and Children of the Nile are two of my all time favorites so I very much appreciated the theme of For Eternity.
I didn't run into any issues like some of the other commenters, the closest I got was a little bit of lag while placing roads in rapid succession but it cleared up instantly upon completing the road. I also somehow managed to get it to stop allowing me to zoom in/out but I was unable to reproduce it after a restart.
Other then those minor issues I really enjoyed the game. I'm inclined to agree with the others in saying that it needs an in-game tutorial, but given the time provided to make the game I understand how it wasn't a priority. On the other hand I also found that figuring out how to succeed was part of the fun for me. So instead of an in-depth tutorial maybe work on ways of showing the player the effects of their actions. For example, to see QoL and unemployed citizens you have to click on a house to open the house details window, this isn't obvious during the first playthrough so it was difficult to see exactly what my markets and cisterns were doing, perhaps put that information on the top bar where it is more accessible.
Very good video game, and I'd be interested to see if you take it further now that the jam is over. Well done!
rick
2017-05-03 17:32
That's a ton of work you got done, impressive!
Like others have said, I missed a bunch of feedback. But with the tutorial post open next to the game I got to play around with it for a while.
After a while it got a bit repetitive and it felt like I was just grinding through to get to the next building.
If you'd like to keep building on this, I'd say to add some random events or something to keep the playing field a little bit more dynamic.
Either way, nice job!
There's an amazing amount of work that went into this, I think more of a tutorial / unfolding beginning to the game would have been very helpful... but yeah, no seriously great job on the sheer scope of this. I think the grind was a bit much, maybe adding an event system every X Ticks or something?
Looks like an excellent base for a larger game. You got in a very impressive amount of content for a 72 hour jam game, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of gameplay at this point. Some antagonistic elements like natural disasters or a military system would go a long way to make the game fun to play.
Overall an impressive submission, especially from a technical standpoint.
Nice work on the Egyptian simulator. Really impressive you were able to do this in a single game jam. I managed to run out of memory in the browser version, haha, I played for a long time. Keep up the good work!
I didn't actually know what I was doing, and I played the Web version which broke a little ways in, but it all seems very well done for three days of production! Congrats! As someone said above, a tutorial at first would be great. I just built things but didn't know what anything did or what would increase my money or anything.
Looks like the start of a pretty interesting economy / city game. The building choices are good and I like the idea that I need to adapt my city design based on the resources that are available in the area.
This is pretty cool. It really needs some sort of tutorial though, because I seriously could not figure out what to do for a long, long time. Also, for some reason early on it seemed like warehouse workers would simply stand still outside the warehouse and not move...? It didn't really make sense.
I think it would be nice to be able to assign workers to jobs - right before I lost, I had built a bunch of farms and then started building more temples so that I could support a new worker population - but all the new workers were going to my farms, so my QoL continued to decrease when that wouldn't have been a problem if I had been able to assign them to the temple.
ratking
2017-05-10 09:01
Heya @holgk, I asked you something on my entry which you commented. You didn't react so I try it here again.
It might be that you had a problem with it because you are on a Mac. Is that right?
Very cool game. I think you got the micromanaging resource feel down. Cool. I was getting pretty into it but then suddenly all my people moved out and my income went way down. I built like 6 temples and it didn't seem to help. This reminded me a lot of Sim Tower in that way – I really loved that game at first but inevitably everyone would move out at some point and stuff would grind to a halt, and I'd never understand why. I think a better in-game tutorial might help, and a more specific explanation of mechanics on your help page. I thought the mechanics were simple (increase QoL with helpful buildings, decrease it with more houses) but I never understood how resources affected things.