Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD41 → War Maker
By david-boeger
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 842 | 3.19 | 35 | |
| Fun | 820 | 3.04 | 35 | |
| Innovation | 813 | 3.09 | 35 | |
| Theme | 1007 | 2.92 | 35 | |
| Graphics | 1056 | 2.29 | 34 | |
| Humor | 467 | 3.08 | 33 | |
| Mood | 744 | 3.09 | 34 |
:( ``` Caused by: MediaException: UNKNOWN : com.sun.media.jfxmedia.MediaException: Could not create player! : com.sun.media.jfxmedia.MediaException: Could not create player! at javafx.scene.media.MediaException.exceptionToMediaException(MediaException.java:146) at javafx.scene.media.MediaPlayer.init(MediaPlayer.java:511) at javafx.scene.media.MediaPlayer.
```
I absolutely love this game. Gameplay is very basic, true, but the theme? The sheer shameless cynicism is suprisingly appealing to me. I've found myself playing this multiple times, shipping 3,5k units at most and sentencing millions to death. So yeah, well done on the idea.
Nice idea, took me awhile to figure out what was going on at the start but once I did it was fun. :)
I see you decided to do the voice acting this time :) There are some noticable cuts in the first couple of sentences, but overall it sounds quite good. I liked the intonation change from serious tone on serious matters that affect whole humanity to "We are just making money of it" kinda tone. In regards to gameplay it's pretty basic and you don't even need two handles most of the time. I played for a couple of minutes setting one somewhere in the middle and using just the other one. All was fine until I yawned, blinked lost my attention for a moment and suddenly the world has ended in a fire of nuclear explosion the Bluezbekistan won. As for the feedback, I would suggest making it harder and harder as time goes to keep balance and somehow preventing players to be just fine using the single handle.
@Jason Kennedy Yes, unfortunately, I still haven't figured out this issue with supporting OpenJDK. I think I might take some time to investigate it tomorrow. Sorry that it's been that way for 2 games in a row now, lol.
@Kobrar Thanks for your kind words! I was absolutely passionate about this game, but I spent way too long trying to fix bugs with issues that ended up going up in smoke and getting cut from the game. For example, those circles that spawn in the beginning were supposed to be defense turrets that shot down the missiles, and they were also supposed to take damage. Some day, I hope to make a sequel from scratch that actually meets my original vision, as I think this game is simple but hilarious fun.
@sirikan Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I originally planned to have a voiced tutorial that would teach the player how to play. Unfortunately, the game was extremely buggy and I just had to cut it out to save time. Hopefully the gameplay was simple enough to learn with a bit of experimentation. I apologize for any confusion, as I normally take player on-boarding pretty seriously.
@detectiveLosos Yeah, the voice work was absolutely terrible quality, but it helped to establish the setting and humor. As for balancing, the actual #1 problem I had was not with the difficulty itself, but with bugs and performance issues. This game ended up being about 10,000 times more difficult to implement than I anticipated. The game logic should have been quite trivial. But for whatever reason, the curved paths shake all over the screen, and are very sensitive to sudden load spikes, such as from triggering sound effects too frequently. I have no idea why, as I did a lot of testing, and the control points I was feeding to the paths were completely static. There must be some issues with the underlying JavaFX implementation that I'm just not aware of, as JavaFX node placement in general is kind of a dark art with all kinds of unexpected behaviors that are only learned through practice. So basically, the shiftiness of the missile paths had to be considered when adjusting difficulty. The game does actually get harder as it goes on, but it's a slow linear increase (well, sort of), which is why it wasn't immediately clear that it was getting harder. Basically, the way it works internally is that the sliders apply a direct probability to the spawn rate of a side. If you lower the price to the minimum, there is no effect. The bases just spawn units at their normal rates. If you raise the price to the maximum, it basically makes it so there's only a 25% chance that each spawn is successful. In addition to the, each base's spawn rate fluctuates randomly between a minimum of 1 unit per second, to a variable maximum. That maximum grows linearly over time at a fairly modest rate. So eventually, the possible gap between the spawn rates of both sides will overtake the player's ability to balance them. I found that in practice, because of all the randomness on both sides, they tended to be pretty balanced by themselves, so I raised the starting gap to a pretty high value, and kept the base health fairly low. I found that it made for a good length of play, although obviously, everyone will have different preferences. The sessions are certainly not as short as many other jam games, so it's understandable why the growth rate feels a bit low. I'd really have to test with a much larger sample group to get a good feel of how it should be adjusted. But yeah, just because it feels easy at first, I guarantee you, the game does get intense. My personal best score is around 430 seconds and 5,000 units, and I got that on my wife's Macbook with the touchpad. It was hectic to say the least, since it wasn't exactly easy to grab the slider each time with the touchpad!
@David-Boeger You really should look into learning and using some game engine. It seems to me, you just spend a ton of time fighting for the performance and making the underlaying structure but not the actual game.
@detectiveLosos Thanks, I'll definitely consider it. I've used game engines in the past, but I just don't like the workflows in a lot of them. They seem to cater to teams more than solo developers. Honestly, like I said, this game should have been trivial with JavaFX. It has built-in support for Bezier curve and path-based animation. I just couldn't figure out how to use it properly in time. I suspect at some point I'll figure out what was wrong and feel stupid, lol.
High Score.PNG
Can anyone beat my new high score?
Simple, but elegant. I'm going to have to dock you on theme on the grounds that I don't see any incompatibility between war and making money. I liked the arrow graphics, too. My first attempt was 277 s / 3781 units. Good work!
I thought the concept was creative, but I feel the game was a bit too easy. Maybe adding more things for the player to control would make it more challenging and fun. The backstory was funny and helped set the tone for the game.
very strange game, but i really put effort on it trying to get a better time. my best time was 380
@piscythe @lucasbra1 @Jaime Paz Lopes Thanks for the feedback everyone! Yes, I originally had plans for more mechanics, but I ran out of time as I was trying to minimize the impact of the buggy path code. Those circles around the bases were supposed to be defense turrets that shot lasers at the missiles, and they could also be targeted by the missiles. I think I'm going to work more on this game when I get the time, because I do really love it. As for the theme, I was actually specifically trying to mix tower defense and playing for both sides. Unfortunately, because of all the mechanics I had to rip out, it doesn't feel very much like tower defense.
@David Boeger The turret idea sounds interesting! I think this has the potential to become a cool game if you develop it more.
LOL. now i cudnt understand YOUR game for the life of me XD no idea wat i was suppose to be doing, was i the red? the blue? the both? trying to balance a magical game of seesaw? lol. all i DO know, is that there were sum intense triangle battling action going on! & i luved it! & the REDANIA & BLUEZBEKISTAN samples had me on the floor! XD they were epicly hilarious, 5/5 for that. great stuff dood ^__^
=)
@lucasbra1 Yeah, I was also going to have them spawn different unit types with different stats, different sound effects, etc. It really was just a matter of bugginess. Once I fix the issue with the paths, I'll be able to develop it further. It was quite sad actually, because I was so excited to get the game working.
@SHINBAXTER Sorry, I really wanted to put in a tutorial, but I just ran out of time at the end of the jam. Yes, you "play as both sides". I say that in quotes because the AI actually spawns units on its own, and you just control the "pricing", which affects spawn rates. So yeah, it's a magical game of seesaw, haha. Thanks so much for the feedback.
Very fun watching all that triangles kamikazing into enemy zone. Very original (and true to life) approach to warfare.
That was fun to watch, and I also liked the humour. I never thought I'd make such a good War Maker!
War. War never changes =) Nice voice over for story. And overall atmosphere is pretty good! It looks like for the first 1500 units you can control only 1 scrollbar and another keep center. Probably that's why I can get more than 2200 =)
@mintarcade @BlakeMcDeezy Thanks for the feedback! @stark Actually, it depends on what you're going for. I purposely didn't try to combine the 2 score metrics so people could actually go for what they wanted. For example, you may want to go for max time, max units, or some combination like the rate of units per time. The "high score" I posed above was 419 seconds and 5109 units, but I actually also got about 5k units one time with slightly more time, about 430 seconds. There's not really any way to say which is better, just depends on the approach. The way I recommend playing for high values on both is sliding both sliders to max price at the very beginning, that way they both spawn slower and you last longer. Then I just slide either one down slightly whenever they need a slight boost. However, if you want to maximize units per time, I would take the opposite approach. Slide to the cheapest prices, then raise whichever one is winning.
@stark also one important thing to keep in mind is that they start with a total of 200 HP between them. Each hit deals 1 HP worth of damage, but also heals the attacker for 1 HP. Which means there is no net change, EXCEPT when the attacker has 100 HP, at which point the healing point does nothing, and there is a net loss of 1 HP. That means that it is super important to not let 1 side stay at 100 HP for too long. You want to keep them at about equal levels. Obviously early on there will be some lost HP, it's unavoidable. But as you get later into the game, it's obviously much easier to keep both at 80 than it is to keep both at 20.
@stark You got me thinking about my game's strategy again, and I tried to beat my high score. Ended up getting close to about the same, but with slightly higher units and lower time :)
High Score.PNG
Yeah, not gonna lie. I love my own game too much!
@stark Oh no wait, what am I talking about? I beat myself on both. Noice. LOL I'm tired.
Love the voice acting! Great job!
You explained the lore of the game pretty damn good, but you forgot to explain how to play the game 😄 That's a shame you excluded yourself from the audio category, because i actually liked the voiceover, but i guess it would have been pretty misleading, because the music wasn't made by you (but it was a really nice pick though).
@annie-owl Thanks so much for the feedback! Sorry, I planned to add a tutorial, but ran out of time. I'm glad you liked the music!
Warmarker has a theme song and dance thanks to my stream. You are welcome.
@logic-monkey lol what do you mean? Is it something I can check out in a video?
@logic-monkey lol just wtached it, that was pretty good.
WarMaker.PNG
Does this mean I beat you?
It's surprisingly fun for something so simple. It's too bad you had to struggle so much with bugs, since the turret feature sounds cool.
@Dovakla Wow! You definitely beat my high score, and by a pretty impressive margin! You are officially now the recognized world-record holder for War Maker! Thanks for playing!
Just got a new developer high score. Still not as high as @Dovakla though...
Hi! I played your game and i'm amazed. Behind very simplistic graphics, the game hide a very complicated and interesting concept. My first game I was: "Mmmh.... How do I play?" ^^
But, during my second game I understood all the principles (well, I think...) and I did a score of 6001! score.png
But, well, I don't see the two incompatibles genres, i suppose it's strategy but the second... Well, after all, it's not obligatory to respect the theme.
And, why don't you want people to rate you in "audio" category? The music is just very good!
Very good game!
@Julink Excellent score. Now I wish I had leaderboards with different metrics, because although @Dovakla has the highest of both scores, you have a very high score with higher units per time than me. So in some way, you probably deserve to hold another record, haha.
As for genres, it was supposed to tower defense and playing both sides (not that playing both sides is a genre, but it is a different take, haha). Unfortunately, because of all the features I ended up cutting out, it doesn't really feel like much of a tower defense anymore. I originally planned to have defense turrets, different units with different stats, etc. So yeah, the actual execution doesn't fit the theme quite as well as the original concept. But I'm glad you enjoyed it!
@Julink I guess in a way you could say the 2nd genre is any of the endless games where you try to last as long as possible, such as endless runner, horde mode, Tetris, etc. I'm sure there are endless tower defense games out there, but I've never heard of one where you also control both sides.
Thanks for you answer! And I think your game will be played a long time if you add a leaderboard.
Enjoyed the game! For the voice over, might I recommend a pop filter and a de-esser plugin? That will help with plosives and other issues that voice recordings tend to have.
Fellow Trout club member!
I love the core idea. It felt like there was not much strategy though, just have them both on `$$$` and just make it a bit cheaper for whoever happens to fall behind. That made the game quite not enough interactive.
Voice acting was nice, and loved the story! The graphics were a bit too... abstract.
I would love for example if there were multiple resource types that I sell to the guys, and have to think strategically what to give them cheap to boost certain aspects of their force.
The idea is suspiciously similar to Ludum Dare 18 winning entry [Fail-Deadly](http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?uid=2073), about prolonging war between two sides, but with a bit different idea in mind. Maybe you wanna check it out.
@BoltKey Wow, I assure you, it's a complete coincidence, haha. I had never actually participated in Ludum Dare or played any Ludum Dare games before LD41, so it's extremely unlikely that I would have ever seen that game. But it must have been pretty good to have won in multiple categories. Maybe I'll check it out soon.
@blake-s. You're right, there are certainly some steps I could take to improve the voice recording quality. I'm not an audio guy, so I literally just used a cheap desk microphone and the Windows 10 voice recorder application.
I love the idea of this..cool vibe and I like the lesson from it!
@tim-ruswick Thanks for the feedback! I was definitely going for vibe, haha.
Very good idea of the game and a great experience.
I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.
I hope you continue with the project.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape
@Dovakla @Julink Read 'em and weep! Just uploaded my new high score, 542 seconds, 8568 units. I hadn't actually played my game in weeks, just came back to it and got that on the first try. Blew away my old high score.