FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD42 → LD42 Running out of Space

LD42 Running out of Space

By gary-beebe

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall5912.9739
Fun5032.9640
Innovation6962.2140
Theme5353.1641
Graphics4063.1340
Audio5521.9037
Humor4831.6626
Mood5952.0128

Comments

pennycook 2018-08-13 02:50

This is so good -- I'm jealous that you have so many complete mechanics. I love that the vehicles are 3D models, and the effect that this creates when they turn.

I think background music is the only thing missing, here. I highly recommend [musagi](http://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.html).

rjhelms 2018-08-13 03:03

I agree with @pennycook, the thing that's really missing here is background music - otherwise, this is remarkably complete! The space ship theme works really well, and the controls work with it perfectly.

I'm sure I'm going to see at least a handful of battle royale games while rating LD42 games, and this sets the bar pretty high.

gary-beebe 2018-08-13 03:25

@pennycook and @rjheims, thanks for the comments and recommendation, I completely suck at making music. Perhaps I'll give musagi a shot next time.

handle 2018-08-13 03:57

The little voxel models are adorable, and everything seems to work as expected. I think that my armor can go into negative values though, as it took a long time to add anything to the meter after I lost it.

squirmonkey 2018-08-13 03:57

This game is surprisingly fun! It could use some background music, and the AI could use a little work (they can't hit you if you stand still), but otherwise, this is the beginnings of a pretty solid spaceships game.

winnie33 2018-08-13 04:02

Very fun concept, but I feel like there could be some small improvements.

For example, the initial size of the field is very large, but it felt like the AI barely moved out of your screen. If the Ai chased you or flew around it would've made movement a bit more interesting. Also, when there was only 1 enemy left, it seemed like he didn't move until I did?

While music is kinda missing, what I think is even more important is the _sound effects_. Hearing a short bleep every time you shoot, while the low sound of engines plays when moving forward, and perhaps additional sound effects for when you hit an enemy or _get_ hit would make the game so much more interesting.

At the start menu, I'm not sure why I had to pick my ship with enter. If the "main" button is going to be Z, why not make that the default selection? (Of course, even better if both enter and Z work, but it feels weird to use enter for only this purpose).

And lastly, autofire would also be really great to have. It gets kinda tiring spamming the shoot button :)

---

Now, there are also definitely some good things!

I love how the ships are little 3D models, it shows the work you put into them. Very interesting and fun compared to only pixel art in my opinion!

Also, the upgrade system was definitely on point. It felt like most of the classic space shooters I know and that is a great thing!

---

So, while definitely one of the better games I've played thus far, there are still some important (and easy?) things to implement which would make the game even better.

gary-beebe 2018-08-13 04:04

Thanks, @handle. I may have overlooked the armor thing. @squirmonkey, yea, I didn't have enough time to make the bots figure out that they were just going in circles.

negativegeforce 2018-08-13 04:32

It's pubg in outer space. Just wish the ai was a bit smarter. I could just stay still and turn in a circle and they would never hit me.

ian-kettlewell 2018-08-13 04:34

Very fun! I was immediately impressed when I could choose my vehicle. It reminded of F-Zero for some reason.

I like the weighty ships, they're fun to handle! I felt like my opponents were weirdly intelligent and I enjoyed dogfighting them! It reminded me of IO games, and I wanted my opponents to be real, but they acted intelligent enough!

I actually liked how at the end when everywhere is dangerous the game became about managing collecting powerups in "sudden death", that was actually an interesting spin mechanically. One thing I wasn't as fond of was how I felt at the end that my opponent and myself were unable to really damage each other enough to make an impact, it basically became a stalemate. Overall excellent though!

gary-beebe 2018-08-13 04:43

@ian-kettlewell Some of the ships were modeled after F-Zero ships :P Actually the AI is pretty dumb, head towards the closest enemy and shoot if within a minimum angle, but I was satisfied with how it turned out.

nehvis 2018-08-13 04:59

It's super hard to hit anything

frontlinesaint 2018-08-13 05:00

was a bit hard to see the bullets but its a good idea and had some fun wioth it good game well done

gary-beebe 2018-08-13 05:13

@nehvis You're probably right, I should have made the upgrades do a spread shot.

blondhie 2018-08-13 05:38

I was so bad at it lol. I had a lot of fun trying to navigate and shoot the things.

gary-beebe 2018-08-13 05:40

@blondhie I'm sorry you think you were bad at it, but glad you had fun. Thanks for playing.

endurion 2018-08-13 06:56

Great little game! I love the different models of the ships.

At times the collision didn't seem to work and my shots flew right through an enemy. Does the red area actually damage ships? It seemed I was unaffected as were the enemies sitting inside and shooting at me.

Other than those really nice :)

erendelous 2018-08-13 07:12

Great game! The ships are nice, and effects too, but, as for me, the shooting sound is quite annoying:)

gary-beebe 2018-08-13 13:00

@endurion I think after bumping into another ship it's possible that the ship is facing downward a bit, causing the bullets to go miss. Thanks for helping me find that. Yes you get hurt in the red area. @erendelous Yea I wasn't happy with the sound, told myself that I would go back and change it, but ran out of time.

eric-kulbiej 2018-08-13 13:19

Nice game, enjoyed it very much. Keep it up!

jose-rodriguez 2018-08-14 01:57

Hi @gary-beebe, would love to rate your game, looks pretty cool for what I can see, but for me the field is too white/bright, can't see the bullets and hardly can see the ships, upon loading http://www.gbeebe.com/games/LD42 I get a javascript exception, maybe thats messing it up, here is the stack from chrome.

lstr.js:26 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'appendChild' of undefined at lstr.js:26 (anonymous) @ lstr.js:26

Cheers!

gary-beebe 2018-08-14 02:04

@jose-rodriguez That's a shame. I've been told that instead of black space with the red dead zone, people on Macs are seeing a white background. Thanks for the error report. I will look into that. Although the Compo is done, if I come up with an alternate fix, I'll let you know.

guardhei 2018-08-14 07:40

@gary-beebe Same problem with @jose-rodriguez . But from my experience so far I should say that the modeling is nice. All you need might be better sound effects and an "space" bgm. Well done!

nexusviper 2018-08-14 08:29

nice game but not directly relatable with the theme... graphics and sound could be improved. one thing which I liked that you have given the different option to the user to change the character.

t8kk 2018-08-14 12:19

Hey Gary, nice entry I quite liked the blocky ship designs and overall idea. At the beginning when i started up the game i just had a slight issue that i wasn't sure if i was moving since the ground was blank without texture to see if i was moving but i found you included a minimap too so It was all good hehe and the AI was surprisingly advanced for a compo game which is impressive to me! Overall nice job on the game. :)

tg1397 2018-08-14 15:39

I didn't realize at first that you had to press up to move so I just kind of sat and rotated. Also, I think there might have been something off with the AI? If I just sat and spun in a circle, they never hit me. Made winning pretty easy! It would have been nice to see some sort of enemy health to know if I was making any sort of indent. The motion felt very smooth and the graphics looked nice.

awix 2018-08-15 07:38

A good game idea, the music should be improved. The graphics are good. Try our game too, maybe you'll like it)

johannimations 2018-08-17 22:13

unfortunatelly one can not see much of the 3d graphics, because it is all shown from above. But the design of the differnet ships were great for variation and the variaty of different powerups was awesome, for it beiing a compogame

rahim-pxr 2018-08-27 22:18

Nice game, Love how everything is balanced! Good luck, Don't forget to take a look at ours if you don't mind and see what it's like when we just focused on graphics in this game jam! Game Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/spacelab-42a

gary-beebe 2018-09-02 21:52

@rahim-pxr thanks. But is that the right URL? I get a 404 page :(