alobker 2018-08-14 10:06
I'm missing a bit of visual feedback for how my island is doing. However it looks great and the controls are intuitive. Good game!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Floating Island
By echo-team
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1075 | 2.89 | 48 | |
| Fun | 1189 | 2.46 | 48 | |
| Innovation | 915 | 2.85 | 48 | |
| Theme | 670 | 3.40 | 48 | |
| Graphics | 393 | 3.72 | 49 | |
| Humor | 877 | 1.86 | 36 | |
| Mood | 1069 | 2.34 | 40 |
I'm missing a bit of visual feedback for how my island is doing. However it looks great and the controls are intuitive. Good game!
I got $871,779.
I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing. The game needs more feedback on what each building is doing and what they need.
@swift Unfortunately, most of the time went into the environment XD
Additionally, I was afraid that offering significantly more information would make it become too easy since the game play loop isn't very fancy. But it's a moot point, I just ran out of time.
I also tried to build a WebGL version but it looks terrible and doesn't work for some reason.
Nice graphics, but I am not sure what the water does to my production. I do think this is a really good base for a fun building game though. For a game jam, this is really cool!
Super cool looking and super fun! wish there was a more clear goal
Hm, I cant oversee certain similarities with our own project...although I have to admit that your water looks way cooler and the procedurally generated islands are impressing.
Unfortunately more feedback would be needed, a capacity indicator for silos and a income indicator of the stores would be appreciated. Maybe even a tutorial would be appropriate, to explain things like that factory production and store revenue is dependent on the respective distance to the next silo.
@kruemelkeksfan I gotta play your game then! :D
My LD games always suffer from things like that since I always end up implementing game play last. It looked a lot better in my head. Originally I wanted the UI to be more clear, and allow different pricing based on height and slope (to discourage starting on mountains). But putting stuff on the mouse cursor and fading them and stuff was just too much additional work. I'll learn eventually. It went better than my previous projects.
I also have to sheepishly admit that I am from a time when games lacked tutorials and have the fun was figuring them out XD So I might not be the best candidate for stuff like that.
@hare-software Water just kills your buildings and whatever resources they hold. The base plate then disappears (mostly because its transparency doesn't work with the water).
For the record, factories produce resources which go in (nearby!) silos from which (nearby!) stores withdraw resources to sell product, giving you money. Rate of production/consumption is reduced as the distance to the silo increases. Factories produce pollution which causes the water to rise, and each building adds to the weight of the island which causes the island to sink. That's about it.
Hi there, I wanted very badly to play your game but, unfortunately, I can't because I have a Linux OS and I tried to install it using wine but didn't work. If you could export it for web or for Linux I will be sure to check it. It looks really interesting :)
@furiouswitch I tried exporting for Web but it looks horrible despite my attempts to force higher graphics settings, and the simulation didn't run (nothing seems to be happening). It looks like making a Linux (or Mac) build requires stuff that I don't have at the moment.
If you are a Unity user then there is of course the option of checking out the source code from Github and playing the game in the editor (or making a build yourself).
Needs more feedback and graphics needs a little polish. However, it's a nice game and I had fun.
The graphics in this one are really awesome! I love the water, its foam, waves, the sun reflections, and how it gets murkier the deeper the water is. I also quite like the simple colors/shapes used in the island. And holy christ those are detailed textures; on my 4k monitor, I couldn't get the camera close enough to the terrain to notice individual pixels! Also: nice easter egg for the banner of the store :)
The water rising the more you build is cool. When lots of the island was underwater, I liked panning my camera through it. Felt like exploring a sunken city :D
The randomized generation of the island is really cool, would you mind writing a bit about how you did that?
The gameplay itself was hard to understand. How close must factories be to silos? How close must stores be to silos? Is distance measured in three dimensions or two? Can factories feed directly into stores? How many factories can one store support? How many factories can one silo support? There's no way to find these answers without either rigorous experimentation or looking at the code :/ even a .txt file with these details, included in the download, would have helped a lot.
I really think you have the beginnings of a cool, addictive game, but I just need to know what's going on!
@iamsodarncool Thanks for all the compliments! The textures are simply 1024x1024 as I always make them, but I ended up cranking up the repetition way high so the colors evened out. It didn't make sense to have individual grass blades the size of a silo. I like that you found the banner XD
The generation is based on subdivision of a isosceles triangle (well, six of them forming a hexagon). This is known as the Fournier algorithm (a 3D version of Brownian motion), but I forewent on perturbing along the edge normal in favour of simply perturbing along the Y axis. The Voronoi Diagram of a regular triangle mesh is a regular hexagon mesh, so since the vertices were only ever adjusted along the Y axis I could simply place hexagons prefabs on the vertices and have them fit together. The subdivision process isn't really very visible anymore, I applied two filters for gameplay reasons (to make things flatter and more like an island), but the earlier larger version kinda looked like Minecraft, lol. There are some screenshots in the source repository.
This was an idea I had a couple of days before the jam that I wanted to try out, and I'm glad it worked and that you like it. It's also where most of my time went.
As for your other questions... The ranges are in 3D (I originally wanted 2D and a special height penalty or bonus depending on higher or lower) but they are in real units, not hexagon steps. All because it was simpler and faster to make. The actual ranges are 3 for factories and 4 for stores (one hexagon is 1 in diameter). Factories cannot feed directly into stores, having silos in between just seemed cooler (also I love how they turned out XD). The ratio of stores to factories is muddied on purpose, I set the rates to rather like 6.546456 and 10.36475 or something so there would not be exact gameplay. The idea being that the game would give you clues as to whether you don't have enough factories (slow cash, preferably some kind of indication that silos are empty) or stores (factory smokestacks stop working, preferable some kind of indications that silos are full XD).
A range indicator before placing a building would be interesting, but it's all a moot point for now. I think next time I'll try to spend less time on the level and more on the gameplay. And finally get to do some audio!
It looks really nice, it just took me quite a few tries to figure out what I was doing. At first it wasn't generating money and I had no idea why.
As others have said, definitely needs more feedback of what is going on, maybe click on an already established building type to see progress or something?
Nice concept!
What a nice looking island :) The gameplay was a little confusing, but understandable for a jam game. Good entry!
Thanks everybody!
@echo-team
\> This was an idea I had a couple of days before the jam \> game is called "Floating Islands"
Something tells me you *really* wanted "Floating Islands" to win as the theme :)
Thanks for explaining the island generation algorithm. That's so cool!!
I only got to 200.000 before Poseidon claimed my island.
All in all a very pretty submission, would be cool to see it with a little more information. Reading your comments here about how stores, silos and factories interact was interesting, I think just a splash screen in the beginning with that sort of info would have been enough. There is lots of attention to detail in the models, the factory workers even have a door to enter their workplace. Water effects were good-looking too with the foam effect and the sunlight reflection. Could look at that water rise forever.
@iamsodarncool See also the very first line tucked away between the image and the title in the description ;)
@captaindreamcast Thanks, it's what cost the most time XD
I think I agree with some of the other feedback here, it would be nice to have a bit more feedback. It's definitely hard in a short timeframe to get all that into the game though. The hints on this page helped a lot, it would have been a lot harder without them. I also would have liked music/audio.
I really liked how smooth the camera panning felt and the water was nice.
@phearbot Full disclosure, the camera script maaay not have been entirely 100% written during the course of this game jam. It is based on a script I built earlier, similar to the orbit camera script on the Unity wiki. I suppose I should've just used that one, it's freely available to anyone.
Interesting concept, but like others have pointed it out it needs some kind of feedback mechanic. It could also use some stats to show how many items are products, stores, and are being sold over time. This way I can tell if I need to buy more buildings of each type. Assuming there is an imbalance between buildings. If not then an imbalance would be cool to force players to make more of each type rather than 1:1:1. Over all the game is good and a great start for a little economy game
@darkguardsman Thanks for the comment. I'm not entirely sure what the balance turned out to be, but it's definitely not 1:1:1 XD I think you would need more stores than factories, and not too many silos per say although there are the ranges to consider.
I made $649,382 before rising sea levels killed all of my employees.
This looks great, and feels like the very beginning of something that might make for a good game.
Just a heads-up, looks like I ran out of github-lfs storage, haha. Damn game is too big. So now I can't push to the repo anymore XD
I mirrored the downloads to somewhere else and updated the links, so you can still download away!
the game is interesting, but it's not very clear in afirst time know what each building are made for
both zip files couldn't be opened :/
I have the same problem as the person above, plz fix
both zip files have 1 kb size
Same thing here, zip are too light and can't open them
Hi again, I downloaded the project from Github to try and build it from Linux but, unfortunately, it didn't work out. I don't know why :(
@wowa @darylsteak @gmaker @antoined73 Oh, I see what went wrong... I downloaded the GitHub files directly to my server since my upload speed is crap, but the git-lfs functionality had already been disabled apparently. So all it got was the pointer files. I thought I had verified them to work but I guess I was just too tired. But I'm all slept up now! I've uploaded the files from home now, they should work again. Just took a while :P Sorry about the inconvenience! I hope you'll try my game again!
The amount of detail that went into the buildings was nice to see however there was a significant lack of game play, as you ended up just watching and waiting for a number to count up slowly. The game becomes fairly dull after a few minutes - mainly because of the lack of music, a calm sea sound or some animal sounds - such as birds - would really liven up the game overall. Finally, i think there should be a tutorial, seeing as it is not overly clear what the goal is initially. Or what each thing does.
@furiouswitch I'm really sorry, it looks like the odds were stacked against us. GitHub shut down my account's LFS (Large File Storage) functionality for the rest of the month due to exceeding the allotted bandwidth. As such, cloning the project gives you only the pointer files, so you are missing all the big files like the Unity scene. Fortunately, through the magic of the internet, I have uploaded the source separately as well so you can try again if you want. I admire your tenacity! I hope the game lives up XD
http://www.ngamed.com/FloatingIsland-1.0.0-Source.zip
Next time I just won't put the releases in the GitHub repository.
I really like the graphics and the use of the theme. However without feedback from the game I am unable to understand how best to utilize the land.
I liked the take on the theme, but like many others would have appreciated more feedback or at least more understanding as to how buildings interacted with each other and the environment. For example, I assume that a factory that goes under water stops producing?
Also, an exit button would have been nice instead of having to press Alt-F4 to exit and would have been easy and quick to add (except in WebGL, of course).
A gorgeous game, with a strong mechanic that makes for a nice implementation of the theme.
Pros : - Beautiful graphics, and really readable game. I also loved the water effects. - Clever and addictive scoring mechanic - Controls are minimal, but totally functional
Cons : - The UI is okay per se, but an improved UX (in-game tutorial, visual feedback, ...) would help a lot - Some more audio would improve the mood a lot
All in all, great game !
Graphics were amazing! fun game but could get a bit repetitive but overall really good
@echo-team Link is not working :D The odds are really stacked against us :D
@furiouswitch Fixed it... I'm really sorry.
Everyone else, thanks for the comments! I understand an exit button is simple to add, but a lot of things are simple to add. I just ran out of time. Next time I'm going to (try to) approach things differently.
There is something that's simply fun about watching bits of the island sink away under the water. Great use of procedural terrain and nice polish on the graphics. Fun to play with even if it's hard to know what the buildings are actually doing.
It was nice for maybe a minute or two, but even for an idle game, it's pretty lacking. I like that the island is randomized, at least.
Awesome game! I enjoy the art and mood of it. Keep up the good work!
@echo-team Visuals are a treat to watch but the game in itself lacks incentive or purpose and we don't have much to do then wait for the counter to go up. You could have added music and sound from the net and it would be really nice if the tiles kept sinking and the factories would make them stay a longer or something like that.
The visuals are awesome, but other than that I tend to feel that there's something missing. The gameplay seems like an idle game, but you don't really add any feedback or progression that makes that worth it. Having no audio in addition to that makes it feel as if there's no purpose to playing the game - I really love the concept, visuals, and theme mashup though!
Hey! Thanks for playing my game; tried this back when the link was down, but now I see it's working and thus gave it a go.
A classic use of the theme, the sinking island is a powerful motivator. I'm sure you had many more ideas to implement... always the way of LD. Still, what's here seems to work and forms a loop of gameplay, even if aspects of it still need fleshing out.
@echo-team Hi again, So I downloaded and played the project from unity but it showed substance engine failed to load error. It played but the graphics were all wrong so I still can't rate it. Sorry, I guess that's it for me. If you decided to make a web version let me know.
@furiouswitch Yeah, it needs the Substance For Unity plugin since Unity dropped native support for Substances in 2017.1. I'm really sorry about the whole thing. I'm at work tomorrow for a meeting, maybe I can build a Linux version there.
@furiouswitch I've been able to build a Linux version (and a Mac version) at work. These are untested, as I don't have access to these platforms. Additionally, I've noticed that the new Substance plugin doesn't seem to properly store material data in such a way that it gets uploaded to GitHub, so some things might be slightly off compared to the Windows version. I tried to recreate them from memory as well as I could.
I'm working on a post jam version although the ratings would suggest that has been a futile effort, lol.