popdaddygames 2018-08-14 03:11
Good luck on the rating during this jam session! :)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Swirling Infestation
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1156 | 2.75 | 28 | |
| Fun | 1168 | 2.52 | 27 | |
| Innovation | 996 | 2.76 | 27 | |
| Theme | 1160 | 2.52 | 27 | |
| Humor | 885 | 1.84 | 25 | |
| Mood | 936 | 2.66 | 27 |
Good luck on the rating during this jam session! :)
Edit: Win64 launch issue resolved.
When I try to run Win64 version. Changing the data folder to exactly match what it's looking for makes the program run. But then it froze later in the game, so that might not be the right solution. Ping me if it gets fixed and I'll play again and rate.
I got to a score of about 210 before it froze. Am I evil if I realized that you can drag the infected people to the healthy people to get more infected to get more points on a pulse?
Huh. That's strange. I thought I fixed the Win64 build after I got earlier reports of it. I'll try again in the morning, or maybe I'll just take down the 64-bit version since I don't think it's going to make a big difference.
@coda-highland The reason the 64 bit version doesn't work is because the name of the executable needs to match the name of the data folder. Renaming the data folder in the 64 bit version to "SwirlingInfestation-Win64_Data" fixes the issue and allows the game to run.
Cool game !
@ReiMari Yeah, I know that. I thought I fixed that already but apparently the download link is still serving up the old version or something.
@jamie-reed I have a guess about the cause of the freeze, and it happened to me once during development but I was never able to reproduce it. I have some ideas for failsafes that I could put in for a post-jam update.
As far as the Win64 version is concerned, I think it'll just be easier to take down the Win64 version since there's no reason to have it distinct from the Win32 version. I've relabeled the releases appropriately.
I played it four more times (Win32 this time) and all ended in a freeze and Windows shutting down the program. Once I died and was wondering if I'm supposed to respawn. The stats bar shows 3 lives, but nothing was happening. Another time everything seemed normal and I'd gotten my score up to about 1500 and only 4 swarms left and it just froze.
Other than the technical problems, the game is nice. I like the idea of using a single purge to clear many curses getting progressively more points, but it seems to encourage me to infect uninfected villagers. The games' strong points are its AI and music and sound. The AI doesn't just blindly follow you, it routes around buildings and it moves to other villagers to infect them. The music and sounds are nice and appropriate.
Edit: it looks like there is still a link to the 64 bit version in the Downloads section above Controls.
@jamie-reed Oh shoot! Thanks for pointing that out. I've fixed it.
You have to press Space to respawn after dying. It's something I should probably have documented. The main reason I have it on a keypress instead of a timer is to give you a chance to wait for the enemies to wander away and that was faster than implementing temporary invulnerability after spawning, but even that rationale doesn't work considering you can't see where you're respawning -- it's a rough edge that I just didn't have time to polish up before the deadline. I do appreciate the feedback!
HTML5 build: http://xmpps.greenmaw.com/~coda/ld42/
I'd add it to the list of links in the article but for some reason it won't stick when I save it. I'll try again later, maybe it's just a site issue, but until then... into the comments you go, link!
@coda-highland My game froze when I made it down to about 10 swarms left on the web version, it said it was out of memory, so I tried again, almost immediately teleported to the other side of the screen, and then it froze. So I tried a third time, got down to 8 swarms and ran out of memory again, lol I did get some decent amount of playtime in the first play through. The controls are a little sluggish, and I did see the swirling was growing in size, I wish it hadn't froze so I could see how large the infestations get.... I had just found my groove
With some help from another developer I've tracked down the likely culprit: the particle effects are a lot more demanding than I thought they would be, and while my development machine has the specs to keep up with it on the Mac build, older machines and the HTML5 build are both more significantly impacted. I'll tone down the particle effects some and release a "lite" version.
@grahhhhhhhhh @jamie-reed I've lightened up the particle effects and added some functionality to make offscreen particle effects use much fewer resources. This should hopefully solve the issues you've encountered. Thank you for your help and feedback!
Hi @coda-highland . I downloaded the new version and it still has the same problem. I don't think it's the particle effects, I think it's a memory leak. I ran the program with the Task Manager open looking at processes and here are screenshots from a "just opened" game and a "near crash" game.
beginresources.png
endresources.png
As you can see, just before crashing, the game is using 3.5GB of RAM, up from about 100 MB near the start. I also downloaded the source, and ran it in Unity. I managed to finish a game by doing that, but even Unity used a lot of RAM while the game was running. Playing the game in the Unity Editor with the Profiler going, and clicking on the Memory tab shows that Textures keep going up into the GB while Meshes and Materials stay fairly constant. I hope this helps.
@jamie-reed Actually that's a pretty good tip. Thanks for looking into it. I didn't realize that the textures were going to stick around like that after all of the references were released, so if I memoize the functions that generate textures that should help.
@jamie-reed Thanks for the tip about the profiler! I didn't even know about it -- learn something new every day. That was exactly the issue, and memoizing the gauge textures instead of regenerating them dramatically improved the memory usage. I really appreciate it the help! New builds are uploaded.
It took me a second to realize what I had to do, but with the information on this LD page it became pretty clear. There wasn't much of a challenge; all it took was walking around and pressing spacebar in time. I could not get the teleport function to work in the web version. Nice job!
Interesting concept! I enjoyed the character sprites and the audio. You made good use of the theme with a unique take on it. I felt like the movement was a bit unresponsive (the player will often keep moving after the button is released) and the game was easy overall but I had fun playing nonetheless. Nice submission!
Like @flaterectomy , I skimmed the instructions and then had to refer back to figure out what that red stuff was. I'd like a little more visual contrast between the afflicted and the townspeople who are just in my way. I liked the music and the color palette, and everything else seemed to be working in the Web version. I never got around to trying teleport. Kudos for bringing some gender equity to the player character.
nice idea but i get some lag after a moment
Nice game! Really cool and interesting! :D
graphics are nice, interesting idea despite many bugs. I don't see how it fits the theme?
@mowztouch The maelstroms grow in size, crowding you out of parts of the map if you're not careful.
so honestlyi didn't understand the game so please try to clear it a little bit but i loved the graphics
Neat idea! I can see how not being careful with where you exorcise people could totally screw you over. A bit more pressure could do the game well, maybe a smaller map or more NPCs?
Nice entry!
Pros: - Cool concept - Very atmospheric
Cons: - The spirals grow kinda slow, so I didn't feel the "running out of space"
Obs: When the spirals get a collision box everyone inside it is expelled, so I experienced some blinking moments
Cheers!
Loved the art and style but really couldn't get into the game and gameplay was a bit confusing. A small tutorial could have helped out greatly :)