darkguardsman 2018-08-11 12:39
Screenshot of progress, roughly 8 hours into the project Screenshot 2018-08-11 07.37.27.png
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Space is running out of space
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1058 | 2.92 | 76 | |
| Fun | 1160 | 2.54 | 75 | |
| Innovation | 803 | 2.97 | 74 | |
| Theme | 1008 | 2.89 | 74 | |
| Graphics | 923 | 2.93 | 75 |
Screenshot of progress, roughly 8 hours into the project Screenshot 2018-08-11 07.37.27.png
Video of gameplay/progress https://youtu.be/S2yDGF3mgNc?t=45
Day 2 progress, improved navigation hud and textures for the junk Screenshot 2018-08-12 06.33.16.png
Day 3 Pre-Finished game demo of "Space is running out of space" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzS35Ngd7iU
Great functioning game. I knocked points off for fun because it felt slow. I both liked and didn't like the drone physics, it was neat and I wouldn't take it out but the scrap was a little too fast and after several minutes of playing I didn't manage to get much progress which didn't feel good. Good job
Good concept.But the game control is too difficult.I would suggest that increase drone speed and control the speed instead of the acceleration.
I love the conceptual progress you've made! Awesome work!
I really like the game concept with there being literally too many objects in an area that you run into them. One suggestion that I think will improve the movement a ton. Add some sort of particle effect or more static objects around you so you can tell that you are moving.
Good for what it is, a slow "work sim" game for relaxing. I would have liked the camera to show more in front of the ship than behind it.
Hey, great game! You captured the theme well and I like your literal interpretation. The graphics look nice and the interface is very clean, which shows greatly how the space is running out of space.
The gameplay, however, is really hard. Because of the ship's fast movement it is not easy to capture the objects. It often took some time to find the junk, and as soon as I got to it, I flew right past it. The controls are also a little bit counter intuitive. I only read the info page and didn't understand at first, that my view direction does not influence my fly direction.
But generally it's a great functioning game! Nice idea and great execution. I played on Linux and it worked like a charm.
Thank you everyone for the comments and feedback :)
@joseph-manley Object count is as much to give you stuff to collect as to also be a danger. Good suggestion on the effects, its something i've add to my list for future improvements after the JAM is over.
@iori-branford I'll see what I can do about camera angles. Still learning how to use the cinamachine follow camera in unity. I have a theory to add an game object in front of the ship for the camera to track.
As for everyone else, ya controls and speed of junk are rough. Wish I had more time to work on both. In future versions I plan to add option to switch between camera and drone orientation for movement. Just in case people do like separating the movement from the aim direction. I'll see about adding difficulty options for junk speed and physics as well.
nice man, i love it
Nice game, but think about adding sound to your game, it would make it much more fun! Also the game world may be too big, chasing down junk felt a bit cumbersome!
Movement is heavy and hard, but game is good. Rate you high
Couldn't get it to run on ElementaryOS
But booted it on windows and was awesome!!!
I couldn't get the hang of the controls. Also, the theme wasn't in the game. I wish the controls were spin and thrust like asteroids. Have them screen relative hurt the game.
@joschi I agree its a bit big, I made it smaller before releasing but not small enough. In the future I'm likely to add options to scale the play field. As well decrease the area to make it feel a little nicer. Sound is also a thing that will be added :)
@george-lancaster I thought about doing controls like that but wanted to give more freedom of movement. That way users can align there ship with the fast moving objects. Sadly I didn't get a chance to switch over to ship relative movement before releasing.
I really don't like the controls to move the drone, but the physics are good
The idea and description of the game is just so good. Someone should make a anime out of it. Unfortunately, I think the game itself needs a lot of tweaking to be really enjoyable.
The graphics are great, and the space physics feel nice. Some music would have given a better mood, but I see you opt-out of that. The gameplay is a bit confusing, once you get it you are able to enjoy for a bit, but it can get tedious after a while.
Overall, I think the concept was nice but the execution needed a better design. You should be proud nonetheless, because your game works really well. Great job!
The graphics were pretty nice, but movement felt very sluggish - there's just not much "get up and go" in the little drone. Even though there was constantly stuff spawning, it felt like I wasn't running in to much debris - this coupled with the difficulty of changing direction didn't play well for me. I think some tighter controls would go a long way to making this more fun.
@sebastian-m Thank you, Tempted to work in some story/dialog into the game in the future to go with the lore. Maybe some kind of campaign to teach the controls and explain the backstory. Will go well with the planned upgrade system and ability to create structures.
As well I would love to get music but skipped it to save time. This is the first game I've released and only 2nd I've made real progress on :)
The idea of cleaning space is interesting, but the movements are very slow. From that, I assumed it was more of a simulator of sorts, but then again it makes sense for how it's in space.
I had a lot of difficulty matching pace with the rocks, and once I finally did I'd lose the pieces as soon as I shot it enough, so in the end I played about 10 min and didn't make any progress. The graphics are very nice and I think with some refinement to the movement this could be an interesting game. Also I can confirm the mac version works.
Really interesting take on the theme. One thing though, the controls were really slow in responding, maybe increase that. Otherwise, seriously good stuff!
Good Job!
Cool game! Movement is pretty floaty and the still background makes it hard to determine the speed of your movement. Sound effects would also assist in improving the games immersion. I still really liked the game concept though. Great work! :)
Nice game, physics worked well - if a little frustrating when something flew past and I wanted to turn quickly.. but I suppose that's just space travel for ya! Would've been cool to have some music/sfx too. Liked the art, and the tutorial/menu screen etc was all very well thought out (although a little plain looking). Good work.
Very nice. The Linux build worked fine for me! As others have said it's a bit slow, but I appreciate that the momentum feels space-like!
Loving all the comments, movement is going to be the first thing I adjust next time I work on the game. Also likely to include movement boosts as upgrades later. In addition to more movement indicators to help get a feel for the speed.
Also for those that couldn't get windows 32 working I made a new build. Figure out that unity will overlap data for both 32 and 64 in the same folder. I've also packaged each OS version as its own download to help :)
Great effort! Perhaps post a thumbnail so that people have a sense of what the game is.
Good idea, uploaded a few images :)
Made it to 100 points at 750 scraps in space! The FPS bar became a bit of a timer, but I still finished at a strong 700FPS (though with 2000 FPS starting it had me a little sweating).
Very arcade-y game, it becomes lots of fun once the debris starts adding up. My personal go-to strategy was camping near the scrap drop and waiting for debris to fly by, though I can see there being multiple possibilities. Only thing I couldn't figure out was health, even though I bumped into scrap I was towing rather liberally while playing the game, I never lost any of that. All in all a cool interpretation of the theme, great job!
Nice, maybe add some "magnet" to the center so that more junk flies closer to the colector. So that game would feel faster.
@yaro Something like that is planned as either an upgrade or separate ship for future releases :)
I think you need like a mini map or something, i kept finding I was getting lost, the arrows alone don't feel like enough to navigate by. but none the less i liked it, it was a pretty fun game.
I might add a mini-map but am unsure as that would take up some screen space. I do plan for some more detailed navigation arrows. In theory that might help when combined with other mechanics.
I loved chasing the asteroids =) good job
I found your game boring for several reasons: -The controls are super hard to hang on -Didn't make me want to try hard and have a better score -Really slow. This isn't supposed to be a problem, but it comboed pretty well with the above Last thing: The description is really long, which is not a problem if it is interesting to read, but is when it holds very few usefull informations. Sorry for the bad comments, I'll leave them not-anonymous so you can come and trash my game in return ;)
I found the game execution to be correct, but the gameplay to be a little bit slow. The ship's movement is a bit slow, and picking up objects makes the ship abysmally slow, making it a pain to return to the scrap collector if you went to get the junk pretty far away. I also think that the junk should be auto-deposited into the junk collector when you hover over it.
Other than the gameplay being too slow, the execution of the game is perfectly correct and playable, with a menu to boot ! Good job ! I just wish there was some audio as well !
@cydouzo Your comment is fine, hard criticism is very useful and would feel off if no one gave me a little. Plus most agree with you on the slow pace + control problem. This was even something I was aware of before releasing. However, I came in late into the event and decided to focus on other aspects. Such as making sure there was a world border, adding movement to scrap, and adding good physics. The newest code on the git has solved movement being slow and future plans are to improve on it more. Pacing will also likely be scaled by decreasing play field size and adding difficulty settings.
The description is a bit longer than what I normally do with stuff. Had a little fun and felt there was no point changing it. Its likely to be changed and included in the game directly in the future. Rather than being setup in some info page for the game like it is here. No worries also about being forced to read it. I love adding skip buttons to any dialog I include in projects :)
Also, No worries on me trashing your game... unless its bad :P
@fluffy-kaeloky Thank you, UI was something I made sure to get running. As I find it annoying when games lack even simple pause functions and ability to exit the game via a menu. I plan to expand on the UI a lot in the future. As I really enjoy usability when it comes to game design. Audio is also planned :)
I like the concept. I agree with what others have already mentioned about gameplay being too slow. Also, the ship's movement was very floaty. I would suggest adding parallax to the background to give a better sense of movement. With some nice sound effects, this could be very fun game.
I felt confused and frustrated. I took a while to understand that if I pressed "up", I would accelerate my ship towards the upper side of the screen. The most intuitive mechanic is that pressing "up" will accelerate the ship on the direction that it is facing. The fact that I'm flying at a certain speed and the asteroids are too, makes it very hard to find even one on your screen. When I tried to shoot it, I thought that I would destroy it or something but I didn't understand what happen. I think I teleported to the main area? I was with 2 points, I didn't know from what I've gained those points. I don't know what the R command do too...I think the mechanics were not so good but the point that definitely needs more work is the Tutorial.
Definitely like the hook mechanic! would work on improving the responsiveness of the controls, which feel sluggish. It's also easy to not know exactly where you are going because the background is not moving. So I would add some scrolling elements. Overall though there is potential with the hook.
The game feels so DEAD! But I think that you can work more on this game and if you implement a mission system, it will feel better to play. Good luck!
@eduardo-yukio Sadly I didn't have time for a tutorial or to fix the movement. There is a rough info screen that does note the goal is to collect scrap. The points you got were likely random scrap flying into the collector at the center of the map. Sorry it was frustrating future versions have already solved most of the problems. However, waiting until after the dare to release.
@carlos-giraldo Thank you, the hook mechanic was something I add randomly. Not something I've ever tried before but felt so much nicer than storing the scrap in an off screen cargo box. Background movement is also planned, along with more effects.
@pnghasemi I agree, the pacing is not what I wanted. I was looking for casual collection game but made it too slow. Missions are something I do plan to toy around with as a solution to several problems. This will include a story campaign to explain the mechanics and controls. As well small missions tinside the current mode (which will be called endless mode). These missions likely will involve chasing down dead stations, satellites, and other large junk to get large scrap drops. I might even tie in the upgrade system with this concept now that I think about it. Would prevent people camping center and waiting for scrap to fly nearby.
Space games <3
The concept is cool, but the movement kind of hinders the game a bit. It would certainly improve if you could see, what direction you are moving in. Maybe by moving the background or adding some trail or such.
But pretty good work for a single person team. Well done.
Nice conceptual idea that has a lot of potential. For a typical spaceship related game, the controlls felt good. Only thing is that the game felt to massive.
When I was going at super speed, it felt like the ship was shaking. Dont know if this was intentional for the effect or whether it is something else - like the camera struggling to keep up with the ship.
I felt like that the best method was to float in space and wait for space-junk/rock to come nearby but it was more fun going at high speeds.
Great art style and sound. Good job. I like the mechanics as well. Keep it up!
Please do check my game maybe you’ll like it and leave some feedback.
So many comments already; not much to add. I had a really tough time with the controls as others said, but the general idea was really cool. Thanks for a fun entry!
@eric-kulbiej sound? lol, it has no sound... but thank you :)
@cppchriscpp NP, thank you for trying it out. As well I already have a new version that will be released soon with better controls and UI elements.
Great game! Very cool and interesting! :D
Great game but controls are a little bit hard to master x) Great job ;)
cool!
Took some time to get used to the controls and space (I felt lost, but with my rubbish spatial orientation it's probably on me), but other than what already has been said (speed etc.), it has great potential and is pretty interesting. Good job!
Thank you everyone for the feedback and trying the game. This was an enjoyable first game jam and game release for me. I look forward to releasing more games in the future for ludum dare. As well I will leave all downloads up for free and will leave the source code up as a thank you.
Also, I will have a post jam version up here soon solving some of the problems. Most importantly the next version has in game keybinds, video settings, and ability to switch movement style. You can change from ship based and screen based movement. As well disable mouse movement to use QE for rotation. This allows anyone to customize the game to there player style. Future versions will expand on this to allow controlling movement speed and acceleration. Along with stronger controller and gamepad support.
Other improvements also include changes to collisions, improvements in performance, and a decrease play field to increase pacing. Quality of life improvements have also been made to some UIs. Including a way to use TAB key to navigate UIs without the use of a mouse. This will be expanded on to also use arrow keys and some hot keys for non-mouse users.