celticlord 2019-10-07 22:57
Love the ambition
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD45 → Village Simulation Game
By joeshanahan and AmyE123
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 431 | 3.57 | 37 | |
| Fun | 294 | 3.60 | 36 | |
| Innovation | 781 | 2.89 | 36 | |
| Theme | 352 | 3.61 | 36 | |
| Graphics | 581 | 3.48 | 36 | |
| Humor | 515 | 2.81 | 34 | |
| Mood | 485 | 3.42 | 35 |
Love the ambition
Really cool concept. Got up to the point of building the first 3 structures but couldn't seem to find a way to progress further after they were all build as I couldn't make any tools. With a bit more work could be a great game!
Thanks for playing - for anyone wondering, here is how the progression works:
* Build first house * Build a food storage area * Collect 50 food * Craft a tool from the toolshed * Get some iron from the mine
I have noticed a bug where sometimes villagers decide they're too hungry to do anything, including eat, and they just kinda stand there.
The first time I got the message that I unlocked the tool shed, the game paused, but I thought it had frozen, so I refreshed and started over. The same thing happened when I built the tool shed for the first time, but this time I figured out the game was paused and so I sped it up, then slowed it down, and kept playing until the end.
The progression was a lot of fun. I've always enjoyed these kinds of games. Some things that could help: - no delay between when you mouse over someone and when you see their stats - whenever you select a villager, you automatically see their stats as well - a message whenever you're out of storage space and try to get something more. When a villager refused to pick up wood, I thought that was because they were tired and sleepy, not realizing that I needed to build more storage. The easiest way to do this would actually just be to display the total at the top of the bar. 24/24 Then it would be pretty clear you need more storage space. - display percentage chances on what might happen if you send a villager out somewhere. Increase the percentage that something good will happen if they're happy/full/awake, etc. Right now it just feels random and punishing - the worst that should happen if you send someone out is that they come back with nothing. It doesn't make sense that they would come back and also destroy the supplies you already worked so hard to create - as the game grows, being able to select multiple villagers at once to do the same thing becomes absolutely necessary. As it was, the game was hovering just on the edge of too much micromanaging by the end, but I think the UI fixes above would help.
Anyway, good job and good luck!
simply amazing looks like a much better version of my game only "bug" i found: the mining progress bar got stuck in the middle and i wasnt able to fix it, it said the villager died so why not cancel this mining process then?
It looks like you two ran into this issue where the game pauses when an event window pops up, and then it doesn't unpause when you close it again. You need to click the play button to get it to go again, sorry about that!
@carraka Thanks for playing! That's a lot of good suggestions!
The storage space being full was planned but we ran out of time. Also we planned to have emoticons appear above the heads letting you know they were too hungry or tired to work, to explain why they weren't working. Honestly, that logic to decide to eat/sleep instead of work was put in last minute and it's really glitchy, should've prioritised that AI before all the other features.
I agree the mines are a bit too punishing, and you shouldn't be losing so many resources. If you do lose any resources, it should be a few apples, or some water, not 70 something iron.
This was our first attempt at making a simulation game, only made puzzle games before. Hoping to make more in the future!
It was a really relaxing experience and a pretty solid base for a full game ! I also liked the text/descriptions some were quite funny to read. I'm impressed it was done in a jam, great work ! ೕ(•̀ᴗ•́)
@akadenki Glad you enjoyed it! Most of the text was done by @amye123, she did a really good job with it!
Relaxing & interesting game! The music is cool & the characters are cute.
After around 10 minutes playing, both of my characters couldn't gather ressources, even if I had space for it (after i click collect, they would just stay in from of the ressource, waiting). Aside from that, I enjoyed playing it! Good job guys!
@boje yeah, I think a lot of people are running into that bug. I should've spent more time solidifying the villager AI but three days goes so fast! Thanks for playing!
Even though that bug is prominent, I think that this was a very strong entry for this jam. I love games like this, and it's even better when there is a cool style, such as this. The art and music fit very nicely together, which helped form a charming experience. I think that if villagers used their own houses rather than just one single house (I don't know if this is the case, but it looked like it), it would allow for some interesting gameplay. But I really love games like this!
@jordanvang yep, villagers were supposed to use their own houses but didn't get round to doing that unfortunately. There's a whole system for villagers passing out of they can't find a house when they're out of energy, but the only way to trigger it right now is to not build any houses. Screenshot_20191009-004130.png
Wow this is really cool! Really impressive for the time frame of the jam.
Love the art and music I think they mesh really well.
I'm really glad you include the time-skip arrows at the bottom, I think a lot of entries in the game Jam often can feel slow, but I love that I can choose a faster pace. Was there a manual way to eat? I had a lot of trouble keeping my villagers above red/low yellow health.
I really enjoyed this and am super impressed you were able to put this together in 72 hours!
Amazing idea! Love the game you made there
Nice game.
Great graphics and suitable audio here. This was a very ambitious project for a jam. Congrats on what you were able to accomplish. This is something you could really get lost in for a long time. Nice work!
@jharler Thanks! It was a balancing act of trying to get the basic systems in, against trying to get content. We could've easily added another 10 buildings or so if we had them modelled, because our workflow (using ScriptableObjects) made adding new content really easy. Unfortunately, our dedicated modeller couldn't make it this time, so the two of us had to jump between programming and art to get it all done in time.
Ambitious? Yes. But that's sort of the point of this whole jam. I hope you continue to expand this game, as you have a fan in me. Really liked the feel of the music as well.
Good small strategy game. I had fun with it. Need some polish tho
Good game!
I could say all kinds of good and bad things about this game but bless you for the speed buttons, every singleplayer management game should have them and it was the right choice to include them. Will you expand upon the existing concept into a city building game?
@starblast The aim of this LD was for our team to have a first attempt at making a simulation game. No constraints set on what is realistic or feasible in the time, just to see how far we could get in three days. From having made this we've already learned A TON about what to do and what not to do, and so we'll be able to apply that to the next time we make a game.
The code on this project is... shameful. Spaghetti code doesn't even come close to describing the full extent of how bad it is. I don't think we'll expand this specific game, but maybe next LD we'll be able to make an even better town/city builder game. One where we get basic systems like hunger/eating sorted on the first day rather than badly in the final hour.
It was supposed to be that the villager ONLY stops what they were doing to eat if there was actually any food available. And if there was no FoodStoreStructure then they should just be able to eat straight out of the inventory. But didn't have enough time to test it and so got the annoying softlock issue.
codde.png
I think next time, instead having ONE task to have attached to them, and needing to swap it out to the "remembered interaction" when something more pressing comes up, there should be a List of tasks each with their own priority, and so the actor can carry on with the lower priority task once they've addressed the higher priority one.
@joeshanahan If you learned a lot you already suceededin my book. Under the greatest constraints do improve the most. For the food issue a smart idea is for the peeps to check whether the food building or a berry bush is closer, the code won't be much more complex but the AI will look disproportionatelly smarter. And for your first Ludum Dare entry I can tell you you did an amazing job. Looking forward to see whatever you'll dream up in 6 months ;)
Love the music. Fun game, even with the bug you've already identified.
Awwww...I was just getting into it! Nice little game. The zig-zag walking is a bit weird though. And it took me some time to figure out how things worked. Tooltips in game might be useful. For example when you hover over one of the recipes a pop should be displayed. I feel like the "Something happened!" notification shouldn't be a red alert colour. A more neutral colour would be more appropriate unless something bad happened.
@nsadie Yeah, I don't like the zig-zag walking, but the underlying sim works by moving one square at a time. I didn't want the characters to be able to move 1.4x as fast by going diagonally, which is why they can only move adjacent, leading to the zigzag. I'm wondering if next time it'd be better to abandon the grid entirely for actor movement, but I do like the simplicity of it.
This game is fantastic! It was all very polished and had an impressive amount of content. Models were colourful and very consistent in terms of scaling and form. Progression was satisfying, seeing your village grow in population and in productivity over time. A checklist system containing some of the objectives you mentioned in the description would be a great way of further improving this feedback, while also providing the player with explicit goals to reach. Some form of opposition against the population growth would also add a lot more challenge to the game, forcing the player into making interesting decisions to combat against these external conflicts (e.g. bad weather, other populations that grow as yours does, time.) Overall excellent work, this was a lot of fun to play!
@megalink Thanks for the suggestions, they're all really great!
The charm of the art style absolutely comes from @amye123 with the concept art, they translated really well over into 3D.
sidebyside.png
This is really ambituous, and controls like a charm! Regardless of how far the concept is taken in this version, I'm really surprised by all the quality of life stuff already here. The automatic gathering and the game speed buttons were very very helpful, and made it a real joy getting to a large number of villagers rather than a slog. Good work! !
Pros: - Progression worked well - UI had some nice animations + polish - Progression worked well - I liked the flavour text :D
Cons: - My villagers kept getting frozen doing nothing. I noticed you mentioned a bug with them getting hungry, so I checked, and it was definitely happening sometimes when they were not hungry at all. They would sometimes just stand in front of a resource patch they were told to collect, and do nothing until I poked them.
- It would be nice if the status bars for each villager were onscreen at all times. Alternatively, if they would consistently sleep when they're tired, and eat when they're hungry, this wouldn't be needed.
too bad my guy keep sleeping all of the time -- thanks for making it
Nice game, but i don't know how to eat.