maverick95 2020-04-21 05:22
The idea seem super fun and I like how the art style works with the concept, but it's hard to start a new task and get the monks to do it. It may be I didn't understood how to do it
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Vivere Computatrum
By GoogleFrog, mankarse, david-liddelow, will-f, Aquanim and istaera
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 600 | 3.76 | 25 | |
| Fun | 1287 | 3.28 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 396 | 3.73 | 25 | |
| Theme | 161 | 4.21 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 1366 | 3.52 | 25 | |
| Audio | 1253 | 3.00 | 23 | |
| Humor | 860 | 3.15 | 24 | |
| Mood | 789 | 3.63 | 25 |
The idea seem super fun and I like how the art style works with the concept, but it's hard to start a new task and get the monks to do it. It may be I didn't understood how to do it
Had a blast, loved the music and the cute little monks. Alas none of them really wanted to ride the bicycle, so the laptop died, but one became and adept baker, so at last future generations could be fed.
I enjoyed watching the monks do their thing, and this is kind of game is right up my alley! However, I had a hard time figuring out what to do and I couldn't ever get my monks to run on the bikes to charge the batteries no matter what I did. Some tooltips to explain the conditions for monks to use a building would be great!
So much depth here, that's really well done. Unfortunately I couldn't really figure out how to get the monks to do exactly what I wanted, similar to @maverick95 's feedback. I seemed to be progressing but wasn't entirely sure why or how, and there are so many mechanics going on that it was difficult to all parse at once.
I feel like with a tutorial and a bit more handholding this could be a great game.
The music is great and it didn't start bothering me. Unfortunately I could only play for 5 minutes, then the monks stopped to move. ALso I couldn't seem to sell anything. Maybe I overlooked something. I love the personal info on the monks and the idea with the laptop is great.
I'm seeing a lot of people confused by the controls and general gameplay. I hope this guide can be helpful.
Monks can be assigned one or more Jobs, by first selecting the monk, and then clicking on a specific Job for the monk to do.
The monks will perform their highest priority Job until they run out of work on that Job, and then they will perform lower priority Jobs until the higher priority Job becomes available.
Jobs can involve dependent Tasks (For example: Cooking food involves picking vegetables from a Veggie Patch carrying them to the Dining Hall, and cooking them. Building involves going to trees or mines, cutting down trees, mining for goods, collecting the results, taking them to the building site, and finishing the construction.)
Fortunately the monks are pretty smart, and will give themselves Tasks to satisfy the dependencies of their primary Job.
There are limits to this; for example, if a Veggie Patch has no ripe vegetables to pick, a monk who is assigned to Cooking will simply wait or move to their next highest priority job, rather than automatically tending to the field to make vegetables available to cook with.
While smart, the Monks are also human. Once they become tired they will stop working on the Job you gave them, and will find an empty bed and sleep.
Once they become hungry, they will automatically go to a Dining Hall and eat any cooked food stored there.
**Monks will NOT automatically cook food for themselves**, so if there is no food available when a Monk becomes hungry, the monk will become unresponsive until a different monk prepares food for them. One way to soft-lock the game is for every monk to become hungry while there is no food available.
These provide sleeping locations for monks. These can not be explicitly used; monks will automatically use the beds to sleep when tired.
Monks will automatically travel here and take cooked meals when hungry. The "Cook Meal" Job picks grown Vegetables, or finished Bread and transforms them Cooked Meals, that are stored in the Dining Hall.
Produces bread/beer, which can be traded for money; and additionally (for bread) cooked into a meal in the Dining Hall. The "Bake Bread"/"Brew Beer" Job fetches harvested grain from a Field, and transforms it into Bread/Beer, that is stored in the Bakery/Brewery.
Produces Vegetables, which can be cooked at the Dining Hall, in order to feed your monks. The "Tend Vegetables" Job creates ripe vegetables (up to the storage limit of the vegetable patch)
Produces Grain, which can be turned into Bread or Beer. The "Reap Grain" Job creates grain (which is then stored in the bag in the field)
Charges laptop batteries. The "Charge Battery" Job takes a battery from the "Empty Battery" pile charges it, and leaves it on the Generator. (The number of batteries in the Empty Battery pile is indicated by a red number in the leftmost corner of the Laptop room) (It is necessary to use the "Monitor Batteries" Job of the Laptop hall to move the now-full battery from the generator back to the laptop hall).
Produces Books. The "Transcribe Book" Job can only be performed by someone who has mastered a skill (this can be done via the "Use Laptop" Job in the laptop room). The "Transcribe Book" Job takes a blank book (must be purchased through trading), and produces a book containing the knowledge about the Skill that the monk performing the Job is a master of.
Attracts new Monks The "Play Organ" job summons a new monk (they will walk in from the edge of the map).
The trading post allows you to buy and sell goods.
If you have the coin, press "Buy" against an item, and it will immediately go into the inventory in the trading post.
If "Take from Post" is shown against that item, Monks will take items from the post if they need them for another job. (For example, if you buy Vegetables or Bread, a monk who is assigned to Cook Meals might take the vegetables or bread from the trading post and use them to cood some food).
First you must get the item into the inventory of the trading post, either by buying it (probably pointless, since you will just lose coin this way), or by setting the inventory mode to "Move to Post" (click on "Take from Post" in the "Trading Post" menu) and having a Monk perform the "Trade" job. Once the item is in the inventory of the trading post, you can sell it by pressing "Sell" against the relevant item in the "Trading Post" menu.
The "Trade" Job moves materials from their storage buffers (in each building/field) into the Trade Post (if "Move to Post" is selected)
The "Charge Bar" indicates charge in the battery that is currently installed in the computer.
The Green number near the top corner of the room indicates the number of full batteries that are ready to automatically be swapped into the computer when the current battery runs out.
The red number near the left corner of the room indicates the number of empty batteries that need to be charged.
The laptop room has two possible Jobs.
The "Monitor Batteries" job (click on the top-left side of the room) collects full batteries from any Generators, and replaces the current battery in the laptop.
The "Use Laptop" job gives a monk a skill. A monk can only have a single skill at a time. The longer they use the laptop for, the better they become at that skill (until they master it). Learning a new skill will make the monk forget everything they knew about their old skill.
I won't list all the skills here, since I'm not exactly sure about what each of them do, but generally, they make the monk faster/more effective at performing certain tasks, and able to write books.
Thanks for all the feedback. It takes a bit too much poking around to figure it all out since we had no time for tutorialisation. All the monks stopping is probably due to running out of food, which will eventually cause a loss due to battery power, but we did not get around to detecting when food will lead to a loss. I've added a 'Help and Hits' section to the game description.
Nice little RTS game you built, reminds me of the Stronghold series a bit.
I've noticed monks will sometimes take the less optimal path when doing jobs, and I had to redesign my base due to this. I'm not sure it's a bug but I couldn't Demolish Construction after some time - clicking on the button would do nothing. Lastly, I've been defeated (laptop battery went out) despite having a guy camp the laptop charging/monitoring batteries. I wonder what happened..
All in all, pretty nice pacing for a Jam game, I thought it would be overwhelming but it's actually quite relaxing
Took me some time to realize that monks can only learn one job and are controlled by their list of three tasks. In the beginning I was a bit confused at how they prioritize tasks. The batteries also go out insanely quick later in the game.
All in all, the game certainly posed an interesting challenge and was smooth enough to keep me playing. Well done!
The concept of monks trying to write down knowledge from a dying laptop is really cool! It did take me a while to figure out how the mechanics worked though. The guide posted here did help.
Cool concept. A little complex to start, so it was harder to get into, but pretty good for a 72 hour RTS game!
Very nice project! I would say at the beggining it was pretty hard to manage all of the monks, but after some time i got use to them. Congrats!
I couldn't resist fixing a few bugs that sometimes crop up in monk behaviour, as well as doing a few minor things that make the interface a bit clearer. I managed to resist making any changes to the underlying game mechanics and balance.
Fixes in v1.2: - Fixed a bug that caused monks to be less interruptible by the player than intended. - Fixed a bug that caused some blocked task types to not advance the job queue in some situations. - Fixed "Cancel and keep current skill" hitbox. - Added a defeat message to deal with the loss condition of everyone starving (or having nowhere to sleep). - Reworded Controls and Objectives slightly. - Made the help screen say the title of the game. - Darkened the Rest and Satiety bars when the monk is neither rested or satiated respectively. - Replaced "Carrying" with "Busy With", except in the rare case where carrying does not make the monk busy. - Made monks be "Busy With" Eat and Sleep. - "Monitor Batteries" -> "Gather Batteries". - "Demolish Construction" -> "Cancel Construction" and made the construction deconstruction slightly less confusing. - "Order" -> "Assign" - Changed the Order/Assign text colour when the monk is busy - indicating that the order will not be acted on immediately. - Fixed some UI clickthrough. - Fixed a UI discrepancy with Power Consumption For Next Battery.
ok, so i snapped this game up as soon as i saw it in my feed. i looove little management/city builder games like this and the story was too good to pass up. so i played it last night, and i loved it! but, i did get a little frustrated after failing a couple of times and learning the strategies i needed to take the hard way.
but, truly, i actually looked forward to giving this another try after i got off work today. i want to get that victory! so, i think you guys have done a wonderful job here. the animations are nice, the mechanics are interesting and i love that little twist of flavor to it. great work!
This was really good! I love these sorts of management games (Dwarf Fortress, etc.)! Took me three hours and two restarts, but I finally managed to beat it!
Loved the names of the books, that was a really nice touch. I felt like the monks would go to sleep/eat way too early (looks like 30% of their bar remaining?).
It was funny seeing that it took me 36 years to complete (Is that minutes?)
Thanks @twobitadder and @ordineu I'm glad you like it. I've found myself fiddling around and playing it when I should really be rating other games. In the interest of not keeping all the fun to myself I made a post-jam version for those who are particularly keen. It can be downloaded here: https://github.com/NeptunianAxolotl/LD46/releases/tag/V1.3
This version has two more challenging modes in which the laptop requires more upkeep and the rate of discharge can grow without limit. The basic objective is harder and more urgent, but I am also really looking forward to seeing how long I can survive with unbounded charge requirements. The first mode can be enabled by typing 'challenge' and seems doable. I am not even sure if the second mode is possible.
Years are minutes, and 36 is pretty quick. Monks seek out their needs at 30% depletion. Delaying their sleep makes them sleep for a bit longer, but you are right that we probably could have rescaled everything so they sought out their need at 0%. There were plans to make bad things happen at 0% (slower movement, maybe even death) but the game turned out to not even need it, which I found to be quite neat.
Very nice, the design is cool, and the engine you guys wrote is very advanced. It reminds me of Dwarf Fortress. If you were to develop it further, I would actually recommend something that a lot of people have recommended for our game - it could use better status messages, so that it was visually obvious why a monk wasn't taking your commands, for example. One of the dangers of a game with a highly sophisticated internal model is that it won't come across clearly what factors are influencing what other factors. With a simulation as deep as yours, that is even more crucial.