mitosis 2020-10-06 07:15
Really great game, gameplay is addicting, I love the artstyle, and your gorilla is very cute indeed
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD47 → Gorilla Taxi
By rongo-matane and IdinaKloppstock
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 366 | 3.81 | 43 | |
| Fun | 332 | 3.75 | 42 | |
| Innovation | 567 | 3.53 | 41 | |
| Theme | 1120 | 3.29 | 43 | |
| Graphics | 826 | 3.52 | 43 | |
| Humor | 215 | 3.69 | 41 | |
| Mood | 368 | 3.80 | 40 |
Really great game, gameplay is addicting, I love the artstyle, and your gorilla is very cute indeed
I was relieved to see the city design was fairly simple though its surprising how quickly you pick up where the streets are. Art was nice and gameplay straightforward, well done :thumbsup:
For clarify I didn't play the game for too long. I'm a very bad top-down driving player (get nauseous after just a bit) so I couldn't manage well.
The game's mood is fantastic! - I love the radio music, it's the one little detail that get you into driving mode. - The (German?) street name is another thing that enhance the "local driver" feeling. - The "cause" of the game also drew me in, I still remember when I was a child when drivers don't have GPS and they remember all the streets in the city like the back of their hand. As someone with name-remembering trouble I admired them a lot. - The evaluation criteria are very human-like. Should require a bunch of different detection. How did you do them?
The things that I'd love to have better: - The animation of the map opening/closing could be better. I'd love it to have a feel where the guest name a street and you kind of fling the map up for a quick peek and step on the pedal. The in game animation is a bit clumsy. - The evaluation of the game could be more transparent. I like how when I just started the guests give me feedback on how I should not drive on pavement, how I should not cut through streets etc. But quickly after that I get a series of guests who neither complain nor praise and just slap $6 on my face. I don't know how well I did or how I can improve. It'd be great if I can constantly know what I can do to improve.
As mentioned at top I didn't reach the point where I "finished" the game, the best result I had is a guest saying fantastic and gave me $80. I can only try to give feedback under pretension about what would a target audience might like. Hope they don't miss the point of the game :)
Hey @avavt , great to see you back at LD! :) Thank you so much for your detailled feedback, that's really fantastic to work on the pain points. You are right, the street names are german - it actually is just a part of the city i live in, Dresden: https://www.google.de/maps/@51.0526807,13.7250649,17.25z with slight modifications ;)
The animation thing - absolutely, you are right. It feels bad as a player. I first had it open faster, but then i slowed it down so a peek at the map would be more of a time penalty (time being the most important factor in delivery). But it's not a good solution - maybe i can come up with something that feels fast but still takes a bit.
I also fully aggree that the feedback needs to be enhanced. Right now i evaluate 4 criteria, but only give a feedback if they are above some threshold: time needed in relation to the (straight) distance, average speed while driving, time spent offroad and collisions. You are perfectly right, it also needs feedback on the lower end. I didn't want to make the player feel bad, but now it might just be confusing/unclear. The biggest issue is, that the straight distance can vary greatly from actual road distance - i know what to do here, but it was too much for the jam.
You can make as much as $2000+ with a single drive, if you score really high :D
Hey man, I really loved your game. It's a really good mood, I just put on the radio a drive around. The clients are a bit tough though. It took a long time to get the money. But overall, I really like it. Did you share the source code somewhere? I would be interested in having a look.
Cheers.
@hakro Thank you :) I didn't share the full source code. What area is interesting to you? I can elaborate on it, or share some source. Nothing magical happening though, all pretty straight forward :D
Haha got me nostalgic of collecting taxi fares and trying to drive sanely in GTA SA.
Like the game actually, spend quite a time to play, but didn't finish it since it completely freezed at some point after some bugs :< Which is very sad. But the traffic system is working well and I do like the overall feeling :) Great result!
@henry-du haha, exactly! A big inspiration for this was GTA Vice City, where i did all the taxi missions, listening to the radio and lazlows show, just enjoying the simple time and the "job feel". One of the most memorable moments from the game for me.
@erlioniel Thank you for the feedback, i'm sorry about the technical problem. I'm sure there are some edge cases left that cause a crash, and i don't know if there are problem with the game running long - it is all simulated at the same time, no area "turned off". So, it doesn't scale.
@rongo-matane I'm not excluding some technical issue with my laptop, so maybe it is :D Anyway very nice result, dude
Wow I had a great time playing this, this is the only game of the dare so far that I've happily played for an hour and would play again. It feels really polished and the simple art looks great. I know the payout was supposed to be exponential but it did seem a little inconsistent or at least a little hard to tell why sometimes I would get $6 or $2000. Maybe a breakdown of penalties would be good. Unfortunately it crashed when I did my final drive. If it gets patched or improved in the future I can definitely see myself coming back and playing it more. Great submission!
@weirdybeardyman Thank you, that makes me really happy! Payout is indeed inconsistent, based on direct distance between start and end, but it rather needs the distance over road. Implementing this was not doable in the jam, but i will add it afterwards, A* pathfinding. I hear you on the breakdown, i'll think of something :)
I'm so sorry for the crash. The end screen isn't much, but i'll post it here: s_3.png
@rongo-matane nice end screen, thanks I feel complete now.
That is a nice game, good job!
really cool game. i got 9000 in 4 customers and then had to drive another 20 more to get the remaining 1000 just to crash on the last customer but i see you already know. great work
Great game. I made some big bucks and had real fun until it stopped responding :cry:
@nisanick @flying-dog-fish thank you both, awesome that you had fun! I'm sorry about the problems :( I wasn't ever able to reproduce any hang up or crash - would you mind sharing what browser you use? Or did you use the desktop version?
I encountered the bug menitoned by @flying-dog-fish and @nisanick. The are the details from the web console.
**Browser: Firefox Quantum 67.0 64-bit Linux mint**
https://gist.github.com/Voidsay/a3f1eaf3a403e63e63c6a4098cea3b72 (all your secrets are mine now)
Classic array out of bounds. You will have to check your sourcecode.
But enough about bugs lets get to the game!
I was asked to press something, so I pressed the power button and my computer turned off *wink wink* thank you I will be here all night!
A few things about the city: - I managed to drive off into the void (yes I constantly joke about my name) on Osta Avenue and Amonstraße when I missed my exit turn. It would be nice if there was a city sign that says that you are leaving/entering the city. - street numbers are usually odd on one side and even on the other. In this small city it probably isn't very meaningful, but on a long road it could definitely help out. - the skyscrapers on amonstraße obscured the traffic and caused me a couple crashes - I am not a city planner myself, but to me it appears that a couple rather significant crossing points are missing (I guess you're supposed to learn them and avoid these routes)
I constantly pressed space to break, but only opened the map. You should consider the paths laid by racing games before. I found it difficult to stay in the lane and avoid the dirt, then again I am a f***ing casual. Whomstever wrote the earth radio music must have a large Rick and Morty brain. Radio selection was nice.
Didn't manage to get to the end. Silly molerats and their concern for comfort and safety. It's my taxi and I will scratch it all I want! Now buckle up Jimbo we'll get you to Schützenstraße 4 in record time!
@voidsay your post was genuinely hilarious :D
Thank you so much for the debug info, i'll fix it with this. I have a mission order predefined, by length between start and destination. After this predifinition is passed, the missions are supposed to be random - BUT i used a ">" where there should have been a ">=", creating the chance for an out of bounds. Thank you so much!
I hear you on street numbers (and everything else actually), they are not even consistent. I think the even/odd is not the same across the world, is it? To justify not making it work properly, i said to myself that it will act as an additional challenge! :P
The crossing points - what do you mean exactly? Crossing for the double lane roads, like Freiberger? If so, yes, kind of. Right now, you can basically cross all you want, the minimal offroadiness will not anger the molerats. I wanted to make it more interesting by not allowing all transitions - this is where really knowing the streets kicks in the heaviest. But, as is tradition, time ran out.
Space - i can actually offer a drift mode that is really fun to drive, no need for space :D But the suggestion also works perfectly, drift with handbrake could be so much fun. I can't overstate how happy it makes me that you found the rick and morty reference, i think you might be the only one!
What you wrote impressed me deeply and i now consider you my internet friend, and will follow all that you make!
Nice game, easy to understand and to play ! My only recommendation would we that the controls adapt to the screen and not to the car, because I always got confuest when turning right while pushing the left button, because I'm heading down. All in all, nice work !
Hi, wow this really takes me back to the original Grand Theft Auto games, as well as driving the taxi around in Vice City! My favorite part of those games was listening to the radio, and I really appreciate that that feature is in this game. Thank you so much for this very pleasant experience in the sea of submissions! I guess a comment on the gameplay would be even with the retirement money lowered to $10,000 it's still a pretty daunting number to reach in terms of playing and rating games for this Jam. Also, there was a place where the road mysteriously ended and I was so confused and just kept driving through the white void (major road exiting towards the bottom-right).
@nikolai-shkurkin haha, exactly! When making the game, my time in vice city was a major inspiration. I enjoyed doing the taxi missions and listening to laszlo, and the other radio stations :D
If you deliver a "perfect" drive you only need like 4-5 rides - as it says, exponential rewards ;)
Yeah i'm sorry about the road. I planned to include much more roads (only 3% of what i planned made it in), and i never managed to get around making a proper "end of the world". So you can just drive off into the sunset ;)
I liked the game a lot. Definitely in my top 5 so far. I dont know how much being off the road impacted the score but its fairly difficult to stay on the road. Overall, its just a hard game, not a bad game so i cant recommend anything for improving it because nothing wrong. One small thing i recommend is the NPC car's stopping behind you if you're stopped on the road instead of colliding with you.
Really cool game. I like the idea of going back to the basics with these kinds of games. It definitely reminds of GTA. I can see me playing this for a while, kinda had to force me to stop and rate :)
Hello ! Thanks for this game, I really enjoyed it ! Great feeling to learn the map and starting to rush the rides. Is the map automatically generated ? If yes where did you take the data ? Openstreet map API ? Thanks !
I absolutely loved the game, made it all the way to sweet retirement. And as and added bonus, I'm sure I'd know my way around Dresden, if I ever happen to be there haha
It was just so motivating to be able to drive a client immediately to where he needed to go without needing to have a look on the map.
The only times I felt frustrated were when I knew I wouldn't make it in time because I just had to search for the street on the map (especially in the beginning of the game), but that made the times I succeeded all too sweeter.
My favourite entry so far, keep it up!
Lol: "You could get us killed. Your driving was absolutely flawless"...
Really enjoyed the game, it's really fun how you learn the map better and better and finally can get the huge bonuses. I think the size of the map is of a good size, a bigger map would be way too hard to memorize. I think if you did all of the area you originally planned, it would have been way too hard.
I really liked the concept, no hand holding exploration, just like the olden days. I quickly gave up though since the whole map seems to have only have generic block buildings and the only landmark is a park, which made it much harder to understand the layout of everything.
@mrschlag2 Thank you! I added a map screenshot into my editor and just retraced the streets there. Auto generation has its own problems here, starting with the scale. The cars and streets are not to scale - so a road that takes you 1 minute in real life might only take 15s to drive along in the game.
@lexi Thank you so much! :D I fully understand the frustration, i thought about it too. In the beginning, the guests will always be disappointed - have to be, because you are learning the map. But this doesn't feel good as a player, because no fault was made. I'm not sure how to tackle this, as i also don't want to take away the feeling when you are finally making really good drives.
@smbe19 hehe, giving feedback that is consistent is kind of hard actually :D I agree that the original map would have been too big, but it was a more interesting layout. So maybe i should have just went for something custom made - but i thought i could save a lot of time not thinking about a own city, and rather just copying real life.
@mike09123 Yeah i understand - we prepared some special buildings, but only 2 made it in. It was intentionally kept in that minimal style, to rely more on color than on structure. So, i take it the colors didn't do it for you :D
Pretty good! It was way too hard to make a perfect drive, though :p
Thank god, you didn't make the map as big as planned! I decided to take passengers exclusivelly on 31 Amon street - as it's left corner of map and by the end was pretty familiar with about 30-40% of town, still was quite hard.
The thing I liked the most, was passenger feedback. Always so polite even after a number of wrecks and wrong turns) It was as if I was taxiing for ludum-darers. In fact I'd say that the game captures the spirit of game jam perfectly:
You set out on a mission, for which you clearly lack both skills and knowledge, and pick up pace way higher than you should, yet in the end you get really nice and thoughtfull feedback, no matter what kind of wreck the whole trip actually was. =)
Thank you for submission!
Outstanding execution! I can't drive without my GPS and always wondered how they did that not that long ago.
Hey @rongo-matane, just interested on how you implemented the whole map and the collisions. Is it a big sprite with Areas nodes for the roads? Or something else?
Thx
Thank you guys! :D @steambrain beautifully written :D and you invented a new tactic to beat the game, very interesting! A good reminder of the lengths players go to optimize. The molerats were initially way more rude, but that seemed horrible and discouraging to a new player who really tries hard.
@hakro Here is a screenshot of the editor with viewable stuff enabled. The lanes are basically bezier curves and are organized in a street object per street. Per naming convention, to lanes are merged visually by drawing a textured line between them, which is my road texture. Then there are junctions, which always connect exactly two streets. The are similar curves, that then get a textured line drawn over. On startup i run quite some code to detect if and where a junction lane connects which street lanes, and at what offset. This is extremely flexible and reasonably swift to build. With that i have a fully connected network of streets, lanes and junctions.
The buildings are sprites for which i define a collision rect once per sprite, seen in the leftmost orange building. What i also show in the screenshot with the red and purple area are collision polygons, that signal the car to go slower, to simulate offroadiness. The visible road is only decoration.
The house numbers are also generated automatically, same as the little roads from the house to the street. s99.png
@rongo-matane brilliant. Thanks for sharing. Makes more sense now. Cheers;
Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/767511277?t=4h21m52s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
Your game was played on my stream ( https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos ) on 10/11. Thank you for sharing your game with us! You can find the timestamp of when your game was played here: https://tinyurl.com/yy4oycvv
I loved those times when there were no quest markers and "all" the games didn't think they absolutely have to be open word (I was replaying the original Deus Ex not so long ago and got nostalgic). But I'm here to talk about your game.
Remembering the street layout was the easy part. What I found very challenging was the actual driving. I am pretty sure I didn't get even one client to his destination without copious amounts of riding off the road, poking other cars and driving into buildings. If the game had more detailed graphics/animations, it would be a veritable bloodbath :laughing: I even drove into my clients - I am the worst taxi driver ever!
I liked the client feedback and the inclusion of various radios to choose from is great and very thoughtful.
Aw man, what a nice reminder of the times when the journey was at least as important as the destination.
Enjoyed the game greatly! Also had to grin at the street names. Could see the game being way easier for german speakers, as we won't have difficulties differentiating them too much :D
The game just works, there's not much to complain about here, you even included several radio stations! Lovin' it. Thank you for bringing this game!
Great job! I'd love to see the drifting experiment added to this!
That was a great experience! I loved getting to know the streets. Receiving a 3800 dollar fare feels really good. Sometimes not cutting the corners was a bit hard. Being able to choose out of 5 songs/radio stations was also pretty cool, and it even came with a volume slider! Found no bugs - everything was flawless!
Considering all that, I give it a lot/10 with a huge bonus!
Beautiful, clean graphics. The gameplay was fun with smooth and well balanced controls. The radio was a superb addition.
Fun game. Considering i am lost when i am further than 100m from my home this was a good challenge to me. Thank you for your game
sorry double post
I would be a bad taxi driver back in the days without the GPS ;)
But I had a a lot of fun with your game. The mood is very relaxing. I like the idea of the radio. The controls feel good and the graphics were minimalistic, but fitting. It reminded me of the first GTA, where I also liked to just cruise around.
The feedback of the passengers as a text was also a good thing. I knew on what part i screwed up and it felt very good to get over 500$ after some tries. But one little thing, that would make that feedback even better, if you would add some "cash sound" while getting the money.
Great little game, I had a lot of fun. Greetings from Germany.
I like taxi driving games :)
The map is just the right size to get to know it and the radio sets the mood quite right. Great idea to have several station sto choose from.
The AI drivers were a bit annoying; I would have liked them to avoid accidents as well (and not just plow staight ahead).
Overall, I had fun :)