Hyperloop

indigo 2020-10-05 00:12

Very cool entry! I absolutely dig your music, and the sound effects in general were decent too. The warp tunnel looked cool as well.

My main gripe with this game would be that there's little feedback on player interactions. For example, the Help tells me that WASD moves my ship, but I basically just have to take your word for it, as the camera is centered on my ship and the background doesn't move either. Also, there appears to be little penalty for just hitting the spacebar and jump all the time, which makes the game too easy (whereas staying in a system for long makes it impossible).

Oh, speaking of the backgrounds: I loved how you made the three systems feel a little different by adding different types of enemies. That gives the game more depth.

bookerbluejay 2020-10-05 03:24

Pretty dang nifty! I like that each system had their own enemies and planets but i thought i was rotating around the planet at first until it moved away, so maybe clearer player moving feedback would help. Good job, keep up the good work!

jmoocow2003 2020-10-05 16:52

@indigo @bookerbluejay Thanks for the feedback! This is my first ludum dare jam, so I'm not sure about this, but do either of you know if you're allowed to give your game a quick and small patch update? Like, say, adding debris in the background that makes the player movement more emphasized? If that's allowed I would do that, and that should help the movement become more visible.

indigo 2020-10-05 17:08

@jmoocow2003 no, content updates are not allowed. You may only fix breaking bugs, i.e. things that prevent the game from even running on some computers, and even then only in a very short timeframe. Of course, you can always create an updated version of the game and put a link in the description, as long as you are explicit about that version being a post-compo version.

jmoocow2003 2020-10-05 17:15

@indigo Alright, thanks for the quick response. I'll keep it in mind for next time.

elizir 2020-10-05 19:05

Pretty nice music! Really like the fact that you did all of that in just 48 hours... amazing work and nice game concept :smile: had a lot of fun playing it :heart:

dcrdro 2020-10-05 19:18

Very dynamic game! Two types attack on player is powerfully Cool AI: various enemies, bullets, and how they keep distance. ( though at first it's hard to distinguish bullets from resources :D) Liked the extras section ;D

But I didnt' seem to understand how the switching between battle and moving in loop works... I can just switch to loop movement at any time in battle? And its purpose is regenerate my hp and second weapon ?

corporation 2020-10-05 19:19

Nice game! Enemy AI felt actually kinda advanced) good job writing it) Some suggestion would be: chaning bullet graphics - they felt not fitting overall style, and adding some events of some type to different planets. Btw I feel like our projects got something in common with idea of collecting resources to get out of the planet)

jmoocow2003 2020-10-05 19:30

@dcrdro The game is supposed to get exponentially harder the longer you stay in a system. The loop, or warp, is meant to act as a method of making tactical retreats when things get too hot, and it brings you to the next system where you collect different resources and different enemies. It also serves the purpose, as you said, of regenerating your shields, secondary weapon charge, and half the damage you took for health, a safe zone, that allows you to recooperate after battle in the previous system. Warping is also the only time in the game where you can save your progress and quit. If you quit in a system you'll lose your progress since your last save.

@corporation Thanks for the feedback! I was originally gonna model an actual bullet but completely forgot about it until way later and ran out of time, heh. I'll be sure to check out your game as well, to see that commonality :)

schraf 2020-10-05 20:44

Well done fitting that all in for the Compo. The secondary weapon was a nice add. I felt the movement of the ship felt sluggish and going forward and reverse didn't feel quite right.

kirbloid 2020-10-05 22:31

This was fun! The ship felt pretty hefty and I really dug the low-poly look, which 3D is always impressive to see in a compo and worked great here.

dcrdro 2020-10-06 11:30

@jmoocow2003 Oh, I see.. Thanks for explanation! Now I understand why there were so many enemies and it was incredibly difficult to fight after staying for several minutes and didn't know when it would end :D

amin-jk000 2020-10-06 16:11

I liked it but it was a little hard to play. nice job :v:

shp 2020-10-06 16:44

Cool, I did end up playing long enough to meet all the goals, I liked the kind of a break the warp section gives you, paces the gameplay pretty naturally. Only thing I didn't really like was how slow the ship movement felt

kunonooni 2020-10-07 03:27

This was a fun game! The music and sfx were really good as was the use of theme and the overall presentation. I liked having the second weapon as a option to get out of a sticky situation. Congrats on finishing and submitting your game!

thebugger 2020-10-08 12:28

Fun little game!

blue-pin-studio 2020-10-15 03:37

Good submission, i liked it. The music got a little bit loud and repetitive but kudos for making your own music during compo. I feel like maybe there are too many materials to collect and it takes too long without any sort of progress in between. Basically its either you fix the engine or not, there are no milestones or upgrades. It lacks player progression

strange-jeremy 2020-10-17 10:47

Really fun game

niterich 2020-10-22 15:45

I was also impressed by how the AI moves around the screen - very nice for your first Ludum Dare!

That being said, I was a bit confused about the secondary gameplay loop. I didn't notice that different systems dropped different materials so I didn't understand the purpose of the warp outside of refilling health and ammo. Even something simple like colour-coding the text on the warp screen to match the planet they're found would help bring that across better.

guimoliveira 2020-10-22 18:10

Nice game. I liked the music. :) Good job!

amar-ravi 2020-10-22 18:23

"Having trouble with the game? Try getting better at it!" I feel personally attacked xD

Fun game! its kind of hard to tell you're moving unless there's a bunch of enemies around you. I think you could definitely add more feedback to the game when you get hit/ hit enemies - that would go a long way in improving game feel.

Congrats on your first compo/jam! Solid work :D

moski 2020-10-25 12:19

Can't help but jiggle whenever I see a snappy remark.

Hyperloop_LHZJnx89xk.png

There was fun to be had with this game. I'd say I enjoyed the gameplay loop if the pun hadn't been overused this much, but yes, I love good old top down shooters. For a compo game, this one had a fair variety of enemies, mechanics and even length. It was rather impressive! Your experience on this shows quite well! Keep it up! :whale:

duke 2020-10-25 17:45

Phew... that was hard getting into :) The entry was pretty rough around the edges in almost every regard. Especially the movement of your own ship and how it behaved relative to the other entities. To be honest, I'm still not sure what exactly happened, when I moved. I GUESS that i was orbiting around a planet, but visually, that wasn't what the player got to witness. It was really a strange experience and had an an immediate impact on my enjoyment. Also, I didn't understand, what I was supposed to do and what the stuff did, I was collecting. I just tried my best to stay alive and kill as many enemy ships as possible while increasing the numbers on the left for my (supposedly) benefit. Enemies did just pile up endlessly until I died eventually. It was really hard to dodge anything with the controls you provided. Some enemies did seem to have some kind of hit scan weapon where dodging was impossible from the start. I really do love myself a good bullet hell game, but only if the controls and enemy weapons are balanced right. It didn't feel like that here. Shooting enemies worked alright, but it wasn't really that satisfying. It lacked some well made audiovisual feedback to trigger enjoyment when shooting stuff. I do appreciate the enemy variety though! It was nice to have some music. but didn't really fit the mood. I wasn't really sure what mood your were going for , since it was all over the place. The art direction was pretty rough as well and could really use someone looking after it. I know that it is super hard to make a game by yourself and I'm still flabbergasted that people actually pull it off (you included!) but it is obvious, that some parts are left on the cutting room floor. Maybe try to find an artist next time to collaborate with. A game is a lot more then just the sum of the parts it is made out of. So a good art direction and/or sound design will elevate your game play visions A LOT.

Keep it up :)

jmoocow2003 2020-10-25 21:22

@schraf @kirbloid @amin-jk000 @kunonooni @thebugger @strange-jeremy @guimoliveira @amar-ravi @moski Thanks for playing and thank you for the feedback

@shp always nice to hear someone finished the whole thing, thank you :)

@niterich That's a good point colour coding the text on the warp screen, I'll consider stuff like that for next time. Thanks for playing :)

@blue-pin-studio honestly I kinda just threw together the music last minute running out of time and thought it was alright, but knew it wouldn't be for everyone, so that's why I added the mute button ;)

Oh, and I did want to add ship upgrades that you spend resources on at some point, but ran out of time :/

@duke Thanks for the in depth review. I'd like to take a moment to comment on your points. The movement of the ship is probably the thing I got the most criticism on, and rightfully so, I can see why it would be hard to see the movement. To go in more depth, the ship was supposed to act a little more realistic than most arcade shooters, basically you accelerate in a direction with a certain button press until a max speed is reached, and you won't slow down unless a button in the other direction is pressed, since there's no drag in space. In hindsight it would really help if I added debris or something in the background that's a lot closer than the planet so you can actually see your movement (I mean, I personally could see the movement, but of course I could, I am the developer after all lol). Next point, what you were supposed to do. It says in the info section what your goal is, which was collecting resources to fix your hyperdrive, but that was a wall of text and I didn't really expect anyone to read it anyways lol, don't worry about it. To the point of enemies piling up endlessly, the goal of that was to force you to use your jump drive to move onto the next system (hold space), as a sort of tactical retreat when things got too heated. When you entered warp it would be a time to recuperate, let your shields and secondary weapon charge back up so you're ready for the next system. The "loop" you're stuck in is a hyperloop between 3 star systems, where you collect resources to escape the loop, is what I was going for anyways. About dodging bullets, again that kinda requires the knowledge that your ship is more realistic than typical arcade shooters (not super realistic but more than usual, I think). The hit-scan undodgeable enemies you were referring to I'm going to assume were the laser ones, and those weren't meant to be dodged but rather quickly taken care of before they piled up too much and you'd be forced to retreat (they did minimal damage anyways). When it comes to shooting enemies, the bullets would shoot forward and you kinda have to lead your shots if you're moving in a certain direction, again it ties in with the movement. For music, read the stuff I said to blue pin studio above this wall of text. I'm not really sure what kinda mood I was going for either, honestly, I have nothing to say about that lol. The art was definitely programmer art and I knowledgeable that. I know people who can do art better than me, and would probably like to do a jam with me, especially if I made this game 2d instead of 3d, but my goal with this game jam was to see if I could make an entire video game by myself from scratch, so I didn't want to find an artist. Perhaps next game jam, we'll see ;)

Again, thank you for the in depth review, I enjoy those, and thanks for playing :)