FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD50 → Model-5C

Model-5C

By william-corrin

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1073.8043
Fun2123.5643
Innovation3233.2643
Theme4853.1943
Graphics624.1743
Audio443.9343
Humor1623.3543
Mood1043.7243

Comments

billnotic 2022-04-04 06:01

I enjoyed what I play, graphics were quite good, and aside from minor camera jank the game ran fine. The moving sound got on my nerves a bit as it would cut every few seconds when the audio replayed. Music fit quite well. Don't really see how it fits the theme but maybe I'm missing something.

I don't know if this is a bug, but when I reached the huge trash room, I got a message saying that I couldn't process the trash weight and then the screen went black and I couldn't do anything. Is this the end of the game? Did I do something wrong? If so let me know what to do different and I'll give the game another go.

Overall pretty neat entry.

attala 2022-04-04 06:04

I can tell you know how to make music :) The music makes the game very atmospheric and is absolutely top notch for a compo game. The gameplay is also good and innovative. I found the controls to be a little sluggish. A more atmospheric lighting would also complement the mood set by the music. (The lighting in my game was a catastrophe so maybe I shouldn't be the one saying this :)) All around a solid entry. I found it enjoyable. Good work.

william-corrin 2022-04-04 06:35

@billnotic Thank you for the feedback!

Yeah, I struggled a lot with the camera. It was coming down to the wire and I was trying to fix the jank, but there is a few issues with it still.

Hahaha yeah, that was just the end of the game...I wanted to do something more but it was pretty much 6pm at the time so thats just the end :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I tried to have it be "you're just one robot trying to save the ship, but there's too much trash and its inevitable that you will fail", for the theme. I could have conveyed that more through the dialogue though :)

Thanks for playing!

william-corrin 2022-04-04 06:37

@attala hey thank you! Yeah, I spent a good 2 hours on the music. I make electronic music as a hobbyist, and its one of my favorite parts of game dev. Thank you for the praise! :bow:

Nah, its okay to critique other people's projects even if you didn't do it yourself. I do that as well - we all know what SHOULD be good, we just don't all have the time to do it ourselves, hah!

I appreciate the feedback. I wanted to light the room a little more, but I had to choose between taking another lighting pass and getting the rudimentary AI/combat room in...I chose the latter. I agree though!

Thank you!

avi 2022-04-04 06:40

Really fun game! I liked the detail put in -- eg the pulses of lines in the tiles is super cool! The UI and mechanics feel very polished, and the progression was interesting :)

I think i found a bug on the webGL version: when I walked into the big piles of trash, i got the funny dialog saying the trash was too much -- but then the "death" screen was a bit abrupt, and I was unable to leave without refreshing the page (image attached) Screen Shot 2022-04-04 at 4.36.14 pm.png

I also found it a bit tricky to determine where my projectiles were going to be launched, but maybe thats a feature to add a bit more challenge!!

All in all -- super cool :)

william-corrin 2022-04-04 06:48

@avi thank you for playing the game!

I appreciate the praise, I spent a little bit too long on writing the shader for the line pulsing, but I'm glad you think it came out cool!

Ugh, yeah, thats actually just the end of the game...its not even a bug :grimacing: I spent a lot of time doing other things (like music/sfx, shader stuff, etc) so when it came to the end of the game it was like 5:50pm and I chose to kill the application at the end of the game. So thats actually intentional :laughing: not the best decision on my end...

Yeah, I tried lots of different things for the projectile direction determination. Its absolutely not perfect, you are right.

Thank you for all the feedback!

[EDIT]: I actually decided to make a quick fix for the ending since multiple people are thinking the game is crashing. Thanks again for the feedback :)

simplepotential 2022-04-04 11:18

Nice entry! Something about the camera gave me motion sickness which isn't your fault, it happens to me with FPS games too but it did prevent me from giving it a full playthrough. What I did pay seemed to work well. Controls were generally easy to get down and figure out where to go was easy enough. Looked and sounded really good too.

adroitconceptions 2022-04-05 00:17

would have been nice to have a way to turn down the music, so that I could hear the SFX well without being blasted by music.

there were a few times were I felt like I was fighting the camera to get a bead on something I needed to shoot at.

I was able to basically bypass the combat arena by standing in the door way and shooting the first 2 enemies before they activated, and I was able to get off a burst of 5 shots on the last before rolling in and killing it before it activated also.

I missed 2 of the bots to scan and got crushed under all the trash, so not sure if I missed some of the story there - it wasn't very clear what to do once I got to the huge pile of trash.. just got a lot of 'I see....' responses to scanning stuff.

the point were you need to fake the finger print, I figure out on accident by just hitting space randomly and something happening when I got near the scanner.

lb01 2022-04-05 03:48

First of all, the music was incredible! It added to a much more relaxed vibe than I was expecting for this compo, which I found refreshing. The story line was also interesting. One small sound design critique: the kart movement sound didn't loop properly. If you used an mp3 instead of an uncompressed file for that sound, Unity for some reason isn't able to seamlessly loop mp3s. But I'm splitting hairs here. Really good job on this.

william-corrin 2022-04-05 03:55

@lb01 thank you very much! I spent too long on the music, hence the abrupt ending :laughing:

Yes, I am unfortunately aware of that problem. I'm assuming you played the WebGL version - I used Unity 2019, and even though I'm looping properly (and its a .wav file) it appears its just flat out broken in < 2021 versions.

(see: https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/webgl-audio-stutters-slash-distorts-when-played-for-a-while)

FWIW, it loops fine on Windows version. And the lighting is better too. WebGL caused me all sorts of problems this time around, but I know its important to get a version online since ppl play it more. Ohhh Unity sometimes :upside_down: hahaha

Hey, thanks a bunch for playing and critiquing! :)

sirikan 2022-04-05 05:00

Great game. Music and controls are on point. Nice idea to match up to the theme. :)

haztro 2022-04-05 06:09

This is super impressive!! - Loved the atmosphere. The music went so well with the dark/mysterious tone of the story (groovy too). - Art was great. The lighting was super moody and the levels looked great, both of which I could look at cause of the neat camera movement. - My only issue was with the aiming. Sometimes it felt a little weird the way it aimed in 3d.

Awesome entry :)

khaotom 2022-04-05 08:05

I really dig the music, fits the setting nicely. Left me wanting to explore more of the ship, which is a good thing! I had a bit of a disconnect when I got to the part where it said I understand because I didnt understand! :laughing: Overall a nice entry with a nice setting and vibe.

miguel-fernandez-tormos 2022-04-05 08:06

Nice music and awesome graphics!

auxiliarymoose 2022-04-05 08:47

I played this on Pop!_OS 20.04 (based on Ubuntu) and Proton 5.13-6 worked well. It was a bit frame-ey but that's probably because I'm playing on integrated graphics.

VERY impressive game, especially for 48 hours as a solo dev with all original assets! Where do I even start... super cool visual aesthetic, an environment that keeps things fresh and interesting, tons of neat effects and visuals, great soundtrack, overall a very cohesive and fleshed out piece. Really it leaves me wanting more! Which is fantastic!

Some stuff that could be improved: * The automatic camera system was a bit hard to have a grasp of. Sometimes the automatic camera positions hid important stuff, so I had to go back a few times to look for more, and lining up some shots was hard (freely rotating with the mouse would be really nice). * The ramp up/ramp down audio sounded a bit funny on the robot when ramping up and down. Some sort of scrolling/ticking sound would probably fit better with the treads (like the ticking when aiming a mario 64 cannon) * Having an x/y found *per area* rather than overall (especially if there were one for the buttons) would help against feeling stuck. There was one time when I thought I had the game softlocked when in reality there was a button I hadn't found yet. * Just having a longer game with more areas would be really nice I want to play it more :smile: (of course there's only so much that can be done in 48 hours by one person!)

william-corrin 2022-04-05 10:03

@auxiliarymoose thank you so much! Your praise means a lot. I’m really glad you enjoyed it :) I was hoping people would feel exactly like you described when playing, that makes me very happy.

You make some really solid feedback here. The decision to do an autocam versus free floating was maybe not the best, because you’re totally right, it obscures objects sometimes and can cause difficulty for completing the button puzzles.

I know exactly what you mean about the Mario cannon lol. Yeah, I was struggling a lot trying to create the tread sounds. I definitely agree they could use some work!

Thank you again for playing and taking the time to leave such meaningful feedback!

kewdev 2022-04-05 10:37

An amazing entry! Very well made controls, with a good story and an amazing soundtrack! I only had one problem, and it was that i wanted more! I really enjoyed it! Good job! (Also nice synthwave music.)

simba 2022-04-05 14:36

Fun game! The web version worked just fine for me. The audio was really well done!

gummibot 2022-04-05 17:58

Really impressive, music and sounds were on point, good job! I liked the overall mood

str8griz 2022-04-05 18:14

I loved the visuals on the game, music was super chill and created an overall great experience!

william-corrin 2022-04-05 20:00

@kewdev @simba @gummibot @str8griz thank you all so much for playing! :smile: glad you enjoyed it!

studio-vykanic 2022-04-05 21:22

Great visuals and music! This is a great candidate to continue working into a bigger game if you wanted to!

wuppos 2022-04-05 23:54

This was cool! I found 5 out of the 7 broken robots, and I really wonder where the other 2 could be. I feel like there were not too many hidden corners around. The game was pretty short, but I think that is fine! Especially for Ludum Dare, so that everyone can play through the whole thing. The sound and music were really impressive! They were really well made, and fitted the game very well I think :)

The visuals were really nice as well, but it was hard for me to see things. I think this was due to the repeating pattern on the floor and the dark atmosphere. A few times I just drove straight over one of the broken robots and only noticed it because of the green exclamation mark that popped up. Maybe this is what you were going for, but just to let you know :D

Great job with this! I enjoyed it!

caeonosphere 2022-04-06 04:19

Bah, only managed to find 6 of 7 robots. Definitely a cool environment, never seen anything quite like it in a compo game before!

stuntcomposer 2022-04-06 18:34

Absolutely fantastic game - Brilliant gfx and the music is awesome. Controls are a breeze and I really like the camera movement. All in all probably the most polished game I've seen in this Dare so far! Great work!

agyrzstar 2022-04-06 21:00

The camera and movement are really polished! I love the graphics and music too. The storyline fits well with the gameplay.

jackaljk 2022-04-06 21:05

It looks really great and I like the concept. I really wanted to see how you made the pulsating floor but it looks like you forgot to push the code to github?

william-corrin 2022-04-06 23:07

@studio-vykanic thank you! much appreciated :)

@wuppos haha! yeah, i won't tell you where, but one of them is hidden in a pretty hard place to find. I wish I had made the camera a little better but i ran out of time. Yeah, lighting is another thing I didn't work on a ton - thank you for the feedback!

@caeonosphere so close! haha, thank you! I have been working on shader programming for the last year so I wanted to test out my skills :)

@stuntcomposer I'm unworthy of your praise :bow: thank you so much!

@agyrzstar thank you sir o7

@jackaljk thank you! ah, it is definitely there - i just always push to master instead of main (old habits die hard). If you click on branches you can see the code. Or just use this link to the shader (there are two variants, one for one color and one for 2 colors with distortion: https://github.com/williamdewaynecorrin/LudumDare50/blob/master/Assets/src/shader/EmissionFlow.shader )

[EDIT]: @jackaljk to be honest, I'm pretty sure the way I created the emission flow maps isn't the best practice. It results in a lot of jaggies (aliased pixels). Just a note, that if you try it yourself, make sure your flow/emi maps have mipmaps disabled. its impossible to see the emission flowing from far away if they are enabled!

Also, the way the flow map works is a grayscale image from black->white, with black->white being the flow direction. Using gradients usually makes easy best results. For some of the tiles in-game, you can sort of visualize what I'm talking about with these two texture examples:

**Regular emission texture** ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- tex_test_grid_emi.png

**Emission flow texture** ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- tex_test_grid_flow.png

lisyarus 2022-04-07 07:59

Nice game, impressive visuals and sound! Loved the punch that you are the 7th unit. Lovely player character model. I'd say camera movement and shooting need some work. The camera view changes way too suddenly at times, presumably when you move out of something that blocked camera view. Very hard to see what's to the side of the player, since the camera always looks forward. Aiming in general is hard as well, because you can't always estimate the height difference between the player and the target, and you can't predict where it is actually aiming. Maybe some crosshair indicator projected on the target would help? Anyways, impressive game, good job.

2022-04-07-104521_1920x1080_scrot.png

mhorth 2022-04-08 00:05

I'm always scared to do a full character movement game in a jam, out of fear that I won't get a character controller that feels really good to move around. You made it happen, nice job!

lvl99chicken 2022-04-08 04:01

Very fun game! Was able to find all the robots. I really liked how the robot controlled, very smooth and I liked the graphical design a lot. The emission patterns on the floor and walls were a bit intense though and the orange emission was pretty similar to the color of the red buttons which made them tough to spot at times. I really liked the level design, did a good job at slowly teaching the mechanic then testing that. Very sleek UI and the camera positioning was spot on. Overally really enjoyed this game!

owca 2022-04-08 10:28

Cool game! :) I like the character and level design, audio and the overall mood. The camera controller could be improved a bit, but it wasn't a big issue for me. It was really fun to play this little adventure :)

emaigualmc2-art 2022-04-10 02:43

I really thought it was a very good game, a little difficult to get used to the controls and the movement of the camera. However the music and art made the gameplay much more enjoyable, great job here! xD

dan-smith 2022-04-11 14:38

Really impressive entry, had fun playing it and thought the visuals and music were great. Had trouble aiming sometimes which made some parts difficult, but really good job overall :)

nyxkn 2022-04-15 08:43

Impressive graphics! Adding neon lights everywhere seems like a really smart way of spicing up the visuals. I played the html version and it still looked really good! Very nice atmosphere as well and the music is great. The sound of the robot moving was a little loud and annoying. Also nice and unique story! The github repo is empty.

william-corrin 2022-04-17 08:49

@nyxkn thanks man! Yeah a couple of the sounds good be better for sure, I didn’t have a ton of time to iterate on them.

GitHub repo isn’t empty! Check the other branch :)

mikouaji 2022-04-19 13:49

Very impressive for a compo entry! The story isn't too long, but all the rest is great. The controls feel very nice, visuals and sounds are really really good and fit together nicely. The game feels polished and plays really well.

Played the webGL version and haven't got any problems :)