JUGGERNAUT

p1x3lc0w 2022-04-04 16:43

Interesting Game!

The idea of actively having to avoid getting faster changes the game from how you would normally play this type of game.

Some Feedback: - The start screen feels overwhelming when you first see it, and you don't know what information is important. I'd try to trim that screen down a little. - Moving the ship at the start of a level when you have not yet gained any speed feels very slow, maybe the starting speed should be a little faster. - Your projectiles eventually move so fast that you can't see them anymore (and they don't hit anything anymore). I think this could be fixed by capping the maximum speed for projectiles and implementing Raycasting for hit detection. - The flashing graphic at the end of a level is very hard to look at, try to avoid quickly flashing bright graphics, especially covering large portions of the screen. - You list Ableton Live and bfxr as tools, so i assume there should be audio, but at least for me nothing plays (no sfx and no music)

Even though there are some shortcomings, it's impressive how much you managed to achieve with technology you were unfamiliar with, good job! :thumbsup:

lisyarus 2022-04-04 17:44

An interesting take on the theme! The ship's starting speed feels painfully low, while the speed acquired by hitting enemies feels painfully high :D Also the map collision resolution seems to be absurdly intelligent and always pushes the ship in an appropriate direction so that you can essentially reach the end by literally doing nothing, not sure if this is a bug or a feature?

Anyways, congrats for completing the game with your own C++ engine, glad to see I'm not alone :D Good job!

cogcomp 2022-04-04 17:57

@p1x3lc0w Thanks for the feedback! Yeah most of these things can be explained by "I ran out of time". I had a hard time tweaking the speed correctly and I'm going to guess that most of the comments are going end up being either about the slow speed followed by the game becoming way too fast. :laughing:

Also, yes. The game has music and sound effects. I've tried it in Edge, Firefox and Chrome on Win 10 and it's working ok in those. What browser/OS combination are you running?

cogcomp 2022-04-04 18:01

@lisyarus Thanks! I was striving for an interesting take on the theme :wink: Yeah, as I mentioned in a previous comment I ran out of time so I was never able to tweak the game speed to feel "right". and YES! the terrain guiding is supposed to be super intelligent. It's part of the design so that you always inevitably end up winning the game and it's up to you to delay it so that you can rack up a better score.

anonymouspanda 2022-04-04 19:57

Did you come up with the idea of making your ship go faster everytime you take damage? I think its a really cool way to balance the game with having less time to make a higher score. A very unique gameplay I was not expecting!

kurrik 2022-04-04 20:07

Nice Gradius-style throwback game! I liked that the ship could take a few hits since it was a little tough to control, and I was able to enjoy getting through several levels. I wish the time slowdown mechanic were explored a little more , feels like that would have been a cool way to get through tougher areas without taking hits.

cogcomp 2022-04-04 20:51

@anonymouspanda Thanks! Yes I did come up with the idea. I can't recollect ever seeing a game that uses that as it s main gimmick before. I just wish I had the time balance the speedup/slowdowns a bit more.

jackaljk 2022-04-05 20:32

Damn making something with the tools you used is something of a feat in and of itself, the game is interesting too with that speed mechanic. Nice!

candlesan 2022-04-06 07:59

Good music - some really appealing visuals. I like the retro vibe.

Also - congratulations on making a game in C++ with SDL - that's doing Ludum Dare on hard mode. Much thanks for taking the time to make it web playable using enscriptem.

theslate 2022-04-06 20:41

Good job! My first LD Jam a billion years ago was SDL, so good job there. But you ALSO targeted webasm with emscripten. Kudos!

elimarable 2022-04-06 20:44

I really like your take on the theme! I definitely hadn't expected to see a game based around "your victory is inevitable" instead of "your defeat is inevitable." The art and the music are great. I do agree with the other commenters saying that the minimum speed is a bit too slow. I was also caught off-guard by the automatic speedups, maybe you could add a different sound or animation to make it clear I'm not being hit by an invisible enemy? Critiques aside, great work on the game!

forgin-bits 2022-04-06 20:48

Nice job, reminds of those old school PC games I used to play on my first computer :laughing: it would have been good to be able to just keep pressing space to shoot instead of having to spam it ! good entry, thanks

dilem 2022-04-06 20:57

That was funky! Loved the music! I was a bit confused by the great speed at first, but after picking up some items to slow down I managed to figure it out :D Really well done!

zimny11 2022-04-06 22:37

Really cool take on the theme! It is impressive how many enemies and levels you designed in such a short amount of time. I like the unique art style. The only thing that I wish for was a high score screen at the end of the game. Great job!

potatolain 2022-04-07 01:16

This was a really fun one! I got the vibe of games you would play on an older mac from the system 7/mac os 8 era. The graphics and the music/sfx really helped that. The mechanics were really clever and unique. I can't really write much more without just rehashing what other people have already written, but this is a fun one! Nicely done

aeveis 2022-04-07 04:18

I liked the little cells the buildings were made out of. Since the game gets harder to play and ends sooner when you are going faster, I kind of wanted the levels to be longer? Or perhaps the premise could be you actually can't be going too fast in order to reach the end, otherwise you might just skip past it? I also kind of wanted a situation where I could just keep increasing in speed and watch things whiz by. Anyway, couple thoughts on how the gameplay could vary maybe.

Since you mentioned this was a high score chaser, I would've liked to see the high score at the end screen to see what my score was, but I don't think I saw it.

Overall nice work on making your own engine and game!

pdotjpg 2022-04-07 14:00

Props on trying those new tools. Coming out of the compo with a solid, finished game is difficult enough as is. Doing so while learning tools - hats off.

I agree with other commenters about the speeding up idea being interesting but that the speeds should be tuned somewhat - the start is too slow, and then the speed-ups get really crazy.

vidarn 2022-04-07 15:41

First of all: I love the music! :smile: . Such a cool energetic track! What you managed to do in 48 hours on this game is really impressive. I did not expect so many levels and such a finished game. Also, the way you incorporated the theme was quite inspired and unique.

ossi 2022-04-07 20:39

I think even though speed balancing might help the controls of the ship I was still having a blast going FULL SPEED! I felt like Sonic hitting those speed boosts and nearly flying off screen! Nice game!

hungryroy 2022-04-08 16:06

Nice game! I didn't get at first that the ship couldn't die from getting hit and was trying to avoid everything lol that's what I get for not reading. The BG music is a banger!

hungryroy 2022-04-08 16:12

Also, OMG I can't imagine using C++ for a very short period jam like this, great job!

mavvy 2022-04-09 06:40

I got DOS game vibes from this and that's an instant win in my books. With the given tools and time limit, this is absolutely incredible. Loved the music, too. :smile:

ace17 2022-04-09 08:58

Hi , fellow C++/SDL/Emscripten user ! :metal:

I noticed there was an issue with Emscripten SDL sound in some browsers.

``` - Windows 7 + Firefox + Emscripten : sound is OK - Windows 7 + Chrome + Emscripten : sound is OK - GNU/Linux + Firefox + Emscripten : sound is OK - GNU/Linux + Chrome + Emscripten : sound is distorted. ```

The distorsion is as if the audio buffer size was too small, and was constantly underruning, which makes the mix sound "metallic".

Juggernaut has this issue , I can get this metallic distorted sound if I play it using Chrome (or one of its derivative, like Brave).

My entry for this LD50 has the same issue (so go play it! but use Firefox :) ).

Indeed, if I increase the buffer audio size to 4096 samples, the audio playback becomes fine in Chrome. ( However, the latency becomes very perceptible and the game starts to feel less responsive ).

Have you ever noticed this issue ? I was under the impression that this wasn't occuring on Windows 10 ?

PS: please note I'm not talking here about "audio not playing at all" issues, which are a completely different issue, related to Chrome blocking policies ( https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/issues/6511 ).

harmadillo 2022-04-09 15:30

great game. And more levels than I was expecting when I started.

simplepotential 2022-04-09 21:27

Nice little shooter. Deceptively simple and very enjoyable. Was a bit difficult to read the title screen, took me bit to see that I needed to hit space bar to start the game. Nice job

sir-syko 2022-04-10 15:21

Damn for a game made with SDL and all those tools in 48h I'm amazed :smile: The take on the theme was pretty smart and the mechanics are also pretty neat :smile: controlling the ship was a bit hard imo and it was strange that you had speed bumps and orbs on areas where you couldn't comeback from without hitting the walls. This only made sense to me once I realized that I would just be pushed up or down by the walls when hitting them :sweat_smile: Very hard to control but for something made in 48 hours it was a great job! :smile: