cyber-puffin 2023-09-26 16:16
Round 1 Voting
This is going to be fun.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → Oregon Startrail
By cyber-puffin
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 340 | 2.79 | 26 | |
| Fun | 349 | 2.45 | 26 | |
| Innovation | 286 | 3.00 | 25 | |
| Theme | 303 | 3.02 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 302 | 2.86 | 24 | |
| Humor | 136 | 2.93 | 25 | |
| Mood | 261 | 3.00 | 25 |
Round 1 Voting
This is going to be fun.
Wrapping up and uploading latest builds. Still a lot of work to be done, but I'm really happy with the 48 hour progress.
Fun and well written! It was cool to just about reach a new planet with the limited resources. Also very nice menus and options.
Woah, I was able to play this game in Italian, by changing the locale in the options menu. This is probably the most accessible game I've seen yet. Nice job!
Thank you both for the feedback!
I'm not 100% sure that one can actually reach Wolf1061c with the current balance, as I used a travel-time override while in editor (just run the game with the godot 4.x editor and travel time is static at 5 seconds). I'm building a nice big list of tweaks for rebalance and bug fixing.
Good to hear that the locale changes are appreciated. It felt odd writing strings directly in the editor since my main workflow has me using a translation table. Godot and Google combine to make translation tables really easy (wrote up a [devlog](https://cyberpuffin.digital/devlog/20230816) a little bit ago), though font support remains a bit of a challenge.
Currently, Oregon Startrail supports the following locales: * ar - Arabic * cmn - Mandarin * cs - Czech * de - German * es - Spanish * fi - Finnish * fr - French * hi - Hindi * it - Italian * ja - Japanese * ko - Korean * pl - Polish * pt - Portuguese * ru - Russian * uk - Ukranian
I haven't tested the TTS system in other languages.
I liked the writing, the transmissions between ship and docks were funny!
I like the idea of the game and the different aspects of all the different things required for life like hydroponics - I would have loved to play more. However I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how I can play and I only once got to the moon randomly. When I press Use Fuel button, nothing seems to happen. There were many resources but it was not clear to me which resource I need to use and why... Maybe having a simpler structure like Energy, Water, Air would have been sufficient 3 elements - and maybe make the game interesting that way?
@hotaloca the more I play test the more I agree at the information needing properly highlighting. It probably would have been better to start with just the base three you suggest and enable the rest as I got the other parts implemented. Sadly, the spacedock wasn't implemented so players are unable to purchase the upgrades for hydroponics and fisheries.
I just finished writing up more information about playing and the resource guide in the entry above.
Thank you for the feedback!
Ah OK, i see the summary now in this entry - sorry i missed to read it, i was jumping right in :) Yes this is logical this way.
I had issues with the game ending but not being clear on why the game ended. It would be helpful to have hints about where to go from your death. Otherwise, it is a neat theme and a great homage to the original.
I had fun after I figured out the game. Understandable given you were ambitious for a 48 hour jam. great work!
Very interesting entry that I think _could_ be a fun game, but for me got real bogged down in unclear systems and information. The furthest I made it was Mars. I think with careful attention to how and where information is presented, this could definitely be a fun and engaging spiritual successor to one of the all-time classics! You did an excellent job of taking the concept into the space age, keeping the same dry/dark humor, and introducing new mechanics. I just couldn't get to a place where I understood how all the moving parts fit together, and it seemed like a number of buttons just... didn't do anything. Overall, this is an excellent entry, and having localization for that many languages in 48 hours is just insane! :tada:
It was quite hard to understand what I'm supposed to do. :'( I like the amount of details you put into the game and the description here. I may come back to this game later, when I'm done with some smaller and easier games first. :D This one requires concentration and ... reading. xD
Also, how can I get this "eh?" style buttons in the menu? Which language should I choose? :D
You probably want to hide the "exit" button in the web build since it looks like the game just hangs if you press it.
The text is quite hard to read when playing in a fullscreen mode on itchio (I think it's because of the messed up size rations):
tmp.png
@quasilyte thank you for the feedback! You're right that I neglected to highlight important information and the ending hits suddenly. The next iteration will have UI highlighting on the important data and a ramp-up to the end game state (e.g., run out of water, humans start dying until you run out of humans).
If you don't want to read as much, you can run the desktop variants. So long as you have TTS voices installed on your system (default for most OSes but linux, and the linux voices are easy to install) the dialog window will present the "Read with TTS" button. Sadly, this doesn't work in the web export.
You're also correct that I want to hide the "Exit" button the web export, I discovered the same during some of my post-jam play testing.
As for the difficulty in reading the small text, if you check the options you can adjust the global scale.
And finally, the Canadian locale will append "eh?" to the end of each string. This serves more of a purpose than just annoying (/amusing) my Canadian relatives. I use this locale to help identify where I've neglected the translation. For example, I missed the "CONSUMABLE" string in the Resource tab. This gets highlighted without the "eh?" bit.
I wrote up a [devlog](https://cyberpuffin.digital/devlog/20230816) back in August that details the mechanism in Godot.
@cyber-puffin sounds pretty cool eh?
Godot rocks. :]
There is one unfortunate thing about this game, which is that it's daunting to get started. My brain cannot handle having to deal with so many resources at once, without gradually building up an understanding of each. That aside, I really appreciate the effort that went into this, clearly there was a big design in mind. I'm kind of blown away to see accessibility options (any at all is amazing, but this is lots!), especially in a compo game.
If trading is the main mechanic of this game, the placement of that button needs to be prioritized.
To illustrate that point, I clicked depart first and got an immediate game over. Next time I tried some other buttons, but didn't notice Trade because it is grouped with "main menu" and "pause" - so died again instantly.
Also, the up and down arrows on the trade screen are very small when there is plenty of space for them to be bigger, which would just make it easier to click.
@poshdan Yes, you're quite right. My notes have difficulty modes differentiated by how many resources get controlled (Energy, Food, Water, Waste) but I was thinking I might go with different consumption rates. IIRC, the original Oregon Trail approached it in a similar manner, albeit with better explanations. The idea is to build your stock from the place that has plenty, as the resources gradually get scarcer the further you go.
I am glad to get such a positive response to the accessibility options. It's been a primary focus for my other project (it's in the name after all: Accessible Sudoku) and the efforts transition easily into new projects. Easier if you do it from the start.
@lou-bagel thank you for the feedback! I alphabetized the buttons and barely thought about the functional order. I do hope the quick death loop made it easy for you to jump into a new game after your untimely demise(s).
You have multiple valid points that will influence the next iteration.
I appreciate all the feedback!
Ambitious game for jam. I could see really interesting game but it was hard to understand and play. For some reason the text was also hard to read which didn't help, i think it is some resolution scaling thing. Some better feedback to player for trade would be nice or make important elements bigger. I also insta lost at start witch was funny :D
@ttkayttis I ready your username as "TTS" at first and thought you have something to say about the TTS :grin:
But I thank you for the kind feedback. The issue wrt: text size came in as a bug on the web export. The locale is defaulting to the minimum allowed scale (0.7) when no existing setting is present. A different scale can still be set in the options. But I set the minimum to something that was at least legible and moved on.
You, and several others, are right that I was a little too ambitious for a jam game.
pretty cool idea and worldbuilding. It takes some getting used to but it's fun figuring out everything at your own pace. Some music and sound effects would be nice, but not crucial. I like how you put in the extra effort to implement TTS and all the language options