Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Traffic
By matt-swieboda and whysguy52
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 775 | 2.88 | 20 | |
| Fun | 686 | 2.91 | 20 | |
| Innovation | 402 | 3.42 | 21 | |
| Theme | 160 | 4.16 | 20 | |
| Graphics | 728 | 2.80 | 20 | |
| Audio | 559 | 2.38 | 20 | |
| Humor | 534 | 2.47 | 20 | |
| Mood | 746 | 2.94 | 20 |
Always love me a good traffic simulation game, even if it always ends in numerous road fatalities. I think a good addition would be changing the locations of the police headquarters/hospital, or the layout of the intersections as time goes on. (And as a personal preference I would love keybinds for cycling and flipping the intersections. Something like clicking one and pressing 'e' or 'r' maybe)
@jacobloon yes key bindings options or defaults for the intersections is a great suggestion and easy win, agreed, should have added that. thanks!
agreed, possibly new levels, or dynamically adding/moving roads/police/hospital simulating like construction would make it more of a full game, right now it's kind of in a demo / prototype state :)
That was a cool idea that was fitting the theme of the jam. There is potential to spice it up for sure. A few a low-hanging fruits to improve this in a couple of hours of work:
- I second that comment about adding key bindings, it really streamline the game. - A simple sound effect when you are interacting with the traffic lights, like a clicking noise or something, just so that there is minimal feedback to know that the action worked. - A more prominent visual indication of the ambulance / police cars, like a more intense flashing light or an arrow pointing to it, so that you can spot their position easier when they appear, because I would hear the sound but it would take a while to find it.
Good job nonetheless
@exofrenon darn, i had planned to use the "ding" sound for clicking the traffic lights, i must have forgotten to do that. noted, and that would definitely help! I know I definitely wanted to do that for any buttons, but again, kind of ran out of time.
definitely agreed the ambulance and police cars are hard to spot! the only indication is the siren when they spawn, and they are hard to see when zoomed out. larger flashing lights on top might help, but maybe a transparent red/blue circle glow below them might help. arrow pointing via a HUD is something I thought of, blue/red, but didn't get around to it. the combo of all those would probably help a lot
thanks for the helpful suggestions!
The camera controls are great, it feels really good to move around. Cool concept, it fits the theme well. The fact that you can click a car to see it's route is pretty nice. For feedback, I'd like an alert or something on the side of the screen to see where the ambulance/police cars are, since I had trouble finding them sometimes.
Also I appreciate the linux build as a linux user. It runs very well on my pc.
I LOVE simulation games, and this is a concept I could play for hours. As mentioned above, adding keyboard shortcuts would help a lot. Great jam entry, perfectly on theme!
I had the same idea at first haha, but I didn't expect someone to think the same as me! This is so interesting
@500 i'm surprised there weren't more traffic "signal" games like this actually! glad it's somewhat unique, although again, I thought there would be a lot of them
(edit: i have found a few traffic signal games, but still thought there would be a bit more)
love the title screen!! (also ty for macos version)
God, I almost died when I first heard the siren. But the game itself is quite interesting and, surprisingly, fun. Even if the controls are not the most convenient, it’s still cool. Thank you
I really liked the idea of regulating traffic — the concept is great. It’s cool that you can see the route of the cars, although I didn’t immediately realize there were four intersections. It might be helpful to start with just one for the tutorial, so players can ease into it and understand what to do.
In any case, I enjoyed it! Thanks!
Loved the concept and implementation, I think you did a great job with the drivers AI, not too dumb, not too strict. I can see how adding distractions and small minigames or rush hour events could make this game great!
The neighborhood somehow gives me sims 1 vibes in the best way haha
It's a bit of a catastrophe simulator, and I'm the cause for that catastrophe :laughing: (I mean that as a compliment :heart: )
@podrez sorry about the siren sound volume!! I didn't have time to tweak the volume, I really should have before I triggered it via code, my fault!
@purrseus haha, thank you! Catastrophes will also happen naturally. Cars (not just ambulance or cops) will run red lights when they get impatient.
There's definitely a bug tho where sometimes the intersection gets jammed up without cars actually crashing into a wreck you can remove. That's the major bug "catastrophe" I didn't have time to fix haha (if you see that there's no way to fix it but restarting)
Also since I mentioned bugs. Not all of the ambulance/cops get to their target destination. Some paths are impossible without U-turns. But sometimes if it's too many intersections or I'm not quite sure why but they might exit the map instead of going to the hospital/police station.
So you're not hallucinating if you see that :smile:. It works mostly, or "good enough" but the pathing is indeed wrong. Hard to get perfect in 3 days
Cool take! I also did traffic signals and I like your approach of trying to orchestrate a larger area and micromanage multiple intersections. I think the graphics are cute.
I had a hard time finding the cop cars, so I would hear the siren and then spend a long time looking around. I think that "Switch" is Uno reverse but I would like to see the queue of patterns so I know which direction I need them to go in.
I also had one intersection deadlock which I see you mentioned above. 4 cars in the inside lanes.
Clicking on cars to see their goal isn't in your instructions but it could help to know that's possible. Thanks for the game! :smiley:
@madbarron wow, I'm definitely gonna try your Lights of the Living Dead later, it looks freaking awesome! Probably was a lot simpler with just one intersection. I made my life hell with pathfinding that doesn't always work. thanks for playing mine, and great feedback and suggestions, thank you!
Neat little game, although I couldn't really figure out how to make sure the cars go to where I wanted them to. I could tell that there went quite a bit of thought into making it all happen, and the details with being able to see where each car wanted to go was nice.
Did not figure out what to do, but could definetely see that a lot of work went into this