FoonLudum Dare ExplorerUsers → CaiusTSM

CaiusTSM

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvFuInThGrAuHuMoCo
202149UnstableUnstable Ball Gamecompo5232.712.722.312.722.112.542.082.20
201429Beneath the SurfaceMineDowncompo12102.292.592.483.072.111.762.1057

Performance over time

overall score (left axis) percentile (right axis)

Scatterplots

Fun vs Overall

Innovation vs Overall

Theme vs Overall

Graphics vs Overall

Audio vs Overall

Humor vs Overall

Mood vs Overall

Comments by CaiusTSM

LD29 — Beneath the Surface

Acceptance by zatyka 2014-04-29T23:29:00

Nice take on the theme.

[ Particle Effects. ] by Graf_Grun 2014-04-29T20:34:00

This game is funny, the flying enemies look funny. I like idea.

Explore Beneath the Surface by Matt Hartley 2014-04-28T22:03:00

Simple art, but nice to look at.

Mars Under The Surface by zerocreativity1 2014-05-03T03:38:00

The graphics and audio are great, but sometimes I felt like I was doing some leap of faiths because the camera was zoomed in too much so I could not see where I needed to jump to.

Beneath The Surface by Taffaz 2014-04-29T19:46:00

I had a few bugs where I could not move left or right anymore, and some sound issues.

The Roots Of Evil by JaviCepa 2014-05-03T16:37:00

Nice sound, and graphics. I also like the different plants.

The Tree by Joritan Cety 2014-04-28T02:36:00

If you are using slick2D you need to have the libs and natives included in the folder with the jar file or it will do bad things (made my computer freeze, had to force shutdown).

Mine Story by donan 2014-05-03T03:26:00

Wow, great graphics, music, and gameplay. Nice!

The Underkeep by DaanVanYperen 2014-04-28T23:23:00

When I understood how to play it was pretty fun, great job!

Syndrome by Anoarith 2014-04-29T20:00:00

Pretty fun game.

Atlantis Explorer by Integershift 2014-04-29T20:11:00

I liked the amount of content, and the music is nice. The only thing I suggest changing is the movement speed to something a bit faster (vertically).

Jimmy the explorer by Kevlanche 2014-05-03T15:04:00

The connecting to objects is a really cool idea that should be explored more. Graphics+ Audio+

Darkness Shines Through by Empyrealhell 2014-05-03T17:51:00

Very nice! I will take a look at libGDX, is seems like it is pretty good.

Sink or Swim by noom 2014-05-03T03:21:00

This is amazing, great work! Though at first I was a bit confused, I thought I had to get the air bubbles (dissolved oxygen) but I think that is just me.

Drill! Baby! Drill! by sirerr 2014-04-29T20:16:00

This is really fun! The idea is great, and it is really funny with that huge drill ;)

Surface Dweller by Eno Khaon 2014-04-28T23:17:00

Took me a little while to get what to do, but then it was really fun.

Herbert Crawler by Ronin748 2014-04-29T20:29:00

Graphics are great, but could use some music ;)

Escape the Caves by CoderMusgrove 2014-04-28T22:16:00

I had fun this with this :) The spikes are a bit hard to see and the camera shake is sometimes a bit annoying.

In the Mines by torey0 2014-04-28T02:45:00

Nice. It would be nice if the bots chased the player.

Terror from beneath by v_n_j 2014-04-29T20:20:00

Wow this is hard. I like the music :)

Splash Europa by pkenney 2014-05-03T14:30:00

Great graphics and gameplay!

Linked by ALobker 2014-05-01T19:47:00

The collision is a bit strange on the turning parts. It is a pretty fun idea though :)

Crystals by Wir 2014-05-04T20:23:00

Wow a lot of stuff in this game. If you decide to work on this more I suggest allowing the player to move the camera with the arrow keys too.

Manifold Mining by AnglerteamGames 2014-05-02T21:03:00

Nice looking fire. It would be nice if the controls where not so close to each other but more spread apart.

Flipside by NathanBrower 2014-04-29T00:13:00

I noticed a glitch when I flipped sides I got stuck in the floor (half way through the floor). The game is fun though.

Hollow Earth by Vinyl Pixels 2014-04-29T20:05:00

I like the triangular looks, but it needs a challenge.

Shark Feast by carrier_signal 2014-04-29T00:24:00

Pretty funny. I like all the particles.

Roots by Dutchess Games 2014-05-03T01:47:00

lol, you have some nice art!

Box Simulator by terraco 2014-04-29T00:39:00

lol

The Colors Beneath the Surface by VictorDoval 2014-04-29T00:19:00

Nice idea. I find it difficult to tell which green is the right one, maybe I am just bad with colors.

MineDown by CaiusTSM 2014-04-28T23:46:00

Fixed 3 bugs that made the game crash, try running it now.
Posted 4/28/14 :: 7:46 PM US-EAST

MineDown by CaiusTSM 2014-04-29T20:41:00

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: MineDown/Main : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassCond(ClassLoader.java:637)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:621)
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:141)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:283)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:58)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:197)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:249)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.jarinjarloader.JarRsrcLoader.main(JarRsrcLoader.java:56)

Make sure your version of java is the most up to date one because that problem is usually caused by that.

Escape from the Catacombs by Sichuan 2014-04-28T23:04:00

nice atmosphere, was that water by the key or ground missing?

Sand Runner Arena by Sparrow 2014-04-29T22:11:00

Nice game! It was tense at times when I just made it to the edge of a safe area.

Beneath the Trolls by Dreauw 2014-04-28T22:07:00

This is great!

LD49 — Unstable

Tones of the World by khaotom 2021-10-04T01:22:57Z

This game has mood. I did not understand the mechanics very well.

Breakaway by Mark Smith 2021-10-04T01:56:40Z

After playing for a long time i'm getting that visual thing where everything looks like it's moving up even after closing the game. Pretty good, but coins / objects being after to spawn on top of each other is a bit awkward.

Jenry Javelina by PBG 2021-10-05T23:06:45Z

I enjoyed this game. Nice sounds effects and colors.

A few notes:

- Having manual camera control or placing it behind and higher up would help with depth perception / knowing how far away the next block is (can I make the jump?). The top-down view trades off being able to see further into the level ahead for more understanding of distance between blocks. Since being able to look ahead does not seem to play as an important role as being able to judge distances, I think the camera should be angled somewhat downward (above and behind the player).

- Another solution to depth issues is to have better lighting with shadows cast from blocks and the player onto other blocks (not just directly below the player (but keep that too)).

- The depth issue is not as big as in other platformers because in this one you can land on the side of a block and climb it, making it more forgiving.

- Since the view is often filled with a block (when climbing it), any texturing on the blocks would have helped me understand how i'm moving up or down when climbing (height perception). Horizontal stripes (slightly darker shade of the color) would perhaps work, although i'm not sure it's the best (would have to test it to know). The particle effect did help though, since I could tell I was sliding down because of it.

- Sometimes the camera would bug out and wiggle back and forth rapidly for a bit at the starting platform (not a big issue / rare).

- Sometimes I would move through the cactus and it would not register the collision (also not a big issue).

Well done.

Astral Collapse by Richard Baron 2021-10-07T04:27:02Z

A space shooter with a good amount of enemy variety and a nice minimap.

Good job.

Professor Unstable's Chemical Combustion by Kazatan 2021-10-04T01:13:42Z

I was not able to get the 100 deg. yellow plus cyan reaction to happen, but got 6/9. Particle simulations are always fun.

Displacement by Milestone Games 2021-10-04T06:29:19Z

The basis for a story driven puzzle game is there. Could use some sound effects when interacting with objects for feedback. And maybe some kind of indication that an object can be interacted with (e.g. a highlighting effect).

Unstable by DevParty 2021-10-06T05:36:29Z

Very relaxing. I kept playing to see what the background was going to contain next.

Unstable Ball Game by caiustsm 2021-10-04T02:07:06Z

Added itch.io downloads.

Unstable Ball Game by caiustsm 2021-10-04T05:05:19Z

Added some screenshots.

Unstable Ball Game by caiustsm 2021-10-06T23:24:09Z

@fre Yes the lack of editor resulted in that code mess. Plus the lack of preparation. With some preparation I would have probably written a thin layer on top of Panda3D (the Entity class was the half-baked version of that). I would have turned Blender into my editor by using its ability to add custom user data / tags to objects and then using something like bpy (python blender module) to read through the scene and create entities from objects. I would also like to note that such a thin layer already exists and is called Ursina (I recommend it, rather than raw Panda3D), but I wanted to learn Panda3D itself (in part so that I can contribute to Ursina). With Ursina you don't need to know any Panda3D at all. It's very easy to learn (it just gives you some stuff like the Entity class and takes care of boilerplate code).

@brainloaf-studio Yeah I think the fix to the randomness is just to have more points of interaction with the ball. I was thinking about adding more flippers and/or other mechanics such as a plates on the ground which the player can have shoot up under the ball to make it jump manually (giving more control on which areas to get the ball to). This also fixes the issue of having long waiting periods between the ball bouncing around and actually getting to interact with it as mentioned by @recessive. Although you can still just have it bounce around by itself if you want to just sit back and relax and watch it do its thing (which is one of the things I really like about pinball, the simulation-y look at it go part). Another thing is the secret zones and such which could be expanded on, I really like the idea of having exploration in a pinball game, but not restricted to just one course / under glass (but could not add all that due to time).

Unstable Ball Game by caiustsm 2021-10-07T02:45:07Z

@fre While I did not try it out, Panda3D has PandaAI. For controls / character controller Panda3D integrates the Bullet3D physics engine (used for this game), which has a character controller and a vehicle controller, I recommend using them (I have used Bullet3D outside of Panda3D, the integration is very good). The camera controller would have to be made, but I don't see that being much work unless you have some complex camera requirements. There is no asset store which comes with engines like UE, Unity and Godot, but on the other hand you have access to all of python and its libraries. Plus you can use any C/C++ library (the Panda3D C++ experience is very similar to the Python experience (the docs can toggle between the two)). Panda3D is very capable and other than an editor (and the size of the community that uses it), I don't see it being better or worse than something like Unity. But, it's open source (and free), and I found it less buggy than Godot (for now (v4 soon I hope)). Also being able to just "pip install panda3d" rather than have to go through a whole install and project setup process is very nice for things like game jams or other small projects.

Going Home by lb01 2021-10-04T01:47:57Z

Pretty neat idea, would have preferred camera control as I would often bump into things when my camera was locked on to an enemy, when running away from an enemy to get water.

Hopper Unstable by Castoor 2021-10-06T22:47:26Z

This game has nice models and the foundation for a fun idea. I recommend trying some variations on the game. For example, having no timer, and instead difficulty can come from the blocks falling if you stay on them for too long plus the level design requiring quick thinking. Another would be to have no timer and the blocks don't fall until you leave them, turning the game into more of a puzzle game where you need to plan your movement ahead of time.

Some sound effects (and/or visual cue) for the blocks falling would help the player know the timings of when they have to move or fall.

Nice job.

Unstable Core by Frankey333 2021-10-06T05:15:08Z

I really enjoyed this game. I would have liked a bit more time in the beginning for some kind of investment phase. I spent most of my time chasing down fires and holes without any time to even collect money. Maybe I was just doing it wrong.

Pills by shellofagirl 2021-10-04T01:37:49Z

Lacking instructions. I don't know what the controls are.