FoonLudum Dare ExplorerUsers → vknauss

vknauss

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvFuInThGrAuHuMo
202557Depths👥X Terminator Sim 2036jam3.503.382.833.333.663.833.623.50
202456Tiny Creatures👥GubGubsjam3.833.334.163.663.503.103.50
202353DeliveryDanger Dashjam2.292.152.253.402.042.332.35
202148Deeper and deeperBad Nightjam17852.782.622.963.342.962.863.16

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 vknauss

LD48 — Deeper and deeper

TorNado by Igor KinGamer 2021-04-28T23:52:52Z

I thought it was pretty fun, I played until what I assumed was the end, when the right progress bar filled up. I liked that there was a progression in the number and size of objects as you moved down. One piece of criticism I have is I think the game could be harder. I know you said losing is not implemented anyway, but in my opinion this game is similar to an infinite-runner type game (although I guess it's not supposed to be infinite?) which I think get a lot of their fun from wanting to beat your previous run. The core gameplay I thought felt good, well done

Dimensions by Tarcisiotm 2021-04-27T20:17:29Z

I thought it was fun and the dimension switching mechanic was clever! It's a small game but seem like you polished what you have pretty nicely.

Darkest Depths by skipi 2021-04-28T02:07:24Z

I thought it was fun, especially the movement was super responsive. I was a bit confused though, since after going through several doors it seemed like I was ending up in the same 2 areas, I could even still see the bits of flesh from the monsters still around. Good job though it's a super solid basis, I'm sure the final version will be really cool

Into the Matrix by TheGamer1123211 2021-04-29T20:44:51Z

Hi, I tried your Linux build but it wasn't working for me. I see the Unity load screen then the music starts but the visuals look corrupted Screenshot from 2021-04-29 15-42-16.png this is what I see fullscreen

Into the Matrix by TheGamer1123211 2021-04-29T22:07:36Z

@thegamer1123211 I have a Radeon RX 580. Only 3 years old, my drivers support OpenGL 4.5 and Vulkan 1.1

Acheron's Gambit by zarthas 2021-04-27T20:09:26Z

Great audio and graphics! I struggled with the combat but I'm not very good at games like this.. I think it may have crashed on me when I died with "1 soul remaining"

Aleph Qoph / Duat by ancient-pixel 2021-04-28T04:11:58Z

Really loved the graphics style. The first time I just walked around reading the story. Would love to have seen other players, but I guess nobody was around. Really cool and very unique game! By the way, tried using an XBox one controller but the left mapping for the right stick wasn't working, instead the left trigger was controlling left/right which was sort of unusable

Aleph Qoph / Duat by ancient-pixel 2021-04-28T19:46:26Z

@ancient-pixel I was using a Xbox one controller on firefox esr. I played through no problem with the mouse though :)

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-27T21:02:25Z

@thob Huh I didn't realize I did it backwards lol... I'll push a fix for that!

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-27T21:16:36Z

Ok thanks for the feedback everyone! I have fixed the mouse look in 1.0.3 I am amazed I genuinely never noticed while developing!

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-27T21:37:06Z

@evil-villain-games That is very real with the getting bored with dragging. It was something I definitely realized while developing and if I hadn't been so crunched I would've tried to balance it better or add something to make it engaging. @narajeamfry There is a certain position a ways down the trail that when you enter you'll get the text "This spot seems okay". It's a bit far though and it's a bit of a "drag" to get there :). Unfortunately the game isn't very smart and events are only triggered when things happen exactly as I expected them to, which is a weakness for sure. My idea with the guy was that you hit him with your car (the red one at the beginning) but yeah lol there's not much to really make that clear. Thanks for playing!

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-27T21:39:38Z

@asephy super stoked you finished it! I was thinking maybe nobody would. Thanks so much!

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-27T23:39:41Z

@remram44 Interesting. I have a feeling that the error is due to the first region being unloaded but its entities not being cleaned up properly. "err 1281" is the OpenGL error GL_ERROR_BAD_VALUE which ultimately means some of the rendering data was corrupted, and "pure virtual method called" is an extremely unhelpful message that comes from Bullet physics internals but also has to do with corrupted data. There has been a Heisenbug I haven't been able to track down, so I'm guessing that got you. It is rare though.

The second time, I'm curious what text you saw? I'm guessing that the "chase" sequence never properly activated, since checking for you to enter the cave only happens during this sequence. I think perhaps if you run from the dogs too early the game won't realize they are chasing you. The expected sequence is :

"Better back away slowly..." => [moving away from the dogs triggers their AI to start running] => [the game checks the AI state of the dogs to see if any are in the RUN state] => "F*** Run!" => [The game checks to see if the player has ever used the SPRINT action before] => [If not, show an info tip and set a 5 second timer] => [if 5 seconds elapsed OR the player sprints begin the CHASE sequence].

In my tests all these steps worked but the ordering is important so it's very possible the game got confused somewhere. Anyway thanks for letting me know these are issues. I'm not sure how much I can do to fix them at this stage but it is good to know.

As for the mouse look, I'll double check the release version has the fix applied correctly. By default, horizontal motion should be correct (move left = look to the left) and vertical movement is inverted (move up = look down). This is configurable by specifying values in mouseconf.txt in the executable folder.

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-27T23:48:07Z

@remram44 Nevermind I tried playing through again and yes definitely there's a crash when you enter the cave. Looks like another bugfix is incoming :) thanks for bringing that to my attention.

Yikes this is what I get for using a "Debug" build for all of development and then shipping a "Release" build without testing all the way through.

Apologies to everyone who's had to deal with these bugs. I appreciate your time spent!

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-27T23:59:37Z

@remram44 ah looks like I forgot to put it in the package. It is in the GitHub source tree though. I will update the releases soon though. I'm not sure why the err 1281 is happening as I can't reproduce that, but it's likely not a fatal error. I forgot that I had the error checking code still enabled in the renderer so I think I'll just remove it.

I'm still tracking down the source of that crash, but you're right it's for sure happening for me too. I'll run some more tests on the mouse thing, it was definitely reversed in the previous versions but I really think it should be fixed in 1.0.3, and when I downloaded and ran the linked linux version it seemed okay, so I can't say for sure what's happening. Thank you for your help letting me know!

Most of the OpenGL code I put together last week, knowing I'd like to make a 3D OpenGL game regardless of the theme, so I didn't do much OpenGL this weekend. Thank you though :)

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-28T00:52:26Z

Version 1.0.4 fixed the crash when entering the cave and now provides mouseconf.txt with the binaries. I added a bit about mouse look to the description and updated the changelog as well now that there have been so many updates... :cry: In response to the boring drag sequence I boosted the player's speed a tiny bit, hopefully that will make it better without really being noticeable. Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-28T02:14:29Z

@remram44 glad to hear it! Thanks for playing

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-28T19:41:59Z

@rongefilet sorry about that! It's not too surprising as the only rendering optimization I implemented is a suuuper quick and dirty frustum culling system. I wonder how much better it would be if the trees were instanced. Anyway thanks for playing!

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-29T02:35:10Z

@matterlinx @rnrmoongoose thanks!

@miej Yeah I totally get that, that sequence definitely didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. There actually is a destination, but it does take a bit too long to get there. I haven't timed it but it might be around a minute of dragging. Shortly after you see the second chunk load in, you'll get the text "This spot seems okay", letting you know to drop him there. However if you drop him anywhere else the the text will tell you to go deeper, which I suppose could be confusing if you already passed the spot.

@crychair Were they actually invisible? That's definitely not supposed to happen. Did they appear then vanish? Or did you never see them at all?

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-29T02:59:27Z

@miej Ah yeah that section is for the next sequence! There's more to the game after you finish dragging but that totally makes sense. (In fact that's basically how I played while testing, except of course I knew exactly where to aim) Thanks for that feedback though it's definitely something to keep in mind for the future, that there should be safeguards pointing the player to the correct action even if they do something unexpected.

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-29T03:54:33Z

I changed the mouseconf.txt file in the binary releases to use `reverse vertical false`. Hopefully this should be easier for most people.

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-29T04:51:15Z

@sacredbacon Thanks for playing! You were too sneaky for them lol. I was gonna put some fences in around the edges of the map regions but it was a pretty low priority addtion I never got around to

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-29T07:29:11Z

@baarmaboi Oops :grimacing:

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-04-29T09:28:48Z

@crazybot Thanks! Yeah I thought the hand was sorta funny so i left it like that lol. It's basically connected by a spring to both the body and the player. Too much spring force made it unstable so I just rocked with the disembodied look

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-05-01T21:27:43Z

@siberpunk01 Yeah sorry about the lack of direction. You gotta drag the guy down the path, then when you reach a certain point (a little circle in the trail) it triggers the next section. So it's not just about how deep in the woods you are, you have to go literally to the one specific spot. I tried to lead the player there, but there's no indication of how close you are until you get there

Bad Night by vknauss 2021-05-04T07:47:58Z

@adam-selker Thanks for playing! I've realized that since all the motion runs through the physics engine which by default steps at 60hz, locked to <=1 steps-per-frame, if the gpu can't keep up with the draw call overhead (90% of which is the trees), the entire game slows to a crawl. It's on my list for next time to test my engine on a variety of hardware, and make the necessary optimizations!

Dig Deeper & Digger by gonutz 2021-04-29T07:41:55Z

Nice simple game. At first I thought the controls were not responding right, until I realized it was based on moving discretely between the columns and I was better off clicking a key than holding it down. It would be nice if there was a bit more of a difficulty curve, maybe some sort of obstacle you can't move through etc. Well done game overall

Dig Deeper by ursagames 2021-04-29T07:23:01Z

Really well done! Impressive inventory and equipment system and liked the procgen. It would be cool to see some surface variation on the caves or just something to make the environment pop a little bit more

Not So Grimm by Rongefilet 2021-04-27T22:13:31Z

This game looks beautiful and another OpenGL game :) I would love to play a linux build if you were to make one!

Not So Grimm by Rongefilet 2021-04-27T22:15:22Z

Actually I was able to run it using wine but only with a 32 bit wineprefix! FYI for anyone else on Linux

Crab Game by jellycakes 2021-04-27T20:11:21Z

Do you have a build to play without having Godot installed?

Save The Captain by sonmi 2021-04-27T22:43:04Z

I liked the concept a lot. One thing is I thought it was difficult to tell which row the bullets were coming through on. Nice synths btw

Fore! by TheBlondeBass 2021-04-29T00:43:24Z

Fun game a unique genre for a jam! Appreciated the humor in the writing and especially liked the meditating graphic. My favorite equation was 2379-2379+17

Deeper into Carnage by Zelberor 2021-04-27T20:30:12Z

I really like the concept and the use of the theme! I thought the game was sort of hard to play though, since the camera rotation was really slow and the movement was really fast. But I liked the assets and thought it was fun running around a giant room filled with 200 zombies

The Depths (Ultimate Edition XXI) by sacredbacon 2021-04-29T03:34:47Z

Loved the graphics style and super impressed with the audio! I couldn't finish though but It seems really well made. My only gripe would be the camera, which others have mentioned I see

Echoes of The Underworld by Lucas Félix 2021-04-27T22:57:14Z

Interesting mechanic how it makes you stop to wait to see ahead. For the final chase I basically had to memorize which turns to do though since while running the echoes lag behind. I liked the graphics audio and mood too. One suggestion I have would be to make the "target" objects more obvious, for instance at first I avoided the ghost door because I thought it would kill me, and at the end I didn't realize the torch thing was the goal.

Tin Mining by rubenwardy 2021-04-27T22:30:14Z

This is nice! It feels like a super clean demo. I especially liked how I could click with the mine and then the ladder on the same tile and they would mine first then build a ladder. Definitely would be cool to see expanded gameplay!

Drill Deeper by remram44 2021-04-28T02:35:33Z

This was a lot of fun! 2 of my guys died pretty quickly but I souped up my last guy to atk 12 and he could take out a full swarm from outside their notice range. He died when I got too cocky though after 8 levels. This could be a really cool full game with a more involved progression to keep you playing

Asterisk by Crychair 2021-04-29T02:47:41Z

This was fun! The first game I've played yet with voice acting. Overall really impressed with the audio. The bombs confused me, it seemed like most of the time they would just disappear, sometimes they would blow up, sometimes I would dig directly into one and nothing would happen.

To The Core by Tubertz 2021-04-29T03:42:16Z

Creative and unique game! Really nice audio. It would be cool if there were a level counter or something so you know what score to beat! Could also be cool to have randomly generated levels (at least they seemed the same on both of my runs)

Where's my dynoMITE? [LD48] by miej 2021-04-29T03:11:24Z

This game was really weird, but I loved it! The foley sound effects killed me and the general mechanic was super funny and enjoyable to use Screenshot from 2021-04-28 22-03-46.png Optimal strat

Deeper Into The Forest by siberpunk01 2021-04-29T00:28:43Z

The graphics were super solid! It was a short game but it really shows a lot of polish

Kurou's mind fights by NoCymer 2021-04-29T02:55:20Z

The insanity mechanic was very unique, and I liked your sound design!

Rabbit Rappel by MatterLinx 2021-04-29T01:00:55Z

Really nice graphics and animation! Unique take on platforming. I liked using the gun for propulsion, but the recoil and screen shake made the combat a bit awkward. Really nice start for what I bet will be a great game!

Muck Mansion by Themuckamuck 2021-04-29T03:23:14Z

Fun little game, and the last bit was a good challenge I thought. Agreed with what others have said about the hitbox, especially when moving horizontally it seems to be a few pixels wider than the sprite.

Deeper Bros. Digital Computer by Adam Selker 2021-04-29T09:24:59Z

Wow this is really cool! I the only bit of feedback I can give is it wasn't clear at first how the (up to) 2 commands in one pipe section would both take the same 2 inputs, and would constitute all the inputs for the following command(s). The wording of the manual made me unsure if it was like a post-fix ordering with implicit nesting, or if each pipe section was one input, or what. I did figure it out though. Really nice work on this one I plan to play all the puzzles!

Deeper Bros. Digital Computer by Adam Selker 2021-04-29T22:26:38Z

It would be nice if there were a way to copy "Deeper" code between puzzles. I spent a lot of time just reimplementing my custom "Less than" operation. Done 7/9 puzzles. Love this, the most time I've spent in a LD game by far

Deeper Bros. Digital Computer by Adam Selker 2021-04-29T23:38:18Z

I think I may have found a bug. In the sorting program, it looks like the first test input is missing "0" in the expected output. https://github.com/aselker/ld48_computer_1/blob/main/puzzle_list.py line 48 (forgive me for digging into the source). My program outputs 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, but it never enters the second test case.

Bob's Depth by phealsout 2021-04-29T00:17:52Z

Wow this game was very hard! I liked the different beam mechanics and I thought it was fun figuring out what they would do to each enemy. I did get very frustrated with getting trapped in corners by the "arrow keys" monster with the "plant" monsters chasing me and never made it past 5/9, but I guess this is the intended level of difficulty so I can't complain. The gameplay felt well done and when I would get sent back I actually wanted to keep going and try again!

LD53 — Delivery

Danger Dash by vknauss 2023-05-05T22:32:41Z

Oof this is a bummer about the windows issues. I'll see what I can do

Danger Dash by vknauss 2023-05-05T22:36:10Z

@ciderpunk thanks for playing! Yeah balance is not good lol I definitely wish I had more time for tweaking the zombies stats levels. Speed 1 is $15 and is like a 2-3x speed boost, so i recommend going for that one first. Definitely helps with not getting swarmed

Danger Dash by vknauss 2023-05-05T22:42:46Z

Ok so it looks like those dlls are part of Visual Studio C++ redistributable. You can download that straight from Microsoft, I don't know if I'm allowed to distribute those dlls myself or not (like legally). I am really not a windows person so I just assumed building with Visual Studio would be best for compatibility, but perhaps not. Will try to see if there's a better solution than saying "go download something", but here's where you can grab the runtimes from microsoft: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170 You'll just want the x64 one for 2015-2022

EDIT: you shouldn't have to download the redistributable -- i included the necessary dlls in the windows version . again please leave a comment if you have any troubles and I will try to fix as soon as I can!! thanks!!!

Danger Dash by vknauss 2023-05-06T01:46:21Z

@random-ideation-studios @balimaarthebassfish @stmatn thank you for reporting the issues with the windows dlls. I think there were 2 issues, both that the distributed version was on "debug mode", meaning it used the debug libraries which you are not likely to have unless you are a c++ developer. The other was missing msvc runtime dlls. Both should be fixed now. If you are still interested, the windows link should now point to the updated version. thanks again!

Danger Dash by vknauss 2023-05-06T04:40:57Z

@prismapunch 4 minutes is not bad considering! thx for playing

Danger Dash by vknauss 2023-05-06T18:26:46Z

@martta thanks! yeah agreed about the balancing

@cdunham thanks for the feedback! Those are definitely good ideas, weapon options are actually supported in the code but I never implemented any except the default rectangle lol. I wanted more powerups too to help with balance later on, also the zombies really need a lower speed limit. rolling is always fun too

@bullex thank you! I appreciate the detailed feedback. 1. definitely needed, the healthbars turn yellow but it's not obvious enough what's going on. before I had a color-change effect on the character but removed it because it had some issues. 2. this is concerning, it sounds like a bug but I never experienced this, if I knew where to look i might be able to fix but unsure what could be causing this. 3. it's kinda broken, there are 4 hitboxes on each character, with a different damage multiplier. if you hit all 4 on the same frame you do a lot of damage, but it's frame perfect. if you hit just one it locks the others for the i-frame duration. this was not intended and i do know about it but never fixed sorry. each arm is 80% damage, body is 100% damage, head is 150% damage. also the weapon is only "sharp" during the forward part of the swing

@stmatn great feedback! thanks for playing! I will look into the crashes, i think the pause menu crash is more of a case of unclear controls, if you hit escape twice it will quit the game. I don't think i tested having both the delivery and pause menus open at once, so it wouldn't surprise me if you can't see the text on the pause overlay. escape to exit the delivery menu is a really good idea, that would get around this issue i think. The other crash with the deliveries I will have to do more testing to see. thanks for all your game feedback too! I really appreciate it

Danger Dash by vknauss 2023-05-09T00:50:01Z

@raptor851 nice!! lol I knew (and intended) you could move with the window open but never thought about just never closing it... thanks for playing!

Bagelseeker by alaah 2023-05-06T02:54:42Z

really creative mechanic! I did scan the qr code the first time, but skipped actually installing the apk until I read the comments and spoilers on itch, so thank you for adding those. i hope shallotte gets paid well because i spent like $1000 of their money on concrete bagels...

ROG LD53 - Relic Courier by Rocktavious 2023-05-06T03:22:46Z

good stuff! a surprising number of mechanics and everything was well executed. definitely felt the dark souls sorta vibe. I think it would be nice if there were a bit more to the combat, after learning the parry everything was very easy, overall fun though!

R&D (Research & Delivery) by thormoth 2023-05-05T03:36:48Z

Really liked this I feel like you balanced it well, took me a few tries to get the hang of it but was really enjoyable!

Claw Express DS by DDesignDude 2023-05-06T05:20:13Z

I wanna try to play this on my 3ds, it is jailbroken but I don't have a computer with an sd card writer anymore... if I can find a way to get it working i will update!

Little Oni by chris1919 2023-05-06T04:21:57Z

wow really great work! I thought the core mechanics were really fun and well executed. on top of that the graphics and audio created a very nice experience. unfortunately gamepad did not work for me, but I was playing using wine on linux with the windows version, so it's probably not your games fault. I still managed to get to the end, i was very impressed with the length of the game considering the level of detail you clearly put in

Blockhead Bill by Prismapunch 2023-05-06T04:51:25Z

this game really does not wanna run under wine, using just vulkan it crashes on startup and with dxvk using directx it starts but crashes when I click the start button. I will give it another shot on a windows pc later, but if a linux build is easy that would be cool too :) the art looks cool i really relate to "I'm here for the fucked box"

AppleDeliveryWorm by Dani Obey 2023-05-06T03:48:10Z

was the worm a procedural mesh? I thought that looked pretty cool. I like this sorta graphics style, it reminds me of spore in a way. would be cool if there were more to do game wise, but I like what you had!

LD56 — Tiny Creatures

GubGubs by vknauss 2024-10-16T02:13:53Z

@smoore appreciate the feedback! yeah the input queuing was def less of a design goal and more of a capitulation because i couldn't figure out how to make grid based movement on a regular tick interval work at the time lol so just counted discrete inputs. on the other hand, glad it was clear enough how the input worked and you were able to figure out the rhythm

Rat Dead Redemption by GreenPig 2024-10-16T01:38:12Z

I like the look and mood a lot, is there an objective I'm supposed to find in the tunnels?

Lucky Lefty Loves Lofty Little Lodges by TheBookSnail 2024-10-16T01:04:21Z

It has a nice look and feel and cool to be able to build and deck out the snail however you want!

AFTER HOURS by seltzerfish 2024-10-16T01:14:56Z

Looks and SOUNDS amazing. Especially love the character portraits. Love the mini game concept too, very wel executed and impressive to put together each different one in a weekend. only feedback would be that it would be cool if they were harder!

Final Harvest by Teatoon 2024-10-16T00:28:56Z

I like the audio and mood, nice details on the environment and player, very off putting. I couldn't really figure out if there is anything I'm supposed to do though? Besides toss some cubes and eat some gnomes

LD57 — Depths

Captain Peggles: That Man's Chest by Sheepolution 2025-04-09T02:27:32Z

really well done! cute art, voice acting?! loved the concept of shared player experience. the web player crashed on me after I created my map, downloaded and it worked fine and got to dig up 3 treasures :]

X Terminator Sim 2036 by vknauss 2025-04-09T06:30:48Z

@trevor-lentz shoot, that's a pretty generic error message and it's hard to tell what could cause it. you could try to make sure the "visual c++ resdistributable" is installed, in this case in particular for Visual C++ 2022. Otherwise I'm really not sure, running in cmd prompt might show more messages. my system also is windows 10 22H2, but home edition

Worm Quest by T C 2025-04-09T03:13:34Z

Unique idea and good level design making use of various aspects. I had to give up on level 3 after reaching almost the end and getting trapped after boosting past the last enemy and the dirt i was supposed to land on. not sure how much more there is after that. very unforgiving game and finnicky placement controls (seems like pressing c if not past the midpoint of the current block just doesn't do anything?), i think if you were going to continue the concept further some local checkpoints would make it a lot more enjoyable to try hard parts over and over again. but overall I think a well done and well thought out experience!

Into the depths by Perovic2018 2025-04-09T03:24:02Z

I picked up an item but not sure how to use it. The look and mood feel nice, i think some direction to player would help

Depth to Horizon by YibiRabbit007 2025-04-09T06:09:39Z

appreciate the instructions in 2 languages. I was also a bit unsure how to proceed after the red capsules start to fall

Trip to Australia by Boban005 2025-04-09T07:01:56Z

simple and sauceful gameplay. nice responsive controls, secondary motion and audio. finished with only 68 deaths lol. one gripe is the death sfx sounds like it might be stacking multiple times and is loud and clips quite a bit. non of the other effects seem to have this issue. overall very solid!

Shadowboy and Lightergirl by speedcuber25 2025-04-09T02:38:40Z

unique concept that I think could go really far! I liked the mind bending aspect of trying to control both of them sort of in reverse. on the last level, i couldn't quite figure out how to use the central sliding red-within-blue, and ended up just being able to get them to circle around the stationary block which probably wasn't the correct route. presentation was simple and effective, and led player by design which is always nice