Kitten by GFM

[raw]
made by GFM for LD32 (COMPO)
About
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Legends tell about 7 stones of power. If one were to obtain all 7, a great power would be granted unto that being.


Dependencies (linux)
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To run this game, you must have SDL2 installed on your system.
Simply install it from apt-get and it should work:

$ sudo apt-get install libsdl2-2.0.0

If that doesn't work, try using the development package:

$ sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev


Installation
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No extra steps are needed. Just be sure that the 'assets' directory is on the same one where the application is.


Instructions
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Gamepad is strongly advised!

Keyboard:
- Use 'A' and 'D' to move
- 'spacebar' jumps
- Aim and fire with the mouse

Gamepad:
- Use the left stick to move and the shoulder buttons to jump
- Aim with the right stick and shoot with the trigger buttons


*I only tested using a XBox 360 wired gamepad, so I can't assure that any other will work. If your gamepad isn't custom, it'll probably work fine.
If the game finds a gamepad it doesn't support, it'll crash!!


Tools:
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Language: C
Libs: SDL2, GFraMe
Editor: vim
Pixel art: GIMP
Tile editor: Tiled (with custom plugin)
Sfx: Bfxr
Song: Benjamin Soule's VMML
Timelapse: Chronolapse (will render it on Blender, later)

I reused 2 code snippets, from previous projects (on my github, and that I announced on my "I'm in!" post):
- Code to render part of a tilemap to a camera
- Base code for the Tiled plugin


Edits:
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2015/04/21 - Created a release on github and modified the link here (so I can fix bugs and stuff)
2015/04/21 - Fixed a bug on the Linux version. It (probably) only happened on systems that doesn't support SEEK_END as the fseek target. The patch can be seen here: http://pastebin.com/4gkrpMB9

Ratings

Coolness 56% 3
Overall 3.24 488
Audio 2.97 406
Fun 3.25 392
Graphics 3.41 338
Humor 2.68 568
Innovation 3.14 528
Mood 3.07 434
Theme 3.09 763

Feedback

TheScopelessOne
20. Apr 2015 · 13:55 UTC
Unforternatly I can't download the game, chrome claims it is harmful and gives me no options to download it anyway :/
(The windows link)
Ilseroth
20. Apr 2015 · 14:01 UTC
Fun game, surprised at the amount of content, but a little annoyed at the fact I can't fullscreen or make it a little bigger. Keeping my mouse pointed on the tiny little window is a little awkward. Also the camera has a tendency to hand a bit behind the character which means a lot of off screen "jumps of faith."
Markus Becker
20. Apr 2015 · 14:01 UTC
Like the idea. I've seen this concept of propulsion movement done a few times, but this is very well implemented.
I couldn't scale the window, so it was very tiny on my screen, and I often clicked out of the window, when I tried to shoot downwards, this would be fixed if the player wasn't directly at the bottom of the screen.
Mizipzor
20. Apr 2015 · 14:02 UTC
Crazy difficult, especially with a mouse, and I kindea like that. Didnt get very far, gave up. Nice graphics. Music didnt get annoying. Good use of theme. Great work overall! :)
madhoe
20. Apr 2015 · 14:09 UTC
BTW: If you're experiencing issues in Chrome, it's because the .zip contains an .exe file. In the download bar on the bottom, when the "Discard" button appears, click the arrow to the right and hit "Keep".

Now onto the game: It's pretty well polished! I accidentally skipped the shooting instruction, but I like the mechanic of using it to jump higher. I only wished you could move during that time, though!

I feel like the text's not very easy to read. Graphics and music aren't too bad! Overall, good job!
rg_rem
20. Apr 2015 · 14:09 UTC
it was difficult, but i did it
🎤 GFM
20. Apr 2015 · 14:15 UTC
I completely forgot about full-screen... 3 lines of code (more like 7 or so, to enable toggling) and it could had been done.
And since I played with a gamepad throughout the development, I didn't even though about the possibility of miss-clicking the window (even though it happened while I tested the moust...).

@TheScopelessOne - Try right clicking the file and selecting 'Keep'.

Thanks for all comments. :)
RockhopperGames
20. Apr 2015 · 14:25 UTC
Okay, first off, adorable graphics! This game was great fun, I particularly liked how much sequence breaking was available! I'm gonna call that a feature, not a bug!

What I can't imagine is a feature though is the horrible screech sometimes emitted on touching spikes, between that and how long the game took, I would like a mute button to be available. The music was nice, but it gets repetitive fast.

I am really impressed by the size of the game you created in 48 hours, but it might be nice to add a few more checkpoints. I was dying a lot, even with sequence breaks, so I imagine it would be a lot harder playing through it regularly.
🎤 GFM
20. Apr 2015 · 14:34 UTC
@RockhopperGames

If you are talking about, for example, about getting the green stone as the second one, that was completely intended. =D
The screech you here on the spikes only happens if you jump while on the spikes. Since you are touching the floor, it will allow you to jump every frame, without moving... Which results in lots of sounds playing.

Something that wasn't explained is that you can pass over the "altars" to set it as a checkpoint, once again....
RockhopperGames
20. Apr 2015 · 15:49 UTC
Getting green before yellow was nice, but I also found a way to climb the cliff between the blue and indigo gems, skipping the area with spikes on the roof. You can even get the violet gem without the blue and indigo gems, if you're careful!

Perhaps disabling controls while dead would be a fix to the sound issue?

I did see that the altars worked as checkpoints, I just think having checkpoints at the halfway points between them would allow players to get back into the parts they're struggling with faster (at least from my experience).
🎤 GFM
20. Apr 2015 · 20:01 UTC
@RockhopperGames

Green can be gotten right after red, actually. But about the other two (indigo and purple), I really didn't think they were possible...

Congrats for doing that! =D

About the checkpoints...
As a developer, feel divided. I may be wrong, but the only part that really needs more checkpoints is between blue and indigo. The only part that is somewhat hard is before yellow.
Other than that, you could, for example, re-activate the red altar before trying both green and purple... but they are mostly safe (as well as the path before blue).
Still, I can see how players could benefit from that...

If I expand this game (something that I wish to do, but after updating my framework), I'll go through these comments once again. :)

Really, thanks a lot for the feedback. :D
DesignerNap
20. Apr 2015 · 21:14 UTC
very hard to master and it is down to a couple of things. with pad controls, shooting directly down, makes you go slightly left or right. With a precision jumper like this, that is a bit of an issue. the second is that there is no traditional "air control" in the movement. hard to adjust once committed. I gave up after the second collection BUT I will come back to it as it was good fun and well presented. audio gets a bit much tho ;) great work overall.
Fanttum
21. Apr 2015 · 00:01 UTC
I'm on a mac so any port or web player any time soon? :)
🎤 GFM
21. Apr 2015 · 00:17 UTC
@Fanttum

Sometime ago, I looked into SDL2's support for chrome's native client, but wasn't able to make it work... So, at the time, a web player is totally out of question.

On another hand, I've read about how to cross compile from linux to Mac, but I still haven't tried... So there's still this possibility. Don't know when I'll get to try it, though. :(

If I do get a work around, I'll be sure to tell you about it. :)
Dodecaplex
21. Apr 2015 · 01:41 UTC
I was a bit frustrated by the camera forcing me to make some blind jumps, but the gameplay and graphics were both great. Good work!
dos
21. Apr 2015 · 17:41 UTC
Can't launch it on GNU/Linux: http://pastebin.com/Md7gWLrC
ogrepixel
21. Apr 2015 · 18:10 UTC
I liked the art of this game, music and sounds fit well, The only problem was a place with spikes I could not jump! Other than that good work! =)
🎤 GFM
21. Apr 2015 · 18:52 UTC
@dos

Apparently, based on the log, you were able to find the file, but your system failed to fseek to the end of the file (in order to get the file's length).
If that's indeed the problem, I have an idea that should work... I'll try to fix that...
🎤 GFM
21. Apr 2015 · 20:42 UTC
@dos

And done! :)
It should work, now.
ChuiGum
21. Apr 2015 · 21:22 UTC
That was a pretty cool idea. Nice music, and nice game overall.
philipp
21. Apr 2015 · 21:35 UTC
Level design was neat, although I was stuck like forever after obtaining the second ball. I didn't get the concept of doing one shot, then pausing and doing another. But maybe I was just stupid there :D

Other than that it was interesting to play around with, but you could really have a smaller dead zone for the camera movement, I had to do several jumps of faith. And more checkpoints would have been nice
dos
21. Apr 2015 · 21:59 UTC
No idea if it was the patch of the fact that I changed the PC in the meantime, but it works now.

Woah, it's hard. A bit more checkpoints would be handy! Stuggling with 4/6 part now. Something keeps me playing though, so that's a good sign ;)

However, lack of mouse locking is annoying - quite a lot of time I went with my cursor outside the game window and switched focus to something else :(
Squeka
22. Apr 2015 · 11:31 UTC
Addicting even it is difficult at the right part of the level, but finally managed to get the orb. Great rainbow ending :3.
SteveSalmond
24. Apr 2015 · 23:50 UTC
Cool idea! I found jumping a little bit tricky with the XBox controller - having jump on right shoulder and fire as right trigger with aim as right stick is quite a lot for the right hand to deal with! Not sure how else you would map it, but perhaps if one of the functions went to left shoulder or trigger that would help.. Found the game very enjoyable, regardless :) Nice work.
🎤 GFM
25. Apr 2015 · 00:12 UTC
@SteveSalmond

You can actually use both... I probably wasn't clear enough on the in-game explanation. =X

I, for instance, prefer to jump with the left shoulder button and shoot with the right trigger.
OnlySlightly
25. Apr 2015 · 00:43 UTC
I enjoyed the mechanic and the clever platforming puzzles. It had a really cute aesthetic :)
emmelineprufrock
25. Apr 2015 · 00:50 UTC
I really liked the sound effects, game feel and art, but found the difficulty a bit too high (playing with the gamepad). I sort of got into a rhythm with pushing the right trigger button and right shoulder button simultaneously, but it was a bit awkward.
joppiesaus
25. Apr 2015 · 17:17 UTC
Fun platformer! I'm terrible at it. I like the audio.
Mechanics make the game really well. They do a good job on the theme too. Creative. Nice graphics.
It also takes a while to play, which is great for an 48h game.
Oh, and I also found an hilarious bug: When you press space while you're in spikes, your death will be loud.
Great work!
Snicklodocus
01. May 2015 · 03:08 UTC
Quite a lot of content here! I liked the art style and music. The camera sometimes made it hard to navigate levels since I couldn't see the other side of jumps, at times. Also, the death sound is very rough, haha. Overall though, good game!
Yword
01. May 2015 · 15:06 UTC
Really nice music and interesting mechanics, it reminds me of the machine gun propulsion in Cave Story. Besides, I think it will be better if the camera view can show more space in front of the player. Well done!
RockhopperGames
02. May 2015 · 16:13 UTC
Checkpoints (late reply, got distracted by Crypt of the Necrodancer):
I was more thinking of it as something to keep in mind for if you made the game larger. It's not really an issue now, but if the game world was significantly larger, the same density of checkpoints could be stretching it.

At the current checkpoint density, there's always about three or so challenges between checkpoints. This means that the player has to go through the gauntlet of challenges to move foward, and has to go through them again to go back. This is fine for a game focusing on platforming challenges, but it would make exploration more painful. Placing checkpoints more frequently would mean there's less pressure to consistantly execute the platforming, but would allow players to test themselves against various challenges without being punished as harshly. It's an exploration vs challenge thing, I think.

Of course, you could try doing something creative with the checkpoint system instead. They Bleed Pixels and LD31's winner birdsong both let you control where you place checkpoints, and could be worth checking out. Maybe you could make a checkpoint system where you can place a kitten anywhere as a checkpoint, but can't activate a new altar checkpoint until you go back and pick up the kitten. Something like that would allow both exploration and challenge gauntlets, I think.
01101101
04. May 2015 · 18:02 UTC
It's a really good idea! except the difficulty and the lack of ennemies. May be you should have chosen a more zoomed screen.
By the ways, I really enjoyed it
surpent
07. May 2015 · 04:15 UTC
Great gimmick. I was inspired in this game.
Get to the fifth stone, but it is difficult to advances not :-p
SecondDimension
10. May 2015 · 16:12 UTC
I found this a little too hard, even with the pad, but I liked the idea of using the weapon help with jumps. Was there any way to charge the bar higher so you could use the weapon for longer?