LudumData

Random Access Aliens by edve98

[raw]
made by edve98 for LD36 (COMPO)
Oh no the alien drones are attacking earth! They even destroyed all of our firearms and melee weapons! What could we possibly do to stop them?!

Use our good ol' grenades, of course!

This is a terminal turn based game that I did with my own engine (specifically made for Ludum Dare!). Your goal is to survive as long as you can! Every 10 turns new alien drones will spawn and you will find a new grenade/heal 1hp.

map.txt is the map. You can edit if you want - just remember that alien spawn positions are hard coded (I really wanted to make it not so it would be easy to change the map but I had to rush everything in the end).

there is also .score file that is keeping the score. But do you really want to cheat? :P

Controls:
W, A, S, D - walk or or aim
Spacebar - change between walking and aiming
Enter - throw grenade or end turn
Escape or Q - quit game (score will not be recorded)

Legend:
@ - player
A - Strong alien drone
a - damaged alien drone
_ - killed alien drone
# - wall (drones can fly over them!)
X - place where are you aiming
o - thrown grenade
* - explosion
! - place where alien drones spawn



P.S. PLEASE RUN THE GAME FROM A DIRECTORY IT'S AT!

P.S.S. If somebody wants an OS X version just drop a comment below, I'll see what I can do.
Linux https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_TFdA52nAKQYWN3Q2tQajhqRnc
Windows (not tested but apparently works fine) https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_TFdA52nAKQVngzMHdNMm9fb0U
Source https://github.com/edve98/Random-Access-Aliens
Engine https://github.com/edve98/Terminal-Play
Original URL https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-36/?action=preview&uid=45010

Feedback

Sun-Wukong
29. Aug 2016 路 15:55 UTC
Is it beatable?
馃帳 edve98
29. Aug 2016 路 15:59 UTC
@Sun-Wukong Sadly no. At first I was thinking about making a few levels to beat, but I ran out of time :(
Vaiaphraim
29. Aug 2016 路 16:14 UTC
Windows user here - your engine seems to work well in the command shell :)

Cool game, I enjoyed it a lot. Maxing out the splash damage and kiting the aliens is really fun! Too bad you don't seem to gain any score for blasting them - but it shows that the objective is to survive.. no more, no less, as well as you can.
DifferentName
29. Aug 2016 路 16:14 UTC
It's tough to tell what's going on in a game when you have to look at a legend to tell what anything is. I don't know how anyone does it with more complex games like rogue. I was confused by the grenade at first, because the game let me aim with the grenade even though I didn't have enough AP to throw one. I managed to kill a few aliens though. Can the ! spawning places be destroyed? I was trying to blow one up, but nothing seemed to happen to it. I guess if it was possible to damage it, it would change to a damaged icon like the aliens do?
Multitudes22
29. Aug 2016 路 16:30 UTC
It was fun, but a bit odd to play. I couldn't help feeling like there was something missing to the game. But then again, it is 48 hours, so good job!
馃帳 edve98
29. Aug 2016 路 16:39 UTC
@Vaiaphraim at first I was thinking of giving some points for that (or killing multiple aliens with single grenade) but I really ran out of time - I was working hard until the deadline.

@DifferentName yeah the problem with aiming was not fixed due to time shortage. And !'s cannot be destroyed. The game thinks of them like walls :P
amras0000
29. Aug 2016 路 16:46 UTC
Your engine's missing one very important aspect: numpad control. You don't understand how restrictive it feels to have to aim on a grid in 4 directions.

Aside from that, the engine's cute, legible enough. The lack of color's a bit offputting but it's ld so I'm not expecting too much there.

There's not a lot going on in the game, which is fine if you're just showing off the engine. If you'd had time to make the enemies path around the walls (and gotten more of them to spawn!) it might've been fun to clump them together and watch them all explode. Really, having enemies that are substantially faster than you, which swarm the screen uncontrollably, and which have to move around the same walls you do would've added a lot.
馃帳 edve98
29. Aug 2016 路 17:21 UTC
@amras0000 it does have numpad support, I just didn't add that to the game. When I think about it it makes a lot of sense to have numpad as controls.

Color is there in the engine but not for Windows so I didn't bother to add it to the game (even if I did I would've probably chosen the worst colors possible, haha).

And I was trying to add normal path finding but it didn't work as intended an hour and a half until the deadline. I Decided to scrap it and finish off things that were really important (like grenades actually doing damage).
onyon
29. Aug 2016 路 17:45 UTC
Feels great that you created the engine just for this! I like the ascii-like art. Sad you ran out of time cause I'd be looking forward to seeing more. Good job.
lordvorath
29. Aug 2016 路 19:05 UTC
Nice work making the engine ad-hoc for the occasion! I Like ASCII graphics in general so that's cool, unfortunate that you ran out of time, would have loved to see more content. What else to say, it's a simple game but nicely executed. Maybe a bit lackluster in the theme department but that's optional so...
Amine Tcherak
29. Aug 2016 路 19:18 UTC
Good Works nice Game ..
ryte2byte
29. Aug 2016 路 19:29 UTC
Ya know, I don't think I've played an ASCII game with WASD controls before, lol.

Kudos on building a whole engine during LD! Great way to leverage the theme.
馃帳 edve98
29. Aug 2016 路 20:06 UTC
Oh, I didn't make the the whole engine during LD. I made it *for* it a few weeks before it started (well, I continued with what I had since last LD). Did I say anything that suggest I made it during LD? English isn't my native language so that could've happened.
blinry
29. Aug 2016 路 20:19 UTC
I'm familiar with Nethack and other Rougelikes, so I enjoyed the old-school style! Nice interpretation of the theme, well done! We had a laugh about "TODO: Write tutorial" and that large A's became small a's when damaged ;-) Without looking at the website, the goal was unclear. We would have liked sound effects and more gameplay elements. Good job writing your own game engine!
PetterBergmar
29. Aug 2016 路 21:43 UTC
Nice ascii art!
MrBrenan
29. Aug 2016 路 21:50 UTC
As a windows user I don't have any problem.
I love Ascii art and turn based game so I love your game.
Good job guy :)
AWOL
29. Aug 2016 路 22:33 UTC
Cool game!
Chryse
29. Aug 2016 路 22:40 UTC
Fun little game! Good job! :)
kraiom
30. Aug 2016 路 02:22 UTC
I really like what you did here. Fun to play, and I appreciate the tactics feel of it. Would love to see more content, though. Maybe don't let drones and grenades ignore walls, that'd create some interesting tactical ideas. But I realize the time constraint.

Again, cool game, really like the feel of it!

~ kraiom/guiocm
Fib
30. Aug 2016 路 02:27 UTC
It was really hard to learn at first. But once I figured it out I really enjoyed the ascii art aesthetic. Solid entry & bonus points for writing your own engine.
Piotrek
30. Aug 2016 路 21:06 UTC
Gameplay feels really dynamic as for turn based game.
Good job.
tmpxyz
31. Aug 2016 路 04:18 UTC
It would be more fun if there're guns and more kinds of aliens
Rakart
31. Aug 2016 路 13:50 UTC
Reminds me of the cataclysm DDA days (in the aesthetic way), good job on the engine.
Too bad the gameplay is a bit bland, it could really be an awesome game with mechanics.

Congratulations anyway, game works fine on Windows.
Jimbly
02. Sep 2016 路 03:36 UTC
Interesting little game. Played rather slowly, even for a turn based game - faster explosions would have gone a long way. I totally did not understand the AP system at the beginning, got very confused as to why I suddenly could not move (thought I was stuck in a wall!), then tried shooting, and it would let me do that either, so some feedback about "out of AP" when trying to do either of those would have been slick.
RockhopperGames
02. Sep 2016 路 14:45 UTC
Same as Rakart, I'm reminded of Cataclysm (and rougelikes in general) too. The base gameplay is fun, but I think the pacing could be tuned up a little. It takes a lot of time running away before you get a real chance to strike back, and a lot of that time is just busy work. Personally, I'd experiment with turning up the spawn rate a little bit and seeing how that works. Alternatively you could try the you move/they move style of rougelikes, and see if that does away with the slowdown of having to end turn after every few steps. Despite this, I thought it was still a tops game!
epb9000
06. Sep 2016 路 06:25 UTC
There's nothing quite as satisfying as taking out 7 alien drones with one grenade. I'll admit that it got a little tedious having to kite for 10 turns for a limited chance to strike back, but this was still solid fun.