{"author_link":"\/author\/joe40001\/","author_name":"joe40001","author_uid":"22192","comments":[{"author_name":"sharp911","author_uid":"36736","time":"Dec 9, 2014 @ 4:12am","epoch":1418098020,"text":"Nothing I really can say about this game. A bunch of what look like flaming balls?"},{"author_name":"ketura","author_uid":"16065","time":"Dec 9, 2014 @ 7:52pm","epoch":1418154420,"text":""Playable" for some definition of "Playable". The contrast between the player and the background made me think I had a smudge on my monitor, and the crippling lag you point out makes it hard to do anything meaningful. Forcing a reload of the page to start over leaves testers with little drive to keep trying, never put obstacles to restarting."},{"author_name":"madalaski","author_uid":"29994","time":"Dec 9, 2014 @ 8:01pm","epoch":1418154960,"text":"While there is obviously a ton of lag, I can get the gist of what this game is. If anything the lag adds an extra terror factor to it but that was obviously unintentional. The action game however is a strange bullet hell shooter without any actual shooting and I think it could have been especially great with a few more hours of work put into it. For a game made in 5 hours you've done fairly well against that ones made in 48..."},{"author_name":"TheScragglyMan","author_uid":"46841","time":"Dec 10, 2014 @ 3:46pm","epoch":1418226060,"text":"Way to much lag at the moment, i shall save my vote till its fixed, (So let me know please) interested to see what you have done with this idea ^^"},{"author_name":"snapman_GT","author_uid":"30827","time":"Dec 11, 2014 @ 2:58am","epoch":1418266380,"text":"The rotation mechanic does show promise. Something to consider: the game was just as playable with only the up arrow key, and this was a little more fun even, since it forces you to commit to a move since the option of going back is out."},{"author_name":"joe40001","author_uid":"22192","time":"Dec 13, 2014 @ 12:15pm","epoch":1418472600,"text":"Crap, I should have double checked, when I last ran the build it was actually playable, but for some reason when played on line it seems infinitely laggy. I'll fix it. Sorry guys, my bad."},{"author_name":"joe40001","author_uid":"22192","time":"Dec 13, 2014 @ 2:24pm","epoch":1418480340,"text":"It's fixed now."},{"author_name":"freaknarf","author_uid":"46874","time":"Dec 13, 2014 @ 3:07pm","epoch":1418482920,"text":"Hm nice concept but it's a bit hard to see the player's ship."},{"author_name":"LabOne","author_uid":"25948","time":"Dec 14, 2014 @ 1:03pm","epoch":1418561880,"text":"400 m("},{"author_name":"alyphen","author_uid":"14242","time":"Dec 14, 2014 @ 1:09pm","epoch":1418562240,"text":"At first, this gave me a pretty nice feel of the expanse of the universe, but slowly it just got repetitive. There was no ramp up in difficulty, no change in scenery (until the maze thing at the end), and it really was more of a grind. For 5 hours, it's decent, but it doesn't really compare to most entries."},{"author_name":"Gread72","author_uid":"45863","time":"Dec 14, 2014 @ 2:22pm","epoch":1418566620,"text":"Simple to play and I like the mechanics to this game."},{"author_name":"joe40001","author_uid":"22192","time":"Dec 15, 2014 @ 3:29am","epoch":1418613840,"text":"@Gread72\rThanks!\r\r@alyphen\r\rThat's very fair, the idea was to have the enemy base attack methods change based on your range and actually have a final phase where you dock and walk around to destroy it, but obviously what was hoped for and what was accomplished are very different things. \r\rI don't expect nor do I deserve super high grades for this entry, it just was neat enough that I thought I'd share and this way I get to participate more actively in the voting, which was something I enjoyed doing last time.\r\rI considered really increasing the closing in speed but I felt like that would negate the whole "great expanse" feel that was intended.\r\rIn the end if I give a few people a kinda neat experience then I'll feel fine about it. I really wish I could have put in the proper amount of time and make a proper game, but unfortunately that wasn't a possibility. :(\r\rNext LD I'll do something awesome though. :)"},{"author_name":"Empyrealhell","author_uid":"26650","time":"Dec 15, 2014 @ 7:50am","epoch":1418629500,"text":"The mechanic was simple, and it got pretty boring pretty quickly. It was a neat concept, and I like the idea of just dodging, but the projectiles all moved the same, and the ship movement was so simple and had no variety to it. It's impressive that you managed all of this with only five hours, and I think the bullet hell avoider idea could be good, it just needs some more depth of play and some better level\/obstacle design. I'm curious to see what you come up with for the post-comp version."},{"author_name":"01rafael","author_uid":"11984","time":"Dec 29, 2014 @ 4:11am","epoch":1419825960,"text":"All I can say about is indie games rules!"}],"images":["ld31\/22192-68e34aa798ff5bc9a6eea2d8f30fbb73.jpg"],"links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.kongregate.com\/games\/joe40001\/the-great-expanse","text":"Web"}],"metadata":{"g_key":"13237","g_author":"22192","g_event":"LD31","g_eventkey":"26","g_subevent":"JAM","g_urlkey":"13267","g_title":"The Great Expanse","g_status":"UCHK1","g_place":"1000","g_commentcount":"14","g_site2_node_id":"0","g_hide":"N","g_has_icon":"Y","g_rqueue":"0","g_random":"0"},"nds":[],"node":null,"orig_images":["http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/407933\/22192-shot0.png-eq-900-500.jpg"],"text":"This isn't a finished game, but since it is technically playable I thought I'd share it. \r\n\r\nControls: Up\/Down pivot around the center, you are the (very) small ship on the left and you are trying to get to the base on the right. Just dodge obstacles until you arrive.\r\n\r\nAuthor notes: The scaling thing which I did get implemented was the fundamental idea behind this game, but I had hoped to implement a final \"stage\", and a lot lot lot of polish. However, I really had like zero time to work on this, what you see is around 5 hours total of work, if I had the whole weekend to work on it I would have liked to share a cool game with you guys, I almost don't want to share it because it's so far short of what I want and really isn't up to my standard but I thought since it is technically playable and it's I think an interesting take on the theme I'd share it. I'll work on a post-jam version and hopefully get to show a lot more of what I had in mind. So if you think it shows promise come and check that out in the future, but of course only grade on the jam submission.\r\n\r\nEDIT: There seems to be a weird lag bug, I'll fix it soon. \r\nEDIT2: The lag bug was much worse than I thought, it ran completely fine locally but yeah what was up online was unplayable. Now it's more or less in the \"playable\" state I was talking about before. ","title":"The Great Expanse"}