Beneath by Cherno

[raw]
made by Cherno for LD29 (COMPO)
You're trapped beneath the surface, and must escape. Unfortunately for you, the cavern underground in which you are in is slowly flooding with water, meaning you must find a way out as quickly as possible. Utilizing the available light you have, find the way out!

So I made this game using LWJGL (OpenGL); no engines. I had to make the engine by myself, including the lighting and shadows with the help of GLSL. It was a great learning experience, but unfortunately hindered my ability to work on the actual game. I say this every time, but... no more writing games from scratch for Ludum Dare! 48 hours should be spent on the gameplay, not the engine! So hopefully next time I'll either be using my own engine, or something like LibGDX to speed things up, and enable me to work on gameplay most of the time.

The game uses OpenGL 3.0, so it may not work on older graphics cards. The game also might not run too well for some of you: this is due to the tile rendering, NOT THE LIGHTING! Each tile is rendered separately instead of pushed into a Vertex Array and rendered simultaneously: that's the problem, and I may fix it later.

But hey, I made some pretty nice looking lighting. :)

I streamed the whole thing here: http://twitch.tv/TheCherno
and there will be some timelapse and other videos uploaded to my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheChernoProject

UPDATED! Fixed the music bug (same music played for menu and game), and optimized initial loading.

Ratings

Coolness 0% 2196
Overall 3.21 517
Audio 3.61 115
Fun 2.79 760
Graphics 3.97 113
Humor 2.10 807
Innovation 3.41 320
Mood 3.46 221
Theme 3.36 465

Feedback

ZQMony
28. Apr 2014 · 02:50 UTC
Very original.
Boodog
28. Apr 2014 · 03:04 UTC
Awesome! I liked the lighting, and music a lot!
kylobite
28. Apr 2014 · 03:08 UTC
Since his link didn't make it to the post for some reason (at least on my end), here is where he streamed it: http://www.twitch.tv/thecherno
gartoks
28. Apr 2014 · 07:31 UTC
Looks awesome ! Like the lighting !

One more thing: Can you provide the source code somewhere ?
Anti
28. Apr 2014 · 15:50 UTC
Nice lightning and music! Also a nice idea. :D
piratefraser
28. Apr 2014 · 16:47 UTC
windows wont run it
gmaker
28. Apr 2014 · 18:44 UTC
really great job with shaders! awesome lighting =)
fullmontis
28. Apr 2014 · 20:04 UTC
Crashes on startup :( Any idea why? Windows 64bit
atterday
28. Apr 2014 · 20:52 UTC
Cool graphics and good idea with the water. I didn't really feel stressed about reaching the exit as I couldn't get the water level to reach higher than 45%. Good job
Gamepopper
28. Apr 2014 · 22:38 UTC
While the music is a bit short and repetitive, I definitely liked the originality here. Not to mention you did brilliant work on the lighting, the glow and the shadow mapping are pretty much perfect.
Doubstract
29. Apr 2014 · 14:38 UTC
Hmmmm... i thought if you submit game in compo, you must include source code.
Torri Y
29. Apr 2014 · 20:44 UTC
The graphics are beautiful. Wonderful entry.
Osteoblast Labs
29. Apr 2014 · 21:33 UTC
I'm on mac and my game crashed before the main screen loaded. it looks great though...
MrBenjaminBowman
30. Apr 2014 · 01:47 UTC
Windows Vista 32 bit, when I open it, it shows a black screen, then after a second it closes.
danidre14
30. Apr 2014 · 03:54 UTC
I really liked it.
Vulpus
30. Apr 2014 · 21:41 UTC
Loved watching stream and playing game.
gre
30. Apr 2014 · 21:57 UTC
So I was not so sure how to play the game and what to do, maybe you should have guided a bit more the player in the game,
otherwise that is an original game with a good mood.
CoderMusgrove
01. May 2014 · 00:02 UTC
Absolutely amazing. The music was cool, the lighting was great, the textures were amazing.
alvarop
02. May 2014 · 18:04 UTC
Really original and subtle mechanic you got going there with the shadow direction. At least, that's what I used to get through this game!
Flam
02. May 2014 · 21:39 UTC
I get an unsatisfied link error on Mac.
Shivur
03. May 2014 · 18:27 UTC
Hey Cherno. I follow you on youtube and you gave me the taste to participate to my first Ludum Dare.
KevinWorkman
12. May 2014 · 15:11 UTC
I didn't really know what to do, and the movement and lighting didn't really make it *fun* to explore. You also might want to check out Box2DLights which does all the hard work for you. And you might want to deploy as a runnable jar instead of a zip file, people are lazy and hate unzipping files.