[ Particle Effects. ] by Graf_Grun

[raw]
made by Graf_Grun for LD29 (COMPO)
This game is full of wonderful particle effects, ninjas-things, swords, ungodly monsters, and more wonderful particle effects.

** P.S. You simply must play until lvl 10... **

The author laments that he did not have the full 48 hours to complete it and would have liked to have done better...

It was created in C++ with SDL/OpenGL using Code::Blocks and a small amount of MS paint (quality).

Although the author would have enjoyed pairing it with a fantastic soundtrack, the author sadly admits that he can't music at all.

The author also wonders if he lost the 'fun' aspect of the game amid all the particles. Kindly post comments below for how to make the game more 'fun.'

Pre-made files include:
- the font (font3.bmp)
- application.h/.cpp
- math.h/.cpp
- and loading.h/.cpp
The rest was either heavily modified from original files or made from scratch.

Ratings

Coolness 62% 3
Overall 3.82 96
Audio 1.41 1041
Fun 3.75 86
Graphics 3.98 108
Humor 2.70 388
Innovation 3.39 333
Mood 3.14 420
Theme 3.23 588

Feedback

cr2crstudios
28. Apr 2014 · 05:21 UTC
Hahaha, I love the idea of a guy with a stick beating things that are coming to destroy earth. :)
The art is quite stellar!
terraco
28. Apr 2014 · 07:17 UTC
Love the box related gameplay!
Snoother
28. Apr 2014 · 15:17 UTC
Really fun. I enjoyed the enemy variety and art.
Ditto
28. Apr 2014 · 15:18 UTC
This is super cool! The graphics are super fucking tight, you made a really good job on those particles! Gameplay is so simple, but works really good, the enemies are varied enough to make an interesting game! Great job overall! :D
aldian
28. Apr 2014 · 15:18 UTC
fast paced and fun, liking the art style as well. The jumping things out of the ground look like giant sausage dogs haha

Very good game :D

8/10
Pietro Ferrantelli
28. Apr 2014 · 15:19 UTC
Great job ! I really like mechanics and graphics ! :)
hexagore
28. Apr 2014 · 15:25 UTC
I keep getting belted back to level 5 when I get to level 7 because I'm rubbish, but I really love the style and feel of this. Fantastic!
Pierrec
28. Apr 2014 · 15:27 UTC
This is pretty fun. killing the ennemies before they come out makes it much easier :). I'm stuck at levels 25-30 though, birds are the worst
Jools64
28. Apr 2014 · 15:27 UTC
Fantastic game, so damn smooth. I really love the animations and the variations in the enemies felt good. I did feel that after you stopped introducing new enemies it got a little less interesting, that's totally acceptable within the time limit though.

Excellent work, really solid game!
SuperIzzo
28. Apr 2014 · 15:44 UTC
Reached level 27!
Graphics are neat and the gameplay is very engaging. Very funny too :D
What could add some more humor is if the unexpected things happen. E.g.
* your sword randomly breaks (somehow) and you start using your hands (and they turn out to be more effective, but on the next level you have the sword again)
* You break the world/room by hitting too hard
* The mobs accidently kill themselves: the worm that jumps out of the ground bumps into a bird and both die; you are left with one more thing to kill and it decides life is no longer worth living and suicides into the wall.
🎤 Graf_Grun
28. Apr 2014 · 15:48 UTC
@Pierrec,

Yes, I didn't know how to fix that. Making them immune when spawning would have just made it annoying. And if the birds had come out of the walls or something, then it wouldn't have been 'under the surface,' eh?

@Jools64,

The new enemies are there in the code! I just didn't have time to finish them! There's a frightening Basilisk-Snake-Thing.
Hyoga-3D
28. Apr 2014 · 16:03 UTC
really fun to play it!
biscuitdough
29. Apr 2014 · 05:11 UTC
The game was pretty fun, but though my fps consistently said 30, but it felt like the game was at 3/4ths speed
Unique graphics too!
petey123567
29. Apr 2014 · 06:09 UTC
Great style, pretty fun too. The birds are hard!
Bronaldplo
29. Apr 2014 · 09:10 UTC
Cool game man! nice idea
CaiusTSM
29. Apr 2014 · 20:29 UTC
This game is funny, the flying enemies look funny. I like idea.
BigGiantHead
29. Apr 2014 · 20:31 UTC
I had fun playing this game. Would be really cool if made a multiplayer mode.
Kragnir
29. Apr 2014 · 21:20 UTC
At level 30, I guess it will never end. Haven't seen anything new for the last 20 levels. You should have put an ending at about level 20 with a boss.

The animations and particles are really good but the enemies are a bit bland. Also I think you hype level 10 too much I expected something special and got nothing. The game needs something to add challenge and variety such as timingwindows for attacks, parries, dodges, weakspots.
Jacques_le_lezard
01. May 2014 · 13:14 UTC
Woooo a really aesthetic game =) Continue it : add some music and your "Basilisk-Snake-Thing" ! ^^)
jsspiegel
02. May 2014 · 20:47 UTC
Pretty amazing game! The only thing that really feels missing is music and SFX.
tomvert
02. May 2014 · 20:56 UTC
Awesome game, it feels really alive, I love the third enemy (the jumping one). The waves are well designed. What more can I say ? More checkpoint ?
kunzbe
02. May 2014 · 21:23 UTC
That was quite fun, played till lvl 19, but died six times in the damn lvl 18.

Vivid animations!

Hmm, more fun you ask, hmm... I suggest to work on the controls. It would be nice to have different attacks based on jump height / velocity / accelaration.
philip_sinclair
03. May 2014 · 00:11 UTC
DEAD!...DEAD!....DEAD!>>>:D great game. felt super fluid. would be really nice with some audio. i loved the particles!
austinsheep
03. May 2014 · 00:16 UTC
I love the particles!
CeriseGhost
03. May 2014 · 00:28 UTC
A really enjoyable game! As others have said though, was let down by the lack of audio, however I understand that it's hard to implement audio in such a small time frame!
LIESard
03. May 2014 · 01:57 UTC
A great game!
This is one of those games someone would find on Miniclip or some website like that :D
Something I would change would be have the screen shake a bit every time you hit an enemy, or some effect that would make the attacks seem less soft(?)
Also, you could have the levels randomly generated, but continue to keep the difficulty getting higher every five levels. It would be fun to polish it up but I don't think it's really worth the time...
zedutchgandalf
03. May 2014 · 10:30 UTC
This is great! Good job! :)
runvs
03. May 2014 · 13:07 UTC
Great game. The graphics and the gameplay are great but I miss some sound. For hit sounds and so on you could use SFXR or BFXR. For music you could give Autrotracker (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2011/12/13/if-you-find-it-hard-to-make-music-read-this/) a try.

You want to improve the fun? Try adding some 'juice'. For example screen shake if you hit an enemy and so on.
Have a look at this presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg
Azatoni
03. May 2014 · 13:30 UTC
Very hard game, ecspecially after level 10.
It's like meatboy)
elfeck
03. May 2014 · 14:00 UTC
Great controls & feel! Not the strongest connection to the theme though ;)
Doomista
03. May 2014 · 15:50 UTC
Fun, addictive and hard, just what I like :)
angelk
05. May 2014 · 06:56 UTC
I'm a sucker for squares, particles, minimalist design and fluid animation so I really loved the graphics. I was sad there wasn't any sound since SFXR/BFXR make it very easy to toss in some sound effects, which I think would add a lot to this entry. Gameplay is simple and pretty solid so there's a lot here to like. I really enjoyed it!
🎤 Graf_Grun
07. May 2014 · 01:22 UTC
@tomvert
I find this rather amusing due to the fact that the waves are completely randomly generated...

@LIESard & runvs
I had thought/planned for screen-shaking, but never got around to it.

@angelk & others
I'm so sorry, I (admittedly) completely forgot about the audio. I knew I wasn't going to add music, but I usually do add sound effects...

Thanks everyone for the critique and advice...
DonovanWu
08. May 2014 · 01:59 UTC
The game runs very fluently. Game difficulty balance is very good, too. I like it!
Bernhard
10. May 2014 · 11:39 UTC
Love the smooth animation and the fluid controls! Really cool game. There's a memory leak which prevented me to play longer than 20 minutes or so, I just couldn't beat 35-39 :-)
SnoringFrog
14. May 2014 · 02:17 UTC
I told myself I would stop playing at level 50, but when I hit 45 my fps dropped to 1 and never came back up, so I had to give up there. Awesome game though. Surprisingly challenging.
🎤 Graf_Grun
15. May 2014 · 19:50 UTC
"There's a memory leak which prevented me to play longer than 20 minutes"
How embarrassing... I just tested it and, sure enough, the memory usage is slowly trickling upward. The odd thing is in almost all cases I statically allocate my memory and when I dynamically allocate it, I use std::vector or something... So I have no idea of where the leak might be. It's probably something silly.

"when I hit 45 my fps dropped to 1"
That is odd... What was your original fps? About how many enemies were spawned? I usually (and did) completely ignore optimizations unless tests in my low-CPU-allocation VM fail. They passed, so I didn't think performance would be a problem. If you see this, could you tell me your computer specs?