A Maze Thing by TeamAMazeThing

made by TeamAMazeThing for LD27 (JAM)

Aliens are kidnapping your crew! Explore the space ship and lead them to safety! But beware, your scanners are malfunctioning and will only update your map every 10 seconds - and enemies might lurk behind every corner.

Created by Christian Reuter, Florian Mehm, Moritz Neeb, Stefan Huebecker, Viktor Wendel at the Multimedia Communications Lab (http://www.kom.tu-darmstadt.de) at TU Darmstadt. Enjoy!

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Sources used:

Base-Mesh for victims: http://opengameart.org/content/male-human-low-poly-base-under-1000-polys - www.amon.co

Many Assets: Angry Bots Demo, Unity Technologies http://u3d.as/content/unity-technologies/angry-bots/2aL

Skybox generated using SpaceScape http://alexcpeterson.com/spacescape
A* algorithm by Aron Granberg
http://arongranberg.com/astar/

"Forgotten Victory", "Space Music Out There" and "Searching" by yd

http://opengameart.org/content/forgotten-victory

http://opengameart.org/content/space-music-out-there

http://opengameart.org/content/searching

"The Orchs are Coming" by shalpin

http://opengameart.org/content/the-orchs-are-coming

Web	http://www.kom.tu-darmstadt.de/~creuter/amazething/
Windows	http://www.storytec.de/gamejam/amazething-win.zip
OS/X	http://www.storytec.de/gamejam/amazething-mac.zip
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=27784

Ratings

Coolness	82%	2
Overall(Jam)	3.04	325

Audio(Jam)	3.05	215
Fun(Jam)	2.52	446
Graphics(Jam)	3.59	208
Humor(Jam)	1.86	425
Innovation(Jam)	2.93	315
Mood(Jam)	3.24	169
Theme(Jam)	2.38	545

Feedback

juaxix

27. Aug 2013 · 09:22 UTC

Amazing, that's a good looking level creator. Would you like to share the script?

fgielow

28. Aug 2013 · 03:46 UTC

I really liked the programatic approach to generate the level xD

Larzan

28. Aug 2013 · 09:57 UTC

Interesting idea, well made, only a bit laggy when light comes into view?

RennFarnell

28. Aug 2013 · 09:59 UTC

i dont know where the 10 seconds were, but i liked the game :D

RennFarnell

28. Aug 2013 · 09:59 UTC

oh it was the radar, ofc, yh that radar was awesome too!

Will Edwards

28. Aug 2013 · 10:03 UTC

Love procedural content :)

Dry Tree

28. Aug 2013 · 10:04 UTC

Nice game, good work. The lighting is great and the game certainly feels moody :) I found it a bit difficult - it often felt like I was getting hit without any warning, so maybe add some sound effect for when aliens are very near and/or when you're losing health? I also had some performance issues with this - quite a choppy frame-rate on both the web player and the downloaded windows version - but I've never had problems before with other Unity games. Still, great job overall - well done

🎤 TeamAMazeThing

28. Aug 2013 · 15:10 UTC

as requested, here you can find the script which creates the random maze:
http://www.kom.tu-darmstadt.de/~vwendel/RandomMap.cs

However, be warned, it needs serious refactoring, right now it is pretty much spaghetti code.
I did, however, take some time to add a lot of comments in order to explain the functionality.

Basically, the script randomly places rooms in a predefined raster.
Then each room seeks its 'n' closest neighbors.
After that, links are build between neighboring rooms going from left to right.
Next, overlapping halls are replaced with crosses, tCrosses and corners based on neighboring halls.
Fianlly, an adjacency matrix is calculated for each room, cross, and tCross which is used for pathfinding later.

You can specify the number of neighbors, each room establihes a connection to. If this number is too low, it is possible that some rooms are not connected as this is not checked yet.

Mironix

30. Aug 2013 · 19:12 UTC

My framerate dropped like crazy when looking at some directions. Very nice map design, and rich "world".

doonay21

30. Aug 2013 · 19:23 UTC

Moody game. Music sounds great. Good job!

yagiz

30. Aug 2013 · 19:38 UTC

I also had fps problems looking at ~90 degrees left from the starting rotation.

The map creation is interesting and the radar reminded me of the old AvP games, where the aliens could jump on you in between the updates.

Some notes: It took some time for me to recognize the doors (maybe something more distinct or slightly larger activation zones). And the HUD on top right did not fit with the rest of the visuals.

Good job.

imef

30. Aug 2013 · 19:42 UTC

Very interresting concept! Nice use of the 10 seconds.

Split82

31. Aug 2013 · 09:40 UTC

Can't play this. Runs under 5 FPS on my computer :(

haloflooder

31. Aug 2013 · 09:57 UTC

I liked the soundtrack, it fit in nicely for a space related game. The FPS is a bit low for some reason. It could just be the web version. I also noticed the 10 seconds was the refresh rate for the mini-map. it was an interesting concept.

Alexander Ponomariov

31. Aug 2013 · 14:08 UTC

Cool graphic and mood! I feel some terrible big idea!

Lidfrid

31. Aug 2013 · 21:51 UTC

You spent so much effort in the generation of the room, but you didn't think about the camera. It's too fast, i can't enjoy the game because of that...

porglezomp

31. Aug 2013 · 22:03 UTC

It's too laggy to play for very long for me, but I like the map generation a lot.

Codexus

31. Aug 2013 · 22:04 UTC

Nice graphics, I had pretty much no idea what I was doing though. There should be some indication of where I am on the minimap.

ZYXer

01. Sep 2013 · 00:21 UTC

Wow! Amazing graphics. First LD game where my PC can't keep up. :D The radar map which only updates every 10 seconds need some getting used to, but was a good way to integrate the theme. But overall I'm impressed!

ratking

01. Sep 2013 · 14:32 UTC

The concept sounds pretty great. I just had some problems getting orientation in this space station. Due to the lags I often lost the direction I was heading to.
It would be great if the doors you can use have lights, so you needn't try them all, if you lost the orientation. An arrow for the player symbol in the minimap would be great as well.
Great atmosphere. Thrilling!

Zerot

02. Sep 2013 · 15:22 UTC

A bit confusing but the visuals were nice. Some parts were lagging for me but I wouldn't dock for that. It could have just been my computer.

ratalaika

04. Sep 2013 · 17:18 UTC

Nice game, quite funny to play!!

Sebby

09. Sep 2013 · 04:06 UTC

Oh this looks so cool! I tried the web version first and the mouse controls were really laggy for me. I thought downloading would help but I had the same problem. :( But still really cool, I liked the idea for the theme a lot, and you all managed to get a lot done over the weekend!

cwkx

15. Sep 2013 · 11:51 UTC

Procedural 3D content is amazingly tough and hard to pull off in such a short amount of time, yet somehow you did it- congrats!