WORDHUNTER by gerritg

made by gerritg for LD26 (COMPO)

About
====================
A Game about shooting characters. More and more of them are trying to kill you. If you shoot them, you'll get points. If you shoot them in order (aka a word) you'll get extra points.

Controls
====================
W A S D - Move
Left Mouse Button - Fire
Right Mouse Button - Delete word cache/Submit word for points
E - Bomb
P - Pause

Prerequisites
====================
You need have an up to date (1.7) java installed. I only tested with Java 7 x64 but it should run on x86. Maybe even with Java 6. Who knows. Edit: Doesn't work with Java 6.

Afterthoughts
====================
First entry, first game I kind of finished. Still a lot ideas left with no time to get them into the game. Watch my website (http://gerritg.de) for future updates.

Post-Compo Version
====================
Lots of bug fixes, slowdowns fixed, better spawning, better word possibilities, some new sounds & file size quartered.

Tools
====================
Eclipse 3.7
Gimp 2 (Artwork)
Paint (Screenshots ;))
BMFont
OpenMPT
sfxr
jarsplice

Windows	https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12292704/wordhunter_windows.zip
Web (Post-Compo)	http://gerritg.de/dev/ld/26/wordhunter.html
Linux/Mac JAR	https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12292704/wordhunter_generic.zip
Source	https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12292704/wordhunter_source.zip
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22527

Ratings

Coolness	100%	1
Overall	2.98	758

Audio	2.92	428
Fun	2.81	711
Graphics	3.17	459
Humor	1.96	756
Innovation	3.60	205
Mood	2.59	852
Theme	3.43	664

Feedback

argo15

29. Apr 2013 · 17:55 UTC

Neat idea, quite challenging to actually spell any words.

MauMaGau

29. Apr 2013 · 17:59 UTC

Great fun! I'd never thought I'd see a shoot-em-up/scrabble crossover! I enjoyed the multitasking challenge, and having the option to just give up and shoot sh*t =D

Frib

29. Apr 2013 · 17:59 UTC

Interesting idea. It was quite difficult to make actual words because at some point there would be just too many of them to cherry pick the right letters :D

invaderJim

29. Apr 2013 · 17:59 UTC

I like the style, and it feels good to play. Actually spelling a word is quite the task.

Christopher Schulte

29. Apr 2013 · 18:01 UTC

The graphics were very nice and soft on the eyes. It was very hard to focus on spelling words due to letters spawning very close by and coming in fairly fast. I was made pretty much impossible to survive or spell once the green letters came in; I had to focus all my fire on them and even then some spawned so close as to kill me. Interesting idea!

HeyChinaski

29. Apr 2013 · 18:04 UTC

Good concept, well implemented. Could do with some better feedback when you submit a correct word. A bit too hard as well.

lightsoda

29. Apr 2013 · 18:05 UTC

Took me a while to get a word.

I dig the style, could have used a different color for the player entity to separate it more from the letter entities though.

Jools64

29. Apr 2013 · 18:08 UTC

I think this is a really cool idea but I found it way to difficult to spell out words with such fast paced game-play and constantly moving targets.

The game felt good to play in general though, the controls felt good and the movement felt solid. I really like the simple look of the graphics too. The particles where a nice touch.

To summarize, this was a cool game with a nice idea but by the end I was just playing it like any other shooter and not even thinking about the spelling mechanic.

Good job!

EggDestroyer

29. Apr 2013 · 18:13 UTC

Nice concept, smooth game, classic and solid gameplay with surprisingly satisfying sounds and fitting graphics, but yeah, it's really difficult to actually spell words.

I think one of the major problem is that every letter comes in with equal probability (ot at least that's what I think), so you may come up with 8 consonants (obviously W, X, Z...). That, and the unfortunate missing shots fucking up your word (for which I have no obvious solution).

cahman

29. Apr 2013 · 19:23 UTC

Neat idea and nicely presented. Sometimes I felt like the letters spawned right on top of me, and the hit boxes seemed a little too large. Some of the words didn't seem to get accepted (like tibia, TOTALLY a word).

cmayhem

29. Apr 2013 · 20:13 UTC

As others have said it is quite difficult to spell any words.

Merkoth

30. Apr 2013 · 20:10 UTC

Tried to play under OSX 10.8, it didn't work :(

"Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: de/gerritg/wordhunter/Starter : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0"

No idea what this is. Not scoring of course!

fullmontis

01. May 2013 · 08:43 UTC

Really like the idea. It would make a fun multiplayer game :) Very nice minimalistic graphics.

danielcmessias

01. May 2013 · 17:38 UTC

Cool idea, pleasant graphics and well implemented. As other people have said difficult to make a word, but a really solid entry!

🎤 gerritg

02. May 2013 · 20:05 UTC

Thanks for the feedback so far! I'll look into the posted issues and publish a fixed version. Maybe next week. I have some word for a couple of things:

- Words: Getting a word IS really hard. The idea was, that words are mixed up and spawned. I didn't finish that function so everything is random. Which makes it really hard to get a word sometime. It's like playing scrabble and everything you have is ZYYXZSQQO.
- Words Part II: I used a list of the 1000 most common used words and I'm not satisfied with that solution as there are missing a LOT of good & often used words. Maybe I should have used the top 10.000 ;)
- OSX error: No clue. Sound's like a mismatch of a lib. I'll look into that.
- Multiplayer: Sure. But first: Bug fixing, more enemies, joypad support.

Dark Acre Jack

02. May 2013 · 21:39 UTC

Congrats on your 1st LD entry.

JustinMullin

02. May 2013 · 21:40 UTC

I really really like the concept.

I definitely think your dictionary is way too small. It missed a lot of the words I threw at it. I'd recommend checking out http://wordlist.sourceforge.net/ or http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/w/Long_List if you're looking for word lists in the future, those both seem to be useful resources.

All that aside, though, this was a lot of fun, and very creative!

elbowroom

04. May 2013 · 16:57 UTC

There were some issues with the gameplay mechanics, the fire rate is too high and the bullet speed is rather low. Also there were rarely enough vowels. It is a neat idea that requires more work to shine as a game.

avidgamerNino

04. May 2013 · 22:03 UTC

The movement would sometimes get locked and it would move on its own. I swear I spelled some words and it didn't give me any extra points.

Xanjos

04. May 2013 · 22:06 UTC

It's a really interesting game idea and the graphics and audio were pretty nice. Kinda hard to get letters that can spell out a plausible word though. (Bear in mind I was playing the Windows initial compo version of the game)

Cake&Code

04. May 2013 · 22:51 UTC

What an incredibly simple yet effective idea! Crossover shoot-em-up with a word spelling game? Wow. So simple, so awesome.

As other have said, it was generally pretty difficult to actually string real words together but that just made it all the more satisfying when it happened!

Would love to see this get more developed! :D

GranaDa

04. May 2013 · 22:55 UTC

Can't run the web version (class error). Missed some vowels but it's a nice idea! Cheers!

Cake&Code

04. May 2013 · 22:59 UTC

Oh! As an addition to the previous comment. It would be nice if the frequencies of the letters matched the language more. You can easily find such data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency#Relative_frequencies_of_letters_in_the_English_language

I think it would make the game a lot more fun to play!

angelk

04. May 2013 · 23:25 UTC

I like the idea. I wasn't sure how to "complete" a word. Perhaps if there was a specific word the player was asked to spell and a time limit to spell it?

Zccc

06. May 2013 · 18:08 UTC

Wow, amazingly polished, but too hard :P

multikorv

11. May 2013 · 11:05 UTC

It looked really nice, but a bit frustrating at first. Maybe a bit hard. But I like the idea and implementation! Good job!

kddekadenz

13. May 2013 · 13:41 UTC

sh launch.sh
Unable to access jarfile

My Milked Eek

15. May 2013 · 14:08 UTC

Cool concept, but it's hard to actually get words.

kyru

15. May 2013 · 14:14 UTC

Very good game, quite challenging.

🎤 gerritg

15. May 2013 · 14:16 UTC

@kddekadenz
The generic JAR >should< also work on *nix systems (java -wordhunter.jar). The dotSH was made with jarsplice - seems like the only thing that works out of the box are the jars itself.

@angelk
Completing a word is as easy as pressing the right mouse button. But in some cases it still won't register a word since it only knows 10k.

@Cake&Code
After changing the spawn cache in the post-LD version it's easier to get a word. But for the full version (if I ever get to that) I'll include a lot more words. That's for sure :) Thanks for the links!

BarrensZeppelin

16. May 2013 · 11:56 UTC

I really liked the concept of the game, but I think it would've benefited from shifting the focus to either spelling words or shooting everything. It was far too challenging to spell words when there was 20+ chars on the screen, and they literally spawn 30~ pixels away from you at times, which makes you end up just dying.

I liked the simple graphics & audio though, everything goes well with the theme. ^_^

Good job! ~

henrykun

19. May 2013 · 01:04 UTC

Nice graphics and sounds, I like shooting as well, good game :)

lightnarcissus

19. May 2013 · 13:18 UTC

Very unique take on a genre mash-up and I think it resulted in a fun game. Good job with the aesthetics too -- stays true to the theme.