Thievery by schnerble

[raw]
made by schnerble for LD25 (COMPO)
Kane the thief needs your help to relieve dozens of innocent and unsuspecting victims of their hard-earned cash.

He's up against some stiff competition, with an array of armoured guards on patrol - and those guards aren't against a bit of good old-fashioned biffo. They've even brought in their pet dogs for assistance.

Use daggers sparingly - Kane can't carry many, and throwing them at guards tends to make them cross.

You can loot houses when near the door, or pick the pockets of guards who haven't spotted you yet.
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* Fixed versions *

Some people have had problems running the game because of it not finding the AVBin library, though it's packaged alongside the executable. I've built a "fixed" version, which hopefully might improve things, though I can't be sure as I couldn't reproduce the original problem on any of the three machines I tried. This version should at least allow you to run it without sound if the problem comes up. I also tweaked a couple of numbers to fix some tiny mistakes, but it's virtually identical to the submitted version.
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I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out. There were very few roadblocks, so every spare hour went into more features - and there was plenty more I could do there. I did manage to get a goat in, after a fashion, for those of you who get that far. Some things could've used a bit more tuning - e.g. one guard gets stuck on his path, and maybe the alert distance should've been a little higher - but overall I think it's a pretty good result. I'm not utterly destroyed after the 48 hours, thanks to a few breaks here and there, which helps too :)

Thanks as always to Greasemonkey for Autotracker and Increpare for Bfxr. A bit of simple sound can go a long way.

To run the 'source' version, you'll need to have Python and Pyglet installed. If you're on Windows or Linux, hopefully the builds will work for you without hassle.

Also, by the way, I forgot to write on the control list that 'P' pauses the game.

Hope you enjoy having a mess around with it :)

Ratings

Coolness 79% 2
Overall 3.30 194
Audio 2.91 210
Fun 3.63 54
Graphics 2.68 475
Humor 2.79 277
Innovation 2.63 476
Mood 2.80 349
Theme 3.50 230

Feedback

Somfunambulist
17. Dec 2012 路 18:34 UTC
This game was surprisingly fun, and surprisingly strategic. With slightly improved graphics, this could be a stellar game.
Tobias Wehrum
17. Dec 2012 路 18:34 UTC
I present to you, a dog with a flashlight in his... you know where: http://puu.sh/1C1wD
And now for something completely different:

I quite like this game! I mainly clicked the entry because it reminded me of my title, and the similarities don't end there. It seems we started out with similar concepts and then took them in different directions.

My favourite feature: Picking the pockets of guards. The more guards there are, the more extra money - I appreciate the irony.

The game was quite easy to understand, but still proved to be challenging afterwards - just how it should be.

The chatter is a nice touch. I just wish it would display where it was said - that would add a bit more to the immersion, and would also make it far easier to read. (I missed most of it just because I was looking at the playfield, not down, but I found the chatter.txt later.)

Good job overall!
Faust
18. Dec 2012 路 14:37 UTC
Impressive sneaking game. As @Somfunambulist said, it would be way much better with more polished graphics.
Prealpha
18. Dec 2012 路 15:05 UTC
Hi, I'm getting this when trying to run it on windows 7 64bit:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<string>", line 85, in <module>
File "c:\src\thievery\build\pyi.win32\thievery\out01-PYZ.pyz\misc", line 299,in init
File "c:\src\thievery\build\pyi.win32\thievery\out01-PYZ.pyz\pyglet.resource", line 587, in media
File "c:\src\thievery\build\pyi.win32\thievery\out01-PYZ.pyz\pyglet.media", line 1386, in load
File "c:\src\thievery\build\pyi.win32\thievery\out01-PYZ.pyz\pyglet.media.riff", line 202, in __init__
pyglet.media.riff.WAVEFormatException: AVbin is required to decode compressed media
馃帳 schnerble
18. Dec 2012 路 18:23 UTC
Hi Prealpha - sorry about the hassle there. That sounds like it's failing to find avbin.dll for some reason. It's in the same directory as the .exe, so that's surprising. Could you try starting a console and changing to the game directory, and then running it from there? Alternatively creating a shortcut with the working directory set to the game directory could help too. Finally, the AVBin site suggests copying avbin.dll to C:\Windows\system32, so you could try that if you want.
馃帳 schnerble
18. Dec 2012 路 18:27 UTC
Somfunambulist, Tobias, Faust: thanks for the compliments! Yeah, my drawing skills aren't great, so that's a bit of a known problem :) Will try working on those for next time though.

Tobias: thanks for the detailed feedback. Heh - yeah, I hadn't thought of that dog flashlight issue ;) I'll try highlighting the chat text better next time - your suggestion of putting it near the action is a good one.
ix
18. Dec 2012 路 19:10 UTC
Reasonable sneaking game.
I wish the view cones coincided more accurately with when the guards would chase.
Good chasing AI (that leads you a bit).
DaviDeMo
18. Dec 2012 路 19:13 UTC
Interesting AI. very good and fun =)
馃帳 schnerble
19. Dec 2012 路 01:23 UTC
Thanks guys. Ix: yeah, the vision cone is just a vague directional indicator rather than an exact marker, and the angle and distance are slightly larger than they appear, but at least getting it in there helped a lot.
singpolyma
19. Dec 2012 路 16:39 UTC
You should mark that the binaries are 64bit :)
singpolyma
19. Dec 2012 路 16:44 UTC
Performance was a big jerky on my laptop, but playable. Quite a fun game.
馃帳 schnerble
19. Dec 2012 路 19:19 UTC
Oh yes, good point... I'd been on 64-bit so long I'd forgotten until a bit earlier tonight. Will try building some 32-bit ones if I get a chance :)
Dark Acre Jack
20. Dec 2012 路 00:40 UTC
Heh. Chrome told me it was dangerous. Funny.

Very well done. I might have put the "looted %" indicator on the player avatar or the house that was being looted. Not sure how that would have affected gameplay, though.

Solid entry.
Alex Rose
20. Dec 2012 路 00:51 UTC
Hey, I navigated to that directory on Win7 64 bit in cmd, still got the error about avbin.dll missing.
Toadpud
20. Dec 2012 路 01:01 UTC
I couldn't open it. Looks pretty cool
LTyrosine
20. Dec 2012 路 01:28 UTC
Nice game here sir. Amazing music, fun gameplay....
BipolarMike
20. Dec 2012 路 01:49 UTC
Excellent! Good writing, fun game! Could be expanded to a mini-assassins creed or metal gear :D
馃帳 schnerble
20. Dec 2012 路 09:22 UTC
Thanks all! Sorry about that ongoing avbin error. I'll look into it soon when I get a chance, hopefully - just a bit busy with Christmas preparations at the moment... (plus my job)
Yep, I reckon Metal Gear Solid, as well as Thief etc, probably subconsciously influenced the way I put it all together :)
馃帳 schnerble
20. Dec 2012 路 13:37 UTC
Ah - looks like I packaged the 32-bit version of AVBin instead of the 64-bit one... whoops! I'm not sure how that ever worked, then. Anyway, here's a link to download it for now, and I'll repackage the game when I get a chance. Apologies for the mistake - but it was 2am on a Sunday night! ;)
http://avbin.github.com/AVbin/Download.html
馃帳 schnerble
22. Dec 2012 路 23:56 UTC
OK, I've added a new build which might help... all of my previous confusion about build versions aside (Windows was 32-bit, but Linux was 64), AVBin really should work, and I've added some extra checks and the ability to run it without sound if the AVBin load fails. Fingers crossed it's at least less hassle for everyone :)
ceronman
23. Dec 2012 路 01:53 UTC
Great fun with this game. I've really enjoyed it. Thanks for working on this!
pl0xz0rz
28. Dec 2012 路 14:23 UTC
Surpringly un.
Patrick64
29. Dec 2012 路 01:20 UTC
I liked it, very impressive for 48 hours. The graphics and music are good and it plays well.
Retrac
29. Dec 2012 路 16:07 UTC
Well done, the game was very fun to play. The game was easy to jump right into and held enough of a challenge to keep me interested. Audio and controls were also done very well. I personally would have liked the ability to lose the guards chasing you some how (a limited supply of smoke screens maybe?), but their AI was still good and made it challenging.

Congrats on the game and good luck in the future!
kibertoad
29. Dec 2012 路 20:13 UTC
Simple, but fun. Pick-pocketing guards was a nice feature.
Jeremias
30. Dec 2012 路 17:34 UTC
Solid game and nice idea. You should avoid to give enough daggers to kill all the guards, because then it gets more an assassin game as thievery.
馃帳 schnerble
30. Dec 2012 路 18:12 UTC
Thanks, all - glad many of you enjoyed it :)

Retrac: yes, that would've been the next thing I'd done: provide a way to get away from the guards once they've spotted you. Bit disappointed I didn't get that in, but never mind.

Jeremias: I agree, and in level 3 you don't have enough. Th e biggest problem is that once they've seen you the only thing you can do is kill them; if I got to put in another option to get away, I would've decreased the number of daggers.
Jeremias
31. Dec 2012 路 15:28 UTC
Why not let the player lose if he gets uncovered too often? It's like creating a save ground under every gap in Super Mario :D
馃帳 schnerble
31. Dec 2012 路 19:31 UTC
I think the long term goal would've been to make guards who spot you alert nearby guards, and have them all chase you - or at least make them watch more closely afterwards - but then allow you to hide somewhere so you don't need to kill them. I guess it's a bit too easy to actually hit with the daggers than I was initially thinking. I probably should've reduced the number of them on every level so there was no way you could kill everyone, as it's normally still easy enough to win without doing so. Hmmm... needs more tuning :)
JacksGamesSucks
05. Jan 2013 路 19:56 UTC
well done!
i like game, whole concept, i had a lot fun playing it
i would slightly improve intelligence of guards and dogs, make them stop following you after some period of time and also add some daggers randomly on map because when i used all of them and guards didnt stop following me game became unsolvable
grat job though, congrats!
hissssssssss
06. Jan 2013 路 04:53 UTC
Really impressive for 48 hours! I would have liked some houses with doors that faced different directions.
馃帳 schnerble
06. Jan 2013 路 13:45 UTC
Jack & hiss: thanks! Agreed on the changes: next thing I would've done was make it possible to hide from the guards so they eventually gave up. I tried making houses with doors on different sides originally, but just rotating the sprites looked terrible, and I didn't have time to draw any more... ah well :)
Norgg
07. Jan 2013 路 17:37 UTC
Nice and fun minimalistic sneaky game! I'd have kind of liked some way to shake a guard without killing them, especially since you are able to outrun them or get them stuck on the other side of a building from you.