{"author_link":"\/author\/dadeyemi\/","author_name":"Dadeyemi","author_uid":"15410","comments":[{"author_name":"Lucas Tiridath","author_uid":"5505","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 9:04am","epoch":1346057940,"text":"Very nice entry. Background soundtrack really made it for me but the glowing graphics were very smooth too. Would have been nice to have more control over when the text changes (I'm a slow reader) but overall very polished and impressive. For your first LD, I think you should be very proud of your achievement. Btw I notice that the icon on the task bar keeps jumping to the right and sliding back to the left? Are you doing something weird with refreshing the window or something?"},{"author_name":"Dadeyemi","author_uid":"15410","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 9:19am","epoch":1346058840,"text":"@Lucas Tiridath - Thank you very much, I used some random plugin for Paint.NET to make the icon for about 20 different sizes so it doesn't surprise me that its a little buggy.\r\rI wanted to add the ability to control the timing but it would have taken too long to implement as I would have needed to match it to the particle animations so I left it out :(."},{"author_name":"madpew","author_uid":"2196","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 10:17am","epoch":1346062320,"text":"Well done. I love Educational Games as this one. Please expand on this. Maybe get someone to read the text for voiceovers, and a "skip" button to forward the messages would be great."},{"author_name":"Dadeyemi","author_uid":"15410","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 10:20am","epoch":1346062500,"text":"Actually having it in Low def instead of HiDef was cause significant stability bugs"},{"author_name":"Dadeyemi","author_uid":"15410","time":"Aug 27, 2012 @ 10:24am","epoch":1346062740,"text":"@madpew I did record me doing the voice over but:\r1: the file becomes huge as XNA has a terrible content pipeline for SFX\r2: My voice recording equipment sux (laptop microphone)\r3: I have a cold so sounded horrible."},{"author_name":"Gungnir","author_uid":"15389","time":"Aug 28, 2012 @ 3:53pm","epoch":1346168880,"text":"Is it supposed to end after the line about the brown dwarf? I feel like I missed a lot of content, also no idea how to get any of the achievements, it only lets me create one star..."},{"author_name":"kevincorrigan","author_uid":"15028","time":"Aug 28, 2012 @ 4:25pm","epoch":1346170800,"text":"Sorry, my graphics card is from the stone age apparently, so I couldn't play."},{"author_name":"Starmen","author_uid":"13726","time":"Aug 28, 2012 @ 4:26pm","epoch":1346170860,"text":"Really well made entry. Incredibly relaxing and pleasant to play. I couldn't seem to make anything other than a Protostar\/Brown Dwarf but it was still fun none the less. It was also surprisingly educational, which is always a bonus. Only minor criticism is that the bar at the bottom with all the writing on it took up a little bit too much screen space, but otherwise really, really nice. Good job."},{"author_name":"timtipgames","author_uid":"15341","time":"Aug 28, 2012 @ 4:52pm","epoch":1346172420,"text":"really beatiful. I would have liked to read all the explanations, but sometimes they dissapeared to fast."},{"author_name":"Zoomyzoom","author_uid":"7301","time":"Aug 28, 2012 @ 5:41pm","epoch":1346175360,"text":"Pretty swag"},{"author_name":"Killerbug","author_uid":"14487","time":"Aug 28, 2012 @ 6:21pm","epoch":1346177760,"text":"Informative. The ambient music really adds to the mood. Although at first I got lost due to long messages, it came out well in the end :)"},{"author_name":"echa","author_uid":"15601","time":"Aug 28, 2012 @ 8:54pm","epoch":1346186940,"text":"Beautiful.\r\rI wonder, can I make a black hole?"},{"author_name":"SethR","author_uid":"17","time":"Aug 29, 2012 @ 11:55am","epoch":1346241000,"text":"I loves me some science"},{"author_name":"Materie","author_uid":"14231","time":"Aug 29, 2012 @ 10:44pm","epoch":1346279940,"text":"This game is GREAT! Couldn't escape becoming a black hole, though."},{"author_name":"joekinley","author_uid":"3012","time":"Aug 31, 2012 @ 2:45pm","epoch":1346424000,"text":"Thanks for the playthrough video. As I'm lacking a windows PC this helped me a lot.\rI really liked the graphics and the audio. Good work on that.\rAlso the game feels really nice and seems fun and interesting. Although I had no idea what was happening. It was educational though. \rAlso good work on the achievements.\r\rALso, where's community points gone? I'd have given you 5 stars on that for the timelapse and the playthrough video."},{"author_name":"Wish I Was an Astronaut","author_uid":"4104","time":"Aug 31, 2012 @ 11:56pm","epoch":1346457060,"text":"You know, a post compo version of this would be an excellent little educational game. I'd probably send it off to my astrophysics teacher.\rI imagine the text could be rather confusing to anyone who doesn't already know about the life cycle of a stars. Still, good revision tool :P\r\rAsides from that, the graphics were excellent, the music was nice at first but too repetitive, and the user should really be allowed to skip text when they want.\rAnd in a post-compo version, I'd suggest being able to rewind back to previous minigames instead of starting from scratch every time."},{"author_name":"goffmog","author_uid":"2011","time":"Sep 1, 2012 @ 12:07am","epoch":1346457720,"text":"Couldn't get a supernova or a planet but this has real replayability value and is a joy to play through, lovely mood - and space is always awesome, but doubly so when it's educational too. It seems to crash when I switch to another window, but other than that it seems stable for me"},{"author_name":"dj_pale","author_uid":"9921","time":"Sep 4, 2012 @ 9:08pm","epoch":1346792580,"text":"Really nice concept! The graphics and particles were nice. The sound was a good beginning, but too short loop. I wish there would be a bit more gameplay :)"}],"images":["ld24\/15410-43876948d7e4b1f4d9663e6ff126c142.jpg","ld24\/15410-2467552defea67e8bc54398a5a5060d4.jpg","ld24\/15410-09e07e4ee6abe6345561f9638c145b30.jpg","ld24\/15410-592d15c750529ddc7b63e8af210f8d22.jpg","ld24\/15410-d43b98d78ecb794cd30df11f5da05851.jpg"],"links":[{"url":"http:\/\/people.ds.cam.ac.uk\/ifa20\/Stellar%20Evolution.zip","text":"Windows"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/download\/details.aspx?id=27598","text":"XNA redist (required)"},{"url":"http:\/\/youtu.be\/-Q6xt0OH808","text":"Timelapse"},{"url":"http:\/\/youtu.be\/pt8s2o9NNWY","text":"Playthough Video"},{"url":"http:\/\/people.ds.cam.ac.uk\/ifa20\/Stellar%20Evolution%20Source.zip","text":"Source"}],"metadata":{"g_key":"28774","g_author":"15410","g_event":"LD24","g_eventkey":"12","g_subevent":"COMPO","g_urlkey":"28804","g_title":"The Evolution Of Stars","g_status":"UCHK1","g_place":"83","g_commentcount":"18","g_site2_node_id":"0","g_hide":"N","g_has_icon":"Y","g_rqueue":"0","g_random":"0"},"nds":[],"node":null,"orig_images":["http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/163678\/15410-shot0.png-eq-900-500.jpg","http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/163678\/15410-shot1.png-eq-900-500.jpg","http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/163678\/15410-shot2.png-eq-900-500.jpg","http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/163678\/15410-shot3.png-eq-900-500.jpg","http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/163678\/15410-shot4.png-eq-900-500.jpg"],"text":"This is an educational game about the evolution of stars written in C# XNA where you play through the life cycle of a star and command the fundamental forces of nature to become a Neutron Star (as every star really wants to be a neutron star), aimed at the A-Level syllabus in the UK (16-18 yrs) I'm not technically a physicist so I used Wikipedia and http:\/\/www.astarmathsandphysics.com for research.\r\n\r\nIf your not interested in the physics you may like the many pretty particle animations such as the ones for the Supernova or Black hole and they are to a certain degree physically accurate animations so you should hopefully learn something watching them too.\r\n\r\nGood look collecting all of the achievements! (the supernova, planetary nebula and black hole are the nicest animations IMO so its worth trying to get to them.)\r\n\r\nGUIDE(SPOILER):\r\n--------------\r\nA lot of people are missing some of the content so here is the guide on how to get each animation:\r\n\r\n1) Planet. collect as little of the dust as possible try to right click a region with few large particles without attracting anything. \r\n\r\n2) Protostar. attract for about at least 2 secs to collect some dust and right click.\r\n\r\nHow to win the Hydrogen fusing minigame: hold left click and fuse the ones which are close to each other first it might take a few tries but its not too hard once you got the hang of it.\r\n\r\n3) Brown dwarf. Lose the hydrogen fusing minigame.\r\n\r\n4) Sun -like star + Red giant win the hydrogen fusing minigame)\r\n\r\n5) Planetary Nebula + Whitedwarf. If you didn't collect too much dust in the first round (just more than enough to not get a planet) then after the red giant phase you will become a Planetary Nebula then a White Dwarf\r\n\r\n6) Supernova. if you collected a lot of dust in the first mini game ( collect for about 10-20 secs) then you get a Supernova after the red giant phase.\r\n\r\n7) After the supernova phase you get a strong force minigame where you must keep the proton and neutron apart (use two hands on the space bar alternating to click faster is what I find is the best way to beat this minigame). win it and you get a neutron star, lose it and you get a black hole.\r\n\r\nTo run it you may need:\r\n-Direct X9\r\n-Latest version of the .NET Framework\r\n-The XNA redistributable\r\n\r\nUse this image if you need a clue to get some of the achievements.\r\nhttp:\/\/www.astarmathsandphysics.com\/a_level_physics_notes\/cosmology\/a_level_physics_notes_cosmology_template_html_42d1285.gif<\/p>","title":"The Evolution Of Stars"}