{"author_link":"\/author\/ra4king\/","author_name":"ra4king","author_uid":"4393","comments":[{"author_name":"sythe","author_uid":"8655","time":"Apr 24, 2012 @ 3:14am","epoch":1335236940,"text":"Can't run this."},{"author_name":"refreshcreations","author_uid":"6823","time":"Apr 24, 2012 @ 10:41pm","epoch":1335306960,"text":"Ahh, afer playing this nice, calm, relaxing game about destroying planets whilst your planet grows to gargantuan proportions I feel much better :) Very nice resource management, I still couldn't beat it, after my 3rd\/ 4th try but never mind, the point is that I had fun whilst playing it, the soothing music matches the movement of the craft which is quite responsive yet forgiving. Glad to see the important GUI elements are there, without that red arrow pointing to home I would have got lost quite easily.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>You may need to upgrade your JRE to run this but it's worth it :)"},{"author_name":"BenW","author_uid":"128","time":"Apr 24, 2012 @ 11:17pm","epoch":1335309120,"text":"I had a lot of fun playing this and taking over the universe. I didn't like that I had to open a popup for each planet that I visited. It should have just displayed all the options when I got there. Also I didn't see much point to upgrading my home."},{"author_name":"Darkfrost","author_uid":"7085","time":"Apr 25, 2012 @ 12:08am","epoch":1335312180,"text":"This was awesome! 5* for mood, it was so relaxing to play, good fun too :p I tried about 6 times, but still died, but itwas good fun &gt;:] Would've been nice to have other planets attack you or something, give you a bit more to aim at with upgrading your planet, etc, but it was fun! Nice work!"},{"author_name":"dr_soda","author_uid":"8342","time":"Apr 25, 2012 @ 6:39am","epoch":1335335640,"text":"I'm afraid it didn't run on my machine. \r<br\/>\r<br\/>Windows Vista 64"},{"author_name":"ra4king","author_uid":"4393","time":"Apr 25, 2012 @ 8:17am","epoch":1335341520,"text":"You need to have the latest Java version installed. www.java.com"},{"author_name":"razorquick","author_uid":"13161","time":"Apr 25, 2012 @ 9:49am","epoch":1335347040,"text":"@Darkfrost : the attacking planets are in works ; they will show up in the next installment . \r<br\/>\r<br\/>Suggestions\/CC are welcome"},{"author_name":"Lidfrid","author_uid":"12884","time":"Apr 25, 2012 @ 9:57am","epoch":1335347520,"text":"I like this game! Even it Does not have a goal!\r<br\/>I will add the possibility to repair the ship though!\r<br\/>cool concept.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>you can't use this song!!"},{"author_name":"keebus","author_uid":"11853","time":"Apr 25, 2012 @ 11:00am","epoch":1335351300,"text":"It's hard to grasp, some tutorial is needed to really appreciate this kind of games. Keep on!\r<br\/>\r<br\/>Great music choice!"},{"author_name":"Taugeshtu","author_uid":"8746","time":"Apr 25, 2012 @ 6:50pm","epoch":1335379500,"text":"Awesome. Great mood, great fun to play. Held me for quite some time!\r<br\/>I specifically like &quot;slaves&quot; resource :D"},{"author_name":"ra4king","author_uid":"4393","time":"Apr 25, 2012 @ 8:10pm","epoch":1335384300,"text":"@Lidfrid, this is a piece composed by the great Debussy, a French composer who lived in the 19th century. I was going to perform it myself (I'm a professional pianist), but I had no time and simply downloaded it off an online site. There is no way you can copyright that music, so it's considered public domain.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>@keebus, thanks for reminding me! I wanted to write a full explanation in the description....doing so now :)\r<br\/>\r<br\/>@Taugeshtu, thanks for playing! XD"},{"author_name":"triplefox","author_uid":"391","time":"Apr 26, 2012 @ 7:00am","epoch":1335423300,"text":"It took some time to understand how to play and after a while it became repetitive. I never found the last planet...\r<br\/>\r<br\/>However I really liked stealing from other planets and making your own bigger. :)\r<br\/>\r<br\/>My FPS was quite low, 3-15 FPS. I think it was using software rendering...but this didn't affect play so much."},{"author_name":"pighead10","author_uid":"8539","time":"Apr 26, 2012 @ 9:32pm","epoch":1335475620,"text":"Gameplay had a lot of potential but ended up being fairly simply, presumably because of lack of time. Nice GUI elements, and the sound as well as graphics made it very addictive and strangely calm."},{"author_name":"TurboDindon","author_uid":"5611","time":"Apr 26, 2012 @ 10:34pm","epoch":1335479340,"text":"I second that, nice concept and good job on the GUI and overall mood. Too bad it lacks a bit of depth and clarity (resources needed to upgade\/fix should be showed when the cursor is over the button. Same thing for an attack, it'd be great if the consequences were displayed beforehand when the cursor is over the attack button).\r<br\/>Anyway, I liked it :) It reminded me a bit of desktop dungeons as it's all about choices and simple stats without pressure. You could check it out as a source of inspiration (to add depth while staying accessible) if you want to develop further versions."},{"author_name":"Shadow","author_uid":"4250","time":"Apr 27, 2012 @ 1:14am","epoch":1335488940,"text":"Nice game. Death was confusing sometimes, but I think you managed to put quite a few interesting things into this (like the whole resource-stealing thing and the ship\/world upgrading). Music was perhaps too relaxing, it could be more epic or space-y, but I certainly enjoyed the experience. Good job, especially for being your first LD."},{"author_name":"free_napalm","author_uid":"12423","time":"Apr 28, 2012 @ 1:03pm","epoch":1335617880,"text":"Excellent choice of music, relaxing gameplay and nice mood. Well done."},{"author_name":"Kvisle","author_uid":"3818","time":"Apr 28, 2012 @ 11:50pm","epoch":1335656700,"text":"I didn't figure out how to start this.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>The jnlp-file was downloaded by my browser.  I attempted to open it with javaws (web start, often works) - it complains about parsing the file."},{"author_name":"Evil Sandwich Studios","author_uid":"12700","time":"Apr 29, 2012 @ 12:00am","epoch":1335657300,"text":"Cool relaxing game. I enjoyed it."},{"author_name":"Per","author_uid":"6781","time":"Apr 29, 2012 @ 11:42am","epoch":1335699420,"text":"A nice game. Liked the mechanics. It might be to unforgiving sometimes. Loved the music, a real classic and perfect for space games of this kind :)"},{"author_name":"thegreystudios","author_uid":"12111","time":"Apr 30, 2012 @ 4:32pm","epoch":1335803220,"text":"Very relaxing indeed. Just letting the music play for a while in the background :D\r<br\/>\r<br\/>Performance varied greatly between 15fps - 60fps at times.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>Keep working on this :)"},{"author_name":"Fireblend","author_uid":"10166","time":"May 5, 2012 @ 10:01pm","epoch":1336254960,"text":"A pretty relaxing game, mainly due to the music and the fact there isn't much action or any time-dependent elements to be worried about. The controls were pretty good, considering some other games I've played suffer from really floaty\/accelerated controls and that usually hurts the experience, not so here. The mood achieved by the fullscreen and the music was also pretty enjoyable, and I got into it for quite a bit :) \r<br\/>\r<br\/>I think the gameplay mechanics itself could be greatly improved upon; there was no real tradeoff between stealing and attacking beyond the fact that the first steal was a &quot;freebie&quot;, and I guess that took away some of the experience (knowing it came down to just attacking planets\/healing when necessary\/traveling back home for storage\/upgrades); at the end it did seem a bit like a chore.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>Anyway, pretty enjoyable game overall; I wouldn't advice to mess with the mood by adding enemies or something, but some more strategy and planning elements would be very welcome. Great job!"},{"author_name":"robcozzens","author_uid":"10944","time":"May 6, 2012 @ 1:26am","epoch":1336267260,"text":"Wouldn't run for me... on an iMac."},{"author_name":"ra4king","author_uid":"4393","time":"May 6, 2012 @ 3:52am","epoch":1336276020,"text":"Thanks for the awesome reviews! :o)\r<br\/>\r<br\/>@robcozzens\r<br\/>You're the second person to have had a problem with it on the Mac. Could you send me a stacktrace? You can find the stacktrace in the Java Console, which you enable by going in to the Java settings and set the console &quot;always show&quot;"},{"author_name":"Jedi","author_uid":"4799","time":"May 7, 2012 @ 10:44pm","epoch":1336430340,"text":"Very nice, overall :). I conquered the galaxy! Galactic conquest has never been so relaxing! :D\r<br\/>\r<br\/>My main complaint is that upgrading the ship becomes a bad idea after a while, since there's no kind of damage or shielding bonus for upgrading and you end up just missing out on repair opportunities. You should have full health after an upgrade.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>Also, I think it was cool how you'd have these different resources to manage but in practice, metal is too rare and becomes the only one of import.\r<br\/>\r<br\/>If you keep working on it, this game could really benefit from a minimap. The only other issue is that it didn't want to exit after I won; I had to use alt-F4."}],"images":["ld23\/4393-0c0d33accc90bacff037b16d4abc28d0.jpg","ld23\/4393-9018bb58893ca4b8d3c410af4f4ba644.jpg"],"links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.ra4king.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/LudumDare\/LD23-ForeverAlone\/ForeverAlone.jnlp","text":"All OS's (JNLP)"}],"metadata":{"g_key":"31005","g_author":"4393","g_event":"LD23","g_eventkey":"10","g_subevent":"JAM","g_urlkey":"31035","g_title":"Forever Alone","g_status":"UCHK1","g_place":"69","g_commentcount":"24","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\/\/123793\/4393-shot0.png-eq-900-500.jpg","http:\/\/ludumdare.com\/compo\/wp-content\/compo2\/\/123793\/4393-shot1.png-eq-900-500.jpg"],"text":"Our first ever Ludum Dare! We're pretty proud of this....\r\n\r\nIdea was djdduty's, but he didn't participate.\r\nMe and razorquick expanded upon it.\r\n\r\nYou need at least Java 6 to run this. Get it here www.java.com\r\n\r\nInstructions:\r\nWASD to move\r\nHover over planets to popup info window.\r\nExpand the drop downs to interact.\r\n\r\nShip info:\r\n- To Fix: metal = level x 20, oil = level x 10, slaves = level x 5\r\n- To Upgrade: metal = level x 50, oil = level x 20, slaves = level x 10\r\n\r\nHome Planet info:\r\n- To Upgrade: wood = level x 100, stone = level x 70, slaves = level x 50\r\n\r\nDescription:\r\nYou're a dejected robot on your tiny home planet, all alone with no resources. One day a random spaceship crashes into your planet, which you proceed to claim as your own!\r\nYou start adventuring around your \"cluster\" of planets (50 of them), quietly stealing resources necessary to upgrade your spaceship and your home planet.\r\nYour goal is to conquer the universe, by destroying all 50 planets, making you the most powerful robot ever....all alone.....Forever Alone......\r\n\r\nHow To Play:\r\n- To take an action on a planet, you hover your ship over it where a window will popup on the lower right hand corner of the screen. Expand the tab to take actions!\r\n- You can only manage to quietly steal from a planet once, all further attempts will cause them to notice you and hurt you by 10 HP. You do still manage to steal, but not as much as the first time.\r\n- Attacking a planet will make you take all their resources (to the max your spaceship can hold), and even the population become slaves. However, your HP will go down by the planet's Defense value.\r\n- Your home planet is where you store your resources. Storing puts all your resources on the planet. Equipping equips your ship up to the max it can hold.\r\n- There is no point to upgrade your home planet, that was for a proposed idea where planets attack your home to try and stop your unending rampage!\r\n- Your ship's max HP and max resource capacity can be increased by upgrading your ship.\r\n\r\nThe background music is Clair de Lune by Debussy. I would have performed it (I'm a professional pianist), but I had no time and ended up using an online source. I don't believe you can copyright such music, so it's considered public domain.\r\n\r\nIt has quite a bit of data to load, so give it a minute...I should have put a loading screen :P\r\n\r\nCoded by me from scratch using my lovely game library: java-game-utils.googlecode.com\r\n\r\nArt is by razorquick. He's pretty awesome. :P<\/p>","title":"Forever Alone"}