Tiny World - Ideas in the Sea of Thought by uprightpath

[raw]
made by uprightpath for LD23 (COMPO)
NOTE: I was right about it working on Mac. I just had no way to test it. xD

Premise-
An Idea is a world in and of itself. It's afloat in the universe, caught on a breeze, growing large only to be destroyed (Except in certain circumstances). It inspires souls to its side and often conflicts with others.

The conflict between the ideas is meant to bring home the 'Tiny World' view point of ideas. While at war, more 'Military' type units were meant to spawn (Unimplemented), enough so that the other three unit types would almost be choked out.

While it would take a lot of balancing, the game favors the player when you have a smaller map. The closer to 37 tiles (Half that's displayed) the higher your chance to spawn a unit each turn. Further, the intent was that when you're not at war with another Idea, you can 'destroy' portions of the world, and if you split the map, the parts not linked to you disappear, reducing the map size.

Success-
Limited. While I got much of what I had wanted to get through done, I didn't complete enough to actually call what I created a game. While you can -do- things in it, it's missing a bunch of functions that would make it -playable-.

HUD From top-
Left 1: Number- Your total belief, spent to do things.
Left 2: Y->T looking thing- Toggles and allows you to randomly place a tile on that spot.
Left 3: * Looking thing- Toggles and allows you to destroy an uninhabited tile, due to the lack of a path-finder, this can break movement.
Left 4: Obelisk with waves- Attempts to convert all 'neutral (Yellow)' things on the map (20 Belief for each yellow, with 4x your spawn chance for each).
Left 5: Dead Tree- Opens up a refinements/tech menu (Obelisk lets you get belief faster, Heart heals your units/structures more per turn, Sword increases unit damage, Wispy flame increases pop cap) each costs 200 Belief.
Left 6: ?- Toggles and was meant to provide info about all of the other parts of the HUD.
Left 7: Hourglass- End your turn.
Top 1: Population Current/Max
Top 2: Spawn chance
Top 3: Number of Blank (Little fire) souls. Can become any other type of soul.
Top 4: Number of Artistic (Candle) souls. Passively increases Belief, Healing and Damage.
Top 5: Number of Creative (Compass) souls. Can work in a structure and increase its output by 50%.
Top 6: Number of Convincing (Sword) souls. Moves to the closest non-friendly structure and attempts to destroy it.
Top 7: Number of Obstinate (Shield) souls. Attacks any non-friendly Soul on a tile you own.

Clicking a tile, when not changing/destroying, pops up a blank window which was meant to display information about a structure (In use, training, health, owner). I just didn't have to time to implement it.

Ratings

Coolness 71% 3
Overall 1.85 880
Audio 1.11 772
Fun 1.39 892
Graphics 2.38 691
Humor 1.33 785
Innovation 2.80 492
Mood 1.96 803
Theme 2.20 787

Feedback

Suese
23. Apr 2012 路 15:31 UTC
I wanted to give this game a good chance. It seems incomplete in really bad way. It would have been epic should you have finished this on time and packaged it well, but I just can't figure out how to -play- the game. This game probably suffered from being too big. Keep your ideas simpler and you'll have more success next time.

Thank you for this.
Sanguine
23. Apr 2012 路 15:52 UTC
Where you inspired by Plato? Anyway, I agree with Suese, your game idea was perhaps a little too big.
MrBarnslig
23. Apr 2012 路 15:56 UTC
I agree, this looks like it has potential, but it's just not there. There's a lot of stuff going on and it's impossible to decipher what is happening. What are the swirly things? Why are they moving? What are they going to do? What's my objective? What do all the buttons do?

Some of these could be mitigated by a text instructions on the entry post, but I agree with Suese, perhaps the idea was too big for a 48 hour game.

Thanks for participating and best of luck!
VDOgamez
23. Apr 2012 路 16:32 UTC
I'm not really sure what I'm doing. Most of the buttons don't do anything, and the ones that do don't really affect the game especially much. I assume that I win when everyone but green is dead? But the game did that on its own with no input from me.
馃帳 uprightpath
23. Apr 2012 路 17:12 UTC
Don't worry, grading me bad won't hurt my feelings. I just felt that I should submit -something-. I know I was plagued by trying to make my images good (I spent hours on the several different tiles) and then on mechanics that didn't even get linked into this release.
cadin
23. Apr 2012 路 18:02 UTC
This looks really interesting. Unfortunately I can't play it since I'm on a Mac.
馃帳 uprightpath
23. Apr 2012 路 18:26 UTC
It might work on a Mac. I wrote it using libGDX which is supposed to be very cross-platform, so you should be able to. However, I don't have a Mac, so I wasn't able to test whether it works.
tcstyle
23. Apr 2012 路 19:32 UTC
This looks really promising, but I totally didn't know what I was doing. That's a pity.
armornick
24. Apr 2012 路 04:25 UTC
Looks very interesting but, like others have said, not much of a working game right now.
netmute
24. Apr 2012 路 21:47 UTC
Couldn't rate because I'm using a Mac. Sorry :(
devwil
24. Apr 2012 路 22:09 UTC
***I'm posting this on all non-browser games I bring up in an attempt to encourage folks to make browser games next time around. Do not take it personally.***

When hundreds of people make non-browser games, that means that, to play all of the entries, I would need to download hundreds of games to my computer. I typically use OS X, so Windows-only entries are particularly inconvenient.

Please consider making a browser game next time.
demonpants
24. Apr 2012 路 23:35 UTC
Any chance of trying to build a Mac version?
馃帳 uprightpath
24. Apr 2012 路 23:56 UTC
I believe that it might work on Mac. I built it using libGDX and included all of the native files that came with it, so it -might- work. However, I'm still new enough to libGDX and the like to not know how to change things if it doesn't.
robcozzens
25. Apr 2012 路 01:47 UTC
I would have played it if there was a Web or OSX version.
demonpants
25. Apr 2012 路 03:15 UTC
Wowee. So much epicness in there, but I got so overwhelmed not knowing what was going on that I only experienced a bit of it. Would love to see a post-compo version. FYI this works just fine on Mac.
馃帳 uprightpath
25. Apr 2012 路 04:46 UTC
If/when I get it done I'll make a post somewhere about it. I've already got a better idea for the interface, one that's a hint more intuitive than what I posted before.
caranha
25. Apr 2012 路 13:40 UTC
This game has a lot of promise, although it is still incomplete now :-) I look forward for updates!
Monkey Armada
25. Apr 2012 路 15:30 UTC
I really tried to play it but the more I try to understand the mechanics the more lost i find myself :-S
I agree with almost everyone on the idea of something BIG here, but maybe you should have tried to keep very simple graphics and focus on a tutorial and finishing all the mechanics you wanted to implement.
I see a great board game out of this!!
馃帳 uprightpath
25. Apr 2012 路 20:52 UTC
Right now the mechanics really don't show themselves off to any degree.

Each unit has a very simple behavior set that it follows in a very stupid way. They pick a target, then depending on what it is and what they are they either move towards or away from it.

Due to not having Spawning rules balanced the enemy side never has a chance to spawn a new unit to defend itself (Though, I could see a shield -maybe- spawning). And since I didn't implement any sort of AI for the enemies, they never attempt to create new structures or anything like that, so... Yeah.
TenTonToon
26. Apr 2012 路 16:04 UTC
Epic... in a sort of cryptic way. The best thing about this game is how much it can empower your imagination, forcing to fill in the blanks.
On the other hand, that's not necessarily a good thing in a piece of interactive entertainment, unless it's extremely well done.

Keep working on it. Don't let the idea drop.
jwolf
26. Apr 2012 路 22:14 UTC
Yeah, it definitely needs more work, but it's a good start. Keep at it!
Mago
26. Apr 2012 路 22:19 UTC
Looks cool and complex but I don't know what I was doing
Jhelle
28. Apr 2012 路 12:36 UTC
Since its made in java it could've used a web version :). Enjoyed the music but gampeplay wise I had a feeling a was playing some abstract point and click game :p.
Jhelle
28. Apr 2012 路 12:39 UTC
Apperantly I had a tab open with another LD entry which music was playing. oops sorry!
nornagon
29. Apr 2012 路 08:21 UTC
Seems like a cool idea, but there's too much going on in there for me to figure it out :/
evilseanbot
30. Apr 2012 路 08:36 UTC
Game window opens for a sec then closes with no indication of why. Sorry mate.
馃帳 uprightpath
01. May 2012 路 03:42 UTC
Huh, if possible, could you run it from the command like: java -jar <Name.jar> and tell me what outputs?
DainVadda
01. May 2012 路 11:58 UTC
It looks interesting, but I could麓t figure out what to do.
HD408
01. May 2012 路 23:44 UTC
Sounds like an interesting project, but I couldn't run it. Doesn't even open. Windows XP. Other Java games run fine.

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Tiny World- Ideas/jar

Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: Tiny World- Ideas.jar
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
Could not find the main class: Tiny World- Ideas.jar. Program will exit.
HD408
01. May 2012 路 23:47 UTC
When run with -jar parameter:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no gdx in java.library.path
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.System.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)
at com.badlogic.gdx.utils.GdxNativesLoader.load(GdxNativesLoader.java:116)
at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglNativesLoader.load(LwjglNativesLoader.java:41)
at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication.<init>(LwjglApplication.java:53)
at com.uprightpath.idea.LWJGLVersion.main(LWJGLVersion.java:40)
yoklov
11. May 2012 路 02:02 UTC
I am so confused...
tomhunt
13. May 2012 路 18:46 UTC
could not launch the jar file on my mac