Space Bees Attack! by Dylan McCall
This is my first Ludum Dare entry! I made this with Python, pyglet and pymunk, and all of the art is original.
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You find yourself stuck on a tiny island, with nothing but strange, happy looking boxes to keep you company. But when a hoard of crazed, exploding[1] space bees appears, even that is on the line!
Fortunately, there happen to be some more benign, colourful boxes falling from the sky, and there's one thing the space bees didn't expect: you spent twenty years playing Tetris *for a reason*.
Guide the falling blocks to protect your happy, green-coloured pals! Maybe the bees will get bored and go away, eventually.
Controls:
- Left and Right arrow keys to guide the current block.
- Down arrow to make the block fall (slightly) faster.
- Space to release the block.
- If you really don't want a block, just move it off the edge of the screen.
[1] Actual, visible, gooey explosions were cut due to time constraints. They're just ideas of explosions now, so use your imagination.
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Unfortunately, one thing I didn't have time for (if you haven't noticed the performance) was testing / developing in Windows. The exe file should just work, but it seems Pyglet is a little less widely compatible than I was hoping. Leave a comment if it works. I'm interested to know. But if it's handy for you, there's a better chance of having fun with the Linux version :)
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If you're curious for some reason, here's the stuff I had left to do that I would have liked to do:
- Actually formidable space bees that fly properly (and aren't fighting with the physics engine).
- Sound effects.
- Explosion effects.
- Cleverer falloff for explosions.
- Block shattering effects.
- Better performance. Right now it gets really slow once a few blocks have been created (about two minute's worth). This is mostly because I completely ignored memory management until the last minute.
- Different types of attackers (things on foot, sticky bees, better flying bees, explodey ones that reliably shatter blocks).
- An arrow at the edge of the screen pointing at incoming attack waves.
- Special properties for different types of blocks.
So, yeah, look at that list and imagine the exciting game that isn't. Then enjoy this one! I'm happy with it, too.
-----
You find yourself stuck on a tiny island, with nothing but strange, happy looking boxes to keep you company. But when a hoard of crazed, exploding[1] space bees appears, even that is on the line!
Fortunately, there happen to be some more benign, colourful boxes falling from the sky, and there's one thing the space bees didn't expect: you spent twenty years playing Tetris *for a reason*.
Guide the falling blocks to protect your happy, green-coloured pals! Maybe the bees will get bored and go away, eventually.
Controls:
- Left and Right arrow keys to guide the current block.
- Down arrow to make the block fall (slightly) faster.
- Space to release the block.
- If you really don't want a block, just move it off the edge of the screen.
[1] Actual, visible, gooey explosions were cut due to time constraints. They're just ideas of explosions now, so use your imagination.
-----
Unfortunately, one thing I didn't have time for (if you haven't noticed the performance) was testing / developing in Windows. The exe file should just work, but it seems Pyglet is a little less widely compatible than I was hoping. Leave a comment if it works. I'm interested to know. But if it's handy for you, there's a better chance of having fun with the Linux version :)
-----
If you're curious for some reason, here's the stuff I had left to do that I would have liked to do:
- Actually formidable space bees that fly properly (and aren't fighting with the physics engine).
- Sound effects.
- Explosion effects.
- Cleverer falloff for explosions.
- Block shattering effects.
- Better performance. Right now it gets really slow once a few blocks have been created (about two minute's worth). This is mostly because I completely ignored memory management until the last minute.
- Different types of attackers (things on foot, sticky bees, better flying bees, explodey ones that reliably shatter blocks).
- An arrow at the edge of the screen pointing at incoming attack waves.
- Special properties for different types of blocks.
So, yeah, look at that list and imagine the exciting game that isn't. Then enjoy this one! I'm happy with it, too.
Ratings
| Coolness | 20% | 1007 |
| Overall(Jam) | 2.50 | 203 |
| Fun(Jam) | 2.10 | 210 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 2.30 | 221 |
| Humor(Jam) | 2.78 | 78 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 3.70 | 29 |
| Theme(Jam) | 1.60 | 255 |
Let me know if you know how to fix it and I'll try again!
http://code.google.com/p/pyglet/issues/detail?id=456
There's a working patch, and I think it's fixed in the latest version of pyglet from its source repository. (I'm running the last release, which is a little silly since it's from 2010).
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, I wish I had given myself time to work on the bad guys. I ended up rushing them because I needed at least some kind of conflict (however half-baked) if I wanted to call the result a game. Lesson learned: bad guys are tricky! The falling through barriers thing is likely because they die really easily. Once they collide with a barrier, they push it really hard and they die. (And when they die, they fall off the screen).
I think it might have been a nicer result if they were outside the physics simulation. That way I would have been able to control their movements more cleanly :)
But the bees collision also seemed buggy for me, and no logic to what blocked them or their location.
I'm also on Windows 7.