Robby Goes Rogue by Mars
Description
In Robby Goes Rogue, you play as Robby the House Robot. You've been seemingly abandoned by your owners, and you're nearing the end of your power source. The only options you have left is leave your storage room in search of power, or shut down for good... However, there may be some obstacles in the way.
Controls
- Movement: WASD
- Interaction: E
- Jump: Spacebar
- Shoot Electricity: Left Mouse Button
- Options Menu: Escape
Tools Used
- Unreal Engine 4
- Visual Studio 2017
- Git
- Photoshop CS5
- Blender
- Audacity
- FL Studio 12
Issues
I wasn't able to package the project for Windows 32 or Linux, and Mac was never an option, so sorry about that. The only builds available are HTML5 and Windows 64-bit. You'll need a 64-bit browser to run the HTML5 version.
I want to note that UE4 is a powerful engine running on some heavy built-in shaders, so it requires quite the GPU juice. Given that WebGL games are not very good at utilizing GPU juice given the browser middle-man, and that HTML5 packaging is still in an experimental stage for UE4, the performance for the HTML5 build is not very good.
If you have the option to download for Windows 64-bit, I recommend you do so. The link should be available if you scroll down from the WebGL version at the top of the page.
Can't run the game?
If you're coming here to rate my game in return for me rating yours, but find yourself unable to run any of the available builds, don't worry about it! No hard feelings! Check out the comments people have left on my game, give those people some hearts for their feedback and go rate their games instead. At least something will come out of your visit here :)
Additional Screenshots
| Source code | https://gitlab.com/MarsAstro/dying-machine |
| Windows | https://marsastro.itch.io/robby-goes-rogue |
| HTML5 (web) | https://marsastro.itch.io/robby-goes-rogue |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/robby-goes-rogue |
Ratings
| Overall | 437th | 3.12⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 559th | 2.654⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 388th | 2.96⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 204th | 3.731⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 497th | 2.76⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 238th | 3.115⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 228th | 3.208⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 22🗨️ |
Power supply may be needing some rehaul though.
Overall very fun game to play :)
The trudge across the final courtyard is rather long, especially since I had to replay a few time before I was able to win.
I was a bit surprised (an bummed) that the ending dialog was so... meh. I was expecting more after the colorful intro bit.
I found the second staircase camera light a little hard to read. Maybe adding some kind of cookie to the spot would help.
I had no problems running this and enjoyed this bit of the ol' sneaky-sneaky. I really liked the music!
@ryte2byte I actually intended the difficulty of aiming and the high cost of shooting to be part of the challenge, but in hindsight it might feel like an unfair combination and detract from the fun of the game. So thanks for that feedback.
And I was a little bit too ambitious with this game, especially considering I'm new to Unreal Engine 4. So I ended up having to rush the ending and the entire outside section. I actually intended the outside to be a much more elaborate part where you have to go through a few alleyways and risk more cameras. Never got that far though, so the result was as you saw.
And it was on purpose that the game isn't completable without shooting those lower cameras. Did you find it to be a problem? Do you think it'd be more fun if a "pacifist" run was possible? I'd love to hear your feedback on that!
I certainly appreciate you going the route you did to make aiming difficult (I actually made the same decision with my last LD game and got an earful about it in the comments). Perhaps a 'fatter' projectile, or a blast radius on impact, or beam, or EMP grenade, or some silly thing that doesn't require the precision the current bolt does could alleviate the frustration.
The movement is alright, no real problems here.
The graphics are nice, althought a bit too clean. Given the story, the family should probably be living in an apartment with furniture etc. but i understand the time constraints.
The music is some FL Studio preset stuff. Even if you don't know much about music prod, and wanna take shortcuts, I'd advise you to use some other presets that aren't present everytime somebody loads up FL.
The music still works well within the context of the game and fulfills its job.
Overall it was fun playing, and would love to see the electricity shooting being improved upon a bit
Another thing I'm completely new to is FL Studio, as you noticed. I installed it for Ludum Dare 38, and used it for 2 hours there, and until this Ludum Dare I hadn't touched it again. So I have no doubt my stuff sounds basic, but that's because my skill level happens to be as basic as it gets! Only reason it at least sounds like music is because I play the piano so I know a tiny bit of music theory =P
And about the shooting, that's kinda how I intended it. I wanted it to be difficult to aim and costly to use, in order to instill the fear of running out of power whenever you did choose to use it. Sort of to make you have to get a feel for where the projectile travels in order to comfortably be able to use it without wasting power. However, I can tell by all the feedback people give that they don't enjoy it very much. Most people seemingly to want easier aiming and a crosshair to achieve just that, to the point that some even seem to think the lack of a crosshair is an unintentional oversight :P
Maybe you can give a hint how to continue, and I'll come back to this! :)
@blinry Yeah, I'm sorry about the webGL build, it's not very good. Unfortunately Unreal Engine 4 isn't very good at packaging for HTML5 yet. My first suggestion would be for you to download the Win64 build if you can. Either way, the way out after you leave the first room is to click the big green button to unlock the door beside it. Then head down the staircase avoiding the security cams, then once you're outside find a way inside the area with a big concentration of security cameras. Hope that helps!
Too bad, the music was really uplifting and the visuals looked cool!
More details:
Either the mouse pointer is visible, and then I can't turn around freely: rotating too much to the right, for example, makes the mouse pointer reach the right border of the screen and not move anymore.
Either the mouse pointer is invisible, and then the game is playable, but when you die (fast), you can't click on the menu buttons to restart the game. So you have to press "Esc" to exit fullscreen, so the mouse pointer reappears.
To make the matter worse: making the mouse pointer hidden again is a real pain in the neck ; because clicking when the game is running and the mouse pointer is visible makes the game shoot electricity (which kills you really fast) but doesn't always grab the mouse pointer.
And to make the matter even worse: the only way to play again is to reload the page, in an attempt to reset the mouse pointer issues. However, it retriggers the download of the whole game (200Mb!!) which takes several minutes ...
(I'm using Firefox 52.2.0 on Debian GNU/Linux 64 bit.)