ChronoCombat by omarshehata
ChronoCombat is a 3D, somewhat turn based, first-person strategy-shooter game where time is frozen, but only from your perspective.
Time is frozen, but only just for you
Everyone else, thinks the same way too
It's a very small and isolating world.
A temporally solipsistic game.
Game
- Open http://omarshehata.me:3000/
- Make up a room name, and a player name.
- Send the link to a friend and ask them to join your room.
- Click Ready !
Don't have someone to play with? You can still test the game out by opening two browser windows and playing against yourself!
How to Play
You get 100 frames to move and only one shot each round. Frames only count down when you're moving, so you can take time to look around. The goal is to be the last one standing!
- Move with WASD/Arrow keys. Look around with mouse.
- Shoot with mouse left click.
- Hold space to skip frames.
How the World Works
You as the player experience the world in segregated time slices. Every round, you get to act out your next 100 frames of motion. Every other player gets to do so too. You don't know what other players are plotting for their next 100 frames, but you try to predict. Once everyone has completed their 100 frames of motion, everyone rewinds, and the game world plays everyone's actions in real time.
For example, here I try to move towards the player I see, and I shoot at the tree (just for fun).
That is my predicted motion. But when it plays back:
I realize the other player has moved during that time! So if you want to shoot them, you can't shoot at where they are, but where you think they will be in the next 100 frames.
Credits
Art by Sara Jamros
Programming by Omar Shehata
Made with PlayCanvas.
Screenshots
Inspiration
We'd love to hear any feedback or ideas!
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/chronocombat |
Ratings
| Overall | 479th | 3.2⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 602th | 2.731⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 2th | 4.56⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 757th | 2.08⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 580th | 2.88⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 564th | 2.1⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 658th | 2.609⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 28🗳️ | 29🗨️ |
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
A few suggestions:
- It's kind of weird how when you shoot, the bullet just flies off immediately. I think it would make more sense if the bullets moved as you were moving (sort of like in Superhot, if you've seen that game before).
- Similar to the above, I didn't know which directions the bullets were moving in because they stay completely still, which made it harder to plan. Having the bullets move while you move would also fix this.
- The replay is kind of weird, because you can only view it once and it goes by very quickly; when the game ended, I often couldn't see how I won/lost since the camera was in the wrong position in the replay. I would have liked the ability to slow down the replays, or the ability to play them multiple times.
- Right now the map is really big, so you can continually run away from your opponent if you wanted (the fact that the replays are difficult to parse also contributes to this, since it's harder to tell where the other player is). I'd suggest having a really small playing field or a field that shrinks over time so that players are always in the action.
- One small nitpick I have is that you can walk through trees and rocks, which was weird.
Anyways, I don't want to be too negative, those were just a few thoughts I had. Overall, I had quite a bit of fun, and I could see myself playing this a lot if it were more polished/balanced (also, this gets 5 stars for innovation; the idea is really cool). Nice job!
I did actually intentionally want to avoid having the bullets move as you move like in Superhot. I wanted to somehow communicate the idea that the world was independent of you. But now that I think of it, to be consistent, I think the bullets should move **only while the frames are counting down**. So they *would* move when you move, but also if you're holding down space. That I think would make more sense.
And yeah, I had trouble with the collisions in the last minute and just decided to cut them because they were way too jittery.
I see the collisions have already been mentioned, so I'll skip that. Ludum Dare is a harsh mistress!
I am not sure if an FPS camera is the best fit for this game. Top-down would give a much better overview of the engagement as well as making players easier to hit (because it is rather difficult right now). It would save a bunch of fighting with the replay camera as well.
On a similar note, I'd definitely move to a 1-shot kill system. Maybe even a AOE on shots. Think Quake Rocket Arena but with this odd simultaneous turn structure. I'd also ditch the real time bullet movement and replace it with... oh, I don't know, a dashed line or something to show how far it will move in the the turn (But ONLY for the first turn so players can run into their own bomb :) ).
It is a neat prototype. Thanks for sharing!
Oh, and it might be worth posting that tip about playing solo in two browser windows on the game page. There may be other folks as dim as I am ;)
I think you're right that top-down would be a much better view for this. This was something we couldn't decide on when we started this game. I thought the FPS camera would make it more interesting since you couldn't see everyone around you at once, but now I see it just makes things more confusing, and for a concept like this I think you'd want to distill it down so the core mechanic really shines.
I like your idea of a dashed line and getting hit by your own bullet! I definitely want to try that now :D
I think you're right that top-down would be a much better view for this. This was something we couldn't decide on when we started this game. I thought the FPS camera would make it more interesting since you couldn't see everyone around you at once, but now I see it just makes things more confusing, and for a concept like this I think you'd want to distill it down so the core mechanic really shines.
I like your idea of a dashed line and getting hit by your own bullet! I definitely want to try that now :D
I agree with what others have said that a top-down view might be better. The FPS camera has its advantages, but was also a little disorienting - especially since looking around is "free."
@harry-alissavakis I **love** the idea of a power up. I can't believe it never occurred to me before. Putting incentives for players to be at specific places at specific times could be super interesting. Then it becomes a thing where, does everyone just avoid the powerup because everyone is shooting at it all the time? But then everyone stops shooting at it because no one's going there. Or can you make it something so valuable that it's worth the risk of running for it? That could be an awesome dynamic!
The concept is great and has great potential, I had problems with some collisions and I didn't understand correctly when I was impacting with something. On the other hand, very nice low poly art.
I would like to see a future version of this. Great job!
Great work, thanks for sharing!
I salute you! Respect.
Sadly i did not really manage to kill myself. You are mising some key elements in this game which would make it very captive to play. Maybe
- A way to replay the scene you can see what happened. It plays back SOOO fast i dont even know whats happening.
- A world with some more recognizable landmarks. You make something where the camera changes alot so you need recognizable points in the world.
- Maybe a movement trail to see where the player was or get some clues
I eagerly await your next LD entry :)
And those are some really good ideas. I could tell it's frustrating to play, but couldn't quite articulate all the pain-points. I really appreciate your feedback!
We did not read the explanation so we thought the netcode was horrible at first because of all the waiting for other players and the rewinding but then we understood what was going on and it became insanely fun. The game could of course need some more polish and maybe some audio to make it a more complete game but the core mechanic is really fun and that is the most important thing.
Great work!
I had to play with two instances of the game myself, but i understood very well what to do and how to do it.
This is actually pretty well executed i would say !
Some polish, and other layers of gameplay onto this, and it could become a totally edible game !
For example making possible for the player to playback what he already did this turn, in exchange of a certain amount of frames, or simply traps to diversify the experience !
It, of course, lacked of audio and all, but i think it has great potential !
Well done !