Squeaky Maze by Markus

[raw]
made by Markus for LD 38 (JAM)

photo<em>2017-04-25</em>03-25-17.jpg

Hey folks,

About us:

We are a group of four students from Germany and this is our first LudumDare as a team. I (Markus) already entered two LDs alone and two with Erik, but this LD was a new experience to both of us as well as to Merlin and Fabian. With this entry we mostly wanted to test the engine we were programming for the last few months, next to our studying. It is an OpenGL engine and we implemented it from scratch in Java using LWJGL.

About the game:

In this game you are stranded on a small island with nothing but a few palm trees, some wood, an anvil and a dungeon entrance. Your probably should not enter the dungeon without preparation. Every time you discover a new dungeon level it keeps getting bigger, but you will quickly find useful materials for making better weapons. How deep can you go?

Controls:

WASD - Movement

Mouse - Camera

Left Mouse Button / Space - Attack

TAB - Change weapon

C - Crafting at the anvil

E - Open Chest

Windows / Linux / Mac

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/i4fvf5y455nl3rd/AAAaqBuW6rlo_3KcX8DRqCL9a?dl=0

Usefull advices:

Your PC needs to support Java 8 and OpenGL 3.3.

We noticed that the game won't start on some machines running Mac OS X. If you are affected by this issue, try to launch the game with the -Djava.awt.headless=true and -XstartOnFirstThread=true options.

If you run into any errors or crashes anyway, we would appreciate an error description and a copy of the most recent .log file from the log folder.

So thanks for playing our game, we are looking forward to your feedback.

Some more Screenshots:

photo<em>2017-04-25</em>03-23-46.jpg photo<em>2017-04-25</em>03-26-27.jpg

Ratings

Given 6🗳️ 4🗨️

Feedback

rokasv
06. May 2017 · 21:32 UTC
Intro camera work was pretty good, but did not quite ease into the final view, there was a jump at the end. I would have expected for C to also close the anvil dialogue or moving away from it would do it, but it required Esc to be pressed, which is not in the controls. I REALLY liked the atmosphere when moving into the dungeon. The camera is mostly useless, would probably prefer it to follow me behind my back or point to things I'm attacking. It's also hard to tell what am I fighting, but at least the healthbars help with the damage indication. When in the world view (and possibly when they update) it would be nice to see the collected resources. Played up to a steel sword (4 levels?). Had fun, but stopped using mouse for movement due to the camera - would be nice to have a keyboard button for attacking.

Overall, fix camera, add stuff and it's gonna be good.

--EDIT--
Forgot to mention that it reminded me of the times grinding in WoW, which felt pretty good.
madmaw
07. May 2017 · 01:01 UTC
Hey team, I wasn't able to review because of the following error. I have an old laptop, so the graphics card probably isn't compatible. I didn't leave a rating.

As an aside, speaking as someone who once did a Java entry, it's probably not a good choice of technology for Ludum Dare. A lot of people don't like installing the Java runtime, and gamedevs in general seem to have a pathological hatred for Java on top of that. Maybe consider Unity if you want to make 3D games like this one, or (my preference) JavaScript (or TypeScript, or Dart - which is very Java-y), which will look good on your resume too.

[05/07/2017 10:55:07] LOG: In class GLContext: LWJGL Version 3.1.1 SNAPSHOT is w
orking.
[LWJGL] GLFW_VERSION_UNAVAILABLE error
Description : WGL: OpenGL profile requested but WGL_ARB_create_context_p
rofile is unavailable
Stacktrace :
org.lwjgl.glfw.GLFW.nglfwCreateWindow(GLFW.java:1251)
org.lwjgl.glfw.GLFW.glfwCreateWindow(GLFW.java:1412)
mbeb.opengldefault.gl.GLContext.createWindow(GLContext.java:177)

mbeb.opengldefault.gl.GLContext.init(GLContext.java:94)
mbeb.opengldefault.gl.GLContext.startGame(GLContext.java:79)
mbeb.opengldefault.examples.Main.main(Main.java:18)
[05/07/2017 10:55:08] ERROR: In class GLContext: Failed to create the GLFW windo
w (null)
java.lang.RuntimeException
at mbeb.opengldefault.gl.GLContext.createWindow(GLContext.java:183)
at mbeb.opengldefault.gl.GLContext.init(GLContext.java:94)
at mbeb.opengldefault.gl.GLContext.startGame(GLContext.java:79)
at mbeb.opengldefault.examples.Main.main(Main.java:18)
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.lwjgl.system.Checks.check(Checks.java:94)
at org.lwjgl.glfw.GLFW.nglfwSetKeyCallback(GLFW.java:2819)
at org.lwjgl.glfw.GLFW.glfwSetKeyCallback(GLFW.java:2848)
at mbeb.opengldefault.gl.GLContext.createWindow(GLContext.java:187)
at mbeb.opengldefault.gl.GLContext.init(GLContext.java:94)
at mbeb.opengldefault.gl.GLContext.startGame(GLContext.java:79)
at mbeb.opengldefault.examples.Main.main(Main.java:18)
Wheffle
08. May 2017 · 23:24 UTC
Really cool idea, I am a sucker for dungeon crawlers. I'd say the weakest aspect of the game would be the controls. It was really difficult to get used to and even then it was frustrating at times. The art and sound was good and added a lot to the feel of the game. Once I got the diamond sword I figured I had "won" because it is so powerful! The dungeons also got so big that I wasn't interested in continuing much after that. Overall it was fun and nice work!
masterkrepta
12. May 2017 · 22:52 UTC
I enjoyed the one room at a time style of combat, and was greatful during later levels where you give the player some health back, I did find the constant camera rotation to be a little difficult at times, maybe a suggestion of improvment, but what if when the doors close, the camera locks to a fixed angle, so you can take on the enemys without fighting the camera?
mortus
19. May 2017 · 17:38 UTC
Well, camera could definitely use some upgrades, but overall it's kinda fun. Gets a bit repetitive, which could be fixed with additional enemy types. Also there's a really easy maneuver that lets you avoid all damage - just hold back and either side strafe every time you see the enemy stop (they always do that before the dash) and don't stop spamming attack. I could go through dozens of rooms with getting only 1-2 hits when I was getting lazy or impatient.

After like 3-4 dungeons the game became very laggy for me - constant freezes for 0.5-1 second every second or two. I was trying to get a diamond sword (lacked only 1 diamond on the previous surface visit) but at the end quit because it was very hard to navigate or even see which door you've just entered the room from with those freezes.

I believe this could be a great game with more work put into it, great job.