LudumData

Helicopter Crate Overload by Bificommander

[raw]
made by Bificommander for LD 40 (JAM)

Helicopter Crate Overload

Become a helicopter pilot, and pick up crate deliveries on various tropical islands!

How fast can you pick up all deliveries and get them back to the helipad?

You can pick up multiple crates with your super magnet crate hook, but the more crates you hook on, the more difficult it gets to manoeuvre your helicopter. And be careful, because some crates are heavier than others.

Controls

W/S: Add and remove thrust from your main rotor. There is a base thrust that keeps you stationary.

A/D: Roll to left and right.

Arrow keys left/right: Yaw (rotate left and right)

Arrow keys up/down: Pitch (rotate up and down)

Escape: open game menu.

Tips

The slower you fly the easier it is to keep control of the helicopter as it picks up a crate.

Picking up a crate adds weight, if your helicopter is already pitched forward it might pull your helicopter to the ground!

Find all the crates by looking at the smoke stacks, when you have all crates, drop them off at the helipad to finish the level.

Make it easier and drop off crates at the helipad one at a time, you probably won't get the best times though!

Post your times in the comments to impress us and other Ludum Dare reviewers!

Credits

Game engine by Unity!

Theme midi generated by Abundant Music

Helicopter sound byte from freesfx.co.uk

Code and most other assets by Ivan and Tinco, thanks for playing!

Bonus level: Sinterklaas Surprise

NOTE: This level was made after the Ludum Dare challenge, and should not be taken into consideration for the rating.

As my family is celebrating the Dutch holiday of Sinterklaas (for all you non-Dutchies: He's the O.G. Santa Claus) this weekend I decided to create a bonus level. My aunt will have to play this bonus level to find out where her present has been hidden (though for the sake of keeping the peace within the family, the game also tells you where it is if you die too often).

I'm afraid I haven't hidden a present in your houses to go with it, but you can still play the level. Instead of collecting all the crates in a single spot, you start with three presents and have to deliver them to three different chimneys. Don't worry, they're not as heavy as the regular crates.

And don't worry about the block of Dutch text at the menu, you don't need to understand it. If you do, well, I hope you'll get a chuckle out of it.

Bonus level Credits

All the regular credits

Music made with onlinesequencer.net and Apowersoft Streaming Audio Recorder

Additional code & assets by Ivan

Source code https://github.com/tinco/ludum-dare-40
Windows https://github.com/tinco/ludum-dare-40/raw/master/release/HelicopterCrateOverload_win.zip
macOS https://github.com/tinco/ludum-dare-40/raw/master/release/helicopter-crate-overloaded.dmg
Linux https://github.com/tinco/ludum-dare-40/raw/master/release/helicopter-crate-overload-linux.x86.zip
Windows https://github.com/tinco/ludum-dare-40/raw/master/release/SinterklaasSurprise.zip
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/helicopter-crate-overload

Ratings

Overall 493th 3.523⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Fun 210th 3.705⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 567th 3.17⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Theme 685th 3.295⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 693th 3.284⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Audio 489th 3.068⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Humor 774th 2.5⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Mood 795th 2.988⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Given 68🗳️ 38🗨️

Feedback

rodel77
05. Dec 2017 · 02:02 UTC
Awesome, i really like the controller!
Bastienre4
05. Dec 2017 · 12:44 UTC
The chopper was really fun to play around with. Just lack the control of the camera to be perfect :)
MachoCodes
05. Dec 2017 · 12:44 UTC
Pretty good! Sunrises to see the amount of really good games this year.
I think mine ruined that but please check it out and leave feedback for me to improve on
Masadow
05. Dec 2017 · 12:57 UTC
Game froze my computer :( (Linux / triple monitor)
torfi
05. Dec 2017 · 13:45 UTC
Those crates depended on me and I failed them. I don't know how I'm going to sleep tonight. 5 stars.
🎤 Bificommander
05. Dec 2017 · 14:21 UTC
Masdow: Sorry to hear that. We did run it on one Linux computer, and though the sound didn't work it did run. I don't have a Linux machine myself, nor a triple monitor setup (It worked on two monitors), but maybe my partner can look into it. No promises though.
Vottivott
05. Dec 2017 · 16:07 UTC
Fun game! Nicely done with the introductory help texts in the beginning teaching you the controls bit by bit.
jamioflan
05. Dec 2017 · 21:40 UTC
That was pretty fun, but I just wished my chopper could take a bit more of a beating. Having it die from clipping the tail into the ground ever so slightly was annoying
Egor
05. Dec 2017 · 21:50 UTC
Now that was a hello of experience. Short cuts, two cargo at a time. You really know how to tickle that greed and challenge feling. ) Thanks fo the game, enjoyed it a lot!
Chem0pren
06. Dec 2017 · 14:26 UTC
It was pretty hard to learn how to fly, but at the end I was able to handle it. Great work
Pixel Maniacs
06. Dec 2017 · 15:24 UTC
We had a blast in the office making this competitive. Nice and challanging game!
Logicon211
06. Dec 2017 · 17:12 UTC
The controls in this felt great. It was real fun to actually move the chopper around and pick stuff up. Very solid and on theme. Good job!
Good Day
06. Dec 2017 · 17:59 UTC
Very fun and challenging game. Well done!
greg
06. Dec 2017 · 22:36 UTC
Great and challanging game, well fitted the theme as well.
Murilo
07. Dec 2017 · 00:35 UTC
Frustratingly great!! Good challenge and fun! Somewhat addicting as well. Great work, guys!
yodoG
07. Dec 2017 · 23:16 UTC
I think I've spent the most time with this game out of all of the games so far. Very frustrating, but very rewarding when you get it. Great concept and execution.
ursagames
07. Dec 2017 · 23:33 UTC
Very challenging, but in a good way! The design works perfectly with the theme. Ran into a few areas where I could fall through the map without dying, but it was bug free other than that!
Wakka2
08. Dec 2017 · 12:24 UTC
Surprisingly fun and definitly an innovative game. I failed hard landing properly t_t
Sam Dower
08. Dec 2017 · 18:31 UTC
Love it! 5/5
LERPish
08. Dec 2017 · 20:35 UTC
really cool game i guess it doesnt have much to do with the theme but i havent finished but yeah cool game and really liked the mechanics
gyfis
08. Dec 2017 · 22:14 UTC
Nice submission, it took me some minutes to learn how to control (somehow) the chopper but it was hard! The theme was present but I think that finetunning the controls of the helicopter could've made the game more good to me :)
KingMatthew
08. Dec 2017 · 23:52 UTC
Good work!
Extremely difficult to control!(I think that was intended)
The camera angle might be a little too steep, I could see the trails of smoke from far away unless I was moving forward very fast.
larto
09. Dec 2017 · 18:53 UTC
nice controls :) too bad you couldn't see where is the package because of static camera. you could create some arrow pointing to the nearest crate or sth. And personally i would change the music for something more like "action" :D nevertheless good job!
The Triumvirate
10. Dec 2017 · 00:18 UTC
In the first level I was able to navigate straight into the sea and ended up floating/flying under the sea with strange graphics and controls...
Overall a nice but not so innovative game.
Fylipp
10. Dec 2017 · 23:00 UTC
Interesting game! I would have liked the option for an orbiting camera to look around.
🎤 Bificommander
11. Dec 2017 · 20:16 UTC
About flying under the water: Yeah, we added a Unity Terain that you can collide with, which continues under the water, but it's only a limited size. Since we never got around to making boundaries, you can fly over the water past where the terrain is. We probably should've put a huge box collider below the whole thing.

About controlling the camera: I didn't put any other options in since I figured you'd need both hands to fly anyway. I could've tried some options to tweak the auto-camera, but to manually control the camera... I dunno, maybe with a controller I could've assigned the d-pad for that. But optimizing the game for using a controller is another thing we didn't get around to.
sorlok
11. Dec 2017 · 22:50 UTC
And now I know why helicopters are hard to fly! Fun game, and very good controls. Good tie in to the theme!
furet
12. Dec 2017 · 00:00 UTC
Nice looking game. In level one, the chopper is oriented away from most of the instructions, so I flew straight out into nowhere for a while before realizing the island/more instructions are to the right. I couldn't spend much time playing because of the rotating camera, wish it had been more still. Other than that, seems like a challenging yet relaxing game. Love the option to choose levels too.
16. Dec 2017 · 23:44 UTC
schweine
miziziziz
18. Dec 2017 · 00:31 UTC
The controls are hard to pick up, but once you get the hang of them it's pretty fun. It's rather hard to make precise movements; I think it would good if the crates/ targets were bigger to counteract this. Also it would be nice if you could directly control the camera (with mouse perhaps?) and have all the movement controls done with one hand.
Otherwise, the physics are well done and fun to play around with.
🎤 Bificommander
20. Dec 2017 · 20:13 UTC
@miziziziz : I was pretty set on a control scheme that used two hands. My inspiration was Battlefield Vietnam, where I just had tons of fun flying the choppers, even though I'd crash regularly. Which, sadly, leaves no hands for the camera. Maybe if I had more time I could've made multiple auto-camera settings, but alas.

And on that note, that's also the reason for the crates being tricky. Bigger crates weren't really an option because they made it harder to pick up a second crat, since the first crate blocked the magnet. What we wanted was that crates attached to the magnet from a little further away. Trouble is, if we turned that on we couldn't get the crates to move closer, and the bigger collision volume from the magnet would snag on the ground. In the end we resorted to giving the crates a little push towards the magnet when they were nearby, and still only making the crates stick upon a direct hit.