Omnibar by DubThink

[raw]
made by DubThink for LD 43 (JAM)

For this jam as in all jams, I was wildy over-ambitious, deciding to write a game from the ground up and do so in <64kb. However this time, I succeeded. Omnibar is a first person shooter in 54k. Your health, xp, and ammo are all the same magnificent bar, so be careful!

Note: this thing takes a beast to run because optimization was not my priority. Minimum graphics card a GTX 970m, but it plays better on a 980/1070+ The big download (still only 677kb!) runs slightly better, but the 54k one is there too. Have fun!

Mechanic:

Kill the Gaboods expanding into existence in the atrium with your plasma cannon and slug gun. Your health, ammo, and xp bar are one and the same - the Omnibar. Take a fast and loose fighting approach, playing for the bar packs on the lower floor, or line up your shots and conserve your bar. Get 25 kills (fill your kill meter) to win!

Controls:

1 for slug gun - fires arcing projectiles

2 for plasma cannon - fires a short beam that continuously deals damage

WASD move

space jump

M1 to shoot

C recenter (in case you glitch out or something)

F7 for spectator mode (new enemies won't spawn- fly around and enjoy the graphics)

instruction5.png

audio by Adam Lastowka (Rachmanin0xff)

everything else by Benjamin Welsh (DubThink)

started with this project: https://github.com/DubThink/moonsync

Ratings

Overall 696th 3.217⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 841th 2.783⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 587th 3.065⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Theme 891th 2.804⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 456th 3.609⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Audio 465th 3.109⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Given 36🗳️ 4🗨️

Feedback

ruddgasm
05. Dec 2018 · 01:50 UTC
Interesting concept and I liked the goo-like effect you had in the center. Though it seemed to serve no purpose it looked cool. The controls are a bit sluggish and the projectile gun forces you to be point blank range to hit anything. Would've like to see maybe some enemy variation or have them moving around. Overall some of its aspects are pretty neat.
Trifectuh
05. Dec 2018 · 01:58 UTC
Would like to know more about how this was accomplished. 64kb is TINY! Pretty fun and difficult game too. Nicely done.
Trusty
05. Dec 2018 · 02:00 UTC
The whole omnibar concept was pretty cool. I had a crash part way through, but good job!
AfroAnt
05. Dec 2018 · 02:15 UTC
Very cool entry! The graphics were amazing considering the file size. Those bullet projectiles were so frustrating to aim!
Swanijam
05. Dec 2018 · 04:10 UTC
These are awesome graphics and a lot of functionality for such a small filesize. What cool limitation and you did great with it. I loved the (pretty) screenspace reflection pool. +5 points for adding spectator mode. great job!
ErikU
05. Dec 2018 · 04:12 UTC
Interesting use of ray marching. Had a very Doom-like feel to it where the optimal strategy was timed strafing and getting in close. Impressed at the small binary size! Just so you're aware, Windows Defender isn't a fan of it, haha.
🎤 DubThink
08. Dec 2018 · 02:14 UTC
@trifectuh It's mostly accomplished using techniques from the demoscene - exe compressors, careful control of what is and isn't being linked, a synthesizer (v2 specifically) written mostly in assembly. Probably half of the code I wrote was glsl- all of the world visuals and almost all of the animation is done on the gpu. I used signed distance fields (SDFs) and a raymarching renderer for rendering, which have a very small code footprint. ([how they work](http://jamie-wong.com/2016/07/15/ray-marching-signed-distance-functions/), [a bunch of really good examples](http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/raymarchingdf/raymarchingdf.htm)). I also have the source up on github if you want to take a look. Let me know if you have more questions!

@eriku Super glad to hear that you thought it was doom-like! I definitely was taking inspiration from doom in my gameplay design. And yeah, windows defender isn't a big fan of any really tiny compressed .exes.
ursagames
11. Dec 2018 · 10:27 UTC
Super impressive for the filesize! I managed to escape the world and there was a ton of water and pillars, very pretty but a bit laggy on my 1060. The second weapon was super pretty too, that lighting was awesome! The death effect for the enemies was also really cool looking. It's hard for me to judge the gameplay as it felt slow, but I'm not sure if that was more my laptop than anything else.

I liked the risk vs reward of the two weapons as it felt like the first weapon was more efficient if you didn't miss. Managed to get the "WIN" state after a couple attempts, was a good time! Sorry I couldn't stream your game as it tanked my OBS.
cerno-b
30. Dec 2018 · 10:52 UTC
I finally got around to playing your game. Still very impressed what you pulled off at a little over 50k. I wasn't able to play the compressed version as my virus scanner immediately deleted it, which is likey due to the auto-extract executable, so I am reviewing the "large" version.

Visually, I like what you did with the limitations you had. The archways look very nice and the water effects are awesome! I also liked the music which added to the atmosphere. I had been hoping for a classic chiptune soundtrack, but your choice fit the genre better. Unfortunately there were no sound effects. I wonder if it would be possible to integrate the bfxr code into the game so you would be able use bfxr sounds without having to store them as samples. Having shooting sfx in an FPS plays an important part in the atmosphere, but I guess you must have run out of time.

Conceptionally, there are a few things I would like to mention.

Having a ballistic weapon in an FPS is quite commonplace (e.g. grenade launcher) but if it is the only weapon available, I think a direct line of fire weapon might have worked better, especially since the enemies use this weapon type and therefore have much greater range.

The enemy AI needs some tweaking. Most of the enemies don't fire at all, while some fire rapid shots that can insta-kill you if you are in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Maybe a second of invincibility after being hit may have been helpful there as well. I think if you had all enemies fire at a reasonable rate at the same time would have made the game very frantic in the beginning, but after the player survived the initial onslaught they would have been rewarded with the feeling of superiority as they could have started to pick off the remaining enemies one by one.

All in all one of the more impressive technical entries this LD, great job!
tgiant
31. Dec 2018 · 06:30 UTC
Awesome game. I did struggle a bit on the speed of the game but other than that it worked fine.
Thanks for making this cool game.
Franciszek Pyrć
31. Dec 2018 · 06:31 UTC
Very fun game, but...

- First of I couldn't open the tiny version, so I had to download the big one.
- The game was really laggy, but don't listen to me. I have 8gb of ram in my PC.
- The game is too hard, but again I suck at games.
- I fallen out of the building. I was also really impressed of how much detail you gave to the outside.

These problems are probably mostly my PCs fault, so don't listen to me. I loved the art style and the music.