The Dome by Lintfordpickle
*Backstory: *
The year is 2073 ...
... after the devasting global warming episodes of the early 21st century, the Earth began to boil. The loss of plant and animal life caused the oxygen levels to plummet and forced humanity to move into huge dome constructions with a self-contained environment.
The quality of life slowly deteriorated over the years as resources got being ever more limited. Crime has never been higher and humanity has taken on an air of empathy.
Luckily, the domes are only a temporary solution. The major corporations of the world annually send space shuttles into to space to colonize other worlds, but the price of admission is high.
As a taxi driver, you'd never entertain the thought of saving enough money, but luckily your last fare, who you happen to notice was carrying a huge duffle-bag of cash, came to an unfortunate end in your back-seat. Looks like you are only $15-odd grand short!
Best make sure no one takes it from you before you can cash in ...
Instructions:
[W] [A] [S] [D] - Drive your car (tank controls)
[F] - Fire Gatling gun
*[SPACE] * - Hand-brake
The aim of the game is to collect $15,500. You can earn money by picking up passengers and taking them to their destinations. Alternatively, you could just shoot them and take their money.
Since the end of the compo I have fixed a few bugs in the code: - I fixed the bug that would kill you if you hit another vehicle from a certain angle (I was using a fresnel term to calculate the damage, incorrectly). - The loading screen is now correctly shown when starting a level - removed the splash screen which served no purpose
Development:
The game was made using Java 1.8 and LWJGL 3 for the openGL bindings. I also used the LintfordLib 'engine' I wrote.
The source code for the game has been uploaded to github: The Dome. The master branch is the original version of the game. In the coming days, time permitting, I will create a new branch to add a few things the game is still missing, without which it isn't particularly fun:
- Other vehicles currently drive on rails - I'd like to change this so you see more random occurrences. I tried to fix this during the compo, but the cars would just bang into the walls constantly.
- Police cars don't chase you (related to the first point)
- Mobs and police don't shoot you
- I didn't actually implement the oil slicks (not enough time :( )
*Thoughts & Feelings: *
As is becoming a reoccurring thing with me, the scope was simply too much to finish. There are win and lose conditions which can be triggered, but the game itself is lacking any real substance. I had a little trouble thinking of an idea for the theme, so I just decided to focus on the type of game I wanted to work out - a top-down free racer.
There are a couple of things which are almost finished - including hit contract missions, but alas I just ran out of time.
- Issues
- There seems to be an issue with the police not triggering for chases.
- hitting cars from certain angles causing instadeath (I likely messed up calculating the damage based on fresnel)
I'll update this page with a time-lapse, source code and some better screenshots after I've had some sleep.
Enjoy
| Windows | https://lintfordpickle.itch.io/the-dome |
| Source Code | https://github.com/LintfordPickle/LD42 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/the-dome |
Ratings
| Overall | 589th | 2.974⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 581th | 2.789⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 646th | 2.5⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 695th | 2.389⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 291th | 3.4⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 16🗳️ | 3🗨️ |
Do you have an idea for what might help me become able to run it?
I did like how active your city felt. I wasn't sure if the police would actually chase me after I got stars for smashing pedestrians.
I like the skid marks you put behid the tires, how did you go about doing that? I tried doing the same thing in a different game, but never quite got them looking how I wanted.
Am I running the wrong file?
Or I am missing a software needed to run this? I'm sure I have all the java redists installed (Everything needed for Android port and running Minecraft).
Really sorry about that, but I cannot seem to reproduce it.
and yes, LD42.jar is the correct file.
Could you please let me know which java version you have installed (my game needs Java 1.8 (Java 8) minimum). You can check this by type "Java -version" on the command prompt.
Alternatively, if you have time, if you start the game from the command line using "LD42.jar debug=info", you should get a log file in the same directory. Could you please let me know what/where the actual exception is?
Thanks a lot
This is my java version as it shows.
java version "1.8.0_101"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_101-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 25.101-b13, mixed mode)
How to run with arguments?
java LD42.jar debug=info
shows
Fehler: Hauptklasse .\LD42.jar konnte nicht gefunden oder geladen werden
roughly translates: Error: main class .\LD42.jar could not be found or loaded
I'll have a look when I get home and fix it
Good luck with your submissions!! :)
Now that's the GTA I know! I managed to deliver two fares before the car was totalled. The controls (esp. turning) feels a bit too floaty, albeit it's good enough to actually get round the bend.
I had all AI vehicles combined in the top left border, while other parts were empty (no walkers, no cars). That's the places where I actually could drive more than a few blocks without crashing into something).
That's a really really ambitious goal you set there, and it shows, that 48 hours are not enough. It's however quite close!
What next? Sounds! Repair possibility!
Took me a while to realize that the only thing that really matters is the customer and your health bar. Certainly makes the game a lot easier. It's hard to watch the minimap and drive around at the same time, combined with the fact that the controls were really sensitive makes the game somewhat challenging to play. It could also be part of its sharm however.
I think the game would've been easier/more fun to play if the car had been actually centered of the "camera" view instead of centered in the window. It is kind of hard to predict oncoming cars in the bottom of the screen.
When I dropped off the first customer the game crashed without an error message.
The camera and car movements make it very hard to accurately control the car and not slam into things, the car travels waay too fast and doesn't offer a fast way to turn or escape obstacles in front of you. (I'm biased and maybe this isn't the solution, but drifting and slower top speed might help). Also, I'm not sure what the gun is there for, not seeing much combat early on and you still crash into dead cars.
The art style was really good, if the car movements were fixed up and the gameplay ironed out, it could be a super fun gem! Keep it up!
As a professional game dev I would suggest... just kidding haha
Nonetheless, if you want to work on this project more I suggest making a difficulty incresing algorithm.
Graphics - very nice. Controls are also working very well.
Maybe you could also take a glimpse at my game? I already enlarged it into a wholesome Android game :)