Cannon Ships by chuckeles

made by chuckeles for LD 39 (COMPO)

About

You control a ship in the space. The only way to move around is to shoot. But shooting also depletes your energy so you have to take careful and precise shots. Your energy is limited and the only way to replenish it is to kill enemies. Survive as long as you can.

Behind the Scenes

Hey guys! So for this Ludum Dare, I wanted to stream the development process for the first time. I also wanted to finish a game so I knew I had to keep things super simple. Focus on the mechanics and polishing the game. I also wanted to try to make a game mainly using visual scripting. For this I used 2 Unity3D plugins – FlowCanvas and NodeCanvas. Besides Unity3D I used Aseprite, Rider for C#, Bfxr, and OBS for streaming. I had fun... mostly.

In the end, I was working too slow. For one, OBS was eating 2 CPU cores for the whole time so my computer was super laggy. For two, I discovered that using visual scripting for everything is pretty limitting. I'm a lot faster in C#. On the other hand, visual scripting was amazing for the AI behavior tree and small scripts like quitting the game when ESC is pressed. All in all, I managed to learn a lot during this Ludum Dare. The game turned out pretty fun but missing depth and replayability. The graphics are very basic (I'm a programmer lol) and I didn't have enough energy to improve the sound system. Next time...

Feel free to check out the videos of the stream to see how I made the game and how I used visual scripting in Unity3D.

Screenshots

2017-07-3006-55-59PM.png 2017-07-3006-56-14PM.png 2017-07-3006-56-56PM.png 2017-07-3006-57-13PM.png 2017-07-3006-57-27PM.png 2017-07-3006-57-43PM.png 2017-07-3006-58-09PM.png

Original URL

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/cannon-ships

Ratings

Overall	265^th	3.421⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Fun	92^th	3.684⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	145^th	3.526⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Theme	353^th	3.474⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	409^th	3⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Audio	303^th	2.895⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Humor	392^th	2.067⭐	17🧑‍⚖️
Mood	494^th	2.563⭐	18🧑‍⚖️
Given		15🗳️	2🗨️

Feedback

Mr.McGibblets

01. Aug 2017 · 04:10 UTC

Killing the other ships was so satisfying. Wish we had some music.

🎤 chuckeles

02. Aug 2017 · 06:48 UTC

Thanks! I tried Bosca Ceoil but failed to create any music lol :D.

Simon Millard

04. Aug 2017 · 16:59 UTC

Fun little game! I agree that some music would have been cool. The sound effects are nice though. I like the idea of controlling by shooting, but I feel like it costs too much power to shoot and doesn't make you move much. I found myself just drifting around and only shooting when I absolutely had to, in order to save power. Perhaps moving shouldn't be quite so costly?
However, the idea is very neat, and I enjoyed it. Well done :)

jahndis

04. Aug 2017 · 17:01 UTC

This was really fun. Having the window size affect difficulty was pretty interesting. I thought the graphics worked as a style. You definitely have to be moving around alot to dodge anything. Nice work!

EShudra

04. Aug 2017 · 17:03 UTC

Very interesting mechanic! I like this game. Nothing unnecessary-)

Nostalgic graphics

:metal: **Overall: 4; Fun and Mood: 5**

fusionnist

04. Aug 2017 · 17:12 UTC

So, apart from the sound that destroyed my ears on fullscreen, this game is really good! Nice concept and overall pretty challenging, especially when trying to master those ultimate movement techniques! Good job!
I really wonder how hard this would be on 4K ;) Recorded some gameplay as well, can I upload it? (and link back to you of course ;)

azlen

04. Aug 2017 · 17:17 UTC

At first I was shooting at the blue squares and I was like "this game is hard, how do I gain energy". Once I finally stopped being dumb, I managed to survive much longer and I found myself in-between like 10 enemies trying to dodge their shots with only a few energy left and I was like "this game is hard, but fun, time to play again".

🎤 chuckeles

06. Aug 2017 · 11:48 UTC

@fusionnist of course you can upload it! Thanks for playing man :smile: if you want, you can link my Twitter account @9chuckeles9.

Thanks for playing guys :ok_hand: :video_game: love the comments!

KabalaTrance

06. Aug 2017 · 14:01 UTC

Fun game!
I played it on full screen, and it was meyham and i loved it!
I have nothing insightful to add, you made the game you wanted, and you did it good!

smbe19

06. Aug 2017 · 14:46 UTC

Solid game with very nice graphics effects. The idea that you only can move with shooting is very interesting.

SaraMartins

06. Aug 2017 · 15:02 UTC

Really interesting mechanic, also the fact that you change difficulty by resizing the screen is cool. The graphics and sounds were really nice, reminding me of some shareware games I played in the 90's. Great job ;)

🎤 chuckeles

06. Aug 2017 · 19:44 UTC

Thanks guys! :heart:

TheFlyingKeyboard

15. Aug 2017 · 12:59 UTC

Really fun game to play, with fun mechanics. Really nice paricle and trail effects. Good Job!

Odd1In

17. Aug 2017 · 11:55 UTC

The audio was really nice.

Marcenat

17. Aug 2017 · 13:56 UTC

Probably the best idea I have seen so far. Do you know the youtube channel Game Maker's Toolkit ? Last month he created a jam and the theme was pretty much much what you are doing here : combine mechanics to do more with less.
So moving by shooting is a nice idea, and the energy depletion forces you to behave agresssively and destroy other ships to get their power.
I have some remarks though:
- The ship doesn't move much when you shoot so you can't really control it, it is for instance nearly impossible to go on the oposite direction.
- Taking power supply makes a collision and changes your trajectory, maybe it is intended but I found it a bit strange (I would have use triggers instead of plain collision)
- The bullets gets their parent velocity, which is physically acurate but not pleasant in game, it makes aiming at other ships very hard.
I think those little changes would make the game a lot better to play.

Anyway, great job :)