Slinger - Last jump to infinity. by roycocup

[raw]
made by roycocup for LD 39 (COMPO)

Slinger

Your spaceship is adrift and you must use your last energy in a slingshot to the next exit. You may use the planets to slingshot the ship onto to exit. Use the mouse to position your trajectory and let it fly. The best score will be done by the least number of attempts/time spent to finish all levels.

Note:

This game was done using java + processing and thus it requires you to have a folder "data" next to the "Slinger.jar" file.

Links

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2jVZWMgowbKQllsVXQtbHMwVms

Source Code

https://github.com/roycocup/LD39

Ratings

Overall 211th 3.519⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Fun 155th 3.519⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 272th 3.222⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Theme 625th 2.481⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 481th 2.808⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Audio 385th 2.615⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Mood 302th 3⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Given 31🗳️ 18🗨️

Feedback

souperstrawer
31. Jul 2017 · 09:36 UTC
Simple but fun idea. A quick restart button would add a lot.
2Demigods
31. Jul 2017 · 10:02 UTC
Very cool game, a bit hard for me, but interesting idea. Consider maybe making it scaleable for different resolutions.
Aterlamia
31. Jul 2017 · 11:28 UTC
I love this idea using gravity in that way, however for me (on linux) i had no sound
Nyri0
31. Jul 2017 · 11:58 UTC
(+)
- Idea
- Game mechanics

(-)
- There's sound at the beginning, but then you cab't hear it anymore
- Very simple graphics, no storytelling
- In space, you shouldn't lose your speed.
Johnnyc1423
31. Jul 2017 · 16:09 UTC
I loved this game so much! The gravity mechanic worked really well. One note, after I beat it it told me I had been played for 0 minutes- something you might want to look into
pauljs
31. Jul 2017 · 16:21 UTC
Yeah same 0 minutes for 41 attempts !
Always love to see processing games ('cause it's the software i use every time).

The theme is maybe to much of an excuse. But really nice game anyway ! Love the mecanics !
Spetsdod
31. Jul 2017 · 16:27 UTC
Good concept. A step away from the common crop of ideas. Suggestions: add the option to press a button (space bar or something) to cancel the current attempt and restart the round. There are several times where you shoot and clearly aren't going to make it but you end up having to wait for the ship to slow down and stop before you can restart. Thanks for the entry.
🎤 roycocup
31. Jul 2017 · 18:16 UTC
Hi Everyone! Thank you very much for your input.
Let me just address some of the things here:
- There IS a reset/restart button in the "r" key.
- I guess the 0 minutes is bad logic somewhere. Thanks for that. I'll look into it. I tested it a lot, but I guess I never spent too long making the testing so... 0 minutes...
- Inertia in space - I guess I started using a dampening effect to help the idea of "Running out of Power". Having said that, maybe the game would benefit from no inertia.
- No sound loop - The sound should work on all platforms, but I was not able to test it, so I dont know how to fix that. The music loop is definitely a problem. I fiddled with the audio classes a bit but in the end I left it to play only once.

Thanks again everyone for the input! Really appreciated!
mariandev96
31. Jul 2017 · 19:47 UTC
Really nice game , I really enjoyed playing it. Nice mechanic, using the gravitation pull to steer the spaceship.

The graphics looks good , but the music , I don't know ,there was something about it that didn't sound right for me. Fortunately I was so absorbed by the gameplay that the music was not a distraction.

You should make a post-compo version with more level , I would definitely play it again. My best score is 21 tries.
uzyfeo
31. Jul 2017 · 20:30 UTC
Very nice little game you have here :)
Love the concept, gameplay is very smooth and the music - as simple as it is, the vibes are floating from it :)
smbe19
31. Jul 2017 · 22:08 UTC
Cool idea and well implemented. A bit more levels would be cool but I guess there is only so much time in the compo.
kroltan
01. Aug 2017 · 02:41 UTC
Have to agree, inertia makes this game counteintuitively harder.
The music is cool too, very minimalistic but sets the mood. It was a bit short though :(
Infernal
01. Aug 2017 · 03:53 UTC
The levels seemed like they should have been complicated with all the other gravity wells but we'd only used like 2 per level. More complicated solutions would have been interesting.
matfernandestt
01. Aug 2017 · 04:21 UTC
Very interesting game you have here, I liked a lot the mechanics. Great entry!
hecticgrape
01. Aug 2017 · 05:34 UTC
Works well, enjoyed the mechanics! Levels were a little easy, I look forward to seeing where you take it :)
Godot35
01. Aug 2017 · 05:34 UTC
I like the mechanics of the game, and the graphics and audio were nice as well.

I think the game could be improved by either having a reset button for the level or by removing the inertia from the projectile so the wait to restart the level after failing an attempt isn't as long.

I'm also not so sure what the difference between the blue and green nodes were, other than color.

I wish the game had more levels, as the concept is one you could implement a lot of mechanics with.

Overall, nice work!
🎤 roycocup
01. Aug 2017 · 10:12 UTC
Hi Guys,

Thank you so much for your feedback. Its been really appreciated and I may consider really taking this game forward a bit more.

Just a quick explanation on a few things:

- I wanted to make more levels and harder but I think I ran out of time. There is code in there for things that never worked, namely a flight trail and some planet orbiting eachother which would be really great for the next levels.
- The colour of the planets is relative to the amount of gravitational force they have. The closer to white they are, the stronger their gravity is. The darker/fader green are less powerful. Maybe I should have put this in the instructions... Sorry.

Thanks again everyone for the feedback. I learned just as much from your input as by doing the game!
Royco.
kevinworkman
02. Aug 2017 · 01:54 UTC
This feels like a pretty complete game, so nice work! I think the gravity should have been a little more spread out: more effect further away from the planets, and less effect closer. Anyway, it's awesome to see another Processing user here! (I used P5.js for my game). Have you thought about using [Processing.js](http://happycoding.io/tutorials/processing/processing-js) to deploy your Processing sketch as HTML and JavaScript?
🎤 roycocup
02. Aug 2017 · 13:45 UTC
Hi Kevin,
I didn't use processing as much as the actual processing.jar library and eclipse, so I was unable to compile it to anything else but a jar file :(
I'm now looking at other solutions for that sort of thing.

Thanks :)
mortus
03. Aug 2017 · 11:47 UTC
I always like gravity related games. This one is more of a minigolf game than a space-gravity-thing game because of a limited gravity area and liquid space, but it's fun anyway. Got it in 39 tries.
🎤 roycocup
03. Aug 2017 · 14:12 UTC
Mortus,
You are right. The Physics should really be adjusted. This was my first attempt and the puzzled needed a challenge but going forward it needed more balance in physics :)

Thanks for the feedback!
davideperozzi
05. Aug 2017 · 21:43 UTC
I really like these kind of games and this is well made! Graphics looks good, the gameplay is simple and the music fits in. Great entry, keep it up! :)
Somnium
06. Aug 2017 · 14:18 UTC
A fun puzzle-game, it was quite enjoyable to play!

The collision detection was a bit unfair sometimes (with the ship visually overlapping the target, but not triggering the next level).

I completed all the missions in 25 attempts. If you are planning a post-LD version, you should definitely make some more levels!

Nice work! :-)

>We must plot a course!
>With gravity as our tool,
>we **will** return home!