The Big Pink Thing. by Ludrak
This was my first Ludum Dare !
Rules of game : You are pursued by a "thing" that want to eat you, you need to run faster than it and finish the level !
I make my game using : - Eclipse (java) without any library - Photoshop for graphics - a lot of coffee ;)
I dont think that the game totally fits to the theme but for me it was like : "pick weapons that slow the player" -> "the more you have weapons the worst it is to finish the level" But after looking at other games I realized that I'm totally out of theme xP
I was very short with time (and it was about 3am when the combo finished), so here is the controls that you need to play this game ;)
- Left Arrow && Right Arrow : move
- space || Up Arrow : jump
- left click : shoot
- right click : reload
- middle click : drop / take weapon on ground
/!\ Some bugs with less than 1920x1080 screens... need to be fixed soon !
Hope you will appreciate it !!
PS: if you can't finish this game, that because you need almost 48h playing it ;)
EDIT : I posted a newer version of the game ("new version" in the downloads) where I changes the "jump" controls wich poses problems with the players played it already (I let the space control for peoples who prefer jump with space bar) ;)
Ratings
| Given | 14🗳️ | 5🗨️ |
I loved the weird physics. It is just strange enough to be abusable and feel intelligent without being completely broken.
See on the download
- First, the controls are not very practical. As stated by others, in the first version it was pretty awkward to have one hand on the arrows, another on the space bar and then... what for the mouse?
It was corrected in the new version but, if I were to nitpick, I'd say my opinion is that mouse buttons should be used in FPS games or games that use the cursor feature of the mouse. This is not the case with your game, so I'm not sure of the relevance of FPS-like controls here, I think your game controls should be kept on the keyboard or gamepad.
- The most frustrating thing was the hitbox physics. Sometimes the enemies would deal a normal amount of damage, but most of the time they would simply kill me in one hit, sometimes even not touching them. I think it might have something to do with broken recoil calculation, instead of bumping, the player stays on the enemy and has its life immediately sucked out - but that's just my theory. Maybe having a short invicibility-flickering time after being hit would help. The platforms were also not easy to jump on, it was not always clear where you could land on them. All of this made the game difficult.
- As I played the game it kept filling up my computer memory, which is not even a common thing with Java. You should seriously look up your memory management, maybe you're keeping dead objects in a list somewhere without deleting them, or maybe it's graphic resources that are not freed (with Java it's one of the main memory issues)
- I am not sure of the usefulness of the permanent tombstones, which hinder visibility when you die a lot. Or maybe it's for the theme?
- I was a little lost at the end, not being sure what to do. Apparently there is no real end.
Anyway I give kudos to you for making a game in 100% Java, personally it's not the language I find easiest to work with when it comes to games. Although I still think you could use a game engine to help you with physics and stuff like game states and controls. I liked the characters so I look forward for a more polished game with that universe.
My monsters hitboxes aren't good, I know it (they are too tall and they dont push the player out of it, so he will take like 5x damages and die :/) this will be fixed soon !, also for the controls I will make a simple menu with options where you can handle that whatever you want :)
And for the memory it's a very big problem ! I will look at it really soon ! (it's mabye some bullets that arent deleted by the gamer kind of things)