Shipping Fast by Shane

made by Shane for LD 42 (JAM)

Widgets are built, widgets are shipped! You are the shipping manager trying to keep up with shipping orders. Jump on a same colored box to ship it, different colors swap your color. Let them stack or stack them yourselves to build combos. Don't let the stack get out of control!

Link to my website hosting the game in webGL (didn't work in chrome but firefox seemed to do okay). Will post a binary later tonight.

Software used:

Unity and Visual Studio Bummed some sound Effects from an older game of mine. Wanted to use MagicaVoxel for art, didn't get around to it (and I am a programmer not an artist Jim!)

Controls:

Left ctrl picks up boxes. Place a box on another box only Space jumps

(Binary will work with a gamepad)

Known issues:

Sometimes the game just ends (bad states on falling blocks) rare but it happens. The floatyness of the jump is a pain, more time I would totally of cleaned this up.

Future work: Art redux Sound effects Redux Music Clean up the jump/move in air mechanic. Add more levels. Add a puzzle mode where you have to clear a floor with limited jumps Add powerups for endless mode.

http://shanethomasphotography.com/ShippingFast/

HTML5 (web)	http://shanethomasphotography.com/ShippingFast/
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/shipping-fast

Ratings

Given

8🗳️

7🗨️

Feedback

CandleBird

15. Aug 2018 · 04:29 UTC

So, the webplayer is working, but the game itself isn't working. All the blocks spawn at the beginning and make a really loud sound. Hopefully you can get the bugs worked out, and if you do just @ me and I'll re-rate your game!
![GameScreenshot.png](///raw/3e6/91/z/19a72.png)

mao

15. Aug 2018 · 04:33 UTC

I think you can do away with the physics engine for the blocks, and just make their movement scripted, because the board becomes a bit of a mess after a while. Or, you could just embrace it, and allow blocks to land anywhere.

The camera placement was a bit awkward. You should place it lower and at an angle so you can see the height of the player, or have it follow the player.

I like the concept, and the mechanic of jumping on the blocks to clear them was pretty fun, but the game definitely needs some polishing.

Swordfish

15. Aug 2018 · 04:45 UTC

Interesting take on the theme; some kind of a hectic warehouse management jumping game. But the execution didn't really come together, because jumping is so important it would have been really nice if it was snappy and weighty feeling rather than the float-y "I'm not really sure how high I'm jumping" effect that it currently has.

I'm not sure the top-down perspective really works either, it makes it difficult to tell exactly how high each stack is. Maybe even a 2D tetris like board would have been better. This feels more like an early prototype unfortunately, it really could use some polishing.

I really like the idea overall, lots of people did warehouse games but none of ones I've seen took a more abstract clearing method like this. It falls a little flat right now though.

🎤 Shane

15. Aug 2018 · 05:05 UTC

@swordfish the jumping is awefully floaty, and as @mao said too, scripting the placements of the blocks would be good too and less physics (I sort of liked the chaos) but I think in a perfect world I would do the following:

Change the jumping to be more snappy almost like moving as a tile
Change the camera angle some (actually I wasn't sure if it was allowed but I envisioned this camera angle with a VR headset allowing you to look around the warehouse and see what needs to be done).
With all that not sure the moving picking up boxes and placing them is worth the effort. I would almost speed up the falling of the blocks and let you jump swap colors and jump more to set up the colors and combos.

Thanks for checking it out and @candlebird not sure what isnt working :( maybe clicking in the screen to get the keyboard and left ctrl and space working i dunno :(

now time to try out more games.
:D

Swordfish

15. Aug 2018 · 05:10 UTC

@shane I've seen at least one VR submission so far, it's allowed as far as I know. I think the major problem there is that most people don't have a headset to play it with so getting enough ratings would be pretty tricky. That would exclude me at least.

🎤 Shane

15. Aug 2018 · 05:44 UTC

@swordfish good point! i just tried your game btw, I am glad you included source haven't seen pygame stuff, the EXE didn't run on my machine cause of dual monitor but maybe a tweak to the source and I can get to run :D

mao

15. Aug 2018 · 05:49 UTC

I made a VR game for LD once. It didn't get very many ratings, but I wasn't really trying very hard due to other commitments. VR is definitely an option for Ludum Dare.

PNghasemi

15. Aug 2018 · 22:45 UTC

At first, I actually didn't understand the goal of the game. And the instruction wasn't that clear. that I started trying out every single button to find out how I should control the character (which I could not find at first.)
The game rules were quite easy but badly implemented. for example, I don't think that it should be possible to deflect falling boxes by standing under them. or being able to fly out of the game boundaries (Which happened a lot.) I hope these get fixed in the future versions :D

minibobbo

18. Aug 2018 · 03:54 UTC

I also wasn't sure exactly what I was doing at first, but after a minute (and reading the description again) I got it. Simple and to the point, but I'll echo what others have said. Jumping on the boxes is one of your two main mechanics but it is much to difficult to control. If you are sold on using the physics you are kind of stuck using acceleration, but I think the game would benefit from you just manipulating the character's velocity or position directly to get a little more control.

Also, I somehow managed to jump off the entire board and couldn't do anything but wait until time ran out. Strange.

Congrats finishing and this is the exact type of simple, amusing concept that make jam games great.

🎤 Shane

19. Aug 2018 · 06:04 UTC

@pnghasemi @minibobbo I already have a version of the game where all the issues are fixed :D. I had no current real game project I was working on so took the feedback and started to beef this concept up. Has been fun so far and thanks for the great feedback. I have to agree all the games I have seen so far this jam is just so much fun, more time off this week means more time to play and try new games!