Drone Supervisor by Jimbly
Give orders to an army of drones in this turn-based production-line building simulation game!
Links * HTML5(WebGL): http://www.dashingstrike.com/LudumDare/LD39/ * Source Code: https://github.com/Jimbly/LD39-drone-day
Just follow the tutorial and you should be good to go!
Post-compo Changes: * Fixed input and scaling issues on mobile devices/tablets/high DPI handhelds * The High Scores column in the main menu were added post-compo, you can ignore that for rating purposes, but pay attention to that for how awesome you may or may not be ;). Gameplay remains unchanged. * There is now also an "Updated Version" available with some additional features (undo, redo, save state), more accessible crafting recipe menu, updated graphics, and some audio, if you get past Level 1 and enjoy it, you may want to play Level 2 on this version instead.
Things you might not get from the tutorial (come back and read this after playing the tutorial, perhaps): * On later levels, can pan the level by clicking and dragging, or holding the space bar * Resource generators generate a specific quantity of resources (e.g. copper generates 4), and you can harvest from them multiple times * You can view all crafting recipes from the Menu * If you return to the Menu, you will not lose your progress, as long as you press "Back" to get back to the level you were in the middle of * When viewing scores, you can update your name via the text box at the bottom of the screen, your existing score(s) will be listed under your name
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Tools used: * Engine: custom Javascript engine using WebGL and Turbulenz, based roughly on my desktop game engine, GLOV. * Art: Piskel and Photoshop * Sound: Silence * Mtn Dew
Spry Fox's Leap Day (no longer available, sadly) was a big inspiration for this.
Near the end, I decided that adding a tutorial was more useful than adding sounds and another polish pass, so, sadly, this game has no sound :(. Hope the tutorial helps you get into the game!
Also, if you're read this far, check out my other game on Steam!
Screenshots:
| HTML5 (web) | http://www.dashingstrike.com/LudumDare/LD39/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/drone-supervisor |
Ratings
| Overall | 29th | 4.048⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 64th | 3.794⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 24th | 4.111⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 474th | 3.222⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 429th | 2.953⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 305th | 2.353⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 348th | 2.906⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 57🗳️ | 57🗨️ |
I'm not sure but are new resources added over time? Because I had thought out a way to craft something and only needed more money. When I had enough money I couldn't build it anymore because there was now copper blocking the path. Maybe I just miss remembered my plan?
My only real complaints would be that it was not intuitive how much money I would make from combining certain materials. While I understand the crafting system after I looked at the recipes, I did not notice that until after I had played. During my first game I spent a while combining 3 different materials and the resulting money I got was barely more than I would have got for simply returning the 3 ingredients.
I wish you had added sound though. :-)
Good job !
Well done!
@piscythe Glad you liked it, and nice job on Level 2, and nice job on being the only Ludum Dare person to actually put their name on the high scores so far (although I did say that isn't part of my compo entry ;). Yeah, I regret not having time to add sound, but the tutorial was definitely worth the trade off, especially after I saw my first play-test be completely and utterly baffled =).
The game itself seemed pretty polished and had a ton of content! Great job!
It would be nice some background music.
Anyway, very good game!
Keep moving forward.
Also, great idea having the tutorial. I would have been COMPLETELY lost without it.
I didn't realize that the recipe list was in the game, so I spent a ton of time trying different combinations and writing down the results. Eventually I saw, or rather I thought, that there was a logic to the recipes, that it wasn't simply a secret list of recipes which work while the rest gives junk, like in some other crafting games. There is certainly a logic to which combination produces pure materials, bracelets and necklaces, and so I was convinced that this was some sort of puzzle, that by experimenting I would learn more about the logic of the recipes and I could deduce how to make the masterpiece. Unfortunately, I was wrong, there was some logic to some of the recipes, but in addition to those logical recipes there was also a secret list of special recipes which couldn't possibly be deduced. Oh well!
I got a good laugh the first time I got "large junk" instead of "junk"; I had made a complicated contraption for electrum + electrum + electrum, and I thought the supersized junk was a way for the game to tell me that I was trying too hard... Oh, that might have been a good recipe logic! The recipes which combine too expensive stuff would give a large junk, those which combine too cheap stuff would give small junk, and those which are incomparable (some items are cheaper than the target, some are more expensive than the target) would just be "junk" :)
I think that having to build an assembly line in order to try a combination is a great way to solve a typical balancing issue which crafting has. In some games, we have access to an infinite supply of (a subset of the) materials, and we can combine them freely. For example, the adventure games which allow you to attempt to combine any two objects in your inventory. Since this is low effort, this leads to a thoughtless style of crafting in which the player simply tries every single combination without thinking about which ones might work. In other games, attempting to combine two items consumes those items, even if the combination fails, and so when we get a rare item we are unlikely to experiment with it for fear of losing it. By having the player build an assembly line, we can encourage experimentation by having an infinite supply of materials, yet combining them requires some effort, so the player is less likely to brute force and more likely to think about which combinations are likely to work. Hence my attempt to figure out the combination by experimenting. It's also really nice that the positions of the resources means that each combination requires a slightly different assembly line, so this experimentation doesn't get boring. Especially since there are several obstacles which naturally emerge out the interaction between nearby assembly parts, so some assembly lines are surprisingly more complex to complete than others!
My only problem with it right now is that there is nothing to stop you from just delivering raw resources for a while, and hitting next turn without changing anything until you have tons of money and can set something more complex up.
I think it would make the game much more fun to have some sort of score, reflective of how much time you took to accomplish the goal.
It would also be nice to be able to access the crafting recipe book whilst in the game as well as from the main menu. I ended up playing with two tabs of the game open, with one just for the crafting recipes.
Other than that, it's a really fun game and one of my favourites so far :).
Not much more to add other than little polish things, like it'd be helpful to have an easier way to distinguish between objects already placed and about to be placed.
I can play it for hours!