The Aliens by Nnnnneeeedddd
Welcome to my game THE ALIENS
Instructions are in the README.txt file which is in the download folder, I will also paste it below
Download Links:
~~1. THE GAME -~~ (Please consider playing PostCompo version) https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9e_ZRFruqXvSVdZT0dkSkIzZEE it's Java so it 'should' be cross-platform, although I think cross-platform Java sound is a bit sketchy. It will work fine on windows (with a bit of luck)
2. THE SOURCE - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9e_ZRFruqXvMkRHZGlpQ3ExNG8 So... I heard people learn stuff from LD sources. Feel free. But.... Um.. It's a 'bit' of a ~~clusterf~~ mess
*POST COMPO - * This is some VERY MINOR bugfixes. There are ways in the original you can easily cheat, and win for free, I would much appreciate it if you played the post compo, and judged it as though it was the original, the original is left above for comparison reasons, Thanks!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9e_ZRFruqXvbGg5aUU1RkRMUG8 - this is the post compo link
README - INSTRUCTIONS
Running-----
Make sure you run "TheAliens.jar" in the same folder as the sounds directory
Concept-----
You play as a space rocket, that can shoot Aliens, and you have to get as high as possible. You can upgrade your space rocket, with coins that the Aliens drop when you kill them. You can then get higher.
You 'win' the game at level 7, although you can continue playing if you wanna see how high you can get ;)
Designing----
When you start the game it will be in the "Design" tab (top left) this is where you upgrade your space rocket the buttons labeled "Nose Cones", "Bodies" etc. control which part of the ship you are trying to upgrade, e.g. if you wanted to upgrade the thruster, you would click on "Main Thrusters"
To upgrade a part, just click on one of the buttons underneath the green label that will be labelled similarly/thesame as the button you clicked.
When you start you won't be able to afford anything, so click on the play tab (topleft)
Playing---
You will see your ship. When you are ready, click on LAUNCH. This will start the ship, and it will take off (very slowly if you have the first thruster). Before you do so though, there will be an alien that will come out on the screen pretty soon. The very start can quite often be quite narly, just spam the shoot button (SPACEBAR), and kill the first enemy, after that it will be slightly easier.
Whenever you kill an enemy he drops coins for you to collect. You can see your current height, level, money, and nextgoal(how far you need to go before getting to the next level)
About-----
My name is Ned Boulter. I make games from scratch for almost every Ludum Dare I very much enjoy it. Usually I make 3D games, because it hides my programmer art more. I am 17 at time of writing, but my age is always 20xx where xx = myage. i.e: 2017: 17
I am very interested in graphics programming (e.g. OpenGL, Vulkan) I am currently learning vulkan.
FAQ----
Do you really think this fits the theme? I am aware the game doesn't really fit the theme, it was supposed to be as the ship got further away from the planet, the planet got smaller (which is very tacked on) but it sounded good in my head.
You know you can turn the ship 180 degrees, and go into negative height? Is this fun? Yes! Well, while it's fun you go ahead and do that, but when it get's boring (and it will) you can play the game properly :P
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-aliens |
Ratings
| Overall | 396th | 3⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 334th | 3⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 410th | 2.684⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 520th | 2.342⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 369th | 2.947⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 334th | 2.568⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 294th | 2.424⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 379th | 2.794⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 11🗳️ | 11🗨️ |
The compo has a short timespan, and figuring out an ideal solution with Java games can be tricky, but I if you had an extra day, I'd suggest avoiding Java dialogue boxes for when the player wins or loses, as they can seem a bit jarring and take away from the experience.
Just as a heads up, running the jar on Linux didn't activate sound! Perhaps it was an issue with my machine? I'm using Lubuntu 17.04 on a ThinkPad T430 if that helps. I opted out of rating audio because of it.
```
$ java -jar TheAliens.jar
Sounds are not workinga
60 ticks, 60 frames
60 ticks, 60 frames
60 ticks, 60 frames
...
```
Otherwise, awesome stuff! Keep up the good work!
```
Sound not working!b
javax.sound.sampled.LineUnavailableException: line with format PCM_SIGNED 44100.0 Hz, 16 bit, mono, 2 bytes/frame, little-endian not supported.
at com.sun.media.sound.DirectAudioDevice$DirectDL.implOpen(DirectAudioDevice.java:513)
at com.sun.media.sound.DirectAudioDevice$DirectClip.implOpen(DirectAudioDevice.java:1304)
at com.sun.media.sound.AbstractDataLine.open(AbstractDataLine.java:121)
at com.sun.media.sound.DirectAudioDevice$DirectClip.open(DirectAudioDevice.java:1085)
at com.sun.media.sound.DirectAudioDevice$DirectClip.open(DirectAudioDevice.java:1175)
at game.SoundEngine.play(SoundEngine.java:93)
at game.obj.ship.SpaceShip.update(SpaceShip.java:80)
at game.obj.Entity.tick(Entity.java:25)
at game.state.Tester.tick(Tester.java:89)
at game.Game.run(Game.java:247)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
```
You went hardcore synthesysing your own sounds? that's awesome
And the building ship part adds more depth
Rated!
This is one of the more fun games I've played in LD38 though! Decent sound, fine gameplay. I do wish the field of view was bigger, it feels unfair how little time you have to react to enemies.
It's not often I see a metagame, so nice job on that! It feels appropriate.
Other than that, this game was really enjoyable. The upgrades kept me motivated and the rocket felt quite nice to handle. The gameplay is certainly the strong point of this entry. But it could get a little boring waiting for new enemies to arrive.
The graphics were really appropriate for the gameplay, as was the sound. But both of them didn't really stand out to me.
I suppose the theme wasn't tackled that explicitly, which is a bit of a weak point for this game.
But overall, I'd say that you did a very good job on it. It's an enjoyable way to spend 15-20 minutes.
But it made quite fun! Very good work, you even had time for sounds!
Loved the particle effects. So simples, and yet really add up to the experience. I like the amount of things you can upgrade and the choices to make, but it is all really unbalanced. I choose the best cannons after two playthroughs and it was enough to beat the game. It would be good in your next project to save some time in the end to balance everything. A good idea is to limit the amount of mechanics/upgrades so there is less stuff to balance in the end, but the choices become more meaningful. Still, it's a fun experience and works great as a proof of concept prototype.
But 17 man! KEEP GOING! You're going far, just like my overpowered cannon rocket \o
Also on OSX with a crash on killing. I think I had 36 coins and was at a height of ~8000.
I liked graphisms, and the upgrade system a lot !
I just think it lacked of a bit more difficulty since you just have to get second weapons upgrade and spam button to be totally safe and then just upgrade your motors to go as fast as you can !
But you got a very nice base on which you can construct something very cool ! With some balancing and more diversity on ennemies i would totally play it !
I was surprised steps didn't give money ! Since you count them i think you should do something with it !
And in my opinion, it would be very cool if an ending would be reachable but very far to give a real objective to the player !
I didn't really liked music and i'm sorry of it, i just find it too much dissonant to be enjoyed, but it must be my only opinion !
Anyway, great job, it was a very nice experience !
First of all I would like to say, that I glad to see some more devs using Java and making their own engines as well and have to give you a big thumb up for the particle effects I really like those and know how hard it is to make a good ones.
I quite like the game, it was simple but fun, the controls were a bit wonky and by that I mean the way the ship flew and also I found an exploit where I just was spamming the fire and never got hit, so maybe that could be fixed with making a longer cooldown on firing. Also one more thing I would like to point out is that it would be better if the enemies spawned right away after the 1st one died, cause there were a lot of time where nothing was happening and I was just waiting for the correct distance to get an enemy.
But overall it is a nice entry...Oh also the music and sound effects were nice as well! Good job!
I found the alien ships quite difficult at first because the small view meant they would appear right above you so you didn't have much time to react and they would kill you in one shot.
The particle effects were neat and I also liked how the background sky got darker as you went up. I managed to get to level 9 and also got max upgrades on my ship.
Personally I really liked the particle effects!
Music could use a slightly lower volume :P
Also, your game consumes insane amounts of RAM. After 15 minutes of gameplay, it was using 2.1GB RAM, which is over half of my total RAM, leading to my internet browser crashing and the SFX in the game stopped playing.
But the fact that you kept me entertained for 15 minutes is quite good (I usually stop after 5 minutes of gameplay on these entries), so good job.