LudumData

Kessler Syndrome by Rytannic

[raw]
made by Rytannic for LD 42 (COMPO)

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Great work from everyone involved in LD42! Can't wait to play some of those games!

Kessler Syndrome is a fun little game about launching satellites and stations into orbit while trying to not collide with the ones already up there. The game is based off of a real life theory that eventually space will become to crowded for us to fully utilise it. In the game, the player must pace their shots and spread out their satellite trajectories to avoid collision. Too many collisions will get your funding cut and your career will end. The game can quickly become hectic and challenging so plan ahead to see your career through to the end. Assuming that it actually does end... Perhaps?

I'm pretty proud of my programmer art as it turned out a lot better than expected. Hoping for this one to be my best Ludum Dare yet! Good luck to everyone!

Wasn't originally planning on entering the Compo but since the game was pretty much finished and the Quill stream chat said I should, I did! Thanks guys :) compoEncourangement.png

Features: - Various exciting planet types. 512594ee7d1c257a8478b1c11a872e1c.gif

  • Multiple challenging difficulty levels. difficulties.PNG

  • Half-decent art for a programmer. Station1.png

  • Various References and Easter Eggs.

  • An actual soundbite of me throwing up in a bin.
  • Hyper-realistic Orbital Mechanics simulations (Okay perhaps not but I did need to consult real life astrophysics formulae to calculate the speed of satellites).

All art, programming and sound was made by me.

Here's to my best Ludum Dare so far! Cheers!

"Kessler Syndrome (also called the Kessler effect, collisional cascading or ablation cascade), proposed by the NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low earth orbit (LEO) is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade where each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions. One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges infeasible for many generations." - Wikipedia

Windows https://rytannic.itch.io/kessler-syndrome
Source code https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zdxRXB7XKke3nF6rVt9IE9LbmbcMJOzN/view?usp=sharing
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/kessler-syndrome

Ratings

Overall 211th 3.614⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 236th 3.477⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 269th 3.364⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 264th 3.75⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 281th 3.432⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Audio 143th 3.432⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Humor 354th 2.386⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 13🗳️ 20🗨️

Feedback

thechubbypanda
12. Aug 2018 · 15:01 UTC
So COOOOOOL, I love it!
LoOoNeliEst
12. Aug 2018 · 15:14 UTC
lol
HailBurns
12. Aug 2018 · 15:18 UTC
I'm getting a 404 for the itch.io page
🎤 Rytannic
12. Aug 2018 · 18:38 UTC
@thechubbypanda I'm glad you like it!
@loooneliest lol?
@hailburns It isn't finished yet my friend. The itch page is set to private currently :)
YuKey0
12. Aug 2018 · 18:43 UTC
The link does not work : (
🎤 Rytannic
12. Aug 2018 · 19:39 UTC
@yukey0 The game isn't published yet
Densin
12. Aug 2018 · 22:09 UTC
That's awesome man! Our team is currently making something similar like that as well, but we opted for doing it in 3D. We initially thought of doing the exact same idea as you've realized here, but we made a lot of changes early on so it's awesome to see the initial idea realized and to see that it seems to work really well.

I can't wait to try it out after we're done with the jam and submitted the game! Looking forward to it!
🎤 Rytannic
12. Aug 2018 · 22:37 UTC
@densin
I'll keep an eye out for your game when the jam finishes! Seems like a few people went for the same concept as us but everyone chose a different style! Glad you like the game!
Alpagakira
12. Aug 2018 · 22:53 UTC
wooooooow niiiiiiice
Swini
12. Aug 2018 · 23:07 UTC
the collisions are cool. Every collision causes another collision, Great physics:)
sdrrv
12. Aug 2018 · 23:13 UTC
Really Nice Game!!! one of the bests so far!
🎤 Rytannic
12. Aug 2018 · 23:28 UTC
@alpagakira Glad you like it :stuck_out_tongue:

@swini Thanks :) I thought the physics was one of its weaker points but I'm glad you like it.

@sdrrv You really think so? Thanks!!
Apples_mmmmmmmm
12. Aug 2018 · 23:48 UTC
Neat game! The music is simple and not overwhelming. The game also has a bit more depth than you might think at first.
LoOoNeliEst
12. Aug 2018 · 23:55 UTC
lol because it looks prett funny
🎤 Rytannic
12. Aug 2018 · 23:59 UTC
@apples-mmmmmmmm Glad you like it! Its my first time making a games music myself so I'm glad you like it.

@loooneliest Oh haha glad you like it
croze
13. Aug 2018 · 02:00 UTC
I just played a game that had a bunch of sliders where you would launch rockets and sattelites, I had pretty much no idea what I was doing in that submission but this is actually a game that is really easy to understand and satisfying to watch, with very similar visual effect. Very well done! Satisfied my previously unfulfilled need for launching rockets and understanding how to do that lol
Johan Vischer
13. Aug 2018 · 02:00 UTC
Neat twist on it and having to plan out how gravity will affect the bodies in space.
Only less than positive thing would be a desire for a cooldown bar to know when I can fire rather than hoping I'm correct until it works. Maybe a lineup of the next x projectiles? Ah, well it's in the past now anyway. Good work.
🎤 Rytannic
13. Aug 2018 · 02:35 UTC
@croze You have no idea how happy it made me to read that. Glad my game could fill the void for you. Amazed you enjoyed it that much.

@johan-vischer Damn! How did I not consider that? I'll add it if I ever pick this game up again. The cooldown is 2 seconds in case you wanna time it in your head ;)


Thanks to you both for the feedback!
rainysolar
13. Aug 2018 · 05:39 UTC
Very interesting game. Simple control and great fun!
Maybe I can learn the launch action from this one, and rebuild my satellite tower defense game. :rocket:
🎤 Rytannic
13. Aug 2018 · 06:30 UTC
@rainysolar If you can translate my sloppy programming the source code is included on the itch and ludum pages :) Glad you find it interesting
Team-on
13. Aug 2018 · 07:22 UTC
My satellites really out of space.
On gif rockets fly slowly, but in game there are very fast. If I dont press spacebar as fast as i can, rocket destroy.
🎤 Rytannic
13. Aug 2018 · 07:52 UTC
@team-on What difficulty are you playing on? Orbits and rocket launches are faster on higher difficulties. As mentioned in-game, you can also use the left mouse button which I would suggest on higher difficulties as it decreases travel distance on the button press and can be more precise.
Team-on
13. Aug 2018 · 08:30 UTC
@rytannic Problem solved, I play on Engineer) Sorry about it.
mshopf
13. Aug 2018 · 13:22 UTC
Very humoresque entry, I love it! Game mechanics work well, it's difficult to achieve the exact orbit as before, thus satellites will eventually catch up and collide; but that's part of the game :rofl:
🎤 Rytannic
13. Aug 2018 · 19:59 UTC
@mshopf glad you like it!
GettingRekt
13. Aug 2018 · 20:15 UTC
I had to try this since my game has a similar scenario, space junk!
This game is solid, good mechanics, sounds, and graphics. Difficulty option is really sweet, holy crap its fast on higher ones! Good job!
🎤 Rytannic
13. Aug 2018 · 23:25 UTC
@gettingrekt Glad you liked it! I'll have to give yours a go to see how you did it :)
Thanks for the feeback.
alobker
14. Aug 2018 · 11:06 UTC
This was great!
🎤 Rytannic
14. Aug 2018 · 22:59 UTC
@alobker Glad you liked it!
Sekwah41
14. Aug 2018 · 23:05 UTC
PRAISE THE ALMIGHTY SPACE WHALE! Also is that your face? xD
🎤 Rytannic
15. Aug 2018 · 01:11 UTC
@sekwah41 Praise Be! Yes haha! I was really sick when I took the picture and I thought it was funny.
Iamsodarncool
15. Aug 2018 · 05:02 UTC
I love this game! Unique and interesting gameplay, nice visuals, groovy music. Also: very clever take on the theme. Running out of *outer* space. I had a blast playing, the best I was able to do was 45 launched satellites on Cadet. Love the easter egg at 42 :smile:

A few points of criticism:

In real life, objects orbiting at the same height will have the same orbital period. Heavier objects - such as moons - are not slower. The moon in this game kind of completely blocks off an entire region of orbit; there's no point to putting a satellite there. It has the same effect on gameplay that a smaller screen would. A moon with proper velocity would have been more interesting gameplay-wise, I think. Particularly if different planets had different moons, and some had multiple moons at different heights.

Additionally, I think the cooldown timer on launching was a bit too long. Especially in the early stages when space is very empty, it was annoying to have to wait to launch.

Overall this is an excellent entry. Incredible that you did it all in 48 hours! Very well done, you should be proud :)

PS: after playing the windows version I tried the web version to see what issues you were having, but the game worked normally for me. I don't know what the problems were, but I have a lot of experience beating Unity's webplayer into submission and I'd love to help you out. If you're interested please send me an email :) - jimmycushnie@gmail.com
🎤 Rytannic
16. Aug 2018 · 06:27 UTC
@iamsodarncool Wow! Thanks for the in-depth review! I'm glad you liked the music. It was my first time making music for a jam. As for the moon thing. I completely know what you mean. The problem I had was that when calculating the speed of a satellite based on it's distance to from the planet. The formulae would typically require the cicumference of the planet. I didn't know how to calculate that within unity so I used the distance between the moon and the earth as a subsitute. This meant that I needed to give the moon a base speed so that it too actually moved. This lead to the issue of satellites at the same height catching up with it and hitting it when in real life they wouldn't (at least not until a long time). So I completely agree with your criticism and intend to fix this issue if I ever pick the game up and continue development. Thank you. This was a brilliant bit of feedback. As for the windows version, I noticed that with a lot of jam games that use the web player I tend to have issues with loading games sometimes. This only tends to be on chrome though. Switching to Edge seems to fix the issue. Perhaps one of my extensions or something disagrees with it. Glad you were able to play the game without any problems. I'll be sure to email you if I need anybody to break webbuilds in the future! :)
MartinTristan
16. Aug 2018 · 07:29 UTC
my space station collided with the moon! this is really cool and addicting. the rotating satellites and space station is hypnotizing. i love the music too. Overall, great and interesting interpretation of the theme!
grizeldi
16. Aug 2018 · 08:12 UTC
Now, *this* is pretty cool.
🎤 Rytannic
18. Aug 2018 · 23:06 UTC
@martintristan @grizeldi glad you both liked the game!
aCuriosity
23. Aug 2018 · 18:26 UTC
cool concept, simple and enjoyable, good audio... I would really like to see a launch cooldown or some sort of visual telling me a launch is available... I realize the launch cooldown is pretty quick but when you have a window to launch and you think enough time has passed so you try, and nothing happens, its frustrating.
🎤 Rytannic
25. Aug 2018 · 23:02 UTC
@acuriosity Great feedback! There seems to be a lot of demand for some sort of indicator. I'll be sure to implement that if I ever pick the project up again. Thanks