Factions by frenchie

"This world is only big enough for me"
Factions is a simple RTS. The goal is straightforward - control all the bases to win
Instructions: * Capture all bases in the world to win * Be the only player near a base to capture it * Bases spawn pawns * Left click + drag over pawns to select them. Then left click to send them * WASD / Arrow keys to move the camera
Links!
- Web Post-Compo Edition
- Windows Post-Compo Edition
- Windows Compo Edition
- Linux Post-Compo Edition (untested)
- Source Code
- Timelapse
Changelog (compo version): * Bugfix: The final victory screen would not display
Changelog (post-compo version): * Feature: Levels now have titles! * Feature: Pawns now go flying off the world when killed >=D * Feature: Added some clouds and more particles * Bugfix: Pawns would sometimes die when they spawned D:
Have suggestions? Put them in your comments below! I may update the post-compo version :D
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/factions |
Ratings
| Overall | 31th | 4.048⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 19th | 4.095⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 139th | 3.5⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 23th | 4.25⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 101th | 3.95⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 48th | 3.8⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 54th | 3.632⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 100th | 3.632⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 10🗳️ | 15🗨️ |
As soon as we can rate games - you will be rated very highly by me!
(I watched your timelapse video and it's interesting - watching you work reminds me of how I work.)
Really enjoyed the overall look and feel.
There were a couple levels where the winner was determined within the first couple of seconds and there was no way to come back. That's more of a complaint with the whole RTS genre, but it was more obvious here since matches were so short.
Every time I beat a level, the music would crack me up yet again. Great game, love the light mood.
@pyokoanarogue sorry you hit a bug with unit selection! I definitely think it's the most awkward part of this game. I wish I'd taken just a couple minutes to think about what I was doing when implementing it. If I had, I would have done the standard "left click select, right click dispatch" RTS controls
### GOOD
-I found the simplification appealing, reminding me of games like eufloria
-Good amount of levels
-Music and sounds were pretty charming
-Fast paced gameplay is a huge bonus to me
### IMPROVEMENTS
-A restart button would have been nice
-Some kind of indicator on how well you're doing, something akin to starcraft graphs, or a bar at the top filled with whatever percentage colour is winning.
-I feel like the shadows don't suit the style.
-Unit selection/deployment is weird
Overall a great full featured entry, controls might be wonky sometimes but there is a good game here! Well done!
I found that the music, while fun, got stale sort of fast. I didn't mind the silly style, but I wish the loop would be a bit longer, or there would be variety between levels.
I also found a bug. On the second to last level, after a few minutes of play, the game got very slow. During this time, all units stopped spawning, and it became very hard to control mine. This happened again on the last level, but with a lesser performance drop.
Something else that I noticed was that when you try to select units on the edge of the planet, they often aren't selected. I don't know if this is intended, but I would like to see it changed.
These issues, aside from the unit spawning bug, didn't detract much from the game. It was definitely one of the funnest games of LD38!
@nardandas I agree on the AI. I didn't have time to try to make it behave as "human-like" as I had wanted so as a quick hack at the end I reduced the unit movement speed so that the AI's instant controls wouldn't be as advantageous. Interesting bug, I don't know what would have caused it. I did spend a little bit of time optimizing the game and could get 500 units on screen before hitting 30 fps. What's your setup (CPU, GPU, RAM) and which build did you use? As for the unit selection bug, it's a known issue. When I check to see if a unit is in sight (you don't want to select units on the other side of the planet!) I do a raycast from the camera to the unit. After implementing controls I switched from a perspective camera to an orthographic camera. This meant that some units would be on the rendered screen but the camera wouldn't actually have line of sight to them. Fix is simple - just need to tweak the raycast. Didn't have time though :(
The game play was fun and thrilling. It was hard enough for me to lose once or twice, but not too hard so a RTS newbie like me can still manage to clear.
The sfx and music was especially funny and cute. I can say the audio is what made my good impression of this game. The graphic might not be the best but the board game-like appearance is charming in its own way.
My only problem is that I prefer a more traditional control method: left click/drag to select, right click to move. Left click serving dual purpose is not really to my liking and caused confusion.
Despite that I still think the game's worth a 5 star overall. Great work!
Loved the graphics, as well as the neat sounds :p
The gameplay was pretty easy as I thought but still very fun to play.
Very nice entry!