LudumData

Loopbot by ctpeepee

[raw]
made by ctpeepee for Ludum Dare 47 (JAM)

Do you like booming synthy drums. Do you like playing boomy synthy drums.

Then you may enjoy our hacky music-driven platformer!

screenshot3.png

How to play

Loopbot runs on drum loops. Create drum loops to control Loopbot. Work out the beat you need to complete the levels!

Keyboard and controller supported.

screeshot2.png

About:

Ludum Dare 47 entry by C-man and J-dog.

This was our first game-jam competition entry, so a bit short and rough. But the potential for a very fun game is there! :))

Created in UE4, with Paper2D. Most of the work by C-man, most of the binned features by J-dog.

Twitch vods of development.

screenshot1.png

Assets:

Thank you Mr Kenny https://www.kenney.nl/assets

Music sources:

Drum samples: https://soundcloud.com/datadrive

Bass Synth Samples:

https://www.noiiz.com/sounds/packs/267 & https://soundpacks.com/free-sound-packs/future-synthwave-sample-pack/

Others created using Sonic-Pi!

Warning

Headphoen warning - game sounds might be a bit high! Blame the so called j-dog

Youtube https://ctpeepee.itch.io/loopbot
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/loopbot

Ratings

Overall 855th 3.455⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1038th 3.136⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 413th 3.682⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 653th 3.762⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Humor 668th 2.868⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1052th 3.158⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 46🗳️ 20🗨️

Feedback

HappyDevilGames
06. Oct 2020 · 01:01 UTC
Looks like a broken link to the itch download
🎤 ctpeepee
06. Oct 2020 · 01:13 UTC
@happydevilgames yeah i dont know whats going on, sometimes it gives 404 sometimes it works. Just tried now and it seems to be working again! thanks for the heads up!
snowinn
06. Oct 2020 · 01:14 UTC
The link worked fine for me but I can’t play it because only windows :/
🎤 ctpeepee
06. Oct 2020 · 01:27 UTC
@snowinn sorry! thanks for confirming link is working. are you on mac or linux?
snowinn
06. Oct 2020 · 01:43 UTC
@ctpeepee I’m on mac!
Jordanfb
06. Oct 2020 · 01:58 UTC
Oh man this was a tough one! I beat all eight levels although a few of them like level eight it took me ages. Part of the problem was that I kept confusing which key did what (I'm on a US keyboard maybe that was part of the problem?) I honestly didn't understand how to make my character move the way I wanted it to until level seven or eight, most of the early ones was just random keymashing and then hoping I made it... Perhaps letting the character move the way it would move during the practice session would help me figure out what beat to use? Cool game! While the graphics were obviously kenny graphics the fantastic music when you failed or died or whatever was great, and the beats all felt rewarding when you pressed them which was fantastic. Nice work!
🎤 ctpeepee
06. Oct 2020 · 08:44 UTC
@snowinn Ah! Can't help then sorry.The, about, 10 lines of c++ in game mean we can't build for mac as don't own a mac!
🎤 ctpeepee
06. Oct 2020 · 08:51 UTC
@jordanfb awesome, thanks! thanks for the suggestion, we had thought about a test level like you describe but wanted to avoid making it just a platformer but soudns play when you press the keys if you see what i mean (even if just for warmup). from what you say I think I would prefer to make the early levels "harder" (without being too hard) so you work out earlier on what youre doing without just luckily completing them. eg, maybe we should have limited you to just hihat first level, hihat kick second etc. really we just needed more levels total to make progreession better but ran out of time!
Hank Ather
06. Oct 2020 · 17:15 UTC
Very cool idea! I think a good QOL feature would be to cancel recording and start over if you make a mistake in your take. having to wait the whole 8 bars when you mess up the first hit is rather annoying especially at the harder levels where precision is key.
I imagine it would be complex to do but if you ever expanded on the prototype, Quantization would really sell the 'rhythm game' vibe on play, so the drums would always be a relative match to the music and not a jumbled mess from my objectively out-of-time fingers.
🎤 ctpeepee
06. Oct 2020 · 18:04 UTC
@hank-ather Thanks! I completley agree with your QOL suggestion. I actually went to implement that at one point but would have had to change a few things round so opted to try make more levels instead! Interestingly we actually already do quantize the input. It's set to quantize to 1/4 beats so might not be immediately obvious. I think maybe it should be 1/2 or 1 for earlier levels perhaps. That said, there are a bunch of issues with audio timings due to how we implmeneted stuff.
necauqua
07. Oct 2020 · 00:14 UTC
The art style is really cute, I liked it a lot, music was on point too, really nice job :)
TinySalad
07. Oct 2020 · 00:22 UTC
I loved it, the biggest problems I had was the controls feeling very unergonomical and the time it took to get back into it after you screw up. Other than that great work!
Empty Set
07. Oct 2020 · 00:52 UTC
I like the idea here of actions being tied to percussion. The controls feel really awkward - I think you should've put all the buttons next to each other rather than scattered around the keyboard - there's not much point in having the keys match the first letters of the instrument in my opinion and it just makes it awkward to press them.

I also thought it was kind of frustrating that the controls listed on the screen tell you which instrument each key is, but not what they actually do - kinda the exact opposite of what would actually be useful, haha. Since just making a recording already require a lot of coordination, it's tough to also have to keep straight which buttons actually do which actions on top of that. If for instance the controls were ZXCV and the screen listed what actions were which the game would immediately be three times as easy to play.

Good work for your first game jam!
TheseusInABottle
07. Oct 2020 · 01:50 UTC
Really good game that I am not very good at. Nice to see such creative ideas to remind me that even with bad themes there are great ideas to be found.
🎤 ctpeepee
07. Oct 2020 · 08:52 UTC
@empty-set thanks for the feedback! I agree the keyboard controls are awkward (plays much better on controller!) and something like zxcv would have been better. The controls matching the drums rather than the commands is rather the point of the game however! The levels certianly need work to introduce things better, eg only allow certain drums at start, but point was to not just directly tell player what does what. Partly because we had ideas we ran out of time for where the commands change!
honey
09. Oct 2020 · 20:09 UTC
Very clever idea! But I struggled to practise the beat without metronome and knowledge of the level/beat. Also it felt like there's some lag between hitting the key and the sound effect, which was pushing me out of rhythm. Are you sure that there's no silence on the beginning of your sfx or something like that? Still I liked the game very much, picking up notes that play into the track was great detail! Good job!
TheVideoGamester
10. Oct 2020 · 07:43 UTC
The core concept is very strong. Gameplay was mostly entertaining with some frustrating hiccups as is the nature of a jam game. If you take this further post jam I would focus on primarily making the beats the player press feel like its truly adding to the song. Obviously for a jam that is a lot to ask but as a post-jam game concept that is where I would focus. Very unique hook too.
🎤 ctpeepee
10. Oct 2020 · 11:28 UTC
@honey Thanks! Yeah the practice/recording section is a bit awkward I agree. Having knowledge of the level would be against what we were going for in the jam as a more puzzle game but having the backing track (if that's what you meant) during warmup is a cool idea I hadn't thought of! And you felt correctly! There's no silence on sfx and we weren't quite sure why timings were so bad for ages. Eventually realised it's because we were doign all the timings on the game thread... If we continued work on game, this would be the first thing we rectify as it is kind of cruical to a music based game to have good timing 😂
🎤 ctpeepee
10. Oct 2020 · 11:30 UTC
@thevideogamester thanks! totally agree with your comments. On that we had some ideas to build up the track yourself, ie first time through you lay down the drums, next the bass etc. Didn't have time to figure out how to make the play throughs different enough to be fun though.
Ruling Spear
10. Oct 2020 · 14:34 UTC
This was looking so good, but without a visual indication of what is recorded or which beat does what, it was a but difficult. But I love the concept. Great artwork as well!
🎤 ctpeepee
10. Oct 2020 · 14:52 UTC
@ruling-spear thanks! Part of the point of the game is to have to work out what beat does what. But I do agree some visual indication of what you have played would be good/cool. Hadnt thought of that!
yellowsalamander
13. Oct 2020 · 08:28 UTC
This idea is great! It was very hard to learn which drum beats corespond to every movement though. Visual feedback and mapping the instruments to WASD and Space instead of the first letter seems like a better option.