Protect the Pup! by Maindric

made by Maindric for Ludum Dare 46 (COMPO)

Oh no! Some aliens are coming to take the pup to do.. Do.. Well, that's the thing... WE DON'T KNOW! Protect the pup from the aliens with your trusty towers! Keep the puppy alive through the boss to win!

Protect the Pup! is an inverse Tower Defense game. Where normally the player would place towers to defend something from a threat, instead you are the something that would be attacked! Navigate the aliens and the towers to defeat the boss to stay alive!

Controls:

WASD / Left Thumbstick : Move

Mouse / Right Thumbstick : Camera

Mouse Wheel / DPad Up|Down / LT RT : Zoom

How can you look past the puppy?

Watch out for those terrible aliens!

Kudos

Also, I would like to express special thanks to my wife who pushed me to finish a project even if I was struggling for motivation. Love you, hun

EDIT

There is a game breaking bug (or several) in the first upload. The FIXED upload should fix it. This link includes new source, Windows binary, and Linux binary. I did notice that opening the source on another PC did not load the shaders correctly. This is a Godot issue (likely down to version). I used v3.2.1.stable.official for this project.

Youtube	https://1drv.ms/u/s!As3fx4XzI-zJgfcossK7stUJTbfd-Q?e=pyUn06
Youtube	https://1drv.ms/u/s!As3fx4XzI-zJgfcw-m6c40-yymms1g?e=31MIJd
Youtube	https://1drv.ms/u/s!As3fx4XzI-zJgfcuIJ77_1BcSvqMSA?e=jX8Kre
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/protect-the-pup

Ratings

Overall	923^th	2.926⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Fun	828^th	2.868⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	802^th	2.941⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Theme	621^th	3.571⭐	37🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	810^th	2.957⭐	37🧑‍⚖️
Audio	655^th	2.757⭐	37🧑‍⚖️
Humor	214^th	3.441⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Mood	758^th	2.909⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Given		28🗳️	44🗨️

Feedback

Eldar

20. Apr 2020 · 06:50 UTC

Tried your game, but it crashed on Wine :( (I'm playing on Mac) I'd been playing for several minutes by then, so perhaps the boss was due? I don't know... It's most probably the issue with me playing in an emulator, but I could attach the backtrace if you're interested.

That said, the alien sound effects are rather unsettling (in a good way). Also, did you do the voiceover yourself? xD

Evolving

20. Apr 2020 · 06:51 UTC

The game is realy funny. Had a good time)

FatEagleGames

20. Apr 2020 · 06:54 UTC

Nice little game, the puppy is cute. The aggro range of the aliens could be bigger, so it feels more like they are after you.

jk5000

20. Apr 2020 · 07:00 UTC

This is overall a fun and simple little game. The graphics and audio is pretty good for combo game. The end were UFO takes you is really funny. I would have liked a bit more to do, and I am not sure that the tower is working. But overall a fun little jam game.

🎤 Maindric

20. Apr 2020 · 07:04 UTC

@eldar, I would be interested to see the backtrace. The issue is with my spawning mechanism. I did not track them quite as I should have (implemented it as I was awake for 20ish hours) so sometimes a call to null is made. I tried to circumvent it, but it was either turn it in or never.

@evolving, thank you!

@fateaglegames, that is fair. I did make the boss and his henchmen automatically know the player's position at the spawn to make the final wave a bit more difficult.

Eldar

20. Apr 2020 · 07:20 UTC

@maindric There you go: https://pastebin.com/yrv5HvYb

I'll try again to see if it reproduces, or perhaps I just got unlucky and hit the null.

EDIT: nope, crashed again. This time I was being chased by the higher-flying giant alien head - is that the boss? I also had a fallen alien head horizontally dangling on the ground, lol.

IronyGames

20. Apr 2020 · 07:26 UTC

Cool ships, bro. If we ever get into space I'll adorn my spaceship with a giant disembodied human head :D

Neat little game.

I wish I could see the turret shots. Also I'm pretty sure at some point after the 2nd turret the tractor beams don't work. I stood inside some and didn't get carried off.

🎤 Maindric

20. Apr 2020 · 07:37 UTC

@eldar, the plot thickens. So I playtested (with my daughter) a few times, and each time the boss died, it crashed. This did not happen in engine for the playtests. This could have been your issue. Thank you for playing it!

Ch4oticAU

20. Apr 2020 · 08:23 UTC

Made me laugh looking at the cute dog! Nice modelling, and the first 3D game I've ever played from Godot :) Nice work mate.

PS: Hey from Reddit!

DerKuchen

20. Apr 2020 · 14:52 UTC

Nice modelling, and that in such a short time! I like the idea. I did not really understand what the towers do, and often it seems that standing still is the best strategy, maybe the aliens should actively follow the dog if they are too near? It was fun to play!

verrazano

20. Apr 2020 · 15:36 UTC

I liked the turret models and the derpy dog. And I got a kick out of the gameover voice over. The game seemed to bug out towards the end unfortunately the boss alien was stuck in a tree on it's side. When It died the game crashed.

🎤 Maindric

21. Apr 2020 · 07:16 UTC

@ch4oticau lol, thank you. I am far better at making vague 3D models vs 2D sprites.

@dekuchen the idea is that the towers would defeat the aliens. I should have added another collision to be all around at least a bit.

@verrazano for some reason the compile broke the victory portion of the game. I noticed this after the deadline. There is certainly some issues with the Kinematic Bodies (Stuck to trees, sometimes flies to ground, etc). I have never been good with physics engines.

MysteriousBaboon

21. Apr 2020 · 12:02 UTC

Really interesting and unique, that's kinda fun to play !

Goutye

21. Apr 2020 · 13:02 UTC

I think I won: I heard some kind of "Congratula----" before crashing :smile:
Well done, and congratulations to finish a game in 48h!!
You are allowed to fix game breaking bug after the deadline, so if you ever find out how to fix the victory portion of the game, please do :v:

bongo227

21. Apr 2020 · 13:09 UTC

I really like the idea of a reverse tower defense!

It would have been nice to have a linux build.

🎤 Maindric

21. Apr 2020 · 13:10 UTC

@mysteriousbaboon Thank you. :)

@Goutye, I didn't know that... Time to investigate deeper.

GeneralSturgeon

21. Apr 2020 · 15:18 UTC

Good job! Managed to get a few minutes in and then a ship got stuck and no progress after that. Needs a bit of polish but had fun!

rigdonware

21. Apr 2020 · 15:55 UTC

Great job! I'm glad you stayed motivated and finished it out. It's always the best feeling to finish a game and have people play it. No crashing when I played. I loved the graphics. I didn't see the tower do anything though.

🎤 Maindric

21. Apr 2020 · 17:41 UTC

@rigdonware, I meant to add an effect to the tower for shooting, but I ran out of time.

@generalsturgeon should be fixed now. :)

@goutye per your recommendation, I fixed the bug. I redid the alien spawning (which was causing null reference issues) and even fixed the stutter issue with that. I did fix the aliens getting stuck in the ground too as that is semi-game breaking. Though, I didn't fix them getting stuck in trees... Oh well.

Eulalia Porto Figueroba

21. Apr 2020 · 18:19 UTC

Good job! I had a great time playing this, very simple but it works perfectly as a game! The only things that I missed is some way to watch the towers shooting, aliens changing maybe the color if they are very damaged, and the camera did really weird stuff when I was on the limits of the map.

Igoreshka

21. Apr 2020 · 18:24 UTC

That dog is awesome :smile: this game have an ending?

wheybags

21. Apr 2020 · 18:44 UTC

@maindric I noticed a problem where my last two aliens got stuck on turrets so they nhever blew up (until i realised and intentionally aggroed them)

I liked the dog model. Such derp :D

🎤 Maindric

22. Apr 2020 · 01:08 UTC

@eulalia-porto-figueroba Yeah, feedback to the player to have the turrets shoot was a planned feature that I never got around to adding...

@igoreshka Once all aliens are destroyed, there is a little victory message. It takes 155 seconds for all aliens to spawn, and they are destroyed faster if you aggro them and pull them to the towers.

@wheybags, I should have implemented a way to a) prevent two things from spawning at the same locations and b) ensured that if aliens were canceling out each other's movement to then change their destinations. Thank you for that. :)

AdonisDevs

23. Apr 2020 · 21:00 UTC

I love games like this. I don't know why, but there was something just so eerie about it - I felt like there was something more to the game or a dark secret - sort of like Petscop. I think it was the sounds haha! I tried something like this too, so it was cool to see how a different game came out. Great job :)

![sc_temp.PNG](///raw/f22/c/z/32dbe.png)

jsmars

24. Apr 2020 · 07:38 UTC

Nice entry! It was quite fun to play! Nice atmosphere and difficult which I like. I found a tactic to just stand in the corner though since it's quite low chance for them to bounce into the corner. An idea to fix this would be to make them chase you if you stand still too long maybe.

I waited a long time to get a bos but eventually just all the UFOs dissappeared? Is there some kind of ending I missed?

AdrianKrawczyk

24. Apr 2020 · 07:41 UTC

this game is fun!! gj

Remco

25. Apr 2020 · 23:09 UTC

Not a bad start.

- Consider not starting zoomed in
- Maybe some sort of high-score or other 'progress' element?
- I could hide under the trees for a long while...

🎤 Maindric

26. Apr 2020 · 23:39 UTC

@jsmars, That is fair. Given the "pure" randomness of the alien's destinations, there is a small chance that they will go to the corners. I could have offset this in different ways. Likely the easiest way would be to set the dog's position as their destination randomnly (or regularly). This would counteract any possible standing still tactic.

@adriankrawczyk thank you!

@Remco that is fair, and I considered against it. I just wanted to showcase the dog model from a perspective that the player is unlikely to do in natural game play. I did consider a score system, but that was after adding in effects to the towers.... Clearly I forgot that latter as well.. Correct, I have come up with a technique that should seem natural for future jams.

Bloham

29. Apr 2020 · 06:48 UTC

The Camera freaked me out in the beginning xD But the atmosphere was nice and the graphic fitting, just felt like on of the games from the beginning of the century (what can be a good thing ^^) I mean I like your aesthetic. The Aliens are random I guess? otherwise the hunting part did not work out too good :) Compliments to your wife for pushing you a little!