GLYPH by JaCkJoKeZ

made by JaCkJoKeZ for LD34 (COMPO)

Controls:
WASD for movement
Left Click to use a spell
"R" to restart
and Esc to exit the game.

Objective: Kill enemies to level up, grow stronger, and survive until the counter gets to zero!

First Ludum Dare, Whoohoo! I used the theme "Growing" as in "Growing more powerful", but I feel like I made my scope too broad and should have narrowed down a bit and focused on an easier genre. Even a small, fast-paced RPG is difficult and time-consuming to make without any code-base.

For those of you wondering, here are the programs I used;
Engine/Language: GM:Studio/GML,
Art: ASEPRITE, Cosmigo Pro Motion, in-engine editor,
Sound: Bfxr

Changelog:
-Fixed bug where game would crash due to the player leveling up while dead.
-Updated link to be a standalone executable and not an installer
-3:59 A.M. 12/14/2015 - Various object placement fixes that caused conflicts with movement causing, stutters and other game breaking bugs. Also fixed a variable conflict that was causing shadows to render backwards and non_transparent.
-6:22 P.M. 12/14/2015 Fixed bug where player wouldn't collide with enemy hit box. Also fixed starting spell not scaling with damage stat. Fixed bug where player could not be damaged. Added a win condition so that game can be played and actually WON. Also, some small balancing issues have been addressed.
-5:33 A.M. 12/18/2015 Fixed bug where game would cause StackOVerflow. Required a re-upload and re-link to Google Drive

Windows	https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5QpOSj1wG7PZTZrOWg2NU9LNXM/view?usp=sharing
Source	https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5QpOSj1wG7PSUlFWjNCRnFTT1E/view?usp=sharing
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=64810

Ratings

Coolness	36%	1857
Overall	2.89	767

Fun	2.84	694
Graphics	3.47	289
Innovation	2.56	795
Mood	3.00	444
Theme	2.47	933

Feedback

rzuf

14. Dec 2015 · 10:45 UTC

It's very easy to get stuck between enemies at the beginning. I couldn't die (hitpoints were stuck at 80), as well as the spawner at the bottom left part of the screen. I liked the feeling of becoming extremely powerful very quickly. :D
Wizard sprite is pretty awesome.
Congrats on your first entry!
Oh, and I made an RPG as well, so I know how hard it is. But it's not impossible! Cheers!

🎤 JaCkJoKeZ

14. Dec 2015 · 23:18 UTC

Thanks! I tried out your game and I liked your idea as well and the way you implemented the RPG elements! And thanks for pointing out those bugs. I crushed some bugs today, so hopefully that's all fixed now :D

Nizan

16. Dec 2015 · 10:05 UTC

I found it really hard to kill your first enemy, at first I thought the enemies were bugged and not dying. Not sure where the spawners are either? Graphics not loading?

peyj

16. Dec 2015 · 10:06 UTC

It's not working on my win10 notebook. That's a problem with GM-Studios fullscreen-mode, though. I've encountered it before, you can fix it by making it "fake fullscreen": enable borderless window and call window_set_size(display_get_width(), display_get_height()) on game start.

timeshapers

16. Dec 2015 · 10:26 UTC

attacking enemies seems pointless, running away in circles is the dominant strategy.

🎤 JaCkJoKeZ

16. Dec 2015 · 10:35 UTC

@Nizan oh! sorry about that, I forgot to update the objective after I did some bug fixes ha ha my bad. I spent so long on the systems I didn't have time to implement a system where you could actually *WIN so I added the "spawner" as a somewhat placeholder win condition. I didn't want to "add" anything per se, so I just added a condition where it would go to the next room if you survived a set amount of seconds. That's why it says in the top left now "Quest: Survive" (;w;) lol. As for the enemies, they ARE a bit difficult early in the game because it's a balancing issue. If they're too easy in the beginning you'll just snowball and wreck everything's face and challenge goes *POOF* haha. The delay on spells is completely intentional as well, if you notice some spells cast a lot faster than others :D

@peyj thanks for the tip! I didn't know that before, I just added it in and hopefully it'll run now!

🎤 JaCkJoKeZ

16. Dec 2015 · 10:36 UTC

@timeshapers, until they catch up to you ;)

Jupiter_Hadley

16. Dec 2015 · 16:44 UTC

Really challenging game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 34 compilation video series, if you’d like to check it out :) https://youtu.be/XuTLfsOkf7k

candlesan

17. Dec 2015 · 06:45 UTC

Could not run. Glyph just started spawning additional copies of Glyph. I opened up task manager and there were hundreds of copies of Glyph.exe running with more being created every second. Had to reboot my machine.

Leon Möhring

17. Dec 2015 · 08:30 UTC

good game for first time ludum dare, nice pixelart on the enemies

YinYin

17. Dec 2015 · 11:54 UTC

same problem as candlesan

🎤 JaCkJoKeZ

17. Dec 2015 · 19:37 UTC

@candlesan & @ YinYin, can I have your specs? What's your window resolution, Windows version?

Skruffye

18. Dec 2015 · 04:36 UTC

Same problem as candlesan. Game copies itself until it crashes the system (in my case it bluescreened).
Running Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium edition on an Intel i7-3740QM processor and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX.
I'll come back to this game in a few days to give you time to fix the problem. :)

🎤 JaCkJoKeZ

18. Dec 2015 · 10:30 UTC

@Skruffye thanks for the specs! It took me a couple of hours, and I had to run the game in a virtual box, but so far it's up and running again! Thanks for the information and feedback you guys, it's really helpful in improving my game :D

Hackbug

25. Dec 2015 · 14:34 UTC

I love the graphics and the gameplay ;)

🎤 JaCkJoKeZ

27. Dec 2015 · 04:21 UTC

@Hackbug thanks!

zenmumbler

31. Dec 2015 · 14:06 UTC

The window opened about 200px down and 50px to the left of my screen origin, but I could still play it. No real link to the theme I can discern and if you die the timer continues and then when it runs out tells me I survived :)
The spell takes very long to cast and does little damage, am I doing something wrong?

Guard13007

04. Jan 2016 · 05:48 UTC

The game launched in a borderless window partially off of my monitor, so I couldn't see nearly a third of the game. It also didn't seem to be very responsive to controls. :/

🎤 JaCkJoKeZ

08. Jan 2016 · 07:59 UTC

I apologize for the bugs, I completely revamped the game and was forced to upload a Post-Ludum-Dare version on GameJolt which is now linked to the Windows link. For my first Ludum Dare, I gotta say I was overly ambitious, but at least now the build is stable after about a month. Sorry for the delay, but you guys can follow development on the site. Thanks so much for trying it out and your contribution!