Turn of the Tide by Polyethyleneglykol

Operate a small Saboteur squad amidst a massive RTS battle.
With over a hundred AI units warring amongst the small villages and the main city, you have to operate deep amongst enemy lines.
Tasked with placing explosives to disrupt the enemies supply lines, or disrupting their communications by destroying the communication antennas you'll have to do your best to survive while being surrounded by your foes.

Credits:
Polyethyleneglykol - Code & Art
Cameron Paxton - Music
GargleSmargle - SFX
| Link | https://markus-franz.itch.io/turn-of-the-tide |
| Apple MacOS (Untested) | https://markus-franz.itch.io/turn-of-the-tide |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/turn-of-the-tide |
Ratings
| Given | 33🗳️ | 46🗨️ |
it was surprisingly un-janky given the timeframe it was made in! very nice :D
if i out of sheer necessity have to complain about anything, it's that it would have been nice to easily zoom in on where a specific unit is, given the scale of the map (and that the combat within which you'd get absolutely smashed seemed hard to avoid once you got past the first few obstacles)
also figuring out how to use the traps was a bit hm, i think i accidentally placed a few of them, realising afterwards it wasn't buttons to get more units but to spawn the traps, oops :P
but really, those are minor complaints :) very cool
In the end even though I destroyed all the radars I lost all my saboteurs and soft lock myself because the allied forces couldn't really win even though the resources were overwhelmingly on their side
With map this big and zoom that big I would even say having foot soldiers is meh, let every unit be a fastest vehicle or make the map smaller.
Also you either need to introduce some strong antialiasing or you have to change the textures because they are all look glitchy zoomed out.
Nonetheles this is a really great concept!
I found the map to be a little bit big, and I couldn't find a way to highlight/find my units by clicking on their little boxes, so I had to go manually click & drag near each town to figure out where exactly they were. I also ran into a bug where two or more guys would get into a car and only one would ever get out. Considering the amount of content that's achievable in 72 hours, it may have been a nice idea to focus on 3-4 towns in a smaller cluster and make the gameplay more tactical, rather than having a much bigger world without a whole lot going on in it.
I would also suggest uploading the file as a .zip and not a .7z so more people can play it, it's really nice! :smile:
@profan Zooming in on units actually was in the 1.0 version, but sadly with the unity version I used there is a bug where transforming a orthographic camera in the way I did would soft crash the game, as the mouse Input is out of the camera clipping planes. So I had to just remove the button as a sacrifice! All in all thanks for the great feed back and kind words!
@octopussy Yeah, good point! The only way to earn cash is through destroying objectives, giving a player small amounts of cash per resource point generated would have been smart. But bug squashing was the main priority at the end of the jam, who knew making a big scale AI RTS like that would have alot of edge cases to consider :D! And the Anti aliasing issue you are mentioning is a Unity thing sadly, the Pixel Perfect camera is still in experimental and doesn't support the URP pipeline. I definitely should have checked that before hand! Thank you for the comment its much appreciated!
@loginaut There was a way to highlight and control units from the UI but I had to remove it as mentioned in the reply above, as to regards to the world size it was really a shot in the dark to how big the map should be. Thank you for all the kind words, and as per your suggestion a .zip file version is now available, I always kind of default to .7z because it gives around 10% better compression it seems.
@loginaut Thanks for playing and giving feedback. I'm glad you liked the audio!
@crumblybread Thank you for the nice words, and great username btw :D
@maratg2 Thank you for the comment!
Even though I completed it, I feel like I missed a big part of the game. I see people talking about AI allied units, but I don't really know how to access those or if I have any input on them. Maybe a dedicated help menu would have been helpful (it was probably my bad anyway).
It's a good game nevertheless, I can appreciate the hard work that went into this. Congrats!
I'll let @polyethyleneglykol chime on the details, but I'll say that you only have direct control over your subterfuge squad to assist your side (coming from base on the west) in claiming all of the outposts and the base on the east side of the map. Thanks so much for checking it out!
Great music, sfx and art. The work put on the game shows up. Keep it up!
@jkoftekian I appreciate you taking the time to play the game and listen to the music! When the game begins, you have direct control over the saboteur unit in the middle of the screen. You can click and drag to select and then right click to direct him where to go. He'll automatically shoot at anything that can be destroyed (towers, enemy vehicles, other enemy troops) or can lay down explosive traps by clicking the button on the left side. Destroying towers reduces the amount of resources that the enemy draws from bases they claim, making it much easier for your side (mostly controlled by AI) to win. I hope that helps!
Great effort going for this kind of game in a restricted amount of time.
@bmacintosh Thanks for the kind words! The bombs detonate automatically when an enemy vehicle comes within proximity of them. Just be careful not to have your guy(s) standing too close when it goes off!
The gameplay is really interesting, but maybe the map is a bit too big with not much to do, and as you can add units anywhere you want, I just ended spawning people near places where I had something to destroy, and it worked ^^
It does not need a lot of changes to become a real pearl, the work you've done is amazing for a jam, so keep up the good work ! Try to simplify your concept so that it becomes more immediate !
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1012941526
@jrevel Thanks for your constructive feedback! I agree that it was a huge idea to try in 72 hours. We originally did have a "zoom to unit" button implemented, but it caused a lot of problems so we ended up having to take it out right before release. Similarly with the "units spawning in the middle of the screen"... we had plans to balance that better. Really glad you were able to enjoy it though, and thanks so much for your input!
@justcamh Hi Cameron! Cameron here :) I composed the music and helped brainstorm concepts and stuff, but I can speak to some of the things that came up in your playthrough. Gotta admit I got antsy when you were fixing audio levels while the tutorial was playing, haha! But I was surprised by how much you were able to figure out anyway considering it's fairly esoteric...
One major thing you didn't figure out (and this was a UI issue, not your fault) was that vehicle units with green health bars were on YOUR side. Vehicles (and soldiers) with red health bars were enemy units. Friendly units originate from the base on the left side of the map, and enemies on the right. The "AI Target" buildings are resource centers, and the vehicles from either side go to those to try to claim them. The more resource stations your side has claimed, the more vehicles/troops it can produce to overwhelm the enemy side. Taking out the towers reduces the multiplier applied to resources gathered by the enemies.
Overall, it was really enjoyable and informative to watch your playthrough. Thanks for sharing it with us!
You got a lot of feedback already, so i'll just make a suggestion, maybe for next time:
A playable tutorial would fit really well here. The game is complex and has many different concepts which have to be taught. So maybe the player would start on a small bit of the map, zoomed in an one commando and control him to do simple things like shoot an antenna. Then maybe get into a car and drive to the next part, where he plants a bomb and sees a truck destroyed. Then the game opens up more and reveals the two teams, although it has to be clear where the player belongs to (strong colors maybe?). Doesn't really matter, but it's always great if the game can teach concept by concept and gradually open up, especially if it is a deep game like yours.
Great job, that's such a cool entry, and really unique.