Spacemine Defense by Jimbly
You are tasked with harvesting all resources from the sector as quickly as possible. Your boss tells you there is no danger and everything will go just fine.
Heavily inspired by an old Flash game I remember fondly, called The Space Game.
Some notes: * Supply is created every 10 seconds, and distributed to anything that needs it * One Factory creates 10 supply, so can supply at most 10 Miners * You also need supply to build, so you'll likely want to build a second Factory after building 3-4 Miners
Links * HTML5(WebGL): dashingstrike.com/LudumDare/LD51 * Source Code: Jimbly/LD51-spacemine-defense
Controls: Mouse with keyboard shortcuts (recommended), should also work with Touch controls (tablet or large phone required to see clearly, though!)
Some additional hints if you get stuck: * Most things you build go through their entire supply every 10 seconds if in use * When you encounter a second kind of enemy, you'll need fighters created by the Flybay to deal with them * A single Flybay will consume 10 supply every 10 seconds, so will need a dedicated Factory to be optimal
Screenshots:
Post-submission bug fixes: * Fixed a bug where a high score would not be submitted if you replayed a level
Development Notes
I seem to alternate between super simple ideas (like last Compo, where I had a playable game in 45 minutes), and overly complicated beasts that I just barely manage to get functional with almost no time for polish and balancing. This is one of the latter, with lots of complicated stuff going on under the hood, and lots of design space to explore, but I basically just had time to do what seemed like the minimal "2 different weapons, 2 different enemies, 2 levels". However I did have at least some time to add sounds, and the music turned out better than I expected (first time using 1BITDRAGON, highly recommend!). The balance is... I really have no idea, we’ll see how people do!
Tools Used * Custom Engine: GLOV.js * Mtn Dew * Music and SFX in 1BITDRAGON * SFX in Bfxr * Aseprite * Photoshop * Audacity * PICO-8 Color Palette (used poorly) * Fonts: 04b03 and Perfect DOS VGA 437
| HTML5 (WebGL) | http://www.dashingstrike.com/LudumDare/LD51/ |
| Link | https://github.com/Jimbly/LD51-spacemine-defense |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/spacemine-defense |
Ratings
| Overall | 2th | 4.474⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1th | 4.564⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 111th | 3.679⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 266th | 3.538⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 152th | 3.705⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 35th | 3.974⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 255th | 2.5⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 58th | 3.838⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 35🗨️ |
And the leaderboard! How did you finish everything in such a short while and have time to spare to implement it! Amazing
@serxiolas Thanks for playing, and glad you liked it!
@johnnydz0707 Heh, yeah, the enemies on the border are a little weird, I was planning on making that better/clearer, but, I didn't have the spare time, and a `clamp()` was easy ;). As for finishing everything, it was a stretch, I definitely really had to push up until the end. It helps working in an engine that I spend my work week working in though, too, and the high score system is part of the engine too, just had to hook up the game's logic / leaderboard display to it.
@gcrexx Glad you figured it out! Some things are a bit overcomplicated, if there's anything that was the most unclear, would be good to know what, I could leave a note here on the description for those who come after you =). Glad you liked the music, it was my first time playing with `1BITDRAGON`, and it turned out pretty great!
@somecodingguy This one was lots of fun, maybe there'll be a non-jam version some day ^_^.
@nyxkn Those are some great scores!
I followed you while scrolling in the during the jam because you posted a screenshot that appealed me, and boy, what a wonderful game ! Best entry I saw in this ludum, but I have to admit that's totally my kind of games.
It was a pleasure to play, the game is correctly balanced (which is very hard for this type of game in a jam). The game concept is perfect, the 10seconds trick is perfectly integrated in the game play and you understand quickly the game thanks to a first level with near no enemies (at first I believed it was a bug that there was laser tower with no enemies).
10:26s for the last level, I'm pretty happy :).
Congratulations for this entry and I hope you'll continue to develop this game, because I really enjoyed it.
@sebbernery That's great to hear! I sometimes wonder if anyone sees those while we're all scrambling to get things done. But, I was so excited when I had the basic build packets flowing around I had to share it, kinda thought it would appeal to programmer-gamers ;).
Mostly I left the laser tower in the first level so you could take the time to read what it does / requires... and then when I was playtesting I forgot to disable enemies on the first level and literally laughed out loud, cursing my darn boss who said everything would be fine, so I decided to leave it (and, much delayed, the enemies) in (also as an extra... learning experience... for new players, I guess? =)
@thedevduellist Glad you enjoyed it, and your time is not too bad! At least a couple of people who have the top scores are some gamer friends who are pretty competitive, and _may_ have played the first level a dozen times or so competing... Glad you liked the music, `1BITDRAGON` was really fun and easy to make something pretty good sounding.
@jaykayey Thanks for playing! Yeah, the text is a _little_ small, but I ended up with a lot of information I wanted to convey, and kinda picked a resolution to use and stuck with it ^_^. Out of curiosity, were you playing on mobile or on a small display, or in a small window, or anything like that? If on desktop, your browser's fullscreen function (`F11` by default, usually) is super handy ;). On my monitor, the text is slightly larger (if harder to read, due to the pixel font) than the text here in the Ludum Dare website, but that'll vary greatly by device...
and now... while writing this.. it started randomly in the background again :smile:
That's weird with the music, definitely sounds like a bug. What browser on what platform are you using? This might be affecting my commercial game too, so would be great to track it down if there's a bug =).
Absolutely brilliant, 10/10, probably my favorite game so far!
Currently my highest rating in fun so far and I also like the music! Only small nitpick I have is that sometimes placing buildings is a bit weird.
You're welcome :smile:
It was windows 10 64-bit
Chrome latest version
WebGL
@oadt Yeah, the learning curve is a little steep, and there's a lot of mechanics to grasp, with no tutorial, so that first level works out pretty well. I'm really glad I changed it at the last minute to 5 minutes without enemy attacks from my original 3 minutes, which probably would have wiped many users =). It was actually originally intended to be no enemies spawning at all, but I had a bug and it caused me to laugh out loud and curse my tricksy boss, so I thought it was best left in ;). Building placing is a bit weird (not overlapping other buildings and not having the supply line overlap other supply lines is finicky, as well as running out of supply links on routers (maybe one of the least obvious mechanics, as there's no real feedback, you just don't see a link show up...). If I work on this game again I'd definitely add something where it finds the nearest valid place to make placing buildings much easier, and need to color-code overtaxed routers, or highlight those with open links, or something.
@tanis Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed it, and glad the balance felt good, as I did not have much time to spend on balance (really just squeezing in a couple self playtests at the very end, 0 playtests by people other than me ^_^). I guess either I chose some good random, arbitrary numbers for the (rather large) set of parameters, or all of these Ludum Dare Compos have been refining my game design instinct ;).
"Heavily inspired by an old Flash game I remember fondly, called The Space Game."
Thank you so much, that would have been bothering me all night.
Good use of the theme, and a good game in general. My leaderboard score doesn't seem to update with additional plays though, don't know if I'm missing something or if that's a bug. Didn't get to 100% but also did way better than my first 10% on the third level.
The first two are easy to beat while the last one offers more of a challenge, really like the resource management and the use of the theme!
@blacklambert Really helps to be working in an engine I know inside and out that I also spend my work days working in ^_^, then can spend all of my energy on actually implementing gameplay and no time wondering how I do any particular thing. _1BITDRAGON_ also really helped get music better than any I've ever made in a jam in significantly less time (I think I spent maybe an hour total on music and SFX).
The sound was great, the sound effects worked very well, and the music was very in keeping with the theme. Just the right vibe. The graphics were a little bit old school and maybe a bit rough around the edges, but it definitely had a style.
My only gripes were that sometimes it was hard to place a building - I worked out that the nodes only had a certain number of connections, but I do wonder if some automatic re-jiggling of connections would make gameplay smoother - there were times were I was sure if I had build my connections in a different way, it would all be fine, so changing where the connections were on the fly might be all it takes to make it less frustrating to place buildings. I also wish it was a bit easier to assess damage - maybe something like factorio where destroyed buildings have a shadow of themselves and a `/!\` or something.
Potentially also being able to control the attack spaceships might be nice too - they were pretty dumb and I wished I could have been able to tell them where to go, and it might have also added an extra layer of complexity.
The theme worked well too - it kind of became defunct after a certain point though, as power just got to places as it got there. I think it would be a different game without it though, so perhaps it is more key than I think.
Really great job, especially for a compo entry!
Aside from the nice mechanics, I found the levels well balanced in terms of difficulty (especially the third one: challenging, but makable).
Really impressive, even more so for a compo!
@nyxkn Thanks, cheers!
https://youtu.be/iHlxBPwYDcU