Galactic traders by mar3k

made by mar3k for Ludum Dare 51 (COMPO)

Galactic traders

Galactic traders is a real time strategy (RTS) game. You have to build a strong army and colonies to destroy your enemy. Every 10 seconds: * Market is updated * Resources are generated * Opportunities appear

I encourage you to post your fastest time to beat the game or the longest time you survived for (I'm not yet sure if it's difficult or not).

NOTE: The game throws you into tutorial and after finishing it or skipping it you get a real match.

Controls

The game contains a tutorial, that starts once the game is open (not when restarting after game over).

F2 - Skip tutorial.

Mouse left click - All actions.

ESC - Unselect.

Tips and info

Fleet units stack, if there is at least one in the build area (blue tiles). You can move fleet away to create a new stack, or move them back to make a stack bigger.
Enemy renews blockade, unless all blockading ships are destroyed.

Scoreboard

ZLuca - 21 min 39 sec
Jimbly - 32 minutes
Paja - 40 min 21 sec

Running the game

On Windows you can download the zip which includes Java JRE so that you don't have to download it. Start the game by running run.bat script.

The game is available as .jar file or source code. It was developed on Linux (KDE Neon) system, but should be platform independent.

The game does not run

It's mostl likely that you're missing the needed Java stuff - you just need to have the latest Java SDK (download Java).

Windows

Just double click the file and it should open if you have Java SDK installed.

Linux and Mac

If double click does not work for you then just type java -jar GalacticTraders.jar in terminal in the folder where you downloaded the game. (In case downloading jdk from link above was not helpful, look in your repos for java-11-openjdk-11.0.12.0.7.4.fc34.x86_64 by using your packaging app like sudo dnf install .../sudo apt-get install ... or similar.)

About the game(dev)

This is a COMPO entry (made within 48 hours) all by me (the art, sound effects, fonts, code...).
I made this in Java using my custom hand made engine (that's why it's somewhat small, but might have some problems with portability... oops).

Post compo edits

Changed the text at the end of a tutorial to "Tutorial finished" from "Victory" and "Press [Enter] to restart" to "Press [Enter] to start a real match" to avoid confusion.
Fixed bug, where enemy blockade was renewed also if it was destroyed (because of a missing check).
Scanner opportunity card was removed, since it cause bugs, where repair ship were unusable.

Source + jar	https://github.com/mark-sed/ld51
EXE + JAR	https://pixcom.itch.io/galactic-traders
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/galactic-traders

Ratings

Given

12🗳️

17🗨️

Feedback

Jimbly

04. Oct 2022 · 03:48 UTC

Pretty cool game! I definitely like this kind of thing... first game I survived 7 minutes. Second game I finally won after 32 minutes. It wasn't particularly difficult once I figured out how it all worked, just need to sit and wait and buy slaves on the black market to man my fighters, while occassionally jumping in with my mother ship and jumping back to repair.

I ran into 2 bugs - once (during the tutorial), I clicked the "opportunity" card, and it froze the game (so, I never clicked it again). Also, I chose the bonus that made my ships go half speed, and then when I tried to move a repair ship, it launched, but never landed, presumably it's now moving at a speed of 0? I just treated them as stationary repair stations after that one never returned...

I'd have liked a little more to do invest in colonies and such... it seemed like I could never get more than +1 population per cycle, which means 50 seconds between new fighter fleets, which means, well, a good 30 minutes until I've got enough to beat the enemy. Was there something else I missed there?

Good job, a lot of complexity here for a jam game!

🎤 mar3k

04. Oct 2022 · 06:57 UTC

@jimbly Thanks for the descriptive comment, and I'll add your time to the scoreboard in the description. Thanks also for letting me know of the bugs, I've fixed the scanner bug, but by removing the card, since now thinking about it, it is so overpowered, since the slow down does not mean anything really and seeing all just removes the need for scouts and scouting (also you are more than right about the speed being 0).

I also wanted to make colonies more interesting and with more to do, but there was not enough time, so unfortunately. The amount you generate should be more than 1 if i calculate correctly, but maybe you did not have enough food?

Thanks again.

niccolo-temperanza

04. Oct 2022 · 12:25 UTC

Can't get it to run :(

Jimbly

04. Oct 2022 · 13:44 UTC

One other note, for Windows users at least, it would be good to include the JRE so they don't need to install a giant SDK to get it to run. Take a look at this game for how it's done (I literally used the JRE included with that game to run this one, so should work!) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/taking-over-the-world

Jimbly

04. Oct 2022 · 13:46 UTC

I definitely had tons of food at the end, maybe it was making more than 1, but if so, I didn't see anything indicating where that would come from, I think I just got +1 population per cycle from the first planet.

🎤 mar3k

04. Oct 2022 · 14:12 UTC

@jimbly Thanks for the top regarding the JRE, I'll try it. Regarding the generation I'll try looking into it. Your mother ship should be generating 0-1 on level 1 and then 1 on other levels and then Planet Dream also generates people. Thanks for letting me know.

🎤 mar3k

04. Oct 2022 · 14:35 UTC

@niccolo-temperanza probably a problem with missing JRE, based on recommendation from Jimbly, I've created a zip with JRE included and a run.bat script. You can try downloading that.

Jimbly

04. Oct 2022 · 15:08 UTC

Ah, I _did_ upgrade my mothership, but I then forgot about it, I bet I never looked at the mothership again after the upgrade (wasn't sure what it did, just figured more damage or something ^_^). So, maybe then I was getting +2 / tick, but that's still a pretty long wait to get to the dozens of fighters needed =).

scottgoldsmith

04. Oct 2022 · 16:12 UTC

Really enjoyable game, love the depth of this as an RTS on a quick timeline like LD! Would definitely play more of this, just fear lots of people will have difficulty with it not being a simple .exe. Great work!

🎤 mar3k

04. Oct 2022 · 20:46 UTC

@scottgoldsmith thanks for playing and the kind comment. I'm aware of the problems with my Java release and every LD some people find it difficult to run and I get that. Hopefully I'll soon get to upgrade/change this.

ThatzNiko

05. Oct 2022 · 18:08 UTC

Cool game!

c4ris

05. Oct 2022 · 19:12 UTC

I eventually got the game to run thank you for the guidance above. I really enjoyed the game with proper planning I feel like I could go hours exploring a mini galaxy. Impressive how much you could fit in such a short time. With more time you can balance all of the mechanics even more! Thanks for the fun time!

LDJam user 300422

05. Oct 2022 · 19:54 UTC

![Bild_2022-10-05_214725507.png](///raw/685/94/z/5265f.png)
GOD! FINALLY! it took me over an hour and multiple attempts but i finally beat it :muscle: great game, lots of strategy. I feel like the enemy units sometimes are way stronger attack wise than my own, or i just saw myself defeated too often :sweat_smile: I like how i always felt like i could beat it eventually, really enjoyed it, great game. I'd love to give you some critique as well, but except for missing music, a desire for more levels and missing credits, i cant think of anything:

SnareRush

05. Oct 2022 · 20:02 UTC

Fun little game! Nicely boils down a lot of rts elements.

DeltaMain

05. Oct 2022 · 20:11 UTC

Wow! You definetely should continue this game. I don't know how you managed to make this amount of content in just 2 days. The only problem I had was crash, that happened then I clicked the opportunity card.

Caerind

05. Oct 2022 · 21:03 UTC

Really nice game ! A bit long to play, I couldn't manage to win, the enemy was growing to fast for me. My citizen growing rate wasn't enough, I'm not sure if I could boost it up.

🎤 mar3k

05. Oct 2022 · 21:44 UTC

@c4ris Thank you so much for the kind words, I'm really happy you liked it.

@zluca Damn, that is impressive time, I'm adding you to the scoreboard! I'm glad you enjoyed it. And I agree with you, some music would totally be nice and more levels or at least some more procedural generation would add a lot. Thanks again.

@deltamain Thank you so much, I appreciate such a nice comment. Maybe I could do some more work on it, after all I did enjoy making this game a lot. And sorry for the crash, I'll try look into it.

@caerind Thank you. I wanted to make the match shorter, but that's really not the case it seems like. You can boost the people generation by leveling up your mother ship (there are hidden "achievements", which give you level up opportunity card) and also some planets generate people, when colonized. Then there is also the black market which sells slaves and also you always need food otherwise people start dying.

thedude3600

05. Oct 2022 · 22:05 UTC

This is pretty cool! It works really well! For me, an RTS would be way too ambitious for a Game Jam, but this was fun to play! Didnt beat it (yet!) but enjoyed it. One nit pick I had (and maybe I was playing wrong) but once a ship starts moving and you deselect it, I couldnt figure out how to reselect it to change its course :-/. but over all Great Job!

🎤 mar3k

06. Oct 2022 · 21:07 UTC

@thedude3600 Thank you so much for your comment and playing the game. Regarding the ship selection, it is intentional. If I had time to add some story and meaning to the game, this would totally be one of the things. Once you send a ship somewhere it cannot be targeted, cannot target anything and cannot change course - kinda like how the transportation works in this universe.

alexander epton

08. Oct 2022 · 01:00 UTC

i wasn't able to play this as half the ui was hidden offscreen. will try tomorrow on a larger screen. was dissapointed as the gameplay looks really deep and fun to play

🎤 mar3k

08. Oct 2022 · 08:39 UTC

@alexander-epton Oh sorry for that. The game has set resolution and I didn't have time to add settings to change them. A full HD screen is unfortunately needed.

jirrev

08. Oct 2022 · 15:16 UTC

After reading the comments I indeed lowered by settings to full HD (was ultra-wide). I played two games, the first I died after around 10 mins, the second after around 15, definitely a complex game with a simple theme. Lovely creation!

LDJam user 245333

09. Oct 2022 · 15:24 UTC

Mmm, maybe I don't know how to correctly play this game. ^^' I must have spent about 40 minutes on a single game, and I was just stuck from the beginning. Despite having colonized 3 planets, I never gained people fast enough. It was taking me probably one minute or two to build a single fleet. Trading allowed me to quickly gain other resources, but in the end the occasion to get people (and thus augment my fleet) were rare. The number of the top right reached -145, some of my colonies had a negative happiness (although I figured out how to increase it eventually, but I don't know how it affects their productivity). I'm proud of having colonized the third planet, surrounded by enemies. But I eventually understood that no matter what amount of time I would spend accumulating resources, all those efforts are always reduced to nothing when I get attack by the adversary, which army grow at a rate extremely higher than mine. There's no way I wait until I have 27 fleets! Maybe there's a mechanic I didn't understood. Or maybe I did a wrong choice at the beginning that lead to this unfortunate situation. But it feels like the one resource that the game asks for the most was also the more scarce, except for the enemy which had it very quickly.

Still an engaging system! I enjoyed the time I had figuring it out (the tutorial is really great, but there's a lot of things to learn). And it could lead to a great strategy game with a little bit more balancing! I think what was missing was a feeling of progression: usually the more time I spend gathering resources, the more faster it becomes to obtain more of them, and to advance in other goals. Here I felt stagnating even though I had tons of (almost) everything. Clean job also on the sprites, they're easily identifiable and consistent with each other. Congratulation for managing to finish a RTS during a jam, it's never easy!

🎤 mar3k

10. Oct 2022 · 07:10 UTC

@itooh Thank you so much for the detailed comment, it really helps me better understand what needs more polishing. And I get that the AI difficulty is one of the things. I didn't have much time to test it properly and it shows, although there are some tricks player can use to "cheat" the system (such as disengaging, repairing and returning). Also I wanted people to be slow-growing resource so that it was not too easy and building fleet would take some more time and managing, but it might be too slow I suppose.
Thanks for playing and for your comment.

Fedora

13. Oct 2022 · 02:20 UTC

Hey, really cool game, reminds me of The Day of Sagittarius III.
It's great that you have a tutorial like that to get the playing started since the game is pretty complex.

cybek

14. Oct 2022 · 23:16 UTC

Hey, I managed to get java exception :P
Exception in thread "ld50" java.util.ConcurrentModificationException
at java.base/java.util.ArrayList$Itr.checkForComodification(Unknown Source)
at java.base/java.util.ArrayList$Itr.next(Unknown Source)
at com.sedlacek.ld51.gui.OpportunityBar.update(OpportunityBar.java:47)
at com.sedlacek.ld51.gui.GUIHandler.update(GUIHandler.java:16)
at com.sedlacek.ld51.main.Game.update(Game.java:128)
at com.sedlacek.ld51.main.Game.run(Game.java:328)
at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Ok, after that, it's funny game, I like that concept. The graphics and sounds are coherent and beautiful! The resources icons are really understandable, I managed to know what is what when I missed the labels :)

🎤 mar3k

14. Oct 2022 · 23:18 UTC

@cybek Thanks for the bug report, I'll look into it. I'm glad you liked the game. Thanks for playing.

Alchemic

15. Oct 2022 · 00:24 UTC

This was a pretty nice experience, especially the tutorial.

The gameplay was a bit slow-paced for my tastes, but it seemed very well thought-out.

The cards at the bottom of the screen kind of faded out of my eyesight, so I frequently forgot about them.

At one point I had moved forward and colonized a planet (or so i thought?) and a bit later it suddenly spawned enemy ships surrounding it, killing me instantly. Not sure what I was missing there lol, maybe a bug?

Overall pretty ambitious, the trading system works pretty well.

Vykri

15. Oct 2022 · 21:23 UTC

Hey, thanks for making the game! I played through it and recorded my thoughts.

https://youtu.be/S5tejk33ank

zimny11

16. Oct 2022 · 17:36 UTC

Making RTS for Compo is really impressive! My only feedback would be: there was no way for me to resized the window and part of it was cut off and some music would be nice. Anyway, great job!