Monkey Business by enderr42

[raw]
made by enderr42 for Ludum Dare 48 (JAM)

Welcome to the jungle!

There are rumors of a rare golden banana hidden in a temple deep in the jungle. Build up your industry, clear the jungle, export BANANAS all to pave the repulsing green and brown in a pleasant shade of concrete grey ~~like my skin right now~~ and find the ultimate prize! Screenshot

Dev commentary

I AM THE GOD OF OVERS! Overengineering and Overscoping. Originally I wanted to do a compo, as always, but spent much of the 48 hours building up RTS systems (always wanted to do an RTS) and had no game, like, 5 hours before deadline, so i stayed for the 72. It even had Monkey Swarms (like, really, thousands) using boid behaviour and unity DOTS but, unfortunately, unfinished features get the guilliotine.

So. Please forgive me for horrendous tilemaps, a few uncaught bugs and half the audio missing, including an 80%-produced-music track. But still it's here. Made proudly with ~~all the compo rules~~ most of the compo rules :)

Hope you enjoy!

Changelog

  • ~~Known BUGS: Tutorial toasts do not close on click. (wrong ref)~~ fixed
  • added webgl build

small bugs: - issues with unit selection; - typo in name (omg); - LOTS of webGL problems (sigh); - label displaying wrong data; - balance check for exports; - kraken behaviour

Bonus: unused truck sprite Truck_transport.png

Ratings

Overall 1264th 3.316⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1030th 3.263⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 889th 3.237⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1665th 2.868⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1533th 2.974⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Audio 1209th 2.526⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 533th 3.167⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1641th 2.75⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 11🗳️ 10🗨️

Feedback

INCD021
27. Apr 2021 · 07:25 UTC
Very nice game. It did take me a while to figure out select and right click other object to do action.
I played it way to long :slight_smile: but did get stuck as you can see..

![stuck.PNG](///raw/5c7/2/z/4053f.png)

I couldn't select the truck. Think it might be behind the other collider/triggers and the UI. But all in all a very nice game.
Great job :thumbsup:
🎤 enderr42
27. Apr 2021 · 18:52 UTC
@incd021 Hey thx) I never added the highlights for things you can click :(

Ah well, the truck seems to be driven by a monkey. Maybe he's stuck and can't get out?)
Malfeasance
27. Apr 2021 · 22:02 UTC
Mmm monkey
LandoSystems
27. Apr 2021 · 22:35 UTC
Funny theme for an RTS style game. Cracked me up a bit that the tutorial text just piles up if not dismissed. Took a little bit to understand the interactions but shows promise. Good work overall, I got that tasty golden banana.
🎤 enderr42
28. Apr 2021 · 20:59 UTC
@malfeasance Mmm, bananas)

@landosystems Yes, that was...khm...intentional :)

Thx for playing guys)
zerocomms
29. Apr 2021 · 02:48 UTC
Really cool idea. High control rts sort of game. Would like to see the monkey boid sim when its ready!
breadstick
29. Apr 2021 · 03:17 UTC
An awesome concept with a charming implementation! The entire game seems built around the pun in the title, and it's certainly worth it: the notion of monkeys using trucks to mass-mine and refine bananas is precious.

I'm sad to see the monkey enemies stealing bananas not yet implemented, but the result is that you have a lovely, peaceful time slowly removing those pesky trees from the rainforest without hindrance (it didn't need all of those trees anyways). The tough calls between selling bananas and refining bananas is interesting, and it was fun to see my decisions pay off as my little banana exploitation farm expanded and leaked out into the green lands around me. Very nicely put together, and especially as a (nearly) compo game!
general
29. Apr 2021 · 08:42 UTC
Made a video first impressions of me playing your game: https://youtu.be/XqRYkxdxDVo
You should definitely expand it, it's a really good start!
My Sweet Whomp
29. Apr 2021 · 14:49 UTC
Did someone say banana? :banana: :banana: :banana:
Now we want monkeys. :monkey: :monkey: :monkey:

Keep up the good work!
Vicco
29. Apr 2021 · 15:34 UTC
Feels like a simpler version of Factorio. Sadly I gave up halfway through because my trucks kept getting stuck on empty space, making the entire experience far clunkier than it had to be. Could definitely be polished into a really neat experience, and would be great as a compo game.
Yngvarr
01. May 2021 · 09:45 UTC
Such an interesting concept! I enjoyed the concept of bananas being both the currency and the material for fuel, despite it being technically the same thing. :) Winning this game requires some calculations and maybe a degree in economics, which I don't have. Also, it requires a lot of patience, because there are some time-consuming glitches (e.g. truck stops loading when I misclick but it looks like it's full of bananas) and no real opportunity to buy speed upgrades, they're just too expensive. Rebalancing the game could make it way better.

I like this sort of games and would definitely return for the post-jam version. :) Here's my (second) playthrough if you're interested. There are no music in the game, so I took the liberty of turning some on.

https://youtu.be/pglFSiNXwM8
commanderstitch
02. May 2021 · 05:15 UTC
Ok I'm going to go through my experience after losing the first time. Then doing it again. hehehe

first, i had to figure out how to beat this very low output of bananas. It's horribly grueling slow in order to harvest enough bananas. By themselves the miners do not give enough bananas to justify the oil cost. Immediately it has to be trimmed down to be profitible, but it's so marginally close to make another one that there isn't enough time to be able to make it to the end. Until i broke the game. Once i broke the game it still took 2 hours to beat this sucker. xD YES.! Very interesting stuff. If you try to add more bananas than you have into your truck, you get the full amount. There's not check on it so i was able to rack up some bananas! :) [fun banana business.png](///raw/b24/z/41fad.png)![heheh fuel.png](///raw/b24/z/41fae.png)![win.png](///raw/b24/z/41faf.png)
commanderstitch
02. May 2021 · 05:15 UTC
![fun banana business.png](///raw/b24/z/41fb0.png)
Frank Gevaerts
02. May 2021 · 17:23 UTC
Nice idea! I did have fun with this for a while. I like the concept, graphics and sound.

I did encounter a few bugs:
* the banana grabber seems to check for bananas in reach *after* collecting bananas, so paying for a longer arm after it has run out of bananas in reach doesn't restart it
* There seem to be a few race conditions with the truck. At one point I wasn't paid for a load of oil, and at another loading the truck with more oil (it was nearly full already) seems to have subtracted a full load from the refinery, making the stock there negative.
DeathStorm
06. May 2021 · 20:34 UTC
WOW how much did you do.
This is great.
After learning how the game works and running in one "Dead End" I figured out how the game works and it worked really well.

I liked the idea and the huge amount of mechanics and pretty well working stuff in the Game.

Really Good Game, well done.
🎤 enderr42
11. May 2021 · 15:40 UTC
First of all, thanks everybody for playing, sorry it took me some time to respond.

@zerocomms yes, monkoids are on the todo list)

@breadstick The pivot from high ActionPerMinute frenzy strategy to idle-ish base-builder was unintended, but surprisingly it worked out ok. I'm really bad at scoping, so it's missing a lot of features and decision-making it should have to be, you know, a game)

@general Дякую) The tutorial is kind of thrown together on top of the notification system :( And thx for the video, this kind of feedback is best kind of feedback

@paulloz *minion voice* bananaaaaa! Thx, will do)

@vicco Heavily inspired by Factorio and Rimworld, yes :) Sorry you've had bad experience, it does require a loooot of polish to be fully enjoyable, and i kinda understand now that this genre is not the best for gamejams :)

@yngvarr Glad you liked it, balance-wise i had to make do with _guesstimates_ in the time that i had, and the core loops sure needs debugging and polish, but...jams) Also thanks a lot for the video, it helps a ton.

@commanderstitch again, balance was mostly guesstimates, but i did put the low initial fuel-to-banana ratio to get the player to learn about upgrades early.
Also there is one bug left intentionally to help with moneymaking, but nobody seems to have found it)
The one you encountered required a lot of rework of the truck "AI" to fix after the deadline because The "AI" is an early prototype that i did not have time to revisit and so accumulated a TON of technical debt to the end of the jam :( so i decided not to publish the fix. Glad you had fun)

@frank-gevaerts Yes, technical debt sucks :( thx for the feedback and glad you liked it as it is!:)

@deathstorm Thx, those 72 were some painful hours) I just saw that you played it on stream, that's so cool) Gave me a little anxiety though :)
VixenMink
12. May 2021 · 00:43 UTC
This game drove me bananas and not in a bad way. Great job on this. I like how you chose to make this top down. Added a very nice element to the gameplay. Fantastic job
someone
13. May 2021 · 01:09 UTC
Nice game. A good amount there for a jam entry.
Problems I had that made it annoying:
- Zoom is inverted on the mouse wheel
- Panning the camera with the mouse also gives selected trucks orders - I was forever having to reissue orders.
- The action menu appears in the screen centre rather than where you right click.
- Giving an order to a truck during loading will keep the bananas sprite but nothing loaded.

Some automation would be nice since telling the truck to go back and forth between two points was tedious.
Also you can continue to upgrade the bananas to fuel value after it becomes 1, but it still says 1. Is that a display error or a waste of money?

Still, I enjoyed playing, though I did not get to the end. I would be interested in playing an improved version.
Frank Gevaerts
13. May 2021 · 08:32 UTC
@someone mouse wheel zoom is a weird thing. I agree with you, but I seem to remember that some weird systems (like mac) invert it by default for some arcane reason, so I assumed that's the reason.
🎤 enderr42
13. May 2021 · 21:10 UTC
@someone @frank-gevaerts Huh, i'm getting a lot of feedback about the mouse zoom, i actually felt as though it's the logical way to go: since you have a "god-like" perspective on things you move the view closer to yourself or farther away. I guess i never paid attention on how that's done "traditionally"

Also on the other stuff:
- The panning was originaly binded to MMB, but i discovered that HTML5 tries to pan the page when you hold MMB so i rebinded it at the last second (nasty WebGL, nasty)
- And you discovered the two upgrade buttons that are supposed to turn off but do not because of panicked coding and me failing to write stuff down :(
- Ye, the action menu was supposed to be "context" and appearing near the mouse cursor but i got a bug in RectTransform stuff and left it for the last moment and....ding-ding deadline :\

And lastly the loading race-conditions are a result of the big architectural piece of crap that is the Truck, that's the ultimate bane of this game as of now :(

That automation idea is actually something ive been thinking about for the post-jam version, nice one:)

Thx for playing and great feedback, and sorry it was....what it was)
someone
18. May 2021 · 18:05 UTC
Who needs industry...
![Screenshot_20210513_223123.png](///raw/361/z/428df.png)
🎤 enderr42
18. May 2021 · 18:51 UTC
@someone Ha. That's what i get for doing dumb random maps)