Midnight Transmission by Liam
WASD / Arrow keys for movement. Press again to speed up, opposite direction to brake

M to open/close the Map, Left & Right to scan for the transmission.
Space to lock the scan in and draw the line onto the map

Once you've locked three lines onto the map, the transmission will reveal itself. Collect it and avoid the men in black!

Ben, Wolfgang and Darren have all been having strange dreams, aliens are sending signals! The adults in their town don't believe them but tonight they are tracking the transmissions down, with Ben riding his bike around to get a fix on the signals and the others back at base.

Triangulate the signals to find the alien tech that's transmitting. It seems that the government knows something is up and Ben will have to be careful...
| Link | https://github.com/hawkstein/ludum-dare-59-signal |
| Link | https://hawkhelm.itch.io/ludum-dare-59 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/midnight-transmission |
Ratings
| Overall | 230th | 3.143⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 243th | 2.81⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 226th | 2.952⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 138th | 3.738⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 212th | 3.119⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 132th | 3.333⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 83th | 3.714⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 16🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
But after collecting 2 transmitters I ran into an agent, and I didn't want to do all of it again.
Really solid and complete entry!
You really nailed the vibe of sneaking around a city you know well taking the backroads and dodging the evil corporation really great work!
If I may give a suggestion: maybe the buildings could have been the transmitter-containers where the player actually needed to identify the correct building, instead of placing a green marker on the map?
The music is very well done, it gives the game the right vibe for such mid-night activities
I think the building idea would work and I will explore it a little bit post-jam, I know the game isn't the best but I've got lots of ideas for improvements to try out for fun so will make a post-jam version :smile: Cheers!
The "triangulation" is a bit funny if you think about it - triangulation is normally required to determine a point in space given that you know its distance (but not angle) from three other points. In this case, you know the angle, but not the distance, and it's in 2D, which means you can find the point with just two scans. The third is just a confirmation (and helps narrow down the inaccuracy of the first two scans). But I did find myself getting a bit annoyed having to find a spot for the third scan, given I already knew roughly where it was from the intersection of the first two. Perhaps only require two scans, but reduce the tolerance for the angle (so I am required to be quite accurate on the first two scans). And also build in a middle colour which is "close but not good enough to lock in".
I didn't quite understand at first that I needed to lock in the lines, and I manually triangulated the first one. Standing on the spot, I then realized about locking in, but the game told me that I needed to move further away to scan, so I had to leave the target area in order to re-discover it from further the way the game wanted me to.
Otherwise a really smooth experience! The bike was much nicer than walking. Nice entry!
It was easy to figure out what to do, and a nice little puzzle. I was way more exited when the puffs of dust appeared behind the bike when going fast than I would ever admit openly, haha! Same advice about the triangulation than Matt Giuca.

Artstyle is great, and the creepy background music reinforces the mysteriousness of it all. Mechanically it's also pretty good. One thing I think I might have changed is adding some more granularity to your speed control, but since the game isn't too difficult as it is, it's not such a big issue.
Overall, it's a pretty solid compo game, nicely done!