Strontium Submergence by Lintfordpickle

[raw]
made by Lintfordpickle for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

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Backstory

You are a submarine commander, captaining a new top secret nuclear-powered submarine. This new power source provides almost unlimited energy, but it is a little unstable, and somewhat prone to exploding if shaken too much.

If the coolant reaches unstable levels, you'll almost certainly die. So don't get shot too often.

Controls:

W, A, S, D - Controls your submarine Up Arrow - Fires Surface Missiles Right Arrow - Fires Torpedoes Down Arrow - Drops Barrel Bombs

preview.gif

Missing:

There are a few things only half implemented, which I will try to add in the coming days (in a post-jam version):

  • Key Binding Screen
  • Sound options screen (especially for volume)

Development

As with my own games, I used my own LD Engine for this entry. The game was written in Java using LWJGL/GLFW with OpenGL and OpenAL. Originally I was going for a compo entry, but I had a hard time creating the levels (waves) to play the rest of the game on, so I ultimately took the extra day to make the title screens and a long level to play on.

Before the theme was announced, I had already settled on making an arcade shmup. Once the theme was unstable I immediately thought about something nuclear being unstable, and recent news events brought me onto submarines. A little google fu revealed a great looking submarine game called 'In the Hunt' which I used for inspiration for the assets.

Changes

  • Fixed a pretty big bug with the collision detection - previously all the projectiles were being rendered with a incorrect offset (-w/2,-h/2), so what you saw was not actually where things were in the simulation.

Ratings

Overall 441th 3.738⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 410th 3.714⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 877th 3.19⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1168th 3.048⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 243th 4.214⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Audio 305th 3.738⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Humor 860th 2.738⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Mood 794th 3.381⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Given 17🗳️ 18🗨️

Feedback

J.Broccoli
06. Oct 2021 · 04:20 UTC
Pretty solid side scroller!
LDJam user 269161
06. Oct 2021 · 12:47 UTC
Nice submarine game, liked the sprites and art!
Raysi
06. Oct 2021 · 12:49 UTC
No music makes it boring to play. Also, I didn't rly get how to win this game, you just go through some bullets and die. I couoldn't avoid them, it feels like impossible to play. But graphics were good as well as movement.
Aleh
06. Oct 2021 · 12:56 UTC
Input and animation very smooth, i like the feeling of the game.
Effects worked with gap, it was always far behind my torpedoes.
Emkani
06. Oct 2021 · 12:57 UTC
crashes on my PC
🎤 Lintfordpickle
06. Oct 2021 · 16:06 UTC
@emkani sorry to hear that, espeically as the engine is my own. If you have time and are motivated enough, you could add 'Params=debug=info' to the ini file in the game directory. Then it would create a debug.log file should should show the problem. It'd be great to hear why it crashes
🎤 Lintfordpickle
06. Oct 2021 · 16:07 UTC
@aleh thanks for playing. Yeah, there is a bug where the animations start to fall behind the gameplay when too many things are happening. I still haven't figured out why its happening though.
almightyzentaco
07. Oct 2021 · 14:47 UTC
Nice. Fun entry for the jam. The art was well done, and the animations were smooth and enjoyable to look at. I was able to spam attacks pretty recklessly, so some kind of limiting factor would be helpful. It was cool to see a Javascript entry into the Jam, using your own engine nontheless! Extra points for that. Great work.
MarkVeligod
09. Oct 2021 · 14:26 UTC
This is the amazing underwater battles!
xiyou
10. Oct 2021 · 09:45 UTC
Developed a game engine in 48 hours? Dude, that's crazy.
Emkani
10. Oct 2021 · 10:02 UTC
@lintfordpickle I used the parameters and it works fine now, not sure why since it should just debug :shrug: Anyhow, I finally got to playing and honestly this was one of the best games I have played so far (a lot of entries try a lot of stuff and never really get there). Here the core works, the graphics are nice, functional and pleasant. Sound is a bit repetitive (random pitch, if LWJGL supports it, would have gone a long way).
My only issue (and it might be a bug based on your description) is that the only way coolant goes down is if you fall behind. It seems easy to implement that it would go down with shooting or just at a fixed rate and the player would have to surface to "vent" (it seems the idea was going this direction :thinking:). Also a score or distance marker would have been helpful to feel a sense of progression.
🎤 Lintfordpickle
11. Oct 2021 · 16:07 UTC
@xiyou ah sorry to mislead you. I started writing the engine when I started joing Ludum Dare (number #30 I think). I add to it everytime I join the jam or compo, and it has become my starting point.
Source code is [here](https://github.com/LintfordPickle/LintfordLib)
pauljohnprogramming
17. Oct 2021 · 01:41 UTC
Graphically, this game is easily one of the best, and the sounds work great too so that's a plus. Enemy bullets are hard to see, given that they are small, fast moving, and visually outshone by other things in the scene. I would highly recommend making enemy bullets the most saturated, flashy, and highest layer things on the screen. The coolant mechanic seems important but I'm not aware of what it does, or what happens if you deplete it, as even when trying to get hit quickly to rapidly drain it, the player's health depletes first. That said, your game is an otherwise very solid shoot-em-up experience. Good job.
ZevsEHG
17. Oct 2021 · 05:39 UTC
Nice pixel-art
Adnonymous5
19. Oct 2021 · 03:21 UTC
Amazing amount of visual polish for a jam game. The animations on the propeller of the submarine and that green liquid on it, the bubbles moving through the water, and other animations of that nature, really give this game so much life. The sound was good, and the shooting and moving very responsive. Really simple but effective premise, and executed extremely well. Kudos!
🎤 Lintfordpickle
20. Oct 2021 · 08:32 UTC
@pauljohnprogramming thanks for the write-up, and you are pretty much correct on all points. I did initially make the enemy bullet orange to try and alleviate the visibility problem, but you are correct in that they are still hard to see -I hadn't thought to make them the 'top layer' entities.
Tbh, the coolant thing is a non-feature. I originally built the game on the premise of the coolant being unstable, but I just couldn't balance the game enough to make it feel like it was working, without massively increasing the difficulty curve.