Orbit Jam by GameJMunk
A Crash Course in Rocket Science
NASA is running low on satellites in the sky, and is therefore sending up as many as possible. Your job is to make sure they don't crash into each other by choosing a lovely orbit.
We will be sending up 1 satellite every 10 seconds, so make sure to aim the cannon correctly.
Remember: you can click the satellites every 3 seconds to give them a little boost!
There are issues with music stopping playing in the web version Try the JAR or EXE for the full experience

| Link | https://gamejmunk.itch.io/orbit-jam |
| JAR (cross-platform) | https://gamejmunk.itch.io/orbit-jam |
| Windows EXE | https://gamejmunk.itch.io/orbit-jam |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/orbit-jam |
Ratings
| Overall | 760th | 3.339⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 725th | 3.234⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 312th | 3.625⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 297th | 3.953⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 744th | 3.375⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 659th | 2.935⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 636th | 2.741⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 895th | 3.083⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 43🗨️ |
I have been making so many satellites to crash and I must be on NASA's blacklist for covering the earth with space junks XD
I haven't seen a Java game in a while, but I used to build a lot of games in Java. Is your source code available? I looked at that ZIP file but it looks like jre stuff.
EDIT: Oh! This is a jam game, not a compo game. That explains the lack of source. I'd still be curious to hear about your toolchain if you want to talk about it.
I like the concept, that actually hooked me some time trying to figure out how to predict satellite's orbits (which I couldn't). Could be helpful a visual help in that aspect (some kind of trajectory indicator maybe?).
It also has a nice music! I downloaded the EXE version just to be able to listen it!
We used libGDX as our game development framework, with gradle as the build management tool (standard for libGDX).
The assets were created as vector graphics in Inkscape by my partner in Inkscape, and the music and sound effects were created by him as well.
The game uses Box2D physics engine at the core, by defining Earth as a centered Staticbody and each satellite as a Dynamicbody. Our game then manually computes the gravitational pull vector and applies to each satellite at each time step to simulate the gravitational pull in an orbit.
The most time consuming part was modifying the initial impulse when launching the satellites, as well as an initial 1 second thrust applied to them, based on the launch angle, such that most launch angles place the satellites in an orbit, as the game would otherwise be way too difficult.
Gameplay wise... I wasn't clever enough to understand. I just set an angle and watched as all of my satellites nicely spun around, and the happiness bar went up to where the curve at the top starts and then just, stayed.
I don't know what I was doing wrong cause I was getting more satellites and they weren't really crashing into each other... but also I wasn't doing anything either?
That being said, orbital mechanics!?!?!? That was so cool to see in a game jam!
Thank you. :D
Art was pretty though!
It seems almost impossible to predict the orbits, feels like having the canon in the same position does not launch satellites the same way (maybe it's me though). But it would have been nice to see the path of the satellite before launching it I think.
And sadly the music stopped after a few seconds, but it seemed pretty nice.
Yes, the cannon has a slight random offset when launching, making it difficult to launch two satellites in exactly the same orbit.
The music unfortunately stops working after a few moments in the html5 version, which is a bug, but it works correctly in the desktop version.
the gameplay was kinda minimalistic but i like gravity oriented games. interesting entry!