Desert Harvest by math_daemon

made by math_daemon for Ludum Dare 52 (COMPO)

Help your harvesters navigate the sand dunes.

Harvester vehicles are filling their tanks at drilling rigs out in the desert. Filled with precious resources they head home to empty their tanks. And out they go again.

Harvesters have very simple programming and do not carry out cooperative routines. To be more efficient you need to lead their ways by carrying them with you ship.

Pick up a harvester by pressing/holding [Space] when flying over it. Drop a picked-up harvester by pressing [Ctrl] at any time. Last in first out. Can carry up to 3 harvesters.

If the game does not react, try button "Fullscreen" below the game canvas, to give the game focus.

Controls

Steer left / right: [Left Arrow Key] & [Right Arrow Key]
Pickup harvester: [Space]
Drop harvester: [Left Ctrl]

Behind the Scenes

written in C/C++ using SDL and stb_image.h
compiled for the web via Emscripten
sprites created with Paint.NET
font is taken from here: https://opengameart.org/content/8x8-font-chomps-wacky-worlds-beta

Link	https://math-daemon.itch.io/desert-harvest
Link	https://math-daemon.itch.io/desert-harvest
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/desert-harvest

Ratings

Overall	334^th	2.455⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Fun	335^th	2.238⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	232^th	3.071⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Theme	262^th	3.167⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	287^th	2.909⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Humor	274^th	1.412⭐	19🧑‍⚖️
Mood	317^th	2.306⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Given		19🗳️	12🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 280509

09. Jan 2023 · 06:47 UTC

The concept is simple and good! I believe if more time given, it will be a great game with various types of tanks, various maps, different ways/weapons and various upgrade options for the player.

One little complain. If whether the tanks are filled can be visible, it will be less confusing to me...

🎤 math_daemon

09. Jan 2023 · 09:12 UTC

Hey thanks for your kind feedback! Showing the fill state is actually a TODO I have at the bottom of my main.cpp source file. But didn't manage to get it done in time. I'm very impressed how much others can achieve in 48h..

Christian Zommerfelds

09. Jan 2023 · 21:09 UTC

To be honest it wasn't clear to me why I'm even needed as the player. I could have just left the vehicles working on their own. (I get now that you are supposed to beat the high score). Maybe adding islands so you really need to help the vehicles could be fun? Or make them just queue up if the spot is busy, which would really make your help needed. Nice job!

Arscene

09. Jan 2023 · 21:13 UTC

I love this kind of game! Feel like watching an ants colony.

I think that a way to speed the aircraft up with a dash or a button to move faster would make the decision making even more important.

Congrats on what you did, it's awesome!

GeraldFIngBurke

10. Jan 2023 · 02:17 UTC

The art reminds me of a 90s era RTS in a very positive way. Beyond that, though, I kinda felt like a hat on a hat. I wasn't sure if I was actually helping or hindering by carrying the little tank boys around. I may have missed the point, though.

🎤 math_daemon

10. Jan 2023 · 05:56 UTC

Thanks for the ideas, they are all great. About having too little effect on the outcome, I agree unfortunately. I added in the bridge pretty last minute, before that it was even worse :laughing: There actually is a queue located between the 2 bases, but it is rarely ever used by the vehicles. Maybe if I tweaked the number of vehicles/bases/spots-to-dock a bit better..

Likirus

11. Jan 2023 · 16:59 UTC

Always love to see some C++ games, especially when compiled to run in the browser (maybe I should look into emscripten myself, seems quite useful). I have to agree with some of the others that I didn't quite get why I'm needed. You did too good of a job building the AI for the drones, they seemed to be doing quite well without me. If anything, I picked them up, dropped them somewhere only so that they would immediately move somewhere else :D Maybe an option would have been to have some green fields in the lower area that slowly dry out and you (and your drones) have to keep them watered to prevent them from dying or something like that.

DzejPi

12. Jan 2023 · 18:06 UTC

Interesting take on the theme! What I missed the most were some indicators - I was not sure about the status of every pod. Even number would be great. But 48 hours is very limiting, so that's alright. And it seems that you wrote the whole game yourself without using any game engine, just with the SDL library, which is always huge plus and I would say usually much more programming than devs who use game engines. :)

Papaya

12. Jan 2023 · 18:11 UTC

I think I understand the premise of the game. You pick up drones to make them go faster and more efficient. It is definitely interesting take on the theme, and I like the gameplay a lot!

🎤 math_daemon

12. Jan 2023 · 19:01 UTC

Thank you all for your kind feedback!

@dzejpi You are correct, i spent almost all of the time getting the ground functionality in, like setting the graphics and input handling up and so on. Wrote my own routine to draw rotated sprites, which was very bad (still in the code, commented out :laughing:), then wrote it a second time heavily "inspired" by stackoverflow. In the end i spent half an hour figuring out an issue where the html5 surface has a different RGB format compared to a native Win32 window, so the colors were all wrong in the web-build (the font colors are still different between web and native builds). But all of that is preparation for the next ludum dare!

HolySparks

12. Jan 2023 · 23:24 UTC

I had to try a few times to get the idea right, but I liked your take on the theme. Having a game on the simulation genre specter is not very common

DzejPi

13. Jan 2023 · 17:07 UTC

@math-daemon it's all about gaining experience and it seems that you gained plenty. Making everything by hand has a charm, but... I like to make things easier for me. :)

Simone

14. Jan 2023 · 21:40 UTC

Cool, especially since it doesn't look like you used one of the mainstream game engines

VerttiXPertti

16. Jan 2023 · 11:47 UTC

I got 158!

🎤 math_daemon

16. Jan 2023 · 14:24 UTC

@verttixpertti Thank you so much for playing and commenting, hope you had fun. My personal highscore is 178. My strategy was to just stay in the center-left area and help them over the canyon between the left base-station and drilling-rig in both directions.

Jimbly

21. Jan 2023 · 17:04 UTC

_The spice must flow_. My score: 165!

Neat game. I would have liked a little more to do, but it was fun watching my harvesters run around. They often seemed to be pretty effective on their own, so maybe if I just flew faster compared to them it woulda helped.

For some reason, I kept expecting a sandworm to pop up...

OadT

21. Jan 2023 · 17:51 UTC

Nice entry! I think the player would feel a bit more helpful if the ship would move a bit faster and the hitboxes to pick harvester up would be a bit bigger. But you already had a good idea with implementing this barrier between the north and south side!

🎤 math_daemon

21. Jan 2023 · 20:14 UTC

Thanks for the feedback! Definitely some fine tuning wouldn't hurt. And the sandworm would be a great mechanic so you need to pick up certain harvesters occasionally to not loose a valuable workforce :smile:

bentglasstube

24. Jan 2023 · 17:57 UTC

I really enjoyed the visuals in this game, the style was nice. As others have mentioned, my main complaint is not feeling useful to the tankers who seemed to get into their own rhythm after the first round. Adding A/D for left/right would also have been nice. Great job getting something interesting in the short timeframe.