LudumData

Bubble Space by Thief

[raw]
made by Thief for Ludum Dare 54 (COMPO)

LD54_cover.png

Bubble Space!

Welcome to the bubble continuum friend, where we're being attacked on all sides and there's less and less room to move as the bubbles keep coming.

Bubble space is a twin stick shooter, playable with a gamepad or mouse+keyboard. Hopefully the controls are intuitive! Unfortunately a laptop trackpad probably won't work as a lot of laptops disable it when using the keyboard, so you wouldn't be able to move and aim at the same time...

There are three varieties of enemies, five kinds of pickup and a high score to beat!

I built Bubble Space with Godot 4.1, Paint.net, and Bfxr. And Youtube - I'd never used Godot before, so I absolutely crammed tutorials!

Godot 4 web embed unfortunately doesn't work on ldjam.com due to missing isolation headers, but I have hosted it myself at https://www.dynamicarcade.co.uk/LD54/ . There are some glitches in the web version - namely it stalls the first time each particle effect is spawned. It's been tested on Chrome and Edge, YMMV on other browsers, and it may crash Safari (sorry, not my fault, it's a bug in Safari). It won't work on mobile, there are no mobile controls.

I have also provided a Windows download in the downloads section.

Link https://static.dynamicarcade.co.uk/LD54/
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/bubble-space

Ratings

Overall 267th 3.262⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 208th 3.357⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 328th 2.714⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Theme 202th 3.571⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 268th 3.119⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Audio 256th 2.7⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 24🗳️ 7🗨️

Feedback

JCMonkey
02. Oct 2023 · 22:44 UTC
the web version crashed my browser every time i played it. not sure what that is about. try uploading to itch.io and see if that helps it.s
🎤 Thief
03. Oct 2023 · 06:18 UTC
What browser? It works fine on Edge and Chrome. I'll add that to the description.

Edit: Apparently it's a [known bug in Safari](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/export/exporting_for_web.html#:~:text=Godot%204%27s%20HTML5%20exports%20currently%20cannot%20run%20on%20macOS%20and%20iOS%20due%20to%20upstream%20bugs%20with%20SharedArrayBuffer%20and%20WebGL%202.0). I'll try and make a Mac export today as it recommends.

Edit2: [making a mac export is apparently a bit of a chore](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/export/running_on_macos.html), unlike the Windows and HTML5 exports. Sorry Mac people.
He Li
03. Oct 2023 · 13:43 UTC
Don't know but I'm using the latest Firefox on linux and it works fine. Godot web exports was indeed somewhat confusing.

-----

Well designed game! I do see some potential of improvements in graphics but overall is kinda attractive for me! I spent a lot of time playing and improving my skills.
🎤 Thief
03. Oct 2023 · 15:04 UTC
I really wanted to do a bloom/glow effect, but it's not supported on the web compat renderer, and I couldn't do it in the sprites because... half of it isn't sprites! The playfield, enemies, and player are just Godot poly shapes!
Human Writes Code
04. Oct 2023 · 07:44 UTC
A fun little asteroids/nova drift style game. Getting upgrades made ALL the difference but it was brutally unforgiving if you died later and respawned with absolutely nothing. Basically a death sentence. I liked the art style but feel like it really needed some hi-octane tunes to accompany it.

I didn't have any trouble running the game on PC/Chrome. However, other people have had issues running my Godot game on their Mac, so I'm kind of in the same position as you. Doing a Mac build is such a pain in the arse.
🎤 Thief
04. Oct 2023 · 09:11 UTC
Yeah I agree, it needs a banging soundtrack. But I don't know a good way to create that quickly within the rules of the compo (the rules state music must be created yourself for the 48-hour compo, no public free music)
jordantanner
08. Oct 2023 · 13:27 UTC
Love shooter games like this. I think the difficulty could be reduced a little (at least at first), possibly by reducing the enemy movement speed and the bubble spawn rate, then ramp those up slowly. Fun concept!
Darkmax14
08. Oct 2023 · 19:08 UTC
Realy enjoyable twin stick shooter, I feel the player could be a little faster to make it more frantic but as is it works quite well. It did manage to crash my firefox somehow the first try, not sure what happened there but it was fine on the second attempt :sweat_smile:
ThorPalsson
08. Oct 2023 · 20:53 UTC
Solid game, seems a bit performance heavy since my browser froze a few times while playing. Great work creating it in a Game Jam
spooncats
08. Oct 2023 · 20:53 UTC
Super challenging game, but pretty fun! Had a couple of instances of stuttering the first time I collided with or killed an enemy, not sure if it was a browser thing (chrome) or not.
Flying Dog Fish
08. Oct 2023 · 21:06 UTC
Nice shooter game. It's hard until you get some powerups. Losing all the powerups after losing life is rather brutal.

My Firefox froze for a couple of seconds a couple of times. It mostly happened when hitting the first enemy.
Anchry
08. Oct 2023 · 21:26 UTC
Neat entry, had some stuttering in the start on my browser in the Web version, i'm using Opera GX. But otherwise it was quite fun, quite difficult to keep going after you die once however
Hare Software
12. Oct 2023 · 21:26 UTC
In this game you are truly running out of space, very well done! Difficulty spikes very fast, which I do not think is a bad thing for these types of games. It is easy to learn and hard to master, which I think is very welcome at Ludum Dare. Good work!
betovf
14. Oct 2023 · 10:09 UTC
I like the result you have achieved using Godot poly shapes :open_mouth: As others mentioned, losing all your powerups when you die surrounded by enemies its kinda hard. Maybe if the explosion when you die cleaned some enemies it would work. Great job!
SvenErik
14. Oct 2023 · 11:35 UTC
Nice little coffee break game. Game-play was fluid and nice. The sounds were a bit weird though, not very pleasant to hear those sounds constantly and volume levels were off comparing the sounds, but that's easily fixed. Some nice ambient space music would help a lot to achieve a even better atmosphere too, some synth to accompany the geometry graphics style perhaps. Lovely work overall!
Lachlan James
14. Oct 2023 · 11:37 UTC
Hey mate, similar problems to others with the browser build unfortunately. Made my (reasonably powerful) system hang for a bit, eventually loaded, then crashed within a couple of seconds. This is on Ventura running Chrome - will have a go again later on my Windows box.
EqualEnergy
14. Oct 2023 · 14:11 UTC
The limited space part didn't really come in all that often unfortunately, really great idea though!
Flaterectomy
14. Oct 2023 · 20:33 UTC
After my game started the web client on Firefox froze for a few seconds, but then it woke up again and I could play just fine. I scored 23833 points.

The limited space theme did come through in my view, in how space becomes increasingly limited with the bubbles occupying more and more of it. Ship movement was sliding a little, but still pretty tight, and gun play felt pleasant. I had hoped stacking upgrades more and more would increase my guns indefinitely, but after a few of them it seemed I had reached the maximum output.

Art is basic but clear, all the important sound effects are in there. Ambient sounds/music would've been welcome, and I think I reached the maximum depth of the game fairly quickly--unless there's a lot I simply missed. Overall I had fun, a nice little shooter!
🎤 Thief
15. Oct 2023 · 07:00 UTC
@flaterectomy

Yeah there's a limit of IIRC 3 shots and +3 levels of rapid fire. Extra ones collected give bonus points instead. So does a duplicate shield pickup, or too many lives pickups.

With more time I'd have added some UI to indicate this.

An early version did have infinite extra shots, but it made the game far too easy quite quickly - you could end up firing a complete circle!

Perhaps a temporary powerup for that would be good too. A lot of shooters have a temporary "you have everything+1 for 10 seconds" powerup.

Nice score btw.
LDJam user 371030
15. Oct 2023 · 15:32 UTC
It's a cool game. Clean graphics, crazy-floating enemy evasion. Upgrades.

But I get the feeling it's IMBA big time : / - or it at least feels so..
Even the first boss fight is quite intimidating (I sometimes get the first upgrade and sometimes don't). So it can put off players who would wish to see more. The question is: did I miss anything? I played the web build. BTW for me it froze *only* after the first shot on an enemy (then all good).

On the contrary, I believe the *limited space* part was there - the fact that those bubble-creators are too easy to spam bubbles creates for a *quite limited of space* :D :D :D

Cool game, but please make it less punishing XD
kr4ft3r
16. Oct 2023 · 22:45 UTC
This was good, enjoyable shooter, apart from all the f**king bubbles. Random is a bit cruel, there can be no powerups for a long time and once the bug guy spawned right on top of me. Couldn't go past 7,500 points with 6 or so playthroughs. But like I said it is really enjoyable, and there is some depth and tactics to figure out. The sound of bubbles was enjoyable in particular.