Ancient Factory City by StMatn

[raw]
made by StMatn for LD36 (JAM)
Ancient Factory City should have been a mix of citybuilding and factory management. Unfortunately its just a prototype, because I didn't have enough time to flesh it out properly.
IMPORTANT: You need a working Java8 JRE or SDK to run the game. Unzip the archive - it probably wont start out of the zipfile. The game doesn't explain anything and is in a really early prototype stage, so you probably will have to read this, to understand whats going on and how to control it!

To make it count as a game I smacked in a goal at the last moment: Try to make as many houses "operating" at the same time as possible. If a house is supplied with a bucket of water and three apples, it will consume these items and count as operating for about 20 seconds.

Controls: (current program state is shown in the top left corner)
q - select next building blueprint
e - select next interaction mode (only building and wiring are useful)
r - rotate direction for new buildings
t - select next logic type (only for logic units)

How to play:
-Build an apple farm to produce apples
-Build conveyor belts to transport items to other buildings
-To get water buckets, you need stone from a quarry to be transportet to a mason, which will chisel it into a stone bucket, whick can be filledwith water inside a well
-Try to supply as many houses as possible with apples and water buckets


The logic system:
-Screenshot 2 shows a logic setup
-Logic components are sensors, logic units and switsching belts
-Logic components need to be connected with wires (wiring mode)
-Logic components are either active or inactive
-Sensors are active, if an item is in front of them (keep in mind, thes have a direction, they look at)
-Logic units are active, if their logic function is fulfilled between all connected wires
-Switching belts are active (they change their direction), if any of the connected wires is active
-Keep in mind, that wires are directed


I would love to read your opinion in a short comment! Thank you very much for playing!

Feedback

Four Quarters
01. Sep 2016 · 15:10 UTC
Really big job for few days, for such hard genre like strategy, nice!
standardcombo
02. Sep 2016 · 14:27 UTC
I'm always intrigued by these state machine games, such as infinifactory, but they take a long time to build unless you go for something really simple.
AnaglyphCoding
02. Sep 2016 · 19:37 UTC
A fellow java dweller ;)
The amount of effort put into this game for such a short time span is great, it's a shame you weren't able to finish it though, however I can't blame you for such an ambitious idea. Not really my type of game but I had fun nonetheless :D
TiByte
03. Sep 2016 · 00:03 UTC
I think this idea has great potential and a lot of thought has been already put into this. This could be extended into a really fun game.

Without your entry/post I would have called the game unintuitive - but you explained it quite well.

nice job!
n42k
03. Sep 2016 · 09:38 UTC
The game play itself feels great and I wish I could play it. After carefully reading the controls I figured out how to play it, that's not an issue. But the controls themselves are too difficult to use, making it harder to interact with the game, than the game itself. Please do extend this game and put it out somewhere, I'd love to see what comes out of it!
runvs
04. Sep 2016 · 06:04 UTC
reminds me of factorio (which is a good thing). Trying something like this in a ludum dare is quite challenging. I admire how far you took your idea.
Linus123xbb
05. Sep 2016 · 17:18 UTC
A in-game tutorial would be beneficial I think. The game itself was unqiue, but I didn't really understand it.
Daniel
06. Sep 2016 · 16:32 UTC
unique concept althought I feel that and as linus123xbb mentioned a in-game tutorial would be great and it would help the game a lot.
graphics are simple, the game also plays very well, so well done.
The only thing that is annoying the text on the top left corner is hard to read in my opinion, maybe add a black box under the text to make it more readable.
ZYXer
18. Sep 2016 · 10:31 UTC
Wow, awesome game idea. Great combination of Factoria and city buidling! This game has quite a potential.

I don't want to critisize to much, as the game is oviously a prototype. But it's hard for me to see the side switching belts are pointing if they are covered by items.

I'm not quite sure what I was supposed to do with wire and logic units. I read you explanation, but I'm not sure where I should use them.

You should definitly continue on this project, there is quite a potential here!