Ludum Dare #13compo
Interstate Trucking
I’m done, it’s finished. At least, it’s finished
enough
. Interstate Trucking is a business simulation game, where you take the helm of a small shipping company. Buy new trucks, expand your shipping routes, and try to keep your balance in the green in face of a changing economy, fluctuating gas prices, and a younger brother who simply cannot stay married.
Download
Interstate Trucking for Windows
.
This was my first time participating in Ludum Dare, and I’m quite proud to have come up with an entry. I fully expected to be one of those folks who gave up halfway through Saturday night. Next time around I will almost certainly be back!
If I’d had more time I’d have improved the economy — right now nothing the player does has any effect on the world. It would be nicer if prices increased steadily in general, but decreased each time you delivered a particular good, forcing players to constantly adapt to the changing economy. Beyond that, I really wanted a second, competing shipping company, but it was simply too much to do in time. Instead, I chose to polish what I had, and I’m quite pleased with the outcome. I’m not going to win (who even likes business sims anymore?) but I do feel like Interstate Trucking is at least a decent first effort. Next time, folks. Next time.
The game is written in Ruby, on Linux, using Rubygame/SDL. The Windows exe is courtesy of the excellent tar2rubyscript and rubyscript2exe tools (I’ll package up Linux and possibly Mac builds tomorrow). I used Photoshop, The GIMP, and Inkscape for the graphics (again, such as they are) and GarageBand (along with Audacity) for the music and (single) sound effect.
enough
. Interstate Trucking is a business simulation game, where you take the helm of a small shipping company. Buy new trucks, expand your shipping routes, and try to keep your balance in the green in face of a changing economy, fluctuating gas prices, and a younger brother who simply cannot stay married.
Download
Interstate Trucking for Windows
.
This was my first time participating in Ludum Dare, and I’m quite proud to have come up with an entry. I fully expected to be one of those folks who gave up halfway through Saturday night. Next time around I will almost certainly be back!
If I’d had more time I’d have improved the economy — right now nothing the player does has any effect on the world. It would be nicer if prices increased steadily in general, but decreased each time you delivered a particular good, forcing players to constantly adapt to the changing economy. Beyond that, I really wanted a second, competing shipping company, but it was simply too much to do in time. Instead, I chose to polish what I had, and I’m quite pleased with the outcome. I’m not going to win (who even likes business sims anymore?) but I do feel like Interstate Trucking is at least a decent first effort. Next time, folks. Next time.
The game is written in Ruby, on Linux, using Rubygame/SDL. The Windows exe is courtesy of the excellent tar2rubyscript and rubyscript2exe tools (I’ll package up Linux and possibly Mac builds tomorrow). I used Photoshop, The GIMP, and Inkscape for the graphics (again, such as they are) and GarageBand (along with Audacity) for the music and (single) sound effect.
Comments12
I'm missing some overview of the prices, which would let me compare cities easily.
Btw my master thesis was program for solving multicriteria traveling salesman problem, so that's a big plus from me :).
In the end, really, I think it needs to be important for the player to memorize what resources are at what location and what the best routes are to take. That means less locations, more hands-on approach with each truck, and more feedback on prices and fluctuation.
Could be improved: build-up, explanation, simulation speed (building bigger routes means watching the truck crouching slowly along). Are you supposed to build longer routes (in order to do that you have to memorize the prices)?. Maybe I am playing it "wrong". I think a simulation like this needs to have strong explanation and some restriction at the beginning (e.g. max. 3 cities on a route) and then let the complexity rise on the player.
Definetely a feat doing all this within 48 hours.
/home/quentin/.eee/eee.interstate_trucking_linux.2/bin/ruby: 5: Syntax error: "(" unexpected
and in the source version "ruby init.rb" says :
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require': no such file to load -- rubygame (LoadError)
from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require'
from ./lib/core.rb:2
from init.rb:2:in `require'
from init.rb:2
=> sorry i could'nt play your game
I found it wasn't very easy to compare two cities prices together. It would be nice to have a button that displays all the cities prices OR in each city display the price differences between the connected cities.