This is the tale of a courageous, but tiny robot and her quest to defeat the evil group GNOME. (GNOME Not Overly Merciful Enemies)
This has no relation to the GNOME desktop environment. I promise.
I've made major strides since my first submission.
There are now gnomes to kill, both your gun and the gnomes' guns work, there are even explosions! Also, there is sound, thanks to SFXR. (The SDL port of it)
Terrain, randomly place enemies, and a tired programmer.
I'm happy with it. It's not what I'd hoped for, but it's in a rather game-like state.
I've written a post-mortem in my blog, for those who are interested.
I have put in a request for a Windows port, so that will hopefully be up tomorrow.
It's really fast, I don't know if that's intentional or if something got messed up when porting to Windows but the speed combined with the fact that you can only shoot in the direction you're moving makes it difficult to fight things without getting hit. Could be a fun game with some more development.
I really like the visual style of your art on this entry. Too bad the game is still pretty incomplete and quite scattered. I ran around the cavern a bunch getting swarmed by the big robots and avoiding their huge bombs but in the end I'm not even sure I killed any of them. I like the Metroid like main character and your recursive enemy acronym. :) Congrats on your first LD! Thanks for keeping such an exhaustive journal too. :)
This looks and feels great, but also feels a little pointless. As far as I could tell you just endlessly kill enemies till they kill you. A score counter or timer would have been a quick addition that would have given the game a bit more purpose.
This is a good start, but obviously it's not quite a complete game.
My main comment is about the graphics, actually: They are a mixed bag. I really rather like the drawings. They're nice, abstract, clean, clear. I'm also very fond of Gameboy-aesthetic. But Gameboy-aesthetic really only works if it's taken all the way, with a particular style of low res graphics (see Cave Explorer and Super Bean Kid). So GNOME needed either color, or gameboy-esque pixel graphics. Since I'm not sure you were actually intending a gameboy-asthetic, color probably would have been the better choice in this case.
...
That seems, in retrospect, rather a lot to write about a not very important issue. But now I've written it, I may as well let you see it. Make of it what you will.
As for the game itself, my main complaint would have to be that the enemies can stand right on top of you. Other than that it's not bad.
Art was crisp but too abstract/iconic for me. And just a few more colors (even just the addition of white fills to the shapes) would help. It did work as a game, and the combat had moments where it was really fun, but also lots of wandering and confusion. I hope you keep working on this one, there's a lot here that's "so close" to being fun.
Game was a bit too zoomed in for me. Not being able to aim with the mouse meant that I was constantly running as far away as I could, then running towards the enemy while shooting for a few seconds, rinse repeat. Would have been a lot more fun if I could walk backwards and aim+shoot with the mouse.
Nice start, but missing a few bits for a fun game. For one, the speed seems too fast (Windows build problem?), right now there's no elegant dodging since the rockets zoom past. I liked the art style, but the surroundings are somewhat bland. A little indication on the empty floor if you're actually moving would be nice.
Hey, the source link is broken. Can't port the game for you without that.
Anyway, tried the Linux verison. You should include required libraries with that btw .. I didn't have 32-bit versions of SDL_image and SDL_mixer installed, so your game didn't run until I fixed that.
Since both you and the enemies take several rockets to destroy, it would be nice with some sort of health meter, or at least a little feedback.
I think I managed to destroy all the enemies, at least after a while I couldn't find them anywhere in the level. There was still sounds of shooting sometimes though. (Maybe they spawned outside the level?)
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I really like the visual style of your art on this entry. Too bad the game is still pretty incomplete and quite scattered. I ran around the cavern a bunch getting swarmed by the big robots and avoiding their huge bombs but in the end I'm not even sure I killed any of them. I like the Metroid like main character and your recursive enemy acronym. :) Congrats on your first LD! Thanks for keeping such an exhaustive journal too. :)
My main comment is about the graphics, actually: They are a mixed bag. I really rather like the drawings. They're nice, abstract, clean, clear. I'm also very fond of Gameboy-aesthetic. But Gameboy-aesthetic really only works if it's taken all the way, with a particular style of low res graphics (see Cave Explorer and Super Bean Kid). So GNOME needed either color, or gameboy-esque pixel graphics. Since I'm not sure you were actually intending a gameboy-asthetic, color probably would have been the better choice in this case.
...
That seems, in retrospect, rather a lot to write about a not very important issue. But now I've written it, I may as well let you see it. Make of it what you will.
As for the game itself, my main complaint would have to be that the enemies can stand right on top of you. Other than that it's not bad.
It did work as a game, and the combat had moments where it was really fun, but also lots of wandering and confusion.
I hope you keep working on this one, there's a lot here that's "so close" to being fun.
Nice start, but missing a few bits for a fun game. For one, the speed seems too fast (Windows build problem?), right now there's no elegant dodging since the rockets zoom past.
I liked the art style, but the surroundings are somewhat bland. A little indication on the empty floor if you're actually moving would be nice.
Anyway, tried the Linux verison. You should include required libraries with that btw .. I didn't have 32-bit versions of SDL_image and SDL_mixer installed, so your game didn't run until I fixed that.
Since both you and the enemies take several rockets to destroy, it would be nice with some sort of health meter, or at least a little feedback.
I think I managed to destroy all the enemies, at least after a while I couldn't find them anywhere in the level. There was still sounds of shooting sometimes though. (Maybe they spawned outside the level?)