This was fun. I did have a control issue with clicking (dragging works much better), but not so much that I didn't play all the way through.
I really like the sense of humor here. And I'm a sucker for the fact that your different celestial categories had names of real items that you drew attention to. Pleiades! M31! Awesome!
My original intent was to overload it with real pictures from NASA and to make it slightly scientifically accurate, but I had to settle for just giving the names of things you run into.
I wanted it to be casual, mostly just listening to Carl Sagan and looking at pretty pictures, so I probably should have made the controls less sensitive. So if you're having trouble with the controls, try clicking closer to the Earth- the closer the cursor is to the Earth, the less of an effect clicking has on your movement speed. Slower is better for this game.
Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to play it!
@Kvisle, the site seems to work fine in Chrome for me? I think the http:// is required, otherwise the url gets resolves as a relative path. Can you elaborate more on what you mean, if you have the time?
Ack. They both work fine for me so I don't really know how to debug that! I know "but it works on my system!" isn't a valid excuse, but the game doesn't include anything that shouldn't work with linux. I'd be curious to hear if anybody else is having issues.
Thanks for making me listen to A Pale Blue Dot again :).
The game's a bit frustrating because of how little you can see, but that's also the main gameplay hook. The sounds are kinda rough and I feel like I started ping ponging between different celestial bodies a little too easily sometimes. I think that having the "character" move around rather the scene rather than stay centered in the view the whole time would make things easier.
At first I just played the game, and found it a little frustrating, but after reading the author's advice it was a much more enjoyable experience, as a sort of galactic sightseeing/slow motion katamari. And, of course, Carl Sagan.
I won! I'm not going to lie. I could listen to Sagan talk for hours. I had some graphical and sound issues (screen kept flickering and some of the sound levels were really low while others were really high). Fun, though, and totally worked as advertised!
I won! Awesome game! A very cool but simple implementation. The mechanic itself is kinda repetitive but the graphics, general idea, and audio make it quite compelling.
I love the inclusion of Carl Sagan-- provided a hilarious juxtaposition to the bashing of celestial bodies.
L
Liliaze25 Apr 2012, 11:48
The sound is very well done and puts us in the mood. I like the principle that matches the theme. However, the game length is too short, no challenge. With the score would be perfect.
Thanks so much for the kind words, guys. To be honest I wasn't very pleased with the result at first, but I'm glad that at least part of my goal was accomplished!
To further explain where my head was at when creating the game, part of the "goal" of the game isn't to finish it as fast as possible, but to just sit and listen and think about what Carl Sagan is saying, maybe look at the pretty pictures. I imagined the player spending the first minute or so just watching the earth drift slowly through space, listening to the beginning of a pale blue dot. Then maybe a large object would appear that would cause the player to avoid it, then a small one appears.. but instead of just crashing into it, the player could try to get it to orbit earth or something.
I know that slower games aren't very easy to portray in contests like these where we're trying to play as many games as possible, and I know the control sensitivity and top speed should have been toned down a little to encourage a slower, more "casual" experience. Lessons learned! But perhaps it's better to leave both in there- casual players are more than welcome to dive into the atmosphere by clicking closer to the earth (which results in smaller changes to the speed), and players who really care about winning can still do that as well?
Anyway I'm just rambling and thinking out loud, but my main point is THANK YOU for playing and THANK YOU for all the encouragement! This and The Carl Sagan award that MurrayL gave me pretty much made my day, haha.
It doesn't work for me. I tried in Chrome and IE, in Chrome as an applet and in IE as an applet and webstart. As an applet, it keeps loading for very long and than it gives an error. As webstart, it just does nothing.
I can't seem to load the game. The webstart link appears to be dead and the applet version gives me the following error (on Linux):
ExitException[ 3]java.io.FileNotFoundException: JNLP file error: http://s3.staticvoidgames.com/games/PaleBlueDot/applet.jnlp. Please make sure the file exists and check if "codebase" and "href" in the JNLP file are correct. at sun.plugin2.applet.JNLP2Manager.loadJarFiles(Unknown Source) at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2Manager$AppletExecutionRunnable.run(Unknown Source) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)
Indeed it would appear that the "s3.staticvoidgames.com" domain itself cannot be resolved. A DNS query for the domain confirms what @Kvisle mentioned earlier, that the DNS entry for the domain is wrong. It should indeed NOT contain the "http://"; part. The "http://"; part is just a protocol specifier and has no place at all in the DNS entry. I recommend that you look into that.
Okay, I updated the applet and webstart jnlp files to take your advice. I'd love to hear from some linux people about whether or not that fixed it, as I have no way to test that. Thanks for taking the time to let me know what's up.
Hum, I'm not sure about what you changed, but I've tried querying several DNS servers for your domain, and it still seems to have the "http://"; part in the DNS entry. It could just be a caching issue tho, so I'll could try again a little later, but I doubt that waiting will solve the problem. Here is the current result of a DNS query: http://pastebin.com/n1wuC8z8
Additionally, I can now not load your main website at all. (The website itself worked fine yesterday.) I get the following response: HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable: Back-end server is at capacity
If you want you are free to contact me by email at: jiddo.lua [at] gmail.com for further debugging of this issue.
The DNS issues are all fixed now, so the game works perfectly on Linux as well (and probably on other platforms if anyone else had any problems before).
I really like the idea and the game mechanics. It feels sort of like a more personal take on Solar 2. I wouldn't mind some keyboard controls tho. I keep accidentally clicking outside the screen making the window end up behind something whenever I panic and try to steer away from something at high speeds. It would also be nice if you could zoom out, at least when at high speeds so that you can see stuff coming and react to them before it is too late.
The voice in the background was a very nice touch as well. Great work!
heh. sagansploitation! not too shabby. i clicked through the victory screen! oh no! i wish the screen was zoomed back just a touch. or maybe zoomed out as you grow. background changes with your scale would be nice too.
I won :) Playing a simple game while listening to the Carl Sagan's speech was interesting. It was wise to use the narration because if the game didn't have it, it might be a little boring.
The sound effects are too loud compared to the narration volume.
I laughed my ass off (literally) after the first two seconds of the game, when I had already taken down Venus and Mercury. I wasn't expecting what the game was really about. Thumbs up!! (For my, you'd be the winner of the 'fun' category ;D)
I have java installed and updated (All other java games play fine) but both of your links when I attempt to play the game try to take me to java.com to download an installer, a downloadable version would be nice, it looks interesting but not much I can do as you're site won't let me play it :/
Oh man, we we're going to make something similar to this. I really enjoyed it but a bigger viewport would be appreciated. I could barely see what was coming from the sides. Loved the names poping up when hitting the objects, but the Carl Sagan speech just made the game way more hilarious than I was expecting.
It took me a while to figure out how the controls worked, but it was fun nonetheless =P
I loved the idea of using spoken narrative to set up the mood. I have a criticism about that though, parts of the game are funny (I lol'd at the title, ending and game over screens) while the main gameplay part has a dense, serious mood. I found that kind of inconsistent, the game could have easily been one of my favorites in the "mood" category due to the audio, but the fact that you chose to use a lot of jokes made the otherwise beautiful mood less intense.
Anyways, congrats on your game, I had a good time collecting other planets =)
Comments59
I really like the sense of humor here. And I'm a sucker for the fact that your different celestial categories had names of real items that you drew attention to. Pleiades! M31! Awesome!
s3.staticvoidgames.com is an alias for http://s3.staticvoidgames.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com.
It shouldn't have http:// in it. That's probably why webstart / applet loading fails. Downloading directly from AWS works.
Adding the following line in my hosts-file:
207.171.163.193 s3.staticvoidgames.com
Fixes a lot of problems with that website in chrome. This probably affects other people too - you should check that out.
The game:
A nice prototype - would be nice if the camera could show a bit more of the surroundings as well.
My original intent was to overload it with real pictures from NASA and to make it slightly scientifically accurate, but I had to settle for just giving the names of things you run into.
I wanted it to be casual, mostly just listening to Carl Sagan and looking at pretty pictures, so I probably should have made the controls less sensitive. So if you're having trouble with the controls, try clicking closer to the Earth- the closer the cursor is to the Earth, the less of an effect clicking has on your movement speed. Slower is better for this game.
Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to play it!
The game's a bit frustrating because of how little you can see, but that's also the main gameplay hook. The sounds are kinda rough and I feel like I started ping ponging between different celestial bodies a little too easily sometimes. I think that having the "character" move around rather the scene rather than stay centered in the view the whole time would make things easier.
I enjoyed the game, good work!
To further explain where my head was at when creating the game, part of the "goal" of the game isn't to finish it as fast as possible, but to just sit and listen and think about what Carl Sagan is saying, maybe look at the pretty pictures. I imagined the player spending the first minute or so just watching the earth drift slowly through space, listening to the beginning of a pale blue dot. Then maybe a large object would appear that would cause the player to avoid it, then a small one appears.. but instead of just crashing into it, the player could try to get it to orbit earth or something.
I know that slower games aren't very easy to portray in contests like these where we're trying to play as many games as possible, and I know the control sensitivity and top speed should have been toned down a little to encourage a slower, more "casual" experience. Lessons learned! But perhaps it's better to leave both in there- casual players are more than welcome to dive into the atmosphere by clicking closer to the earth (which results in smaller changes to the speed), and players who really care about winning can still do that as well?
Anyway I'm just rambling and thinking out loud, but my main point is THANK YOU for playing and THANK YOU for all the encouragement! This and The Carl Sagan award that MurrayL gave me pretty much made my day, haha.
Lovely take on the theme, I must say.
Good job, I had fun!
ExitException[ 3]java.io.FileNotFoundException: JNLP file error: http://s3.staticvoidgames.com/games/PaleBlueDot/applet.jnlp. Please make sure the file exists and check if "codebase" and "href" in the JNLP file are correct.
at sun.plugin2.applet.JNLP2Manager.loadJarFiles(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2Manager$AppletExecutionRunnable.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)
Indeed it would appear that the "s3.staticvoidgames.com" domain itself cannot be resolved. A DNS query for the domain confirms what @Kvisle mentioned earlier, that the DNS entry for the domain is wrong. It should indeed NOT contain the "http://"; part. The "http://"; part is just a protocol specifier and has no place at all in the DNS entry. I recommend that you look into that.
http://pastebin.com/n1wuC8z8
Additionally, I can now not load your main website at all. (The website itself worked fine yesterday.) I get the following response:
HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable: Back-end server is at capacity
If you want you are free to contact me by email at: jiddo.lua [at] gmail.com for further debugging of this issue.
I really like the idea and the game mechanics. It feels sort of like a more personal take on Solar 2. I wouldn't mind some keyboard controls tho. I keep accidentally clicking outside the screen making the window end up behind something whenever I panic and try to steer away from something at high speeds. It would also be nice if you could zoom out, at least when at high speeds so that you can see stuff coming and react to them before it is too late.
The voice in the background was a very nice touch as well. Great work!
Playing a simple game while listening to the Carl Sagan's speech was interesting. It was wise to use the narration because if the game didn't have it, it might be a little boring.
The sound effects are too loud compared to the narration volume.
I laughed my ass off (literally) after the first two seconds of the game, when I had already taken down Venus and Mercury. I wasn't expecting what the game was really about. Thumbs up!! (For my, you'd be the winner of the 'fun' category ;D)
Oh, and great narrator :P
I loved the idea of using spoken narrative to set up the mood. I have a criticism about that though, parts of the game are funny (I lol'd at the title, ending and game over screens) while the main gameplay part has a dense, serious mood. I found that kind of inconsistent, the game could have easily been one of my favorites in the "mood" category due to the audio, but the fact that you chose to use a lot of jokes made the otherwise beautiful mood less intense.
Anyways, congrats on your game, I had a good time collecting other planets =)