Ludum Dare #27compo

Ten-Second Taxi

by schnerble

Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.54

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.43

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.64

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.11

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.25

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.44

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.79

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.44

Coolness★★★★★★★★★★41%

You are the taxi driver in a town full of incredibly impatient people. Everyone wants to get to their destination in under ten seconds, and will jump out of your taxi if you take too long!

Controls should be self-explanatory - just drive.

I ran out of time to do lots of things I wanted to do... but that's always the way!

This game was my first real attempt at using Emscripten to generate JavaScript (including WebGL) from C++. It mostly worked pretty well, but I guess C++ isn't the quickest thing to prototype in. Debugging OpenGL errors without a wi-fi Internet connection is pretty tricky too. With about four hours to go I still only had a car driving around an empty field... :) Luckily uploading via my (untethered) mobile phone worked OK! (Edit: fixed the Dropbox link. Whoops! It nearly worked OK)

Thanks as always to GreaseMonkey for Autotracker and DrPetter for SFXR.

Update: I've added a post-compo version with better steering, plus a couple of new features such as autoreverse. You can find both versions from the same link. (Apologies for the hurried basic intro page!)

Comments20

Danex31727 Aug 2013, 02:56

Really hard to control the car. A way to back up would have been really helpful too. But there is always room for another crazy taxi.

schnerbleauthor27 Aug 2013, 11:56

Yeah - I really wanted to put in autoreverse... but I still had no game with about four hours to go :) If I get a chance to do a post-compo version, I reckon autoreverse will be one of the first things to put in.
I'm interested: what else would you change about the car controls? Faster turning? I may tune things a bit...

Anachron29 Aug 2013, 02:19

It's comically fun because of the steering, but the car has the equivalent of a several hundred foot turning radius. Maybe a way to earn money and buy upgrades to make the steering tighter/faster?

schnerbleauthor31 Aug 2013, 00:03

Thanks for the feedback, both. I've added a post-comp version with better steering and a couple of new features (e.g. autoreverse) to give an idea of where I would've been after a couple more hours, and it feels much better, even though it's still pretty unpolished ;)

Almax2731 Aug 2013, 00:19

The control of the car make the game really hard!

Tater_hater31 Aug 2013, 15:47

I love it, just wish the controls were a little less difficult

CosmicAdventureSquad2 Sep 2013, 17:22

Interesting game and nice use of the theme. I think a mini-map would be really helpful.

schnerbleauthor2 Sep 2013, 17:34

Agreed - I wanted to put a minimap in, but was way short of time :|

Antidote2 Sep 2013, 17:35

The controls were kinda awkward to me, had a hard time not hitting walls :( a minimap would have been good

darkshadow2 Sep 2013, 19:55

I kept on getting stuck in buildings and the edges of the map. Glad to see you've done that in a post compo build. Music is suitable and the comments by the people are funny. If you had looping edges to the map that would increase the pace and make it even more mad!

Per3 Sep 2013, 18:53

Crazy taxy III!
It was fun when I missed to deliver those poor travellers, great humor score :)
It would be great to be able to reverse the taxi ;)
Great work.

jwolf7 Sep 2013, 23:49

Not bad! Thank you for putting up a post-compo version, by the way. It addresses most of the complaints that I have with the compo version.

LTyrosine8 Sep 2013, 04:41

High Innovation, Fun and Humor Score.
Nice job ;)

Afal8 Sep 2013, 05:38

The post-compo version is a lot better than the compo version. Great little Crazy Taxi clone

Xaychru048 Sep 2013, 07:52

Great game, that's the first one I see which uses emscripten. It's really hard to control the car when it hits a wall, but it's still fun. :)

hissssssssss8 Sep 2013, 08:51

I drove through a house and a couple of walls at some point. Whoops.
But this was frantic and fun. Nice job!

schnerbleauthor9 Sep 2013, 03:12

Yeah... I think I need to work on my collision code for next time! Thanks for the feedback though :)

Dream Of Sleeping9 Sep 2013, 17:43

What a shame the car couldn't reverse in the sumbitted version! I'm gonna be generous and rate the post comp version. lol It was realy good fun. I don't know if I liked the arrow though. I like the idea of having to learn the town or maybe a map screen would be good.

smash ball14 Sep 2013, 15:49

I think everything but the steering was done right in this game. I think a nice addition would be to add text specific to what the person was doing when you drove them in time, and not just out of time. (other text aside from "Woohoo!")

schnerbleauthor18 Sep 2013, 04:32

Thanks for the feedback. Yep, I'd meant to put in some better text than "woohoo" but was absolutely down to the wire there and out of time. The steering was definitely the biggest problem; I essentially just didn't play-test it enough as I'd left everything too late!