That was a long weekend. I didn't have much time to work on this game, but I'm glad I did. even though I didn't finish all that I planned.
This LD I decided to tackle an almost foreign programming language to me, Elm. This weekend for me was about trying to learn and explore Elm by creating a game for LD, and I feel like I accomplished that goal as much as I could.
Anyway,
Tools: -----
Elm-platform 14.0.1 Vim Pyxel Edit Chrome GarageBand(?)
Synopsis: -------
Banana Bandit is (was supposed to be) a sneaking game about The Banana Bandit - a famous thief that uses a single Banana peel to sneak past guards and get to guarded treasures!
(Rant): -----
I didn't have enough time to add the audio I made nor did I have time to create pretty screens, animations and levels, my maze generator is half broken (but at least I was able to generate one level).
I will continue to work during this week on this game, just to finish it.
Okay, well there's not much to it right now so I can't rate it very highly - but I _love_ that you wrote this in Elm! And you were unexperienced with the language, which makes it so much harder. That deserves an extra point just because you're crazy brave. :)
I've played with the idea of doing my next LD in a language like Elm or possibly PureScript, _maybe_ ClojureScript. I'm worried about performance degradation in using those languages, but I feel like they probably win out for developer productivity (_provided_ I'm already good and familiar with the languages before I start), given the fact that (especially for Elm and PureScript) certain whole classes of runtime bugs go away.
I might use this LD's game as a template to try rewriting it in one or two of those languages, to see how comfortable I can get, and if I feel like it saves me troubles.
micahcown: thank you :) I know there's hardly any game there because i didn't really finish it, thank you for rating anyway! You should definitely try to work with Elm/PureScript/ClojureScript at least once. I was a very fun and educating experience for me. you might enjoy reading my post mortem linked in the description above the links :)
Nomys_Tempar: thanks. will try to work a little more on the game to finish it. once i fix the maze generator i will add many more levels :)
Cool idea but needs a lots of polishment. In my opinion it could be a great game but need to enhance controls, animations and UI, you can start with a retry button. The project is good, the idea is great, the weapon is unconventional and fits the theme! Go and enhance your project, bro!!
I've never even heard of Elm, so props for using the weekend to learn something new! I was able to beat it without really using the banana--just by timing my sneaks just right. Was the banana supposed to make them fall down?
Having a single deployable weapon that you must retrieve in order to use again is a really cool and interesting choice.
You may want to make the player's collision box smaller and position it just around their feet -- I had some difficulty getting through passages, because my head kept hitting the wall when I didn't expect it to due to the camera angle simulated by the sprites.
I'm glad to hear that you'll continue working on this!
Glad you learned a new language. The game itself wasn't great though, as the weapon itself, "Banana", isn't really needed when you can just walk to the goal.
Good one for for a weekend with a new language. Never heard of it but looks worth a look. Cannot rate it high either, but if you add some more levels and a auto respawn it can be quite fun :)
It definitely suits the theme! As someone who's the solo dev of a team that's also been busy this weekend AND unexperienced with the technology of their choice I can totally feel your pain, but isn't it worth it nonetheless? I agree with most people, the game feels fun, it'd be great to have more levels and some UI!
well ok, i think this still needs work? :/ the bounding boxes don't work correctly, your sprites sometimes show that ''image not found'' icon, and even though i got a policeman with my banana peel, nothing happened except him killing me :/
Interesting idea, be cool to see it more fleshed out. I hadn't heard of Elm, but I am going to try it out for sure. I've done some functional programming in Racket, and have been thinking about trying clojurescript, but Elm looks much more approachable.
Nice start. I could not really find out how to use the banana. The controls feel a bit slow and its hard to get through tight passages because the player does not slide along the walls.
Quite a tiny entry, but a good effort considering it was made with an unfamiliar framework / language! Its also good to hear that making the game managed to fulfil your goal of exploring the framework.
I liked the look of the sprites, they seemed cheap to good comical effect -- the bloodied player death sprite was particularly horrific which added nicely to the humour.
I can see where you were coming from with it working better in chrome but the player movements still felt too stiff for my liking but not rendering it unplayable. There was an issue getting through doorways aswell I think it was to do with the hitbox of the player. Overall I enjoyed what I could of it...
I've played with the idea of doing my next LD in a language like Elm or possibly PureScript, _maybe_ ClojureScript. I'm worried about performance degradation in using those languages, but I feel like they probably win out for developer productivity (_provided_ I'm already good and familiar with the languages before I start), given the fact that (especially for Elm and PureScript) certain whole classes of runtime bugs go away.
I might use this LD's game as a template to try rewriting it in one or two of those languages, to see how comfortable I can get, and if I feel like it saves me troubles.