Note: people say this doesn't work well on OSX and I'm not sure why. You can still try to compile it.
The goal of this game is to get as bigger score as possible (you get points by killing enemies) and escape alive from a dungeon that is constantly shape shifting. Your score is saved only on your machine so share your highscores in the comments if you want :)
Controls: Arrows to move around Numpad to shoot (you shoot to the direction the key is from 5) Press h to show help (controls/legend) Press q to close game (Auto lose)
Looks/Legend: '@' is you '#' are doors 'Y' are exits (just walk on it to escape) 'O' are enemies '_' are dead enemies
Things I used: C++11 My custom text based game engine Atom text editor
P.s. Windows Cygwin users (this probably won't work on OSX) will have to build the game themselves (it's a single 'make' command) P.s.s. If you have Windows 10 preview with Linux subsystem, you can run Linux binary "natively".
Yes, my engine is open source (on GPL3 license, that's why my game is on GPL3 too) and is hosted on GitHub (so anybody can use it as long as their game is also open sourced with GPL3). I just forgot to add it because I posted this submission really late at night - sorry!
Just uploaded a project .zip where single 'make' command will build and run the game. If you are on Windows you need to have Cygwin installed though (not sure if MinGW would do it). I should have done this long ago but I was kind of busy. Oh well...
Sadly my engine does not support Windows yet - I'll get to work on it pretty soon though. Hopefully I'll finish Windows support until voting ends.
About the rules: it is said "If you’re using an internal library, to participate in the Compo, you will be required to share it." My engine would probably count as "internal library". But I'm not really sure, correct me if I'm wrong.
@Prudiiarca Yeah I know. I'm planning to add Windows support on my engine until voting ends. OS X version is not coming though - I have nowhere to compile it from (and compiling from Linux looks messy, I'd rather get Windows version going).
Also, if you're on OS X and have dev tools already installed all you have to do is run single 'make' command :)
One complaint: An info how to win would have been nice, at my first run i got bored after a while and then killed myself on purpose, only to see that my score wasnt saved because i lost. Then i looked into the source and saw that it was rng-based (the chance is 1/30 [1/3 for no door, 1/10 for win], so on average you have to walk into 30 rooms to find an end which is quite a bit).
I found a win in the second run, but i think the score/win system isnt optimal, because now the score just says "enemies i killed before i finally found an end" ^^
@remmy thanks for you comment! Yeah, the help page was a bit rushed and I forgot winning conditions. I also wanted to get something more done with score and gameplay but I just ran out of time. I'm thinking about participating with the the same (improved) engine on next LD. I'm sure my next game would be much more enjoyable :P
Very cool! A simple but intuitive and fun game :-) Could've used some more in-depth mechanics but the nethack style make up for it. Maybe next time add a storyline?
And the first game I get to rate is a Linux-native game running in a terminal... This is so awesome!
The graphics are NetHack-like, lovely. (I actually gave 5 stars for graphics.) The only problem with this game is that I think it needs some fine-tuning: you die too quickly, it would nice to have more health to begin with. Also, it is hard to play on a laptop, where you don't have a numpad (yeah, I have a Num Lock which makes some of the letters to function as numbers, but still hard to sense the directions). Finally, I think it does not stick to the theme very much. Yeah, it's open to interpretation... shapes... shifting... still, by my standard, moving shapes are not enough for "shapeshifting".
But once again, I'd like to emphasize that I found this game lovely, and having a custom text-based game engine is a cool thing, and maybe I will build a more-health version of it for myself – since it's open source, I could do that. ;)
I must admit that there isn't much game depth. Most of my time went into making room generation (it's my first time doing somewhat proper procedural generation)
I was going to compile it for windows but i thought better to play it on linux. Nice concept! It remembered me some old school times that those games where popular nice
Has build errors on Mac. src//Graphics.cpp:148:40: error: variable length array of non-POD element type 'std::string' (aka 'basic_string<char, char_traits<char>, allocator<char> >') std::string textToPrint[terminalSizeX][terminalSizeY];
~/Downloads/System Shift$ ./game Enemy count: 0 Enemy count: 0 ./game: relocation error: ./game: symbol _ZNSt7__cxx1112basic_stringIcSt11char_traitsIcESaIcEEC1EPKc RKS3_, version GLIBCXX_3.4.21 not defined in file libstdc++.so.6 with link time reference
Having never played a terminal-based action game before, I greatly enjoyed the elegance and readability of the interface as well as the responsive controls! I'm not sure how this game fits with the theme, but I commend you for delivering such an entertaining and polished product.
Why did it take me so long to find a true Linux game, I tip my hat to you for this. I really liked playing this, I lost my self in the game for a good 20 minutes, brilliant little game. The only flaw that I found was that the high score system didn't work, I overlooked this when I rated the game.
Well, I downloaded cygwin, gcc, make, and did everything just to play this :-). It was very flickery? in cygwin, but I wouldn't hold that against you. The shooting mechanism was really very cool. You've got the seed to an awesome game here if you add some progression/story. Very well done :-)
It's because I didn't have enough time to implement Windows terminal API into my engine. Who was responsible at Microsoft for not supporting ANSI escape codes?? (there's no compiled OS X version because I don't own a Mac or hackintosh)
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But I amn't having Linux in my hands at this moment to play and score :'(
It would be nice if you would make a windows version for us.
Btw, RedPanda is wrong. The rules no longer say that you need to share your engine before the compo.
About the rules: it is said "If you’re using an internal library, to participate in the Compo, you will be required to share it." My engine would probably count as "internal library". But I'm not really sure, correct me if I'm wrong.
Also, if you're on OS X and have dev tools already installed all you have to do is run single 'make' command :)
One complaint: An info how to win would have been nice, at my first run i got bored after a while and then killed myself on purpose, only to see that my score wasnt saved because i lost. Then i looked into the source and saw that it was rng-based (the chance is 1/30 [1/3 for no door, 1/10 for win], so on average you have to walk into 30 rooms to find an end which is quite a bit).
I found a win in the second run, but i think the score/win system isnt optimal, because now the score just says "enemies i killed before i finally found an end" ^^
The graphics are NetHack-like, lovely. (I actually gave 5 stars for graphics.) The only problem with this game is that I think it needs some fine-tuning: you die too quickly, it would nice to have more health to begin with. Also, it is hard to play on a laptop, where you don't have a numpad (yeah, I have a Num Lock which makes some of the letters to function as numbers, but still hard to sense the directions). Finally, I think it does not stick to the theme very much. Yeah, it's open to interpretation... shapes... shifting... still, by my standard, moving shapes are not enough for "shapeshifting".
But once again, I'd like to emphasize that I found this game lovely, and having a custom text-based game engine is a cool thing, and maybe I will build a more-health version of it for myself – since it's open source, I could do that. ;)
src//Graphics.cpp:148:40: error: variable length array of non-POD element type 'std::string' (aka 'basic_string<char, char_traits<char>, allocator<char> >')
std::string textToPrint[terminalSizeX][terminalSizeY];
Regardless, awesome game worked nicely on linux!
~/Downloads/System Shift$ ./game
Enemy count: 0
Enemy count: 0
./game: relocation error: ./game: symbol _ZNSt7__cxx1112basic_stringIcSt11char_traitsIcESaIcEEC1EPKc
RKS3_, version GLIBCXX_3.4.21 not defined in file libstdc++.so.6 with link time reference
Go vote mine ! :)
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=90478
- Nice to see a ASCII based game.
- I think the idea of exploring a "shapeshifting" environment really cool.
One negative:
- In cygwin, I experienced some flickering. I had to mess around with the terminal resolution to reduce it.
Read comments and people seem to have problems, so I'm not gonna try messing around with cygwin and stuff