Ludum Dare #35compo
Turbo/Glide
Turbo/Glide is a car racing game with a car that is secretly also a glider plane.
The plane doesn't have any engine, so you have to build up kinetic energy in car mode.
Controls:
[Up] - Throttle
[Down] - Brake
[Left] - Pitch plane left
[Right] - Pitch plane right
[C] - Turn car / flip plane
[X] - Shapeshift between car and plane mode
[R] - Restart level
Note that you don't use [Down] to steer up ;-)
The plane doesn't have any engine, so you have to build up kinetic energy in car mode.
Controls:
[Up] - Throttle
[Down] - Brake
[Left] - Pitch plane left
[Right] - Pitch plane right
[C] - Turn car / flip plane
[X] - Shapeshift between car and plane mode
[R] - Restart level
Note that you don't use [Down] to steer up ;-)
Comments68
mine is a lot like yours, but easier and with less content:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=19671
conf.lua:2: attempt to index field 'window' (a nil value)
Error: player.lua:15: attempt to call method 'getDimensions' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
player.lua:15: in function 'sprite'
player.lua:53: in function 'load'
main.lua:73: in function 'load'
[string "boot.lua"]:378: in function <[string "boot.lua"]:373>
[C]: in function 'xpcall'
Is there no way to package the game with an executable for linux?
I would really like to play this.
After checking the last gif on your entry page I confirm that you car animation is pretty sexy :)
I didn't manage to get the hang of it though, I don't know if it's the keyboard mapping, how unresponsive the glider is, how I couldn't get to build speed before switching, or how the physics behave in general, but I just couldn't get used to it. Good thing the crash animation is fun to watch!
I managed to finish levels 1, 3 & 4 still.
The game was really fun to play, and the art style is both unusual and charming in its own way. The music & sounds were fitting and reminded me of DOS games.
Good entry, congrats!
I think it would have done better without the direction change altogether.
For now I choose to keep playing.
(rest of the feedback was transmitted through the IRC channel)
A funny thing is that I also have a carplane in my game. :D
All in all, a solid entry- Good job!
But I'll keep trying, because this game is loads of fun! The graphics are top notch. Not just the car/plane, but also the explosions and even the menu is very nicely styled. The audio is pretty cool as well, from the nice countdown sfx at the start, to the engine revving and even background music. This game feels very complete and polished, which is amazing for a compo entry. Well done!
Graphics were suitable, sounds were pretty cool too, and the concept of shifting between car and plane on the go was pretty nice as well.
Good job, good luck!
Controls are a bit difficult and was only able to beat the first level after 10 or so tries.
The graphics are very cool though, the 2d/3d hybrid style is really clean.
Your game was also really frustrating at points for me. Reasons why may of been the controls, sometimes I mixed them up. However I have a feeling that is a me problem and not a game problem. Another thing I noticed is that it seemed like a guessing game for when I needed to lift off and what not, it made it really hard to reproduce what I did in the previous attempts. There are a few methods you could use to help this. The first would be added details in key spots (ie a light where you need to switch to a plane). That however may be a bit too obvious and you want your player to make their own decisions. The next method is just adding more detail to the game. It is pretty sparse as is, and adding grass, lights, a sky, any sort of prop would help give the player something to know where they are. All of the landscape looks the same, making it hard to know where you are. The last method I could see to help this is to zoom out the camera. You are really close to the player, and while this may be nice, zooming out would help you see more of the stage at a time. You could get even fancier and have the camera be dynamic, zoomed in when you were slow, and zoomed out more when you got faster. Or something like that.
Your sound was grating. I think you could've mixed your car revving sounds much lower. It was too loud and got annoying after a bit. Another thing you could try is to make it a little more dynamic, have it rev up and simulate it shifting gears. You could also ry putting a low pass filter on it. Higher frequencies tend to get more annoying faster. Or so I have found.
Your music is also at a constant volume, it never seems to let up. Perhaps making the lead synth get quieter when the whole ensemble gets introduced. You can also have it drop out once and awhile. Maybe try adding a delay to it. The drums were also too present in the mix I think. A good way for mixing drums is lowering the kick and raising it up until you can just hear it. Same for the rest of the set (this works the best when they can be controlled individually). You have a lot of interesting aspects to this song, and your lead synth tends to cover them all up.
Another part to it being too "loud" is the fact that I never heard the second part of the song where the lead synth actually does drop out for 10 bars or so. The music restarts whenever you die. Perhaps you should make the song loopable and loop so the player can hear the whole track.
Some assorted and redundant thoughts in the following.. Sometimes it felt like I was just lucky but I guess I'm just not yet good enough to play this. At first, I was constantly mixing X and C but it get better after a while. Sometimes I lost nearly all speed after shapeshifting. Especially on the final level on the second plane part I just couldn't get enough speed to get up. I just kept stalling and crashing but later it turned out I was shapeshifting a bit too late. Quite delicate controls, that is. I'm relieved to see that I'm not the only one struggling with level 4. When I finally got up and further, of course I crashed right in front of the finish line. Multiple times..
Often the plane did not really turn after shapeshifting and flew forward even though I was holding the turning key. However, they key might be not to hold all the time but a bit less at a time. Or at least I felt like the plane controlled better that way but there is still some learning. On the other hand, as the goal is to finish as quickly as possible, learning to do a better time is rewarding.
I also managed to do some wheelies. However, sometimes I didn't bother braking but changed direction, which ended up in wheelie and flipping over.. Just gotta be patient. On wheelie, the car sometimes got stuck vertically while still being able to switch directions (but not affecting anything). Once the car happened to flip over due to wheelie but got stuck upside down. I think I mashed some buttons during that, so I tried to get it to glitch again by mashing X or X and C. Occasionally, I could glitch trough the wall and fly outside the map (briefly before crashing into another wall). :D
The appearance is quite appealing in its low-poly feeling. Especially the car/plane looks cute in its shiny material. The animations are cool as well and give a little Transformers feeling. However, the engine sound could have a bit lower volume compared to the background music.
Incredibly addicting. I couldn't stop until I finally finished the final track (took waay longer than it should have).
(I should have left out over half of this but have to sleep now.. Especially now that I read WetDesertRock's great comment.)
This game really suffered from the small screen space, I think. There's no way to see what's coming, and without planning you need to go into a lot of situations knowing that you're just going to blow up in the end. A map, zooming, panning, something would be a great addition. The lack of visibility gets annoying when you're decently far into a level, especially combined with the next point.
I didn't really understand when I should have good control over the plane. It seemed like if I went too fast, it would either rapidly pitch up or be completely unresponsive to controls. I felt like I had very little control over what was going to happen when entering plane mode, which I'd guess tripled the number of times I would need to play a segment because it seemed like I would randomly not have control.
The only reason I hammered on those point is that I think this is a really neat idea, and I really want to see it improved! (I'll be checking out the post-compo after writing this.)
Audio was very fitting--I just wish the music didn't always restart at the beginning so I could hear more of it. I left it running just now, and there's a lot more to the song than I ever heard during gameplay.
Unfortunately due to those gameplay points, I couldn't finish the last level. :(
Awesome game, I hope you can get it polished up!
good mechanic, nice level desing, exelent game feels at all!
great work!
Great job!