Ludum Dare #37compo
Cozy Christmas Village
Grab yourself some hot chocolate, prop your feet up by the fire, and relax this Christmas. Take up a cozy little hobby. Why don't you build yourself a nice little model Christmas village?
The Steers-Robluck Company of Albany has you covered this season. We have the greatest catalog of model Christmas village buildings, props, and decorations in the world. Our best-selling how to guide can get you started in this relaxing hobby today.
Gameplay:
Purchase buildings from the catalog and place them on the model table.
If visitors come to your village to shop in your stores, they might spend money, which you can then use on more catalog purchases.
In order to attract visitors, you will need shops and businesses, which will need to be staffed.
Placing houses lets people move into your village, who can then work in your stores.
Visitors to your village don't like trudging through the snow, so build them paths and walkways so they can get around more quickly.
As you build buildings, more things will be unlocked from the catalog.
Controls:
* Click and drag to pan around the table.
* Click the catalog to open it. From there, you can buy any building you can afford by clicking "Buy". Then you can place it on the map by clicking. You can cancel your order by clicking off the table, or somewhere invalid. On the map, valid positions will be shown in green, invalid positions will be show in red.
* When placing paths, all the buildings will be hidden so you can see behind them. The building location are highlighted red, and their entrances are highlighted pink.
* Click the clipboard to see some notes about how your village is growing.
Troubleshooting: If you get a blank red screen, no assets could be loaded for some reason. Did you extract all the files? If that doesn't fix the issue for you, or you get a red screen with an error message, let me know.
--==--
12/15/16 - version 1.1
- better error handling
- fix building entrances that weren't adjacent to the building
- fix Z-ordering in some edge cases
12/15/16 - WHOOPS! rolling that fix back, the Z ordering fix caused crashes on path placement
12/15/16 - version 1.2
- fix path placement crash
The Steers-Robluck Company of Albany has you covered this season. We have the greatest catalog of model Christmas village buildings, props, and decorations in the world. Our best-selling how to guide can get you started in this relaxing hobby today.
Gameplay:
Purchase buildings from the catalog and place them on the model table.
If visitors come to your village to shop in your stores, they might spend money, which you can then use on more catalog purchases.
In order to attract visitors, you will need shops and businesses, which will need to be staffed.
Placing houses lets people move into your village, who can then work in your stores.
Visitors to your village don't like trudging through the snow, so build them paths and walkways so they can get around more quickly.
As you build buildings, more things will be unlocked from the catalog.
Controls:
* Click and drag to pan around the table.
* Click the catalog to open it. From there, you can buy any building you can afford by clicking "Buy". Then you can place it on the map by clicking. You can cancel your order by clicking off the table, or somewhere invalid. On the map, valid positions will be shown in green, invalid positions will be show in red.
* When placing paths, all the buildings will be hidden so you can see behind them. The building location are highlighted red, and their entrances are highlighted pink.
* Click the clipboard to see some notes about how your village is growing.
Troubleshooting: If you get a blank red screen, no assets could be loaded for some reason. Did you extract all the files? If that doesn't fix the issue for you, or you get a red screen with an error message, let me know.
--==--
12/15/16 - version 1.1
- better error handling
- fix building entrances that weren't adjacent to the building
- fix Z-ordering in some edge cases
12/15/16 - WHOOPS! rolling that fix back, the Z ordering fix caused crashes on path placement
12/15/16 - version 1.2
- fix path placement crash
Comments34
i really liked the artwork and the mood in general
congrats!
On the downside... not sure how this fits the "One Room" theme.
I like the voices, but wish I could have heard more of that. The sound effects were alright. I love the art in this a lot, especially that little puff of smoke that comes out of those houses.
It's crazy how this was done in 48 hours. Great work!
~Random-storykeeper
An easy game, relaxing and creative.
I really like the art style.
Great entry
Now while it is an amazing game for 2 days it does have its faults and I do believe they have been said by others but it is possible some of them may have not.
1. Unable to delete an item once it is placed
2. Not able to continually place all objects like you can the sidewalks. IE trees, lamps, houses, etc
3. unable to lay sidewalk by clicking and dragging. (note: I'm totally fine with the way it is but I can see why some people would say that)
4. Not being able to rotate the buildings before placing them
5. Not able to discern a buildings front door before placing object.
That is all I can think of at the moment. Now I understand that you only had 48 hours, and I didn't rate your game and what it could have been I rated it on what you presented and you presented a lot! As I write this I still have the game running, and at the time of writing this I'm at $2450.45 and its still going up, Pop:28, Vistors: 124.
I sincerely hope you will work on this post compo and put it up on Steam. You could add the features I posted about and even expand upon them too. Not only do you have to have a xmas theme you could have a tropical beach theme. Not to mention you could expand the catalog to include other items. You could also include an option to expand the table to allow for a larger town!
Anyways, You did a great job and it was a real pleasure to play your game!
Thank you everyone for all the great feedback! I knew not having a bulldozer was a bummer, but you guys have pointed out a bunch of UI things that I hadn't considered.
I added some better error reporting to the newest version. If you get a blank red screen, none of the assets could be loaded for some reason. If extracting the whole ZIP doesn't fix that, or you see an error message or still just a black screen, let me know
Thanks, everyone!
Unfortunately it clashes a bit with the non-pixel art parts in the menus, especially the text.
Controls are were bit wonky for me. Navigating the menus is a bit of a hassle, and some items should not revert back to the standard cursor, like street lamps and trees.
There was an audio glitch that caused a click sound to play about every 2 seconds.
But overall still very impressive for a Compo game.
Some of the navigation feels a bit clunky in places - I can't offer any constructive suggestions as that's something I struggle with as well.
Some music would have gone a ways to make this game even more immersive than it already is, but even without it there's a great amount of polish and completeness here for just two day's work. Well done.
For a compo project, this is really amazing work! :)