Ludum Dare #39compo

Wreckage

by cogcomp

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.23

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.88

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.23

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.33

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.89

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.04

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.35

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.88

Important!

If you get the dreaded "openAL32.dll not found":
Either download the version with the OpenAL installer
or install OpenAL from http://openal.org/downloads/

... I can guarantee you that other games in the compo will be using OpenAL, so it's worth installing :-)

Other things you might need to install, that other compo games also will be using :

Visual C++ redistributable For Visual Studio 2015 (DLLs): https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=48145

Tools:

Visual Studio 2015 (C++),
Notepad++,
SFML,
GIMP,
Sculpt GL,
LMMS,
Audacity,
bfxr,
birdfont,
x-icon editor,
Bandicam,
VirtualDub

Story

Starship captain Pebbles wasn't expecting his power generator to blow, it just seemed to happen way too often on this type of ship. Not that running out of power was his only problem, there's debris and ooh, yup, there's still enemy vessels in the vicinity. Not much he can do now other than hang around and leech power from other ships in the area to stay alive until the fleet comes to retrieve him yet again...

Instructions

Navigate the space arena avoiding contact with any type of object.
Your ship is constantly losing power.
Using your thruster drains power.
Don't collide with any ships you'll lose a lot of power.
Don't get hit by the enemy pulse weapons.
Don't get stuck in any laser barrier.
Don't run into any mines.

Top up your energy levels by connecting to enemy space ships with your hook.
Collisions with other ships and debris will cause you to detach from enemy ships.
Stay alive until the counter has counted down to zero.
and most importantly...

Don't run out of power!

Controls

Keyboard / XBOX 360 controller

Start game: Any button on chosen controller

Rotate ship: A+D / Left stick

Rotate cannon: LEFT+RIGHT keys /Right stick

Thruster: W / Left bumper button

Grappling hook: SPACE / Right bumper button

Links

* Windows: http://www.cogitarecomputing.com/wreckage/wreckage.zip

* Windows with OpenAL installer: http://www.cogitarecomputing.com/wreckage/wreckageWithOpenAL.zip

* Windows with shader fixed and OpenAL installer: http://www.cogitarecomputing.com/wreckage/wreckageShaderFixedWithOpenAL.zip

* Visual C++ redistributable For Visual Studio 2015 (DLLs): https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=48145

* Source: http://www.cogitarecomputing.com/wreckage/wreckagesource.7z

* Youtube: https://youtu.be/WE_LqN3keis

Tools: Audacity, Bfxr, GIMP, LMMS, SFML

Comments25

Michael Feldman31 Jul 2017, 19:11

Couldn't play it :( something along the lines of: openAL32.dll not found. Reinstalled and got same error.

Hilvon31 Jul 2017, 19:13

Same here..

🎤 cogcompauthor31 Jul 2017, 19:23

Right I thought I fixed this but the game requires that openAL is installed.

The installation can be found here: http://openal.org/downloads/

I'll see if I can put together a package that includes the missing DLL as well..

gonutz31 Jul 2017, 20:05

Unfortunately I cannot run this Windows 64 bit exe on my 32 bit machine, could you add another build?

PiotrJ31 Jul 2017, 20:10

Had the issues as well. Tho no sounds mightve been and improvement. Very load with not mute button!

CG_Fred31 Jul 2017, 22:51

Great & hard game as per usual Alex :D A tutorial would have been nice since it took me a while to figure out what to do.

Wabble31 Jul 2017, 23:30

Cool simple game. Theme was there, okay sound. Commands are a bit wonky, ship's and cannon's rotation to sensitive, overal a okay game.

🎤 cogcompauthor1 Aug 2017, 05:12

@gonutz : This is a 32-bit build for 32-bit machines.

I've verified that it works on older versions of 32-bit Windows 10 and on an up to date 64-bit Window 10.

You might just be missing the redist files: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=48145

🎤 cogcompauthor1 Aug 2017, 05:13

@cg-fred : Thanks for the feedback. It's basically asteroids with resource management and a power siphoning grappling hook. I didn't think it needed more explaining :-)

Surovyi2 Aug 2017, 18:50

Pretty hard game, but overall like it. Interesting idea :grinning:

nikrt2 Aug 2017, 19:06

The art style looks nice, and the environment has been designed nicely. The game is tricky and hard to play, and I say that in a positive sense. Overall, nicely made :)

Vivoubos2 Aug 2017, 19:30

Yeah! It's good to play with the controller :)

I love every developper who did that!

MAYBE THE SOUND IS TOO LOUD x) But audio is nice so it's ok ;)

Very nice game, but every time you die, you have to start from the level 1... It's quite annoying.

So I go to the 4th level and then I give up :(

Good work!

ModalModule2 Aug 2017, 19:32

ummmm, huh? I died a bunch of times not even seeing what killed me! I guess there's no light, so you can't see the enemies? If you at least emitted light that would help... I was able to latch onto some invisible enemy though, and got to level 2, only to immediately die by some unknown force again... I suppose you could say its a reeeeally hard game... haha

Joskineide2 Aug 2017, 19:39

The controls were pretty weird to get the hang on, I'm used to "if the arrow keys are used, they are used to move around", ya know?

The game is quite chalenging and seems to take some time to get good at it, my first couple of lives were basically getting murdered trying to wrap my head around the controls, perhaps an easier first stage could help.

Aarneus2 Aug 2017, 20:05

Man, what a blast from the past. Brought me straight back my childhood in the 90's, looks like something that could have come straight from a Finnish shareware cd. Especially the backgrounds and the game over screen. I don't know if that was your intention, but you absolutely nailed it. And I mean that in the very best way possible!

Even the .dll problems remind me of that time :D Although for me it ran perfectly.

I also really appreciated the gamepad support and I liked the grappling hook once I got used to it. I guess the only real problems are the technical ones, but as I said, I didn't have any. Thanks for making this game!

stormforce022 Aug 2017, 20:46

Gosh, what a learning curve. It took me about 5 minutes to actually beat what I thought was the entire game, and then I had such a "That was just the first level" moment. I eventually made it to level 4, but died there several times and couldn't get past it. The art was good, the music was great, and the game was arcade-y and fast paced! I loved it!

nintendoeats2 Aug 2017, 22:30

That music is frigging awesome.

This is brutally difficult, and also not entirely clear at first. I did eventually figure it out and it went ok, but the controls are super-twitchy. Also be aware, the XBONE controller has horrible bumpers. They are ok for just pressing, but I found holding them down very uncomfortable.

It seems rather unfair to have to avoid enemies that I can't see. The game is hard enough without the darkness preventing me from making them out.

Interesting mechanic, in need of some refinement for difficulty.

Did I mention that the music is awesome? My subwoofer be all like WHAM.

🎤 cogcompauthor3 Aug 2017, 04:50

@modalmodule @nintendoeats Thanks for the great feedback! The enemies aren't meant to be invisible. Don't maximise the window. The game is intended to be played at a 640x480 resolution. It seems there's a bug in the shader code when maximising the window.

🎤 cogcompauthor3 Aug 2017, 18:26

Now, if you really want to maximise the window there's a a version with the shader fixed. I don't recommend it though, since they game really was made to run at 640x480 :-) http://www.cogitarecomputing.com/wreckage/wreckageShaderFixedWithOpenAL.zip

Pandakipu3 Aug 2017, 18:42

It may be hard to control, but I don't know why, I try and try again :D

It's like an arcade game :)

Great job !

TheFunAttic3 Aug 2017, 19:10

Hey !

Game looks and sounds pretty cool, but I had a very hard time playing it as most objects appeared very dark, which is not easy to see in space. Still, the concept is great, and sticks with the theme really nicely. I'd say fix the visual (although it might be on my end), and maybe tune down the energy loss for colliding with things a notch. Good entry otherwise :)

Feel free to check our game out : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/berzerk-hunt

KunoNoOni4 Aug 2017, 01:16

The music was catchy and I really liked the animations. The rotation of the ship and the gun felt a little fast. Have to say I didn't expect the ship to bounce off the sides of the screen but I used it to my advantage :smile:. Overall this was a really cool game. Congrats on finishing it!

gonutz6 Aug 2017, 17:43

Well now I see it actually is a 32 bit Windows exe but it still gives me the message

wreckage.exe is not a valid Win32 application.

on startup. Maybe that really has something to do with the C++ library but I don't want to install anything else. I am actually using a 32 bit Windows XP for testing the games.

🎤 cogcompauthor6 Aug 2017, 17:57

@gonutz Well that would explain it. No, the game is not compatible with Windows XP, sorry...

Tommy14 Aug 2017, 15:01

Nice game, even if I had to restart it like 5 times before being able to survive more than 2 seconds :D

Also, had some graphical glitches when running on fullscreen at 1920x1080, so I had to play in the tiny default window.

Other games by @cogcomp

★3.58

★3.30

★3.54