Somewhere in the distant future, a space shipping truck get's stuck on the NME's Bioweapon Development Site
Person A: The truck won't start!
Person B: We have to call for help! We have enough supplies to keep us alive until rescue comes!
Person A: Hold up, how do we deal with the NME's Bioweapons?
Person B: .... Crap.
Person A: What are we even shipping? Go there and maybe find a snack.
*Person B walks to opens shipping container*
Person B: You're not gonna believe this! We can live out our entire lives here with this guy's help!
Person A: What do you mean?
*Person A walks over to the container to see what Person B is up to*
Person A: Oh
R-Savior COVID Destroyer
You're this mecha guy known as the R-Savior, and you have to protect a truck from giant coronaviruses.
Cool Features: * Nice 3D Models * Manually-coded Inverse Kinematics Walking that took half the compo to start working decently
Things I might have not finished: * LAZOR beam effects * 9 Barrel Howitzer * Nice Music
Strategy & Gameplay
The game is about managing a zerg rush attack on multiple fronts. To win a level, you have to advance forward and destroy the huge cowona, which creates lots of smaller cowonas. The lazor kills everything in line of sight, and you also don't have health and can't die. You have to destroy the cowonas ahead before they get behind you where they're harder to hit, and damage the truck.
Tips: * The lazor is more accurate when you stand still * Walking down hills can be a bit difficult, walk in a zig-zag pattern * You can teleport back to the truck at any time, but you'll lose your defensive position
The hilly and bouldery terrain is a battlefield where many areas can't be hit by your laser. Move forward to the next defensive point when enough cowonas are destroyed in front, so that you wouldn't be overwhelmed shooting back at the few that managed to sneak past.
Media:
Questions that might be asked * Why cowonas?
It was originally suppose to be missiles on wheels with eyes and the player has to advance forward and destroy a giant missile launcher instead of a giant cowona, but then I was running out of time. They may be too popular, but they're easier to animate and move, and people actually want them dead.
*"Fry those bastards"* -someone on twitter
My LD42 game had "Box Caterpillars" which were unique and recognizable, but kind of too cute to kill for some people. LD43, you kill yourself. But this time you kill spiky balls that are currently ruining everything.
* Why a mecha?
It was in my mind for some of the other themes, but mostly because a walking mecha is cool.
* What is the NME?
They're the enemy. The E at the end stands for Enemy. Automated bad guys which were also the bad guys in my LD43 game, but didn't have a name at that time.
* Why is the ground purple?
This was probably inspired by the flash game "Heavy Weapons" where the ground in some levels looks similar. In fact, the endless looping bad music in inspired by "Hover Bot Arena."
* Why does the mecha get stuck so much?
I'm too lazy to fix it. The code is a balance between chaos and readability, just enough to get it done fast while still staying sane. For some reason I decided to use only collision checks to move the legs, instead of the physics engine dynamics. When the front leg is fully extended forward, and the back leg is fully retracted (walking down a hill), the back leg can't move up and gets stuck. Also, if you try walking towards a wall, there's some code in place to automatically deflect the walking direction.
* What game engine is this?
It uses Urho3D, nobody knows about it but it's pretty cool. It's fairly lightweight, portable, and barebones compared to something like Unity, which I consider a good thing. I've used the same engine for the past Ludum Dares. The entire game is made with scripting using AngelScript, which kind of looks like old C++. I'll try getting webassembly export working some day.
I noticed I could sit halfway between the truck and the boss and snipe any enemies, so maybe the laser gun needs to be nerfed. I had fun playing though, and the music is a jam! Nice work!
Good chunky audio! The character getting stuck at random was a bit annoying however, especially common after teleporting. Also a button for teleporting would be nice. But all in all, was a fun game to play through once, the dificullty ramp felt just right as well.
I got stuck a bit too much getting down the slope, which can be annoying after the second time or so. I like the idea though, but I also had trouble reading correctly where my laser would shoot.
I am not sure I understand how it is upgraded? Is it just by teleport back to the base after killing a big one?
I killed 9 huge viruses and 469 small ones. I'd say the game is a bit too slow to get started really, but the base is nice. Good graphics as well. Congrats!
Hilarious but it got kind of boring after killing Cowona twice. Maybe make the walk speed a bit faster and fix how often the guy gets stuck or make some part of the gameplay change other than the difficulty supposedly.
@brachistosauro It keep going until the player is overwhelmed by numbers, or computer runs out of memory. It becomes impossible for a human at around level 20. I'd say an aimbot can go to level 50 or something.
@linky439 The laser DPS gets increased each time. Note that the first few small cowonas killed takes a little less than half a second to kill, and later on becomes perceptually instant.
@clayton-does-things The game gets really intense after a few more levels, skip forward in the video a bit to see what I mean. It plays like a tank, but yeah it does feel pretty slow. It would be worth rewriting the movement, but it already took an entire day to write in the first place. There was plans to give unlockable weapons, note the left arm, but I had no time to implement it.
So many awesome elements! I love the 3-D model of the robot. The music is good too. The sync'ing of the footsteps with the audio was great. I really love how intuitive it is to turn and control the top of the robot independently of moving the bottom of the robot.
Suggestion: The audio when you blow something up is a bit distorted.
Bug: I got myself stuck against a boulder and couldn't move at all.
The idea is good, but the controls makes the game a bit difficult to play. I really liked the music, but I am not a super fan of the sound effects. Overall is this a okay jam game.
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I got stuck a bit too much getting down the slope, which can be annoying after the second time or so. I like the idea though, but I also had trouble reading correctly where my laser would shoot.
I am not sure I understand how it is upgraded? Is it just by teleport back to the base after killing a big one?
I killed 9 huge viruses and 469 small ones. I'd say the game is a bit too slow to get started really, but the base is nice. Good graphics as well. Congrats!
@linky439 The laser DPS gets increased each time. Note that the first few small cowonas killed takes a little less than half a second to kill, and later on becomes perceptually instant.
@clayton-does-things The game gets really intense after a few more levels, skip forward in the video a bit to see what I mean. It plays like a tank, but yeah it does feel pretty slow. It would be worth rewriting the movement, but it already took an entire day to write in the first place. There was plans to give unlockable weapons, note the left arm, but I had no time to implement it.
Overall I really enjoyed it.
I love the 3-D model of the robot. The music is good too. The sync'ing of the footsteps with the audio was great. I really love how intuitive it is to turn and control the top of the robot independently of moving the bottom of the robot.
Suggestion: The audio when you blow something up is a bit distorted.
Bug: I got myself stuck against a boulder and couldn't move at all.
One suggestion - please allow to adjust volume or keep it lower initially, my ears blew up on start. But once I adjusted it, it was a lot better.
Keep up the good work.
Moving is quite difficult, I keep getting stuck on the center hill