Directive 399WH

by ygrichman

co-authored: @jamie-slowgrove

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.36

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.29

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.93

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.83

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.95

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.25

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.57

Directive 399WH is a... we're not sure exactly. You are woken by your ship's AI as there is an anomaly causing time loops aboard ship. The AI has a plan and he has chosen you..... for some reason?
The game is kind of a Puzzle/Exploration/Narrative game.... Just play it for a bit and tell us what we have made.
Please... we'd love to know :sweat_smile:
If it feels like two different games jammed together at a certain point, you must be mistaken :innocent:

We couldn't really decide what to make so we both made different games and decided to see what would happen... won't try that again :sweat_smile: Sorry if it feels a little rushed, because it was at the end :rofl:
There were more endings planned for the ship segment, some are half finished. I will try and release a V2 with them included at a later point.

Both of us wanted to code, rather than one focussing on art so there are no imported models, everything is just built out of unity primitives. Also only a couple imported textures, the rest are flat colours with shader trickery :smile:

Known Bugs/Issues

* Unity WebGL Graphical Glitches - Same old :shrug:
* No particle effects on WebGL build - Can't fix as Unity Limitation. Use the Windows build for best experience
* There is only one ending - The other main ending had to get cut due to time will add it in a post jam version at some
* ~~Will supply a Linux Build at some point soon. Sorry no OSX build as it never works unless you compile it on one.~~
* ~~AI Hub door won't unlock (Should be able to fix when I'm more awake)~~
* ~~Several spelling mistakes - Will fix in the morning, promise :).~~
* ~~Security Game UI doesn't scale - Should be a quick fix :fingers_crossed:~~

Changelog

* V1.0 - Initial Release

* V1.1 - Main Post Jam Fixes:
- Fixed Cryo dialogue not displaying after 1st Loop.
- Hopefully fixed all spelling mistakes and tidied the grammar.
- Tweaked Spaceship UI to be less likely to overlap on some resolutions.
- Fixed AI Hub door not opening and a bunch of bugs related to its functionality.
- Fixed UI Scaling in cube game and improved level loading.
- Escape key will now exit the game in all scenes.
- Total loops counter on game over screen now actually tracks instead of being always 1.
* V1.1.1 - Added desktop icon + Fixed lines in skybox.
* V1.1.2 - Disabled Escape key exiting on WebGL as it caused issues when attempting to exit fullscreen.
* V1.1.2a - Other Platforms
- Linux Release - Tested on an Ubuntu Live USB
- Mac OS X Release - Untested! Tried to follow guide here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/the-looper-encounter/important-note-for-m... Thanks @voidsay for the tip.

Instructions

Main Ship

Explore the ship and either follow (or ignore) the instructions of the ships AI.

Security Game

* The end platform is orange and needs to be activated before being reached.
* To activate the platform you must place a weighted cube on all of the pink buttons.
* A freeze cube will lock at its position and can be used for reaching places.
* The cube has a reset loop where your cube will reset after a set time.

Controls

Main Ship

Movement = WASD / Left Analog Stick
Interact / Continue = SPACE / A Button

Security Game

Movement = WASD / Left Analog Stick
Camera = Mouse / Right Analog Stick
Jump = SPACE / A Button
Freeze Cube = Q / X Button
Weighted Cube = E / B Button
Help Text = H / Y Button

Made by

Richard Hancock - Main Ship - http://richardhancock.co.uk
Jamie Slowgrove - Security Game - http://jamieslowgrove.co.uk

Tools

Unity 2020.1.7f1 Personal
Visual Studio 2019
Gimp
GitLab CE

3RD Party Credits

Genres: puzzle

Tools: GIMP, Unity

Comments16

Daitse6 Oct 2020, 11:49

Nice game ! Loved the humor ! Too bad you still have a few placeholder models. The story was fun, and the music very nice ! Congrats !

GroundDoon12 Oct 2020, 01:31

Nice little game, I liked the variety and storyline in the game.

dxk229412 Oct 2020, 01:41

Ayy I got the engine core to overload. Good writing, I liked the ship design, and there was an expected bonus minigame. Nice job, I had fun!

doomshmuck12 Oct 2020, 04:17

Nice job, I liked the direction this was going in. I was a bit confused on certain rooms not opening, although I think that's just because I missed the button prompt for interacting... maybe the interactable elements need to be better highlighted or something so that it is more obvious? I also hit a soft-lock on the mini game in the security room area where I locked a cube on a tile that raised another tile, and then I couldn't reset it, so probably should have a reset button in there or something.

ubershmekel12 Oct 2020, 04:20

The minimalistic visual style was actually awesome and fitting for an AI-gone-wild sci-fi thriller story. It was beautiful. The music was cool, though in that short amount of time it somehow managed to get repetitive. The mini-game where I had to move cubes around was cool, and a surprising turn of game design. I was a bit disappointed when I didn't get any other mini-games. In the end, it seems like all I had to do was visit each room twice. I understand this was made under time pressure, so if I ended up feeling like I wanted more of this content - you did a good job. The flash-light effect was awesome, and the story and mood were fun. Please get more mini games, and also beef up the story a bit. It looks promising and already is fun. Thank you for the game.

Jordan Kelly12 Oct 2020, 19:24

I thought both games showed a lot of promise and given that you essentially made *two* games for the jam you deserve double credit :D

clemonades12 Oct 2020, 19:26

Nice game you ended up with here. Fits the theme well and made me want to try and figure out what was happening. Good job!

ZeonBlue18 Oct 2020, 12:09

Nice game! Fits the theme, I was being an idiot at first, didn't realize I could actually move the camera when I was playing the block game

ditam18 Oct 2020, 14:43

Bravo, a very complete experience, even without that second ending! I spent way too much time in the "jumpy cube game" before I realized I can move the camera with the mouse, haha. I overloaded the engine in 12 loops, apparently -- it felt much more, but I spent most of the time in the minigame.

riwmd18 Oct 2020, 15:34

I think this game became my favourite! I feel like you guys managed to complete what you envisioned and that is very valuable thing to achive. Of course there could always be more content to add for a game but everything from mechanics to dialog to graphics are all great jam versions of what it could be. Playing and seeing what you guys have made here tought me a lesson which I will follow for my next jams. Thanks for the entry and I hope you guys are happy with what you created because I genuinely feel like you should!

Voidsay18 Oct 2020, 15:37

regarding the it never works for macos: there is a workaround and detailed explination by @shaolin-dave in https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/the-looper-encounter/important-note-for-mac-builds

The dialog boxes in the webgl build completely broke. Only squares of various shapes and sizes. The console didn't revile any errors. Hard to judge it/figure out what to do. I got so far as the security game (I won it). Massage me if you find out what's up/have a linux build

ygrichmanauthor18 Oct 2020, 17:40

@voidsay Weird not seen any UI issues so far, what browser/resolution are you running?
Also I've added a Linux build now, and attempted a MacOS build with that guide you linked. No idea if the mac build works though.
Thanks

Voidsay18 Oct 2020, 19:25

@ygrichman thank you for the build. With the text everything makes sense.

Here is a picture of the bug:

Clearly the text just isn't loading, but it also doesn't give me any errors, so it's a mystery.

I sometimes wonder when the plotting emotionless AI and its wacky counterpart will fall out of favour. Not that I don't like it, it just seems to be so common nowadays. In any case I start to be negative once again (probably my worst character trait) I really liked the way you guys made the character movement. Smooth and responsive, very good! (Homebrew or storebought?) There was a contrast between your two games, but if you were to introduce more "minigames" it almost definitely could be seen as consistent.

Just a dev question. Did you use textmesh pro for the texts in the rooms? Because I used textmesh for the first time this jam and mine looks kind of shit...

ygrichmanauthor18 Oct 2020, 21:18

@voidsay I saw the text do that a few times when trying to setup textmesh pro. It caused all sorts of issues and its documentation is almost non existent. Might not use it next time.
Character movement in the ship is just rigid body with apply force. I think the cube game used Unity's character controller

Shaolin Dave20 Oct 2020, 04:14

I have an idea regarding the text bug but this is just a guess.
I'm thinking you're using a custom font that's not included in the game, and therefore not on the computer of the people playing it?
If this is the case, put the TTF files for your custom fonts in a "Fonts" directory inside "Assets".

ygrichmanauthor21 Oct 2020, 18:56

@shaolin-dave It is a custom font but it is included and I've tested it on computers that definitely don't have it installed. So I'm not really sure, I can't seem to recreate the bug with any hardware I have. It was my first time using TextMesh Pro so i'm guessing its something I've done wrong with that. Thanks for the suggestion though :thumbsup: