The Loop

First LD, total noobs. Watch us bumble through this, make fun of us, help us out whatever.

https://www.twitch.tv/westonwilson

Great first Jam! I think even simple free music would have given this a quality boost to set the mood, I love the player and the movement though! :D

I liked your game my congratulations, I also did one if you want to know, and give me your feedback I am very grateful, this is the link https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/resurrection

@etrealjunior if you liked the game please rate it.

So I had some framerate issues, perhaps my machine is just naff but perhaps a few too many objects trying to be rendered at once? it seemed to clear up if I was facing away from the city. Otherwise, a solid idea well executed. The only other thing I'd mention is that, if you're going to have such a short and repetitive music track (which is fine on such a tight time budget), give us a mute button?

All in all, good job!

@etrealjunior didn't understand the objective maybe it doesn't have... :) but didn't feel the stuck in a loop. You have a lot of models and sometimes the game slowdown. But I enjoy the scenario and the music, but gets boring in time :D maybe a key to turn it off. Good job and have fun :)

@minibetrayal yeah definitely some framerate issues, also some camera issues. We constrained ourselves (pretty much down to the last few hours) to only use Bolt for visual scripting and Cinemachine for Cams (to force ourselves to learn the systems) Some of the choppiness is due to moving the came fixed distances as it grows rather than a smooth pull back. The sound was definitely a last minute "oh, we forgot sound" thing lol! I still want to work on it so updates, actual goals/levels, better audio, performances improvements etc to come. Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!

I like the "Hole.IO" idea of the game, but there are some technical issues

The most prominent is the framerate drop. I believe the cause of this that there are too many objects that are being rendered at the same time, but I'm not sure

Criticism aside, I think you did a good job for your first jam. Keep it up and you will go far

Cheers

@etrealjunior no real objective, in this submission anyway. We decided to go literal with "Caught in a loop" the ship is the loop and it catches things. Yeah the audio is real repetitive. I thought it was better than nothing, but am learning that without the time, it would have been better without. We were wanting to get sound effects and visual effects for each thing we pick up too. water shooting out when you pick up a hydrant car alarms when you capture a car, birds flying out when you get a tree, and so on. Maybe we'll do more with this. Thanks!

Yep, devoured it all. Such an upbeat world annihilation! Katamari vides. Impressive world size, confused about the loop theme. Probably needs some challenge or any direction.

This was great. I liked eating stuff, then i realised i could keep eating everything. that Orb got so big and ate everything, including my FPS.

@blood-jackal23 Thanks! We were going for a katamari damacy / hole.io vibe. Yeah I noticed framerate was an issue right off the bat, and is definitely because there are too many assets rendering. I wasn't sure how to handle it. I deal a lot with Unity but have very few assets in what I normally develop. I'd like to fix it.

This is very a "first jam" game, and I do not mean that's a bad thing. It means you were eager to do a lot of things. I mean damn, the map is huge! It's fun to float around a while. Even though, like the others said, the framerate is a big problem. I have an old and bad PC so it might be worse on my computer but on some places it's hard to play.

Otherwise, that's a good entry, and a good first jam game! I hope you do more in the future!

@oddmes, @arthur-mairs, yeah... total consumption was a problem on my end too. I want to work that out. The first run with the grow mechanic my scale factor was too high and I ate one hydrant and it grew to consume the entire world in less than 5 seconds! it was a mess lol. We plan on laying out better worlds/levels with maybe timed rounds and challenges. However, the theme, we just went literal with it. The ship is the loop and stuff gets caught in it. We considered having some things appearing to try to escape but you know, time.

@drjexter yeah i get that. but i did have fun with it! I wanted to polish off the whole world with my space orb.

@toulou Thanks! nah it's a problem, I am running with a pretty decent CPU and GPU and It bogs my machine down too. Thanks for playing! We'll definitely be doing more Jams.

My laptop got about 1 FPS a minute so I had to switch to my gaming rig haha.
I enjoyed the scaling mechanic! I'm a big fan of Katamari Damacy so that was fun.

Really good job for a first time, I look forward to seeing what you guys make next jam.

Had a few frame rate issues due to the amount of objects being rendered but always like these types of games. The audio was a bit repetitive and I think it would have been nice to see an end goal but I had fun with it. I liked seeing the objects inside of the device as you consumed everything. Nice touch. Well done on your first jam!

Ok...There was some FPS Drop....But Literally stucked in a loop though...I can feel its your first time....me too...really tough to get ideas at first but these type of theme in first Go ....Man it Is Awesome...

@drjexter I'm not an expert in 3D games but I believe you need to look into using different LODs for each 3D model in the scene. You might also need to create some kind of system that renders objects within a certain radius from the player. That way, you don't render everything all at once

Hope this helps

Thanks everyone! @blood-jackal23 yeah I wasn't doing any occlusion culling and my far clipping was set way far out. I normally deal in like the 20-30 models range for what I make so it's never been an issue I needed to know about lol. Definitely lesson learned!

Ooof the framerate... oof the optimization.

Making a katamari game for a first jam is definitely ambitious!

Some suggestions for preformance:
- constrain the "Loop" to a small area at first. One that has all the small objects. This would allow you to make more detailed and unique zones.
- after reaching a certain size release the player into a different area with bigger objects. Repeat this process.
- don't load all areas at once
- merge objects if you can! I am pretty sure that most of your performance issues stem from having so many separate objects. Surprisingly a computer can handles few high poly object better than many low poly ones.
- delete small objects after you reached a certain size. When you swallow buildings you don't care about the bushes anymore.
- also delete the small objects in the ball after some time. You won't see them anyway.
- object culling and far clipping obviously apply, but I am pretty sure that unity dose that for you already.

Now to the actual game:
- music loops too fast. Common problem, especially if you do the music a few minutes before the deadline (I am guilty of the myself)
- controls (in between the lag) where good, rampaging thru the city was fun
- some colliders for the objects that are too big to absorb would be nice (I guess you didn't do it because of the lag)

@voidsay thank you for the detailed feedback! I know it's rough on the lag so I appreciate anyone who makes it through a few minutes!

Deleting small objects is a really good idea! I do employ FIFO to destroy older object in the loop though I've found that isn't consistent either. I have never really dealt which much of the graphics end of games before so most of those considerations went right out the window. (Won't make that mistake again!). We did also have collision with objects we're too small for on the list but it didn't make it in on time :/ I have implemented in locally since and it makes a big difference, great suggestion.

Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

was a bit much for me with the music chosen but all in all it was a good entry

Great work guys. I liked it anyway. Please visit my game too and rate it!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/the-dumb-robot

Interesting mechanic but needs something extra to make it into an actual game. Also as quite a few people have noticed the lag is significant when you are looking towards the middle of the town.

The game was a little bit slow for me so I couldn't play well but I liked the gameplay.

I have the idea that you guys spawned everything in a single go and maybe that's why the framerate was low, read about frustum culling and batch spawn. It would help you a lot.

I really like the graphics. This game has such a cool vibe and I really like the music and the environment.