Ludum Dare #48compo
Midniight
A moody 2D platformer/exploration game (with Lo-fi graphics)
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*You wake up, in the middle of the night, into a world of nightmare.*
*What are you doing here ? How will you get back home ?*
*The answer lies deep down ...*
Controls:
- Arrows + X to jump
- Enter: pause + minimap
- Alt + Enter : toggle fullscreen
Tools:
- GNU Make / Vim / Git
- GCC / SDL / OpenGL
- Tiled Map Editor
- GIMP / Genius MousePen
- Bitwig Studio / Audacity
- Access Virus TI / Akai MPKmini / C-Thru Axis 49
FOR THE WEB VERSION:
- Click inside the picture to enable sound.
- Don't click on the 'fullscreen' button
------------------------------------------------------------
*You wake up, in the middle of the night, into a world of nightmare.*
*What are you doing here ? How will you get back home ?*
*The answer lies deep down ...*
Controls:
- Arrows + X to jump
- Enter: pause + minimap
- Alt + Enter : toggle fullscreen
Tools:
- GNU Make / Vim / Git
- GCC / SDL / OpenGL
- Tiled Map Editor
- GIMP / Genius MousePen
- Bitwig Studio / Audacity
- Access Virus TI / Akai MPKmini / C-Thru Axis 49
FOR THE WEB VERSION:
- Click inside the picture to enable sound.
- Don't click on the 'fullscreen' button
Comments23

PixelPortalz26 Apr 2021, 05:24
How the hell did you do this with no engine!! Wowwww

Ace1726 Apr 2021, 05:57
@riley-miller `midnight.exe` is the Windows executable. For GNU/Linux you need to run `./midnight.x86_64` .
IanTheBee26 Apr 2021, 17:16
This game is amazing, especially considering you didn't even use a game engine.
I love the art style, and the music sounds really nice. The sound design is great for a jam game. One gripe is the controls, which can feel lacking at times. Especially the jump. I found myself missing platforms by just a tad bit, and the jump feels really short and lacking.
Overall really strong work.
I love the art style, and the music sounds really nice. The sound design is great for a jam game. One gripe is the controls, which can feel lacking at times. Especially the jump. I found myself missing platforms by just a tad bit, and the jump feels really short and lacking.
Overall really strong work.

Tad I Guess26 Apr 2021, 17:24
This is really good! I loved the overall atmosphere and the art style was really nice.
youthfulIdealism26 Apr 2021, 17:24
The windows executable wouldn't start for me.

Kirbloid26 Apr 2021, 17:41
You used the visual style of the game to do the theme, but gotta say I really appreciate your sound design in the feeling of going "deeper and deeper" with each new layer you added. While I would say it always is a bummer to have to backtrack to the beginning of a game to pick up a missed collectable, without knowing how much I'd need, it says a lot that I actually spent the time and did, getting the ending. Great job!

guimm1227 Apr 2021, 04:14
I finished it! Yo, the sound design is so good! Top notch mood for sure. Some good platforming puzzles too. Overall a great experience.

Lorwon27 Apr 2021, 08:02
That's a really good game ! The art style and sound design are great. All that without engine :). How do you managed to display text ? And how do you managed to get it workin on Web ^^^. That's a very nice entry good job !

Ace1727 Apr 2021, 10:49
Thank you all for your comments!
Using your own game engine is less hard than it looks ; especially if you're making a simple and light game like mine.
You indeed have to know how to program (and how to handle some sometimes hairy issues, like physics and sound management), but in the end, you're only implementing the features you actually do use ... which is a (very) small subset of the features provided by commercial engines like Unity3D or UE4.
The whole codebase for this game is 15kloc big, including third party libraries (e.g Glad, stb_vorbis).
The upside is that my game builds/runs/loads fast, and the whole game archive is only a couple of megabytes big :)
> @lorwon How do you managed to display text ?
This is a simple fixed-width bitmap font, drawn using OpenGL quads.
> @lorwon And how do you managed to get it workin on Web
I'm using Emscripten, which leverages LLVM WASM target to provide a standard C++ environment on the web platform.
This, of course, requires many constraints on the way you write your C++ code : you can't throw exceptions, you must restrict yourself to a subset of OpenGL features, you must have one global 'tick' function, etc. To make the matter worse, browsers behaves differently, especially when it comes to audio : for some reason, Chrome requires that I use a (very) big audio buffer, otherwise, the sound gets choppy (Firefox doesn't have this issue).
So yes, web support can be a bit of a hassle ; actually, I dropped it for my two previous LD games, but my SO convinced me to put it back :D
Using your own game engine is less hard than it looks ; especially if you're making a simple and light game like mine.
You indeed have to know how to program (and how to handle some sometimes hairy issues, like physics and sound management), but in the end, you're only implementing the features you actually do use ... which is a (very) small subset of the features provided by commercial engines like Unity3D or UE4.
The whole codebase for this game is 15kloc big, including third party libraries (e.g Glad, stb_vorbis).
The upside is that my game builds/runs/loads fast, and the whole game archive is only a couple of megabytes big :)
> @lorwon How do you managed to display text ?
This is a simple fixed-width bitmap font, drawn using OpenGL quads.
> @lorwon And how do you managed to get it workin on Web
I'm using Emscripten, which leverages LLVM WASM target to provide a standard C++ environment on the web platform.
This, of course, requires many constraints on the way you write your C++ code : you can't throw exceptions, you must restrict yourself to a subset of OpenGL features, you must have one global 'tick' function, etc. To make the matter worse, browsers behaves differently, especially when it comes to audio : for some reason, Chrome requires that I use a (very) big audio buffer, otherwise, the sound gets choppy (Firefox doesn't have this issue).
So yes, web support can be a bit of a hassle ; actually, I dropped it for my two previous LD games, but my SO convinced me to put it back :D

dokthar27 Apr 2021, 11:46
Great! There is a nice retro touch to the game, is this Megaman's dream? The music is on point, very moody, I felt it was coming straight out of Kairo.
nwt27 Apr 2021, 18:38
Really appreciated the aesthetics choices, animation gave a organic feel to the character.
The platforming mechanics, game controls and physics are on point, it was really enjoyable to move through you levels. Also I really appreciated your attention to details: the wind moving trees leaves. You muffled the wind sound and added a tight reverb on the footsteps indoors, the backgrounds artwork, tastefull audio assets... Great work!
I will come back to it and study your source code. This is always a great way to learn cool things!
What to say... I really enjoyed your game!
The platforming mechanics, game controls and physics are on point, it was really enjoyable to move through you levels. Also I really appreciated your attention to details: the wind moving trees leaves. You muffled the wind sound and added a tight reverb on the footsteps indoors, the backgrounds artwork, tastefull audio assets... Great work!
I will come back to it and study your source code. This is always a great way to learn cool things!
What to say... I really enjoyed your game!

MysteriousBaboon28 Apr 2021, 08:52
I know how hard it is to make your own engine, and i can only say congrats to this amazing piece ! Really love the feel and the sound design !
thebmxeur29 Apr 2021, 10:32
Nice game. One thing, I'm not sure about is how you managed to make the character style fit in the rest of the graphics. On paper I wouldn't think it works, but in practice after a few seconds I didn't pay attention to the difference in style.

LDJam user 24016830 Apr 2021, 16:37
Interesting game! A little strange to pack both windows & linux version to the same archive - I downloaded the Linux version and got confused with the plethora of DLL's at first. The game is one of the few in this jam that really set some mood & feeling & atmosphere, mostly by background music I guess. The controls could be a bit more smooth, the interaction between jumping & stairs & falling to the side was a bit confusing at times. Anyways, great job!
FlorianDuf1 May 2021, 06:54
It's a very good game ! I take a real pleasure to play.
I found ambiance of old game. It's a return to childhood :)
The music serve the game, the graphism is nice. And I found maps very interesting to explore, to find hidden artefact.
I play with the web player and It's works for me.
Congratulation !! :)
I found ambiance of old game. It's a return to childhood :)
The music serve the game, the graphism is nice. And I found maps very interesting to explore, to find hidden artefact.
I play with the web player and It's works for me.
Congratulation !! :)

Keppu1 May 2021, 13:27
I've not read any of the comments so I write my review as a pure first experience.
The main menu music feels spooky, setting up the mood for the game.
The graphics are clear even though they are lo-fi. They also support the nightmarish theme of the game. A minor thing gripe for the graphics is that I can see the moon through the ground blocks, which makes them feel thin and taking away immersion.
I feel that the wind sound is too loud for an ambient. The same goes for all the ambient sounds even interior ones. The audio clip could also be a little longer as the looping point is very clear. Otherwise, the sound design is juicy and the sounds give the right amount of feedback.
Controls for the game feel nice which is the most important part of the platform genre as precision is the key.
The game follows the theme quite well as the player goes deeper into the dungeon searching for treasures.
Nice entry overall.
The main menu music feels spooky, setting up the mood for the game.
The graphics are clear even though they are lo-fi. They also support the nightmarish theme of the game. A minor thing gripe for the graphics is that I can see the moon through the ground blocks, which makes them feel thin and taking away immersion.
I feel that the wind sound is too loud for an ambient. The same goes for all the ambient sounds even interior ones. The audio clip could also be a little longer as the looping point is very clear. Otherwise, the sound design is juicy and the sounds give the right amount of feedback.
Controls for the game feel nice which is the most important part of the platform genre as precision is the key.
The game follows the theme quite well as the player goes deeper into the dungeon searching for treasures.
Nice entry overall.

azagaya1 May 2021, 14:47
Really liked the level design! Music was cool too! Great game!

lokt021 May 2021, 20:35
I like style of this game. All sprites and audio are 8-bit. Besides, gameplay is pretty good and puzzles are not very hard (I like easy puzzles). And retro style is very cool. I think it is very good game.

alpharock61 May 2021, 22:43
Always impressed by the skill of anybody homebrewing their solutions in OpenGL :) Nice atmosphere, and solid world design! I enjoyed a number of the easter egg-ish artifacts (like the horizontal sliding block turning into stairs to climb up to one in the horizontal room early on)

LDJam user 2456461 May 2021, 23:57
Really like the feel of the game going on! The gameboy-like color scheme works really well with the ambiance and it feels like you're exploring an abandoned world. The exploration aspect of the game was well done (Though I keep stumbling across gates that are closed and found it a bit annoying to backtrack to see which switch I hadn't activated). Pretty fun game!

STiN4 May 2021, 10:42
Cool simple game. Maybe not my tipe of game but game is nice

smbe194 May 2021, 21:11
Cute game, looks nice.



(edit) Do'h thanks. I'm a dummy