Ludum Dare #48compo

Space Train

by patatenouille

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.45

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.29

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.94

Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.82

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.26

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.90

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.77

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.53

Go Deeper Into Space, On Or Off The Rails !

Made with UE4, Blender, Paint.NET, Space Scape, Audacity & FL Studio

How to play :
- Glitch out of the rails by *holding Left Click*, release to get back on the track.
- *Move the mouse* to control the train while flying.
- Avoid crashing into the *incoming trains and asteroid* !
- Beware of your *limited fuel*, pick up the *power spheres* !
- *Smash trains* by teleporting back on them !

Known issues :
- There is a score in the top left corner, but in reality it's just a text that says 9999 (GJ ! that's a high score !)
- No restart button, when your train catches fire you've lost, you have to close and reopen to start again.
- Featuring the unobservable part of the universe behind the skybox, nothing prevents the player from going this far.

Tools: Audacity, Blender, FL Studio, Paint.net

Comments14

Chensu26 Apr 2021, 18:03

Holy, Love the effect when the train flies, the particle effect is just perfect. Audios are also good, just a note, in unreal when you package it you can change the build type from debugging to shipping so the debug window won't come out, but other than that, this is perfection, 5/5 for all.

thebmxeur26 Apr 2021, 19:14

The controls are a bit weird: when you go out of the track, the train directly turns in the direction I moved of the track (I suppose you use an offset from the position where I clicked). I think a click + drag + release would have been easier to handle (and faster to get off the track). And then just a click to get back on the track ?

PatateNouilleauthor26 Apr 2021, 22:32

@thebmxeur I'm doing exactly that, and I would agree, didn't had much time to test other controls. Do you think if I reset the offset once you teleport it could be better ? Originally I thought the player wouldn't spend a lot of time off the tracks hence why I had him hold the click, but in the end you're just holding a lot the button.

@chensu Thank you ! I'm not very familiar with unreal yet, thanks for the tip !

thebmxeur26 Apr 2021, 22:49

@patatenouille Yes resetting the offset would probably have helped. And while playing, at some point I figured out there wasn't really a need to get back on the track. Maybe it's slower off the track, I'm not sure. Having to switch fast between off track and on track would have been great. But as everybody, we never have the time to make everything great !

PatateNouilleauthor27 Apr 2021, 00:13

It's not really made obvious but the fuel consumes 3 times faster while not on the tracks, but if you have enough power capsules in front there's indeed not really a need to go back, i wanted to add more wall of asteroids and some of them would've forced you to get back on the tracks, or maybe it could've increased the score while flying wouldn't. Originally the timing for teleporting was much quicker and I regret making much slower just to match the SFX length, but I didn't have enough time to change it afterwise unfortunately, I'll try to make a more complete version over the next few days.

Artyom Volkov27 Apr 2021, 11:46

The idea of the game is interesting, however, the controls are weird and counterintuitive. It takes a considerable time to understand how they work. However, I love how flying feels, really enjoy just flying in the space on the train.

AndideBob27 Apr 2021, 19:45

This game look amazing, I really like where you were going with this. I would really like to see where you can take this if you sit down for like a week or 2 and pour some more time in. I have the feeling that with some bugfixing and some balancing this could be a really neat arcade style game!

someone8 May 2021, 21:16

Thanks for providing a Linux build. I have never successfully managed to run UE4 windows builds in Wine.

I was quite confused about what to do. The game felt like it was bugged when you catch fire, rather than being a game over.

Shimonster8 May 2021, 21:24

The graphics were really nice and the music was cool. Getting the train off the tracks was a little weird an sometimes the tracks moved into an asteroid. I really liked the graphics though.

Lonithor13 May 2021, 17:57

Looks and plays pretty good, however I can't express how much a restart button would have improved this, maybe I'm just bad at it but I was crashing a lot and being able to quickly start again without the ALT+F4 and opening it again would have been nice. With a little bit of polish I think this could probably work really good as a mobile game since it has very simple controls.

PTSnoop13 May 2021, 21:40

There's a lot of visual polish here! I would have liked to have seen some GAME OVER text at the end, though - just setting the train on fire doesn't make it entirely clear what just happened. The controls took a bit of getting the hang of, but it's a fun game once you've got the hang of it!

Teanan14 May 2021, 20:55

Good visuals, love the teleport effet on your train. It took me a bit to get the controls but then it feels good flying and smashing other trains. Maybe adding a healthbar would be good ? so the game is more forgiving (especially when learning the controls)

Heimy Spiel15 May 2021, 04:41

I was amazed by the idea of it and props on getting this much done within the given time.

bmacintosh16 May 2021, 05:40

Really unique idea. Great polish, too. It took me several tries to figure out exactly how to operate the jumping on and off the track, but once I did I had a good time. Transitioning from the track to flying was a bit tough, I think because the train comes off the track in the direction of the mouse and then additionally picks up a bunch of rotation in that direction - I think it would feel smoother to have the train be going straight ahead at that point and require additional mouse movement to rotate it.

Other games by @patatenouille

★3.56

★3.85

★3.58