MiniLD #53compo
Intelligent Homes
How many times haven't you heard about intelligent homes that are promised to come in the future? Yet technically we already have the technologies to do it. Now you have the chance to sell intelligent fridges as a service to homes and work places. Deal with keeping fridges supplied so that they never run out of food.
=== Controls ===
The game is played using left mouse button. Click on buildings to show available actions. You cannot scroll the map, so don't try to figure out how to do it. :-)
=== Gameplay hints ===
Click on a house, and send out a seller to try to convince it to become your customer. When you get more customers, you need to choose to either fill their homes with fridge capacity or get more trucks so that you can make frequent deliveries. Homes are easier to start with than work places but also pays less.
You cannot really win the game, but if your bank balance gets below -10 000 bucks, then game is over.
=== Development Notes ===
The game is developed in Javascript with HTML5 canvas. The only external library is jQuery. It is my first game that I have made using JavaScript + HTML5 canvas, though I have done plenty of 2D graphics programming with SDL and other backends in other game projects using mainly C++. I have tested Intelligent Homes on several browsers: Firefox, Opera 12, Opera 22, Chrome, Internet Explorer 11, Safari on iOS 7, Opera Coast and Android 2.3. However, I don't know how well it handle older IE versions. It is designed for desktop, but works on phones too if you zoom in to aim your clicks.
This is my first Ludum Dare and I don't know if you are supposed to wait with releasing sources or not (if you do), so I will put them up on GitHub later. Though as it is JavaScript and no backend code it is essentially open already.
As the LD Mini 53 allows splitting up development time, this game was developed over five directly following weekday evenings (and some minor stuff for breakfast), but in in total staying well below 48 hours.
=== Controls ===
The game is played using left mouse button. Click on buildings to show available actions. You cannot scroll the map, so don't try to figure out how to do it. :-)
=== Gameplay hints ===
Click on a house, and send out a seller to try to convince it to become your customer. When you get more customers, you need to choose to either fill their homes with fridge capacity or get more trucks so that you can make frequent deliveries. Homes are easier to start with than work places but also pays less.
You cannot really win the game, but if your bank balance gets below -10 000 bucks, then game is over.
=== Development Notes ===
The game is developed in Javascript with HTML5 canvas. The only external library is jQuery. It is my first game that I have made using JavaScript + HTML5 canvas, though I have done plenty of 2D graphics programming with SDL and other backends in other game projects using mainly C++. I have tested Intelligent Homes on several browsers: Firefox, Opera 12, Opera 22, Chrome, Internet Explorer 11, Safari on iOS 7, Opera Coast and Android 2.3. However, I don't know how well it handle older IE versions. It is designed for desktop, but works on phones too if you zoom in to aim your clicks.
This is my first Ludum Dare and I don't know if you are supposed to wait with releasing sources or not (if you do), so I will put them up on GitHub later. Though as it is JavaScript and no backend code it is essentially open already.
As the LD Mini 53 allows splitting up development time, this game was developed over five directly following weekday evenings (and some minor stuff for breakfast), but in in total staying well below 48 hours.
Comments12
On each building you see bars for how much food there is in the tree parts of a meal in this game. People don't mind which of pasta/rice/potato that they mix with meatballs/fish/sausage/beans. The third part is salad with no subdivision. When one part of the meal is missing you pay a fee. I don't remember if they add up. Next to the bars there is a plate that show all yellow if all parts was available the last time someone ate at that building, but will show 2/3, 1/3 or empty if 1-3 parts are missing.
You can click the HQ to see the total fees during the day as well as clicking on individual buildings. Mind that the figure doesn't update unless you close and open the window again. I wrote the GUI during LD so it is quite simple.
Each fridge hold 10 ingredients divided fair among the meal parts, so if you have a house with more than 3 people it is not enough that the fridge is refilled between breakfast and dinner.
If you want to expand on it, perhaps implement stages of some kind! Simulation games don't really need a win condition, but completing milestones is very satisfying with these sorts of games.
https://github.com/Leffe108/Intelligent-Homes
But well, I guess it is not as discoverable as an App in AppStore or Google Play.
And well if one has nothing to do, one could re-implement the GUI for mobile users using jQuery Mobile or similar toolkit and hide the canvas and instead show this GUI in full screen after touching on a building.
It is now possible to tab around all buildings and use keyboard to "click" on a building as well as tabbing around the buttons/links in windows as well as clicking on the end game screen. All window text is now in the DOM and readable by screen reader. The LD version had all window text rendered onto the canvas making it invisible to screen readers.
Should anyone like to try out the LD version, I haven't maintained two live copies of this game, but there is a tagged version on github that you can download and run locally.