64Digits

Productive Jam

Posted by aeron on Aug. 5, 2013, 11:19 a.m.

Well I pulled through on the SFML game jam. Though after an all-nighter to finish it feels more like FML game jam, amirite? Hur hur.. excuse my bad puns, I am in dire need of sleep but instead I'll be posting the game that I submitted to the jam. After 72 hours poorly spent, here we are.

The theme was light / shadows. So naturally I made a ninja-rope based platformer ;)

Here are some screenshots if you're into that kind of thing:

The story is that your most prized diamond was stolen by a cave-dwelling band of thieves. You must infiltrate their caves and take back what's yours! Oh, and also whatever treasure you manage to find along the way. Beware: the thieves won't go down without a fight! After finding the diamond, you must survive your escape back to the surface!

Controls:

Arrow keys: move and aim

X: Throw ninja rope

Z: Jump and release ninja rope

C: Drop bomb (limited supply)

Enter or space: restart game after death

Feature Highlights

Randomly generated levels

Dynamically lit world

Fully destructible terrain

Download

lite-jam.zip (3.5mb)

Post-mortem

So in my eyes it's not quite finished yet, despite being in an acceptable state for a 72 hour game jam entry. There is quite a lot missing that I had planned, mostly polish-related things like particle effects, music, sound effects, and a menu. Obviously I ran out of time but these might make their way into a subsequent release. I also want to redo all the sprites (Or better yet, get someone who knows what they're doing to remake them).

All in all this was a ton of fun to make, I learned a lot of new C++11 features along the way that I can't wait to use in future projects. I'm also starting to finally feel competent with C++ in general (Well, except for the last hour where I was so sleep deprived I couldn't hit compile without pages of errors every time :P).

Well, it's time for me to wrap this up. I hope you all enjoy the game, and I also hope it doesn't crash your computers. Let me know your thoughts about it, anything and everything is welcome (C&C). Good day!

Comments

JuurianChi 11 years, 3 months ago

Quote:

Here are some screenshots if you're into that kind of thing

That's totally my kind of thing.

I had a good bit of fun with this, even when I died it wasn't like

"FUCKING FUCK, THIS GAME CHEATS. WHAT A WASTE OF BANDWIDTH."

It was more like

"WHAHAHAHA, DID YOU SEE HOW I DIED?! THAT WAS HILARIOUS!"

Genuine fun, but lacking in some areas, like at one respawn I had fallen into a tall narrow hole that had an enemy inside and I couldn't rope away from him, so when I dropped the bomb, I killed the both of us and had to start all over.

If there was a melee function I could have just ninja subdued him and then been able to take my time and solve my way out of the hole.

That aside, there aren't any really bad bugs as far as I can tell.

If you ever get around to it, perhaps a story campaign would be a good addition to a future update.

And HD Graphics plz. :3

Have a Selena Gomez Thumbs Up. You earned it, mate.

Edit: some asshole mod removed my gif.

So here is a link: http://25.media.tumblr.com/3496a47f34976df827555318c2e1d8b2/tumblr_mg7uv0TTpp1s1xq2ko1_500.gif

Mush 11 years, 3 months ago

You finished! Yay!

This game has great atmosphere for a jam game. Good job with that. Like JuurianChi, I had some fun dying until I found out the best way to reach the diamond is just to sprint away from enemies and fall down holes :P

So I guess my main crit is that there was really no use for the rope unless I got stuck in a hole, but even then it seems the rope isn't mean to help you ascend (?) Maybe I was doing something wrong. And it would have also been nice to be able to throw bombs to prevent the all too-common gang rape.

Overall cute little game! I hope you update it ;)

aeron 11 years, 3 months ago

Thanks for the feedback, glad you guys enjoyed it!

Quote:

Haha yes, situations like that are what I like about the game (minus the fact that you spawned into it, I'll be fixing that soon). I swear it had me laughing out loud in some situations where I either barely made it out alive despite my carelessness, or where I just did something so stupid I couldn't believe it after it got me killed.

Quote:

So I guess my main crit is that there was really no use for the rope unless I got stuck in a hole, but even then it seems the rope isn't mean to help you ascend (?)

The rope is definitely for ascending, it just takes practice. You have to aim the hook far away to generate enough momentum in some cases. Sometimes this involves aiming at dirt you can't even see because of the darkness, or aiming through a tiny hole to get pulled through it. But, with practice you'll soon be slingshotting yourself through impossible gaps or out of deep pits with ease.

Though I admit the game could use some sort of tutorial level to teach these techniques. I had acquired them as a kid playing the old DOS game Liero (which I based a number of things in this game off of, but most importantly the ninja rope).

I've actually tweaked the rope physics since the Jam, making it pull you faster over shorter distances. I think it helps with the ascending aspect. I've also added some torches to help with visibility, giving the level a whole new atmosphere:

And did I mention new player / enemy sprites?

I'll post a new demo as I make more progress. I'm making the project open source as well, so if anyone is interested in compiling it themselves they can be my guest:

https://github.com/aeron005/Diamond

Requires SFML 2.x and a compiler with C++11 support (might have to be explicitly enabled on compile).

Castypher 11 years, 3 months ago

Damn, man, I've wanted to do a procedural game for a while now and this is only making the itch worse.

Astryl 11 years, 3 months ago

Looking very good…

I'm going to fork this and see how you handled things. :P