USB Warrior by DraKlaW

[raw]
made by DraKlaW for LD32 (JAM)
Fight evil robots with your USB sticks !

Our modest participation. Coded from scratch with SDL2, Eigen and M's JSON parser.

Binary for Windows available.
Run under linux, but must be compiled manually (see GitHub).
Should run under MacOS, but untested.

===

And now, some flavor text, for those who like that sort of thing.
(Yes, we totally came up with the plot fifteen minutes before the deadline.)

USB_warrior - Stick it to the man.

In a not so distant future, powerful corporations have taken over all of Earth's ressources.

Using mass-produced, heavily armored robots that run on undisclosed proprietary technology, they have locked themselves behind walls of steel and impenetrable security systems... or are they ?

Indeed, a young, intrepid she-android known only as A.M.I. has made a game-changing discovery : almost every operating robot still includes an outdated model of USB plug, along with its vulnerable firmware. USB sticks are few and far between these days, and their aging memories make them more and more shoddy. But some are still reliable enough, and our heroine now intends to wrest control of any hostile robot, by simply sneaking up on them and back-plugging their vulnerable USBware !

===

Updates:

We made a few updates till the deadline:
- Fixed the error message about missing dependencies in the Windows binary.
- Updated the README.txt to explain how to compile. (Note: should be painless under Linux !)
- Redirected logging to log.txt, so that people encountering crashes can send us a bug report with detailed information.
- Fixed a crash with a meaningless error message when assets are not found (which should not happen if you use the windows version, unless you mess with the layout of the archive). Now there is a clear error message, but chances are that the game will still crash anyway - but a least the log should tell us why.

There is also the updated version (we do not provide a precompiled download for this one, only source, see below). It contains a few enhancements right now, but we will add levels we did not managed to get for the deadline eventually.


Troubleshooting:

If you encounter any bug, please post a bug report on our github (the source link below) with a copy of the log.txt file so we can try to fix it.

Ratings

Coolness 40% 1667
Overall(Jam) 2.65 944
Audio(Jam) 2.71 529
Fun(Jam) 2.57 845
Graphics(Jam) 2.71 787
Humor(Jam) 2.31 780
Innovation(Jam) 2.43 853
Mood(Jam) 2.50 860
Theme(Jam) 3.04 735

Feedback

plokdev
21. Apr 2015 路 12:37 UTC
Couldn't run it on Windows 8.1. Wanted "libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll".
馃帳 DraKlaW
21. Apr 2015 路 12:45 UTC
Indeed, we had forgotten a flag to include the standard libary ; the archive pointed by the link should now be a fixed one.
plokdev
21. Apr 2015 路 12:49 UTC
It no longer throws that error, but nothing happens when I click the EXE. I tried the usual tricks (running in admin mod, and setting the compatibility to XP and Vista) to no result.
HeuGamer
22. Apr 2015 路 04:47 UTC
The ladders could use some fixing up, but other than that, solid entry.
Reis Mahnic
22. Apr 2015 路 04:48 UTC
Fun concept, and though I see you had issues in above comment, I had no issues on Win 7 64.
For 15 minutes, I love your little story.
FeniX
24. Apr 2015 路 18:26 UTC
I was able to run it on Windows 8.1, but after finishing first level I see the end screen. Is there anything specific I should do to get to another levels?
TheMeorch
24. Apr 2015 路 19:01 UTC
The controls surrounding ladders are a bit finicky. You may want to snap the player to the center of a ladder when climbing, so they don't end up getting stuck at the top, where the ladder meets the floor above. Also, when walking on a floor that has a ladder leading down, players probably shouldn't fall when they reach the top of the ladder.
jacketsj
24. Apr 2015 路 19:15 UTC
Good mechanics, good idea, but maybe next time focus more on having multiple levels :P
馃帳 DraKlaW
24. Apr 2015 路 19:21 UTC
@Plokdev : Well, sorry, not sure what's going wrong for you, so I can't do much.

@HeuGamer : I'm going to pretend that the ability to make crazy jumps from a ladder is a "feature". (As is F2.) But yeah, you're right. (See below.)

@Reis : Glad you liked it. :)

@Fenix : Ehrm... there isn't another level at the moment. We coded the engine from scratch (well - using SDL and Eigen vectors), and started to work on actual levels very late. We have several unfinished levels, but we couldn't finish their gameplay mechanics before the deadline, so we decided to just leave what worked.
Hopefully, we'll be able to capitalize on the engine for our next jams. We chose to do it from scratch because we used some pre-made JS lib for our first jam (last year), and, well, JS was a real PITA.

@TheMeorch : I thought about snapping players, and then just reduced the hitbox when the "ladder" flag was set ; because I wanted the player to be able to move left-right while climbing. In retrospect, you're probably right though. (And I could/should probably have done both.)
Pretending downward ladders are floors is also a good feature. (And given the current physics code, probably not too hard to do.)
EthanWebster
26. Apr 2015 路 18:50 UTC
Fun little game, could do with more levels though :)