Communications Control by PapyPilgrim
Welcome on board of the Lady-McBeth! Here is your post: I do the flying, and you will be my eyes and ears.
Ready? Let's roll
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What Kind of game is it?
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Paper Please meets Battlestar Galactica
You are the communications officier of a ship. No piloting, no laser shooting, no shield activating, no full throttling (is that even a word?)... Those are not part of your job.
Today's assignment is a standard patrol anyway.
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Known problems
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[Fixed] Forgot to disable the +/-/0 bindings that let you control the audio (those keys are used in the game). I might update my compo to fix that one
Lack of freedom : Since the testers felt completly lost, I felt it was necessary to progressivly unlock the features of the game. It gives the impression that the game is very railroaded (which can iritate some players) and it is true: this compo is nothing more than a tutorial. The post-compo version doesn't suffer from this, but that is not what you are supposed to rate, sadly ;)
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I-spent-most-of-my-time-on-it technical feature
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- Input parsing and contextual autocompletion (yes indeed, I wrote a mini language during the LD. Not the brightest idea)
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Tools Used
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Haxe and HaxeFlixel
Ash (Entity Component framework for haxe)
SFXR - audacity - KORG SP-280
Ready? Let's roll
------------------------
What Kind of game is it?
------------------------
Paper Please meets Battlestar Galactica
You are the communications officier of a ship. No piloting, no laser shooting, no shield activating, no full throttling (is that even a word?)... Those are not part of your job.
Today's assignment is a standard patrol anyway.
--------------
Known problems
--------------
[Fixed] Forgot to disable the +/-/0 bindings that let you control the audio (those keys are used in the game). I might update my compo to fix that one
Lack of freedom : Since the testers felt completly lost, I felt it was necessary to progressivly unlock the features of the game. It gives the impression that the game is very railroaded (which can iritate some players) and it is true: this compo is nothing more than a tutorial. The post-compo version doesn't suffer from this, but that is not what you are supposed to rate, sadly ;)
------------------------------------------------
I-spent-most-of-my-time-on-it technical feature
------------------------------------------------
- Input parsing and contextual autocompletion (yes indeed, I wrote a mini language during the LD. Not the brightest idea)
-----------
Tools Used
-----------
Haxe and HaxeFlixel
Ash (Entity Component framework for haxe)
SFXR - audacity - KORG SP-280
Ratings
| Coolness | 100% | 1 |
| Overall | 3.54 | 233 |
| Audio | 3.13 | 299 |
| Fun | 3.12 | 515 |
| Graphics | 3.02 | 601 |
| Innovation | 4.08 | 55 |
| Mood | 3.68 | 74 |
| Theme | 4.37 | 36 |
Awesome job.
Being a command line junkie myself, this was much to my taste!
Good work!
Took me a while to figure out what to do, but i really like the console style input!
Well done overall! It's certainly unique.
I sometimes felt a bit railroaded (commands not working when I wanted them to, or they worked but interrupted the story). I'd prefer feedback like "command temporarily unavailable" than either of these outcomes.
Keep up the good work!
Frankly, I'm conflicted with it. It's an interactive fiction that uses commands to provide that technological feel, but the fact that every command is locked doesn't give me much interesting decisions or discover new, unimportant facts about the universe we live in. I'm fine with the interface as it is, but not so fine with the lack of control I have.
First of all, thanks for the feedback: props to you for saying something more than "oh i like XX and YY ! good job"
I agree with both of you : The game is very low content-wise. I am actually quiet disapointed with what the compo turned up to be, but I didn't wanted to push rushed-and-broken features in... hence the post-compo version :)
As for the railroad part... Yes it is absolutly true. I felt it was necessary though. I had time to playtest it during the compo and every single tester felt overwhelmed and lost... I had to take them by the hand. Sadly this took a lot of time and I couldn't
So yes, the compo version is nothing more than a long tutorial and is very railroaded because of it. It was a deliberate choice on my part, and the mission I added in the post-compo version doesn't suffer from it since the way you react to a given situation is handled (you can totally disobey orders, and I handle it).
You can try other "command line" compos (http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=38819 or http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=16086) for an exemple of the problem I was trying to solve: those compos are great, but only once you figured what you are supposed to do
While not really compo-related, I played the new version for a bit, and it felt like there's room for putting the command line to more extensive use. For example, instead of scanning a ship's engine automatically, there could be a two step process: first scan the ship to discover its parts, then scan a specific part to discover its state.
Also, it won't let you run "INTERCEPT MC-BETH". :)
One bit of constructive criticism might be that asking us to hide various ships... well we don't know which ships it's safe to hide. We don't know what we're supposed to be interested in or not. Probably better to start with only a few ships and get us to show things based on class of ships. "Show all the civilian ships" etc?
Otherwise very interesting.
Things were a little unclear as far as the commands go. You introduced the first few and that was nice. Hopefully in the future you'll have a mission that forces the player to utilize all of them as a tutorial of sorts.
Obviously that's not something I expected you to have done in such a short time frame and what you did accomplish was really cool. Thanks for entering and showing this off and thank you very much for checking out Natquik and commenting.
Take care!