Space Mechanic by Thijsku

[raw]
made by Thijsku for LD31 (JAM)
Made by Rick Kuilman & Thijs Kuilman

Concept
--------------
In this game, you are the mechanic of a spaceship. It's your duty to maintain the spaceship. This means you need to make sure the engines are running correctly and you need to fix various problems during the flight. Can't handle the pressure anymore? You can always leave your crew behind with with the escape pod. (although we didn't have time to implement this.. sorry, you are screwed)

Throughout the game, you will be guided by a big screen in the main room. This screen will tell you the
entire state of the spaceship (i.e. game)

Features that didn't make it (yet)
-----------------------------
Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to add all the planned features. The gameplay is very limited and there is currently no real goal or ending. We are planning to work on this game after the Ludum Dare, so these
features will definitely be something we would love to implement later on.

* Score system
* Ingame Story + Tutorial
* Gameplay elements


Performance Issues
-----------------------------
You might encounter performance issues while playing this game. We recommend a high end PC to be able to run
this game smoothly. We will investigate this issue in the following days and we'll release a patch once it's fixed.

Instructions
------------------------------

Controls - Keyboard
===
WASD: Walk
Space: Jump
E: Use
F: Turn on flashlight
Left Mouse Button: Interact

Controls - Gamepad
===
Left Joystick: Walk
Right Joystick: Look around
A: Jump
X: Use
Y: Turn on flashlight
B: Interact

Item explanation
===
With Fuel, you can fill up the fueltank
With TL, you can replace broken lights
With Ammo, you can reload the Gun
Interact with the computers to change the state

Feedback

Team Flashlight
09. Dec 2014 · 17:43 UTC
Cool game! It is not very obvious what sequence of repair I should arrange (fuel first? ammo first?) if multiple items need to be maintained.

The open/close door sfx is sometime a bit annoying, because you have several doors together, and they all generate the open/close sfx.

On the other hand, repairing light seems always be the lowest priority task, and it seems that your spaceship wont fail even if light is not replaced...

Anyway, good job!
flwns
10. Dec 2014 · 07:34 UTC
I was looking forward to trying this out, then saw my download say 1mb of 340mb
janovbyrnisson
10. Dec 2014 · 08:50 UTC
The graphics is great and simple, but I think you gained a lot at the effects provided by UE4 by default. :)
You did a good job with the models also.
aaronjbaptiste
10. Dec 2014 · 21:28 UTC
Afriad I couldn't get it to work:

"Unable to open descriptor file ../../../SpaceMechanic/SpaceMechanic.uproject"

any ideas?
MintArcade
11. Dec 2014 · 13:05 UTC
I saw you guys on Twitch working hard on this project. Obviously UE4 default assets make all games nice and modern looking, and you put a good amount of work into modelling, texturing and making this skybox, changing light color for different engine mods, but if feels little bit unfinished. In terms of gameplay - that the most important part of the game, and this is nice, that you wanted to implement score system and tutorial, but that would be better is you started with gameplay. I hope you will continue to work on this game and finish it. I like models - everything looks robust and solid.
Andy Gainey
12. Dec 2014 · 22:27 UTC
Without a goal, without any meaningful decisions, without compelling feedback when completing (or failing to complete) the various tasks, and with the motion blur making it subtly annoying running around everywhere, I lost interest pretty quickly. The visuals (other than the motion blur) were good though.
DonovanWu
13. Dec 2014 · 21:52 UTC
Very nice idea. The performance issue is a bit annoying, though. The motion blur will be really cool if there isn't such an issue.
SaintHeiser
21. Dec 2014 · 05:03 UTC
What the hell? Game runs VERY SLOW. What final purpouse? Where is connection with theme?
🎤 Thijsku
22. Dec 2014 · 11:46 UTC
Thanks for the comments. It's really unfortunate that we didn't had time to add any meaningful gameplay. This is our first game with the Unreal 4 engine, so we weren't really sure how to fix the performance issues. We've learned a lot though, so we hope to deliver a more polished game in the next Ludum Dare! :)

@SaintHeiser: You're a space mechanic who is responsible for all the equipment on the ship. To accomplish this, you need to keep an eye on the big screen in the main room. This screen will there you what to do and what is happening in the ship. So there's the connection to the theme. ;)