10 Second Waves by Erigitic
This was my first time participating in the Ludum Dare so I did not know what to expect. Now that I know how little time their actually is I am more prepared and more confident for the next one. This is only my second game I have ever made in Java and I am glad to say that I have learned a lot of new things as well as sharpened what I already know. Hope you enjoy.
Objective:
Fight your way through 20 waves of enemies with only 10 seconds per wave.
Controls:
WASD - Shoot
Arrow Keys - Move
U - Upgrade Menu
Objective:
Fight your way through 20 waves of enemies with only 10 seconds per wave.
Controls:
WASD - Shoot
Arrow Keys - Move
U - Upgrade Menu
| All(Java) | https://www.dropbox.com/s/spopnhclfdh67va/TenSec.jar |
| Source | https://github.com/Erigitic/10SecondWaves |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=24918 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 50% | 3 |
| Overall | 1.79 | 1194 |
| Audio | 1.18 | 990 |
| Fun | 1.81 | 1156 |
| Graphics | 1.57 | 1171 |
| Humor | 1.57 | 915 |
| Innovation | 1.71 | 1185 |
| Mood | 1.42 | 1079 |
| Theme | 2.18 | 1122 |
1) I couldn't move 2 directions (diagonally) at once, and if I hit Up, held it, and hit Left, I started moving left. This wasn't a problem, but RELEASING left (while still holding up) did not seem to make me start moving left, which quickly confused me.
2) I killed 3 zombies at a decent pace, and then all of a sudden like 15 spawned on the screen. Is this intentional? Some of them spawned literally right on top of me. Ease up the difficulty!
3) After I killed THOSE, only 2 spawned, but those 2 seemed to have much more health than all the others? I was confused by this a lot.
If it is intentional to only be able to move vertically and horizontally, the controls could keep the previous button pressed so that after releasing the recently pressed button the previous (if still pressed) is active.
The 10 second theme is present as you have to clear the wave or else you fail.
As a suggestion next time, even simple sounds can make a big difference, a sound generator usually allows you to do this quickly :)
Each time you compete, you will do better each time you participate! I hope to see you back here again!
Not a bad effort.
Others have talked about the controls, as predictable and responsive controls are critical to this kind of game. A different observation of the controls was that I had quite a bit of difficulty mentally unmapping WASD from movement, so I'd start to shoot in the direction that I actually needed to move. I'm not sure how twin-stick shooters typically handle keyboard input, but perhaps something to keep in mind?
The controls could be better indeed, but at least it's slightly different than what I've usually seen. It's pretty nice to be able to shoot to any direction (well, four direction) while moving to other one. Yes, it's a bit confusing at times but not bad.
The zombies of different health should be identified in some way. The game repeats the same wave pattern so it's possible to memorize them but still. The huge wave was pretty frightening at first but it turned out to be pretty easy (if they didn't spawn right on you) because theire health was so low. The one guy with a massive health is a tough one.
Anyway, with better controls (holding and releasing keys and possibly diagonal movement) this could be even funnier although it's very intense already as is.
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: com/main/game/TenSec : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassCond(ClassLoader.java:631)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:615)
at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:141)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:283)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:58)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:197)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)
The game is extremely hard... enemies moving fast (and diagonally), the player is limited to one movement direction... I wonder if anyone survived all the waves o.O
I agree with the other comments, it definitely needs more content. Even a HP bar above the enemies would be some improvement, apart from that, yeah, probably more weapons and such. (And medi-kits! Please!)