10 Second Waves by Erigitic

[raw]
made by Erigitic for LD27 (COMPO)
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

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

Feedback

Zuige
26. Aug 2013 路 03:13 UTC
You need permission to load game? :(
TheBlueRage
26. Aug 2013 路 03:27 UTC
Access denied sir, I can't play, and therefor can't rate!
馃帳 Erigitic
26. Aug 2013 路 03:29 UTC
Should be updated.
nathanhoffer
26. Aug 2013 路 04:13 UTC
This kind of reminds me of Geometry Wars. Pretty fun.
SpiralCodeStudio
26. Aug 2013 路 05:24 UTC
Upgrade menu is nice, but when monster got close to you, you can't kill him.
TheSambassador
27. Aug 2013 路 05:21 UTC
Awesome that you completed a game! Here are my thoughts:

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.
馃帳 Erigitic
27. Aug 2013 路 14:36 UTC
Thank you for the constructive criticism I will be sure to fix that in my newer games. And yes that is intentional. I have the different waves setup to spawn a set amount of zombies with varying health. I did rush this part since I was running out of time. Thanks again for the comment. It will help out in the future.
Canobie
27. Aug 2013 路 17:24 UTC
You know what's funny, is that I did a very very very similar game for this but it is a jam entry. It's called Enemy Inbound, if you care to look for it.
Kragnir
28. Aug 2013 路 10:48 UTC
It is a good second game but it needs a lot of improving. First of all some dynamic needs to be added to the combat. Maybe some more weapons, new ways of moving, powerups, bosses.
馃帳 Erigitic
28. Aug 2013 路 15:57 UTC
I agree Kragnir it does need a lot of improvement and has a lot of room to do so. I am still working on it due to this reason. Thank you for commenting and trying it out.
Malactus
29. Aug 2013 路 04:38 UTC
Gameplay is simple, but could be fun if the controls would be improved. As many state here the restrictions of not being able to hold movement buttons in conjunction sorta can get frustrating.

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 :)
lurkingshadow
29. Aug 2013 路 04:41 UTC
Needs work on control scheme when switching between keys, also gets far too hard far too quickly.
ign
29. Aug 2013 路 05:01 UTC
Third wave is crazy, i am always die on it. Max score is 51 >_< But nice zombies!! :))
namrog84
29. Aug 2013 路 06:39 UTC
Good job on completing game!! It worked just fine for me.

Each time you compete, you will do better each time you participate! I hope to see you back here again!
馃帳 Erigitic
29. Aug 2013 路 15:04 UTC
Thank you all for the comments. I will be sure to fix the controls in later games to prevent confusion and reduce frustration. The game does get hard very quickly and I should have tweaked the waves better because of it. Again thanks for the comments. They keep me motivated and help me learn for next time.
Starspell
01. Sep 2013 路 15:59 UTC
Not a bad game. It's basic but it functions. It could do with a ton of polish in its graphics and adding audio. The controls could also do with a tweak.

Not a bad effort.
Integershift
01. Sep 2013 路 18:33 UTC
I didnt exactly like the game. Too hard. The third wave was WAY to hard, so first its 2 monsters, then its like 20? Any sense in that?
馃帳 Erigitic
02. Sep 2013 路 03:23 UTC
Thanks for the comment Starspell. It could do with a lot of polish. I did not think the time would go by as fast as it did which is why there is the lack of audio. Integershift, I programmed in the waves myself at last minute so I was not really able to test them out to well which is why it jumps around like that. I am sorry that you did not like it, but just the fact that I was able to complete a game(my second one at that) in only 48 hours makes me happy no matter what . Thanks for trying it out and commenting.
alts
02. Sep 2013 路 08:56 UTC
Congratulations on your first Ludum Dare entry. That's quite an achievement on its own.

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?
馃帳 Erigitic
02. Sep 2013 路 14:25 UTC
Yeah I had the same problem while making the game. I do feel like I should have mapped the movement to the WASD keys. This would have made much more sense and I have no idea why I did not change it. Thanks for the helpful comment and thanks for trying out my game.
Tegu
02. Sep 2013 路 15:16 UTC
Ahhh, got 111 points at maximum. Pretty hard game. Just had to keep on reseting and try to beat that score one more time. Then I had to stop because it was driving me crazy. :D

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.
馃帳 Erigitic
02. Sep 2013 路 23:00 UTC
Thank you for the comment Tegu. I am glad that someone is trying it over and over again which is what I planned. I was planning on making the waves random but I ran out of time. Also, I wanted to add health bars but like the waves I ran out of time as well. Again thank you for commenting and trying out my game.
Jupiter_Hadley
03. Sep 2013 路 04:51 UTC
Very simple game, but it gets really hard fast, never really found enough time to get to the upgrade station. Also the game would not record with fraps so I was unable to add it to my video compilation series. Sorry :/
馃帳 Erigitic
03. Sep 2013 路 19:03 UTC
Thanks for trying out the game. Their is no "upgrade station", unless you mean the upgrade menu. All you have to do is press U in game and then that menu will open up and you can upgrade stats from there. Thanks again.
Latcarf
06. Sep 2013 路 08:25 UTC
It's a good start! It's a shame that we can't move or shoot diagonally and more stuff would deserve to be added to the game, but for one of your first games, that's not bad.
馃帳 Erigitic
06. Sep 2013 路 18:59 UTC
Thank you very much for the comment. I will definitely fix the controls in my later games.
Jezzamon
08. Sep 2013 路 07:36 UTC
I got this error when trying to run on my mac:

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)
馃帳 Erigitic
08. Sep 2013 路 13:51 UTC
You need to update your version of java.
X-0r
09. Sep 2013 路 22:28 UTC
Finally a playable game below 20 MB + installer! (Can I give innovation bonus for this? :P)

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!)
馃帳 Erigitic
10. Sep 2013 路 14:31 UTC
Thank you for the comment. Yes the game is extremely hard and to be honest I do not even know if it is beatable(Not even I have beat it) which is obviously a problem. I am still working on this game because I feel that it does have potential. Thanks again for the comment and suggestions.