Species Hunt by Frib
Species Hunt! A game where you have to shoot birds! With a camera!
Enjoy a peaceful stroll on the beach while snapping some exotic (Ha! I mean common) birds. Try to take the best photo ever! Or fill up your collection of new species you have personally discovered, then name them after yourself! Or just enjoy the view and watch the birds muck about.
Requires XNA 4.0. Should work on most machines, but if it doesn't, let me know and I'll try to fix it ASAP!
Controls are editable in-game. But a quick rundown:
Move with WASD/arrows
Equip camera with RMB
Take picture with LMB
Show/hide photo album with tab
Run with shift
Zoom camera with Q/E or mousewheel
Photographs taken in-game can be saved for use outside the game. Simply click on the photo in the album, then save to disk. You can also enable autosaving every new photo taken automatically in the options menu.
Please note: Key configs are persistent, but all other options are not.
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Update 27/08
I've added a post-compo version with a widescreen resolution of 1280x720, which makes photographs of 1920x1080. So if you want to make prettier photographs, now you can. The system requirements went up though as you need a slightly more modern video card now. And the camera lens rectangle is slightly smaller than the photos. But other than that, everything should still work fine.
Also, don't rate this version! Rate the original.
Enjoy a peaceful stroll on the beach while snapping some exotic (Ha! I mean common) birds. Try to take the best photo ever! Or fill up your collection of new species you have personally discovered, then name them after yourself! Or just enjoy the view and watch the birds muck about.
Requires XNA 4.0. Should work on most machines, but if it doesn't, let me know and I'll try to fix it ASAP!
Controls are editable in-game. But a quick rundown:
Move with WASD/arrows
Equip camera with RMB
Take picture with LMB
Show/hide photo album with tab
Run with shift
Zoom camera with Q/E or mousewheel
Photographs taken in-game can be saved for use outside the game. Simply click on the photo in the album, then save to disk. You can also enable autosaving every new photo taken automatically in the options menu.
Please note: Key configs are persistent, but all other options are not.
----------------------------------
Update 27/08
I've added a post-compo version with a widescreen resolution of 1280x720, which makes photographs of 1920x1080. So if you want to make prettier photographs, now you can. The system requirements went up though as you need a slightly more modern video card now. And the camera lens rectangle is slightly smaller than the photos. But other than that, everything should still work fine.
Also, don't rate this version! Rate the original.
| Windows | https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2110010/LD24/Frib%20-%20Species%20Hunt.zip |
| Post-compo HD version | https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2110010/LD24/Frib%20-%20Species%20Hunt%20HD%20PostCompo.zip |
| Timelapse | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsTdO4smc1U |
| XNA Redist (required) | http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20914 |
| Source | https://github.com/Frib/LD24 |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=3939 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 75% | 2 |
| Overall | 3.37 | 177 |
| Audio | 2.89 | 205 |
| Fun | 3.17 | 186 |
| Graphics | 3.56 | 147 |
| Humor | 2.13 | 343 |
| Innovation | 3.67 | 70 |
| Mood | 3.64 | 46 |
| Theme | 2.63 | 469 |
Also if you stand in one place and take pictures by turning in a circle you can ramp up your species score quite fast.
@cacciatc a sound should play when you make a photo. It's not a 'traditional' camera sound though.
@Dadeyemi Right now the only fancy graphical stuff is when birds land in the water. They make a splash then (which increases your photo value!). But I didn't have the time to add other fancy things.
And yes, it doesn't take distance into account, nor obstacles, so you can just spamclick everywhere and it will most likely register a bird very far away on the other side of the island. :D
The program crashes as soon as I try to open it in Windows XP.
Make sure you have installed the XNA redist. And maybe you'll need to (re)install .NET framework 4. It should technically work on XP, and a crash on startup might mean one of those two is missing.
XNA is linked above and .net 4 can be found here http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17851
If that doesn't work either, please let me know because then something else is wrong :D
(I like the clouds too x) )
I might write some more suggestions at a later time when I'm not so busy, but the first thing I noticed was that the camera shutter sound is bad. Shooting a camera - be it in real life or video games - you just kind of expect this very distinct camera shutter sound. The sound you have now is really disorienting. For the longest time I thought it meant I had failed to take a photo!
I'm happy to hear any suggestions you have. I might continue working on this game, if time permits. There are a few directions this could go to and I'm very happy with the potential it has.
The left photo was a "scenic shot" and the right one was a photo of a bird. wat
Besides some flaws like that, (and the programmer art :P), it's a cute and immersive game with emergent gameplay.
But it does not 'see' terrain, so if there's a bird somewhere in the distance, it will register that even if you can't see it.
It's a bit silly, I know :D
Also, whenever I looked straight up, the camera view glitched a bit and a bit of the skybox got clipped and replaced with a plain green color.
Also, I appreciated the fact that you could actually see your body when looking down! :D