Firefly by timtipgames
Firefly
It's a game about the core concept of evolution - selection. Your goal is to cultivate plants that survive longer than 5 minutes in a hazardous environment. Plants get pollinated by fireflys. Plants have a genetically coded resistance agains the environmental effects that surround them (heat, cold, rain). Try to kill all those fireflies that bring pollen that you don't want to have in your plants genetic code. Recombine those resistances that you want selectively to survive the dynamicly changing weather.
TUTORIAL: There is an ingame tutorial that I added in the last second. It is not very intuitively written (although it does explain everything needed to play the game). I wrote an offline-tutorial that should explain much better. Of course you can also just start the game, but don't complain about not understanding what is going on afterwards please :)
So here is the tutorial: http://timtips.com/ld24/tutorial/
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Added android version. You can get it from google play by using the above link, using a QR-Scanner to scan the 2d bar code that is one of the screenshots attached further down this page (leads to google play too) or download the apk directly here: http://www.timtips.com/downloads/Firefly.apk. Not tested on smaller displays (eg. 480x320). Larger displays (up to 10" tablet size) should work.
The only control change is that you can swap between plant spots with a fling/pan gesture and instead of right clicking things, you can make a long press (keeping your finger on the same position for about a second).
28.08.2012 Few people are still experiencing problems to start the game. Some thoughts:
* Please let the game load, I didn't have the time to add a loading screen. It may take a couple of seconds until the black screen dissapears and the game starts.
* If the applet version doesn't work for you, try the jar please. On windows double-click on it should be enough to start it. On linux just start it from console with java -jar filename.jar
* If none of it is working, please consider sending me a stack trace to timtipgames@gmail.com or to leave a more detailed description in your comment. I would really like to make this game playable for everyone. Thanks :)
* One user (Thurig) told me that only after disabling jar/zip-scanning in his antivirus software he was able to play the game. Be assured, its not because there is a virus in it :) So if you like, you may try that too.
27.08.2012 EDIT: Fixed a bug that causes the game to crash on many windows PCs. Thanks for letting me know about the issue.
The initial release and sources are still available timtips.com/Firefly.jar timtips.com/Firefly-src.zip
The download links lead to fixed version+sources (No changes to game logic, just crash on startup-fixes)
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All graphics created with Inkscape.
Music recorded from my KORG-SP250
Effects by sfxr, ZynAddSubFX and Audacity
Jura-Font by http://www.tenbytwenty.com/jura.php
Engine: Libgdx
Libs: The super awesome Artemis Entity System Framework http://gamadu.com/artemis/
It's a game about the core concept of evolution - selection. Your goal is to cultivate plants that survive longer than 5 minutes in a hazardous environment. Plants get pollinated by fireflys. Plants have a genetically coded resistance agains the environmental effects that surround them (heat, cold, rain). Try to kill all those fireflies that bring pollen that you don't want to have in your plants genetic code. Recombine those resistances that you want selectively to survive the dynamicly changing weather.
TUTORIAL: There is an ingame tutorial that I added in the last second. It is not very intuitively written (although it does explain everything needed to play the game). I wrote an offline-tutorial that should explain much better. Of course you can also just start the game, but don't complain about not understanding what is going on afterwards please :)
So here is the tutorial: http://timtips.com/ld24/tutorial/
-------------------------------------------------------
Added android version. You can get it from google play by using the above link, using a QR-Scanner to scan the 2d bar code that is one of the screenshots attached further down this page (leads to google play too) or download the apk directly here: http://www.timtips.com/downloads/Firefly.apk. Not tested on smaller displays (eg. 480x320). Larger displays (up to 10" tablet size) should work.
The only control change is that you can swap between plant spots with a fling/pan gesture and instead of right clicking things, you can make a long press (keeping your finger on the same position for about a second).
28.08.2012 Few people are still experiencing problems to start the game. Some thoughts:
* Please let the game load, I didn't have the time to add a loading screen. It may take a couple of seconds until the black screen dissapears and the game starts.
* If the applet version doesn't work for you, try the jar please. On windows double-click on it should be enough to start it. On linux just start it from console with java -jar filename.jar
* If none of it is working, please consider sending me a stack trace to timtipgames@gmail.com or to leave a more detailed description in your comment. I would really like to make this game playable for everyone. Thanks :)
* One user (Thurig) told me that only after disabling jar/zip-scanning in his antivirus software he was able to play the game. Be assured, its not because there is a virus in it :) So if you like, you may try that too.
27.08.2012 EDIT: Fixed a bug that causes the game to crash on many windows PCs. Thanks for letting me know about the issue.
The initial release and sources are still available timtips.com/Firefly.jar timtips.com/Firefly-src.zip
The download links lead to fixed version+sources (No changes to game logic, just crash on startup-fixes)
-------------------------------------------------------
All graphics created with Inkscape.
Music recorded from my KORG-SP250
Effects by sfxr, ZynAddSubFX and Audacity
Jura-Font by http://www.tenbytwenty.com/jura.php
Engine: Libgdx
Libs: The super awesome Artemis Entity System Framework http://gamadu.com/artemis/
Ratings
| Coolness | 100% | 1 |
| Overall | 3.59 | 87 |
| Audio | 3.89 | 17 |
| Fun | 2.86 | 330 |
| Graphics | 4.00 | 62 |
| Humor | 1.76 | 493 |
| Innovation | 3.91 | 27 |
| Mood | 3.79 | 25 |
| Theme | 4.22 | 17 |
Additionally, I thought that the feedback loop wasn't really present. It was hard to tell if you were doing well or not. To be more forgiving, it should perhaps be easier to get seeds. Also, it was hard to tell what was happening to your plants - for example, when pollinated, it's difficult to tell whether that pollination was (immediately) beneficial or not.
Overall, I think this is an excellent game. It's clear that you put a lot of thought to it and really took the theme to heart. Great work! I have no doubt that you could develop this into something that would be a big hit on Android or iOS (or Kongregate for that matter).
That's amazing!
Thanks for your comments on my game, appreciate the feedback :}!
I couldn't figure out the controls at first, but once I understood it, I loved it. Good job!
I wish that the concepts were introduced gradually in gameplay, instead of in a big for awhile I was worried that I was going to be steamshovel harry'd.
http://www.e4.com/game/steamshovel-harry/play.e4
I also agree with the mechanics to change the positions. Putting all plants closer to each other made me realize two things: a) The time to stop fireflies from flying to your plant became to short because they reached them very fast. b) The many information on the screen and the resulting feeling of "what is going on here" got even worse. I could have slowed the fireflies but that looked awkward. Still - the game mechanics didn’t end up where I would have liked them to be. This also results in the problem that mdkess very precisely describes as “I thought that the feedback loop wasn't really present”. Thats true and I will try to do better on my next LD game. Thank you for your input on these things!
So I really understand and welcome the criticism, and I wish I would have had the time and also a brilliant idea on how to change these things last weekend. But I did not :) I will definitely keep on working on this game after LD (I have a vision of something bigger, taking this as a good point to start from). Once I start to, I will add the link here.
The tutorial was helpful, but after three or four pages I went wall-of-text and immediately clicked through to the main menu.
I think you've given yourself far too much criticism with the tutorial. The information provided is very condense... the problem that I have with it is that it tries to explain too much. For such an intuitive game, I don't think you really needed too much more than to let the player know what he can click.
Not being entirely sure whether one seed is an improvement over another is part of the charm of this game. I did appreciate that the inventory is auto-sorted, but I would have appreciated the game significantly less if I wasn't sometimes forced to just guess.
The only part of this game that really leaves me disappointed is that there isn't a higher difficulty setting. After breezing through hard, I really feel like playing more, but there's nothing in this game that will be challenging at this point.
It was fun while it lasted. If you do revisit / improve this game in any way, I'd love to see it.
Perhaps there should be a penalty for inbreeding of the plants?
I enjoyed the mechanic greatly. The graphics and music are perfect, if a bit repetitive.
As for tutorial .. I really think @jamin has it right. It's much more rewarding (and fun) to discover via trial and error.
There is one similar here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=7233
The tutorial was a bit long winded. I think the game itself is much simpler than it's made out to be by the instructions.