Pale Blue Dot by KevinWorkman
The Earth is sick of being a pale blue dot! Collect smaller space objects to grow, avoid larger space objects!
Sit back, relax, click the mouse every once in a while, and mostly just listen to Carl Sagan talk, and reflect on how insignificant we are.
I'm entering this in the jam because I didn't create the images (NASA helped) or the sounds (Carl Sagan helped).
Sit back, relax, click the mouse every once in a while, and mostly just listen to Carl Sagan talk, and reflect on how insignificant we are.
I'm entering this in the jam because I didn't create the images (NASA helped) or the sounds (Carl Sagan helped).
Ratings
| Coolness | 100% | 1 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.10 | 117 |
| Audio(Jam) | 3.30 | 67 |
| Fun(Jam) | 3.08 | 77 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 2.51 | 204 |
| Humor(Jam) | 3.18 | 46 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 2.92 | 130 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.48 | 38 |
| Theme(Jam) | 3.79 | 21 |
I really like the sense of humor here. And I'm a sucker for the fact that your different celestial categories had names of real items that you drew attention to. Pleiades! M31! Awesome!
s3.staticvoidgames.com is an alias for http://s3.staticvoidgames.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com.
It shouldn't have http:// in it. That's probably why webstart / applet loading fails. Downloading directly from AWS works.
Adding the following line in my hosts-file:
207.171.163.193 s3.staticvoidgames.com
Fixes a lot of problems with that website in chrome. This probably affects other people too - you should check that out.
The game:
A nice prototype - would be nice if the camera could show a bit more of the surroundings as well.
My original intent was to overload it with real pictures from NASA and to make it slightly scientifically accurate, but I had to settle for just giving the names of things you run into.
I wanted it to be casual, mostly just listening to Carl Sagan and looking at pretty pictures, so I probably should have made the controls less sensitive. So if you're having trouble with the controls, try clicking closer to the Earth- the closer the cursor is to the Earth, the less of an effect clicking has on your movement speed. Slower is better for this game.
Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to play it!
The game's a bit frustrating because of how little you can see, but that's also the main gameplay hook. The sounds are kinda rough and I feel like I started ping ponging between different celestial bodies a little too easily sometimes. I think that having the "character" move around rather the scene rather than stay centered in the view the whole time would make things easier.
I enjoyed the game, good work!
To further explain where my head was at when creating the game, part of the "goal" of the game isn't to finish it as fast as possible, but to just sit and listen and think about what Carl Sagan is saying, maybe look at the pretty pictures. I imagined the player spending the first minute or so just watching the earth drift slowly through space, listening to the beginning of a pale blue dot. Then maybe a large object would appear that would cause the player to avoid it, then a small one appears.. but instead of just crashing into it, the player could try to get it to orbit earth or something.
I know that slower games aren't very easy to portray in contests like these where we're trying to play as many games as possible, and I know the control sensitivity and top speed should have been toned down a little to encourage a slower, more "casual" experience. Lessons learned! But perhaps it's better to leave both in there- casual players are more than welcome to dive into the atmosphere by clicking closer to the earth (which results in smaller changes to the speed), and players who really care about winning can still do that as well?
Anyway I'm just rambling and thinking out loud, but my main point is THANK YOU for playing and THANK YOU for all the encouragement! This and The Carl Sagan award that MurrayL gave me pretty much made my day, haha.
Lovely take on the theme, I must say.
Good job, I had fun!
ExitException[ 3]java.io.FileNotFoundException: JNLP file error: http://s3.staticvoidgames.com/games/PaleBlueDot/applet.jnlp. Please make sure the file exists and check if "codebase" and "href" in the JNLP file are correct.
at sun.plugin2.applet.JNLP2Manager.loadJarFiles(Unknown Source)
at sun.plugin2.applet.Plugin2Manager$AppletExecutionRunnable.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)
Indeed it would appear that the "s3.staticvoidgames.com" domain itself cannot be resolved. A DNS query for the domain confirms what @Kvisle mentioned earlier, that the DNS entry for the domain is wrong. It should indeed NOT contain the "http://" part. The "http://" part is just a protocol specifier and has no place at all in the DNS entry. I recommend that you look into that.
http://pastebin.com/n1wuC8z8
Additionally, I can now not load your main website at all. (The website itself worked fine yesterday.) I get the following response:
HTTP/1.1 503 Service Unavailable: Back-end server is at capacity
If you want you are free to contact me by email at: jiddo.lua [at] gmail.com for further debugging of this issue.
I really like the idea and the game mechanics. It feels sort of like a more personal take on Solar 2. I wouldn't mind some keyboard controls tho. I keep accidentally clicking outside the screen making the window end up behind something whenever I panic and try to steer away from something at high speeds. It would also be nice if you could zoom out, at least when at high speeds so that you can see stuff coming and react to them before it is too late.
The voice in the background was a very nice touch as well. Great work!
Playing a simple game while listening to the Carl Sagan's speech was interesting. It was wise to use the narration because if the game didn't have it, it might be a little boring.
The sound effects are too loud compared to the narration volume.
I laughed my ass off (literally) after the first two seconds of the game, when I had already taken down Venus and Mercury. I wasn't expecting what the game was really about. Thumbs up!! (For my, you'd be the winner of the 'fun' category ;D)
Oh, and great narrator :P
I loved the idea of using spoken narrative to set up the mood. I have a criticism about that though, parts of the game are funny (I lol'd at the title, ending and game over screens) while the main gameplay part has a dense, serious mood. I found that kind of inconsistent, the game could have easily been one of my favorites in the "mood" category due to the audio, but the fact that you chose to use a lot of jokes made the otherwise beautiful mood less intense.
Anyways, congrats on your game, I had a good time collecting other planets =)