Tiny Infection by Darkhogg

[raw]
made by Darkhogg for LD23 (COMPO)
You are a species of a virus, fighting other similar ones in a battle for the tiny little known world. Infect other cells and become the dominant species.

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My interpretation of the theme here was more about the *tiny* than the world, as you can see. I've been thinking on this game for a few weeks, so it was just about time.

The game is HEAVILY inspired by Phage Wars and Eufloria. If you don't know them, try them, because they are quite good.

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The game controls are quite simple:
- Move the camera with the arrow keys or WASD
- Left Click to select a cell
- Right Click to send viruses from the selected cell
- Keys 1, 2 and 3 control which types of viruses you send:
+ If none is pressed, all types are selected
+ If at least one key is pressed, only those types associated are sent. 1=Triangles, 2=Squares, 3=Circles

Cells with a shape inside them generate mostly that kind of virus. Each type of virus has a different ability:

* Triangles deal more damage and reduce the enemy's defense
* Squares increase the defense of a cell
* Circles increase the reproduction rate of a cell

The AI is really simple and basically plays randomly. I might or might not improve the AI after rating has ended.

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APPLET ISSUES:
Some people can play on the applet, some people can't.
To be precise: The applet crashes on my laptop (Ubuntu 11.10, Java7), but works on my father's (Win7, Java6).
Just try...

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:
Download the "Binaries" distribution from the link section and unzip it to any location. It is important to unzip it, it won't work otherwise.
After that, just double click the JAR file. If you are on Mac/Linux, you might need to give it execution permissions before.

If it doesn't launch, execute ir from the console as:
java -jar LD23-Darkhogg-TinyInfection.jar

You might see an error. If is says something about "libjawt.so", I'm on it. If you know how to fix it, PLEASE, PLEASE contact me. If it says something about the jar/native versions, I'm also on it. I don't really know what is it, but I'll look into it.

THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE.

Ratings

Coolness 28% 913
Overall 3.67 81
Audio 2.18 550
Fun 3.72 41
Graphics 2.33 710
Humor 1.50 748
Innovation 3.56 142
Mood 2.69 424
Theme 3.50 184

Feedback

Sanguine
24. Apr 2012 · 14:43 UTC
I love this game! A mini map would be nice though
fanatiko
25. Apr 2012 · 19:37 UTC
Very solid entry and very nice timelapse (although maybe you could have removed the Chuck episode).
jeroenimooo
25. Apr 2012 · 20:11 UTC
Well don on the lwjgl applet, I couldn't get it to work D: the lib's etc :s
soy_yuma
25. Apr 2012 · 21:06 UTC
It is awesome! I enjoyed it a lot. I would add a zoom in/out feature and the minimap that @Sanguine talks about. Good work!
Jim Haslett
27. Apr 2012 · 00:25 UTC
Great game!
Lacutis
27. Apr 2012 · 00:42 UTC
I liked the game. It took a really long time to beat though.
I enjoyed the back and forth with the computer although I'm not sure what each of the cells did or exactly what I was doing.
A minimap would be nice. I basically spammed tons of virus till I captured a cell and pushed forward till I won.
Cosmologicon
28. Apr 2012 · 18:58 UTC
Really cool, my biggest issue is that scrolling felt really slow. I had two fronts going on on opposite ends of my territory, and it was really hard to maintain them both, simply because it took so long to scroll back and forth. I tried strategizing a little with the different shapes, but usually I was too busy rounding up waves for it to make much sense.

Good job on the pathfinding!
poohshoes
28. Apr 2012 · 19:06 UTC
Needs minimap or zoom
Milo
06. May 2012 · 14:34 UTC
Pretty good. I liked the idea of having a bunch of different types of things to attack with.

I think that since the field can't be contained in a single view, it'd be good to be able to set up routes where a cell sends all of its viruses, so you don't have to keep reissuing commands. I felt that I wasn't really able to use the cells that were far from the front, even with the multiple-cell paths.
matthias_zarzecki
10. May 2012 · 18:34 UTC
Most positively dyson-ish! ..or was that Euphloric?
Valeour
11. May 2012 · 09:28 UTC
Man, this was awesome, I love games like these, I get so addicted. Well done!
Mago
11. May 2012 · 10:04 UTC
Interesting game. At first I was like WTF is that but after a while game suck me in. Solid and balanced gameplay, you should improve graphics and it could be something.