Inside My Radio by TurboDindon
Hi there !
Here's our entry for the jam competition.
It is called "Inside my radio".
In this game you play the guy who's in charge to keep the rhythm in a boombox.
All the moves you perform must be synchronized with the tempo of the music.
The game was made with game maker.
For this LD (and probably for the next ones as well) TurboDindon has recruted an awesome musician.
So put your headphones on!
Note: As the game is based on the rhythm it can be quite challenging. Press F1 to display a visual gauge if you experience some difficulties :)
The TurboDindon team :
Vincent Filipiak --> Art
Joachim Neuville --> Sounds and Music
Baptiste Martin and Jerome Fait --> Game/Level Design and scripting
Hope you'll enjoy the game.
Bisous
TurboDindon
turbodindon@gmail.com
----------------------------------------------------------------
N.B. : The display resolution was deliberately set to a low value (800x600) for better performances on low end computers.
Feel free to change it by editing the file "zik.ini" :
[Display]
width = <- set the display width (0 to keep the current desktop resolution)
height = <- set the display height (0 to keep the current desktop resolution)
Here's our entry for the jam competition.
It is called "Inside my radio".
In this game you play the guy who's in charge to keep the rhythm in a boombox.
All the moves you perform must be synchronized with the tempo of the music.
The game was made with game maker.
For this LD (and probably for the next ones as well) TurboDindon has recruted an awesome musician.
So put your headphones on!
Note: As the game is based on the rhythm it can be quite challenging. Press F1 to display a visual gauge if you experience some difficulties :)
The TurboDindon team :
Vincent Filipiak --> Art
Joachim Neuville --> Sounds and Music
Baptiste Martin and Jerome Fait --> Game/Level Design and scripting
Hope you'll enjoy the game.
Bisous
TurboDindon
turbodindon@gmail.com
----------------------------------------------------------------
N.B. : The display resolution was deliberately set to a low value (800x600) for better performances on low end computers.
Feel free to change it by editing the file "zik.ini" :
[Display]
width = <- set the display width (0 to keep the current desktop resolution)
height = <- set the display height (0 to keep the current desktop resolution)
| Windows | http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39230100/insidemyradio.rar |
| Gameplay video | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VHfpjn-OAM |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=5611 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 89% | 2 |
| Overall(Jam) | 4.30 | 1 |
| Audio(Jam) | 4.78 | 1 |
| Fun(Jam) | 4.00 | 4 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 4.54 | 7 |
| Humor(Jam) | 3.07 | 52 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 4.37 | 2 |
| Mood(Jam) | 4.06 | 5 |
| Theme(Jam) | 3.07 | 112 |
when I try to extract it. But then files zipped with WinZip never work for me anyways, so maybe it's not your game.
MadGnomeGamer: hmm I don't know how to fix this :( I have packed it with Winrar, maybe I should use 7 zip instead ? I'll send you an alternative link as soon as I've uploaded it.
emongev: Good point :) We were already concerned by this issue when we played it and the good news is that the game already features a visual helper ! You can display it by pressing F1 at anytime.
This info is displayed on the HUD at the beginning of the game but disappears after 1 minute so you've probably missed it. Maybe you can try it again with this visual indicator and tell me if it helps you ?
Thanks again !
-blemish
Unfortunately I can't rate it because I'm using a Mac. Sorry :(
Its a bit hard at first to get the hang of it,but i think its great that way.
Anyway amazing job.
W o W
W o W
(hope it is still intact)
The graphics are real cool, the movement on the music is so flawless. The music also is real nice.
Best game so far i think too.
Congratulations on making such a great game! Definitely one of the best in the jam! :)
The level of polish in here is OVER 9000!
Great gameplay, loved the beat(s)!
ERROR in
action number 1
of Begin Step Event
for object Surf:
Trying to use non-existing surface.
kddekadenz : this issue can come from different things.
- Maybe your video card doesn't support surfaces: updating drivers solve this problem most of the time.
- Does it happen everytime ? When you launch the game ? if updating drivers didn't work you can also try to launch it in windowed mode: edit the file "zik.ini" and change the "fullscreen" setting to 1.
- Maybe it comes from an unsupported resolution, in this case try other screen sizes by changing the "width" and "height" value in the ini file (set it to 0 keeps the current resolution)
Let me know if the problem persists !
-blemish
But I suck so bad at this game!! haha. I'd love to play the slow dance version though :P
There was also a bug in which, after clearing a stage, the music stopped and didn't come back (it was the stage right before the hall with electric blue things), making it impossible to proceed, so I had to start all over again.
This game is awesome, very neat idea and great polish. Doesn't look like a game made in 48 hours at all!
I did wish for more stages when I finished it though =P
I liked the visual, gameplay and music a lot!
It was maybe a bit hard at times...
Great work! It's very innovative :D
I did get an error after I quit the game (something about not being able to write to a surface).
Nevermind, the entry looks great, the sound is awesome!
Sometimes, it was very hard because my computer is a bit slow and I'm afraid it breaks the rythm,but the whole thing is awesome.
Ony problem : Where is the theme ?
________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Begin Step Event
for object Surf:
Trying to use non-existing surface.
"Ignore" doesn't help. It is there again and again and ...
That said, everything else in this game was wonderful, from the beats to the graphics, to the idea. It's hard to know what to suggest as an improvement from a gameplay standpoint, though I felt like the final room relied a bit much on explotation of the controls and just randomly spamming the jump button until you reach the first of those three diagonal steps that lead from lower left to upper right in that room. Reaching the first step felt impossible without just jumping straight up and hoping I got caught "in" the block so that I could spam my way out of it. If I managed to land between beats, I was able to keep time once again.
Congratulations, team!
Bravo :D
matthias_zarzecki: Glad to see you liked our game! And kudos for remembering our previous entry :D Yeah we're pretty happy with this one as we managed to make it in less time and in a far less stressful mood... We've slightly reduced the scope in comparison to "Action Time" to provide something more polished and Joachim was there for the music this time around :)
Pierrec : Thanks a lot for your comment! It's funny you're talking about BitTrip Runner as it's precisely the kind of gameplay we wanted to avoid :) I love rhythm games so I naturally gave it a try but I was really disapointed by it too: a lot of style but very shallow as you must follow a pre-written score. And even there I think it's not as good as a simple Guitar Hero clone as you actually have to to "desync" with the music and anticipate everything... (Thanks for the review on your blog BTW! and also for the link to Sophie Houlden's criticisms regarding BitTrip Runner: it sums up pretty much everything I don't like about it).
IMO too many rhythm games follow the same GuitarHero/DDR pattern over and over ("a scrolling score you must follow", even BTR is like that but disguised as a platformer/Canabalt). It's OK as it's way more accessible than what we did with this game but jams are cool for these kind of designs as there's no commercial pressure.
Try Rhythm Tengoku/Paradise/Heaven on GBA and DS if you haven't yet! Best rhythm games (design-wise) to me :)
You're right concerning the theme too, it's really too far-fetched now ("inside a tiny radio world"). It's a poor excuse but as time went by we had to scrap the few elements tying the gameplay with the theme: an "open" (i.e. not linear) level where the player created a tiny world full of small dancing NPCS if he kept the rhythm (oh the joys of the first Ludum Dare hours :p). Anyway it was way too big for us and we would have probably came up with something shitty, so we've decided to focus on a smaller game, albeit less related to the theme. We hoped for something clever to emerge during the weekend, but it just didn't came up.
dr_soda: Actually, getting caught in the block and jumping out of it is more an exploit than a conscious design choice. Congratulations for finding it though =) The "right" way to finish it is to walljump before, like this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoryOpECjFA&t=10m37s (thanks to this guy for recording a walkthrough!).
Pavel Dlouhy and pythong: It's the same problem kddekadenz encountered, and I don't know if it's possible to fix it (unless by providing a "low detail" version where the surface effects are removed).
As I said earlier, it can come from different things:
- Maybe your video card doesn't support surfaces: updating drivers solve this problem most of the time.
- Does it happen everytime ? When you launch the game ? if updating drivers didn't work you can also try to launch it in windowed mode: edit the file "zik.ini" and change the "fullscreen" setting to 1.
- Maybe it comes from an unsupported resolution, in this case try other screen sizes by changing the "width" and "height" value in the ini file (set it to 0 keeps the current resolution)
Hope you guys will be able to play the game !
Cheers,
blemish
I've set the timing tolerance to +/- 100ms, which seems already enough to me.
The music is set at 120 BPM, making a beat every 500ms. With this +/- 100ms tolerance you can only fail in a 300ms gap.
Making it bigger ruined the rhythm constraint so I've decided to keep it that way.
That said, other problems can cause this frustration:
- GameMaker : GM handles the draw events in a sequenced fashion in order to keep the FPS defined in the room (I guess it automatically waits a few ms before proceeding to the next step to keep a constant frame rate). As I've set it to 60 FPS, the draw event is called every 16 ms (in the best case scenario, where the computer is fast enough to keep it at a this frame rate).
So if you are unlucky and you've pressed the jump button just after the key strokes are registered, this lag can go up to nearly 32ms between your input and the visual feedback (i.e. way too big for a rhythm game IMO).
Maybe there's a trick to define a variable FPS in GM (calling the draw event only when necessary), it'd prolly help reduce the lag a lot.
=> If anyone knows, I'm very interested. Maybe set it to like 120FPS and render every 2 steps? Or use an high definition timer dll to detect when it's better to call the draw event ?
- Visual/Gameplay feedbacks: Currently there's no visual nor gameplay feedbacks when you miss the timing. I've already developped a small v1.1 with better "miss" feedbacks but I don't know if it helps as nobody tested it yet. The screen flashes, the PC shakes and stops for a very brief instant. That way you don't fall from the platform if you missed the jump button. It's a small fix but it may be part of the solution.
- High difficulty level design: As we had only 48h we couldn't produce a lot of interesting levels. We've chosen to ramp the difficulty early and quite high :) The game felt more interesting to us that way, and more satisfying to beat but we knew it'd make it kinda "hardcore" and not accessible.
It's so dirty that it'd be better to start it from scratch if we want to push it further :)