Last World by Jiddo

[raw]
made by Jiddo for LD23 (JAM)
"You are a tiny little world in a big and hostile solar system. Try to survive by dodging solar flares, black holes, asteroids and more. Pick up moons and use their defense turrets to defend yourself."

Gameplay video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMfX2GseRAI

A physics/gravity simulated space survival game with charming 2D graphics, sound effects, particle effects and an awesome original soundtrack. Enjoy the ambiance of space!

Note! Moons can shoot lasers. Click when you have a moon in orbit to shoot.

Made by 5 Swedish university students, participating in Ludum Dare for their first time:
* Simeon Atanasov - Graphics and sound
* Cem Eliyurekli - Programmer
* Einar Holst - Programmer
* John David Olovsson - Programmer
* Marcus Wennermark - Programmer and coffee maker

Details:
Developed in Java using the Slick2D engine and JBox2D for physics.

IMPORTANT:
* MAC USERS! If you cannot run the regular JAR file, please give the Web Start one a try. It just might work.

* Please make sure that you are using the official Sun/Oracle Java versions. OpenJDK has UNPLAYABLE performance in our game for some reason.

* If the applet is running slow, please go ahead and try one of the standalone versions.

Update history:
1 - Initial upload.
2 - Added a Java Web Start version.
3 - Some performance improvements. Applet/Web version.

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall(Jam) 3.26 88
Audio(Jam) 3.53 46
Fun(Jam) 3.04 84
Graphics(Jam) 3.44 106
Humor(Jam) 2.18 144
Innovation(Jam) 3.28 77
Mood(Jam) 2.87 114
Theme(Jam) 3.31 74

Feedback

azurenimbus
24. Apr 2012 路 03:19 UTC
I couldn't run the java version on my Mac, I don't know why. :(
Werxzy
24. Apr 2012 路 03:51 UTC
The fps dropped over a small amount of time. Pretty game though.
馃帳 Jiddo
24. Apr 2012 路 07:53 UTC
Thanks for the feedback. We have added a Java Web Start version now that we are hoping (fingers crossed) will work on mac. We would love it if you could give it another go, azurenimbus.

We will look into performance issues as soon as possible. We'll get back to you when we have some results, Werxzy. Thanks!
馃帳 Jiddo
24. Apr 2012 路 21:32 UTC
We have now improved the performance a bit. Hopefully it should lag less now. There is also an Applet version now, but it appears to be a bit laggy (at least one the machine we tested it on).
Lawrence Esswood
24. Apr 2012 路 23:09 UTC
My Favorite one I've played so far! Need a score system to validate my ninja dodging skills.
Milo
24. Apr 2012 路 23:10 UTC
It's very aesthetically appealing. It didn't keep my attention very long though - the game doesn't get difficult quickly enough.

(Also, I don't see the astrophysicist on your team! I'm pretty sure you're supposed to contact one before making a game about space! :P)
MadGnomeGamer
25. Apr 2012 路 00:39 UTC
The Java applet crashed my browser, and now I'm hearing these weird thumping sound effects. :(
馃帳 Jiddo
25. Apr 2012 路 06:23 UTC
Thanks for the feedback. We are glad that you like it Lawrence. We will see what we can do to add a scoring system. for it.

Milo, we actually did consult a physics student when setting up the gravitational forces in the game, but we ended up deciding that realism wasn't fun enough, so we sort of had to butcher some of those laws of physics to make it work. Maybe we overdid it tho?

MadGnomeGamer, I'm sorry to hear that. Could you tell us which operating system, java version (and vendor) and which browser you are using and we will try to get to the bottom of this?
Darkfrost
25. Apr 2012 路 10:45 UTC
Nice! I like the graphical style :) Very nice and clean! Gameplay was fun, although it got stale a bit quickly, or I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing! :p tutorial was added nicely, and wasn't annoying, unlike a lot of tutorials!
tripleVisionGames
25. Apr 2012 路 18:01 UTC
Really fun game! Like a bullet hell version of Solar 2. Great graphics too really enjoyed it.
bitbof
25. Apr 2012 路 18:08 UTC
Really nice soundtrack.
NAMKCOR
25. Apr 2012 路 18:30 UTC
I really liked the idea, but putting the tutorial in the middle of the actual game like that was disorienting.
bcdefg123
25. Apr 2012 路 18:53 UTC
'An error occured while running the applet, please contact support to resolve this issue': org.lwjgl.LWJGLException: Pixel format not accelerated
at org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsPeerInfo.nChoosePixelFormat(Native Method)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsPeerInfo.choosePixelFormat(WindowsPeerInfo.java:52)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.WindowsDisplay.createWindow(WindowsDisplay.java:214)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.createWindow(Display.java:306)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:873)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:782)
at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.create(Display.java:764)
at org.newdawn.slick.AppletGameContainer$ContainerPanel.createDisplay(AppletGameContainer.java:194)
at org.newdawn.slick.AppletGameContainer$ContainerPanel.start(AppletGameContainer.java:213)
at org.newdawn.slick.AppletGameContainer$1.run(AppletGameContainer.java:92)

Chrome also reports that the Windows download appears malicious. I ran it anyway, and it won't start. :\
馃帳 Jiddo
25. Apr 2012 路 19:14 UTC
Thanks for the feedback guys!

NAMKCOR, we were planning on making the tutorial a separate stage of the game where nothing dangerous spawned, but unfortunately we didn't have time. The tutorial is a rather late addition anyways. We'll see if we can't fix that tho.

bcdefg123, I'm sorry to hear that. I've never seen that error before. Looking it up on Google it seems to be a rather common problem (especially with Minecraft players), usually a driver issue. From what I understand the only solution is to update your graphics drivers. I'd also like to assure you that the file is not malicious in any way. The exe is just generated using Launch4J from the crossplatform Java JAR file, which I doubt it'll warn you about.
davidwparker
25. Apr 2012 路 20:00 UTC
Neat game. I didn't really see the point (long-term objective)- it would be nice to add points or a timer or something. I liked the graphics and the basic mechanics. The moons were hard to get (everything moves pretty quick) and didn't really do anything once you had them.
馃帳 Jiddo
25. Apr 2012 路 20:27 UTC
The moons actually allow you to shoot lasers at incoming fireballs and asteroids. Click with the mouse in the direction of your target when you have some moons and they'll go pew pew. :)
Lacutis
25. Apr 2012 路 21:01 UTC
Cool cross between strategy and shooter. I liked the capturing moons and using them as guns mechanic.
Was hard to stay alive for a significant amount of time though.
Is there a way to "win"?
edbadiux
25. Apr 2012 路 21:41 UTC
Nice game. I liked the physics and the concept of this game. Great work!
jwolf
25. Apr 2012 路 21:51 UTC
It's a bit jumpy on my end, but I like the concept, graphics, and music. Good job!
Evil Cult
26. Apr 2012 路 05:02 UTC
[Comments and ratings from this account come from various team members]
Solid game! One minor complaint I have is that stuff can still hit you while you are reading the tutorial. Great graphics and music, but the movement could use a little tweaking I think. Good work overall!
馃帳 Jiddo
26. Apr 2012 路 09:02 UTC
*GFX/Sound guy here*
I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for the great feedback!
Cappibara
26. Apr 2012 路 18:02 UTC
This game was a lot of fun to play! Wish I was better at it though :P
bompo
26. Apr 2012 路 22:18 UTC
Nice particle effects!
Jeremias
26. Apr 2012 路 22:25 UTC
Very nice game, but missed something to aim for, scores, a mission etc.. If you get a new moon, the camera is flickering a short time. And sometimes the moons slow down and crash into you instead of being part of your defense system. There should be some bonus to stay at the maps center, threaten by the sun.

Nice concept and idea, was fun to play.
kibertoad
26. Apr 2012 路 22:25 UTC
Optimized pretty poorly, animation skipped all the time. Nice concept overall. Dying few times while reading the tutorial felt... weird.
demonpants
27. Apr 2012 路 17:41 UTC
I thought this was pretty fun. It was a tried and true concept with just enough new stuff that I didn't feel lost but I was still intrigued. My main issue with it is that it's far too difficult to acquire moons (I was never sure why or why not they were adding to my orbit) and the game is impossibly difficult without them.
robcozzens
27. Apr 2012 路 21:12 UTC
That was pretty cool. I really like capturing moons in your gravitation, but it was not at all obvious that they would be able to shoot lasers at stuff.
Wampus
27. Apr 2012 路 21:15 UTC
Good concept. Bit buggy with the moons but fun when they work.
jeffz
27. Apr 2012 路 23:25 UTC
Great music, original idea, congrats!
KevinWorkman
05. May 2012 路 00:26 UTC
Ironically enough (since my game didn't work for you), this game didn't work for me at first. I had to enable my Java cache. After doing that, I like the basic ideas here. It was fun trying to accumulate a bunch of moons and become indestructible, but the black holes seemed overly powerful (but then again maybe they should be). All in all great job, and it would be cool to see where you go from here with this as a foundation.
馃帳 Jiddo
05. May 2012 路 09:40 UTC
Thanks for the feedback everyone!

We are in the process of optimizing both the physics engine and the rendering by quite a bit. We're also adding in distinct levels, powerups and we are going to implement a simple scoring system as well. :)

We never even thought twice about the Java cache really. IIRC it is enabled by default and shouldn't be a problem for most people, but we'll have to look into whether there is any way we can make it work without using the cache (even tho I doubt it). Which version did you try? I'm guessing it was either the webstart or applet one?
KevinWorkman
05. May 2012 路 15:21 UTC
Yep, the cache is on by default. I turn it off because I don't like clearing out my cache whenever I update a program. I know there are other ways around it, but this seemed to be a catch-all fix.

And yep, it was the webstart version. The error said something about a native library requiring the cache be activated. It's probably not a big deal as anyone with enough knowledge to turn their cache off in the first place probably can decipher the message and make the easy fix, but it might be something to keep in mind.
j0n
05. May 2012 路 15:51 UTC
Great game! Lots of cool things, the black holes are a great idea. A little bit buggy on collisions and things but doesn't detract from the gameplay too much.
MadGnomeGamer
05. May 2012 路 20:11 UTC
I'm using Firefox version 9.0.1. Windows (Starter) 7. I tried both the Windows version and the Java Applet (Web, Slow) versions. I see there's more versions, so i'll try those when I'm playing games this evening. I'm using Java version.... erm. Where the heck is Java stored on my computer? Aha! It's version 6.0.310.5.

Does that help?

btw thanks for playing my game!
tcstyle
05. May 2012 路 20:21 UTC
I really liked this game. The physics work great and the whole idea is fun. The music is very good.
The background somehow didn't fit the mood.
馃帳 Jiddo
05. May 2012 路 21:32 UTC
@MadGnomeGamer:
I can't imagine why it would act strangely for you with that setup. Everything seems to be more then up to spec. If you are up for it, try running the Crossplatform JAR version from the command line (Run the java.exe from your Java installation with the arguments: -jar LastWorld.jar) and see if you get any stack trace. Thanks! :)

@KevinWorkman:
Ah, that makes sense. I'm guessing that the LWJGL library might simply the use of the cache to work. I'll try looking into that until the next time. Thanks!
MadGnomeGamer
06. May 2012 路 02:24 UTC
Ok! Downloading it now...
.....
............
My connection is running at less than 20 KB/sec right now so it'll take a while :P

"Invalid or corrupt jarfile"?

Java isn't my language, so I don't know what a stack trace is. (Also, the java.exe closes itself after a second. Maybe my version of Java has been f####'d up somehow since the last game I played with it.)

And the other crossplatfrom (webstart) won't finish downloading.

Some evil force is determined that I not play your game!
馃帳 Jiddo
06. May 2012 路 09:17 UTC
It certainly does sound like there is something odd going on with your Java installation, but I can't even imagine what could cause something like that. Oh well, thanks a lot for your efforts tho. I'll be on the lookout for others who experience similar problems as well, just in case it is not a unique problem.
Pacifist Games
06. May 2012 路 21:03 UTC
I enjoyed it, the graphics and audio are really nice. Couldn't really get used to the controls though.
Hume
07. May 2012 路 21:51 UTC
Awesome audio, smooth controls (usually), good particle effects.

I did see some animation issues and frame rate hitches; it looks like collisions take a long time to process in some cases. Honestly, I'm not sure why the team needed to bring in a physics library; when the whole game is newtonian physics and sphere-sphere collision tests, you can roll your own with reasonably easy math that will probably run a lot faster than a third party library.

Not a lot of LD entries had so much going on that optimization becomes an issue, so that's actually to your credit.

I had quite a lot of fun with this, and I would love to see more levels and goals after a little optimization.
Hazematman
07. May 2012 路 23:20 UTC
Very cool game! I do have a complaint though. This game needs a score mechanic, Its fun to just keep playing but without score its seems like there is no goal to pursue.
It was really fun trying to avoid everything, and shooting lasers out of my moon! :P
lorancou
13. May 2012 路 10:41 UTC
This misses a long-term goal. You can just get away from the rocket-throwing sun and play forever. Apart that, very nice entry.
JellyFame
13. May 2012 路 19:01 UTC
Really cool but needs some more work.