Space Pings! by idgar

[raw]
made by idgar for LD19 (COMPO)
The player is in a small scout vessel exploring a "dark" area in space. No normal scanners work here so the ships must use a very powerful active scanner (the technical name is Pinger) to detect things in their surrounding. The use of the Pinger can be detected from a long range, putting the user in danger if enemies are near. But if you don't use it you can't see...

Controls are WASD (no need to hold W) and SPACE triggers the Pinger. To fire missiles click somewhere in the window. If you click on a visible enemy the missile will track it, otherwise it'll detonate in the area you clicked. Use WASD or arrow keys to navigate the menus. Enter selects an option.

The game was developed for Windows using C# in VS2010 with XNA 4.0, so you'll need the .NET and XNA frameworks to play. Graphics were done with Paint.NET and sounds with sfxr. Font used (Quartz MS) is one of those included in the XNA framework.


Edit:
Make sure you have XNA 4.0. Link to runtime installer:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=a88c6dec-aeae-42cd-a108-d35c013c3b97&displaylang=en

Edit2:
Added link to a new version. Only difference is that you now can control the ship with the arrow keys as well as WASD, and the pinger can be activated with the right mouse button as well as Space.

Edit3:
The "arrow keys" version has been updated and should be using XNA's Reach profile. This means it should now run on non DirectX 10 GPU's.

Ratings

Coolness 9% 61
Overall 3.00 89
Audio 2.70 82
Community 3.30 68
Fun 3.00 72
Graphics 3.00 100
Humor 2.00 136
Innovation 3.20 69
Theme 3.40 72

Feedback

Ryan
20. Dec 2010 路 08:19 UTC
I have XNA and the .NET frameworks installed, but I wasn't able to get the game to work.
r4m0n
20. Dec 2010 路 08:33 UTC
Same here, the game errored and quit before starting anything here... Can you try to pack a setup for it or something like that?
馃帳 idgar
20. Dec 2010 路 09:24 UTC
Hmm.. Do you have XNA 4,0? I managed to get it working on a second computer (32bit vista, dev computer is 64bit win7) after installing the 4.0 runtime. Trying with 3.1 failed.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=a88c6dec-aeae-42cd-a108-d35c013c3b97&displaylang=en

I'll see about making a setup pack if the problem persists.
r4m0n
20. Dec 2010 路 10:52 UTC
ok, the 4.0 XNA did the trick.
Very interesting game, and some smart AIs in there... Good job.
Zillix
21. Dec 2010 路 09:13 UTC
It's be nice if the ping lasted a little longer, I ended up mashing space a lot =P
jagttt
21. Dec 2010 路 12:18 UTC
Very cool missile effects. I think it would be much better if enemy missiles have another color so I can avoid them in time.
philomory
26. Dec 2010 路 07:09 UTC
Sadly, unable to play. I can only judge windows entries from someone else's computer, which means no installing frameworks.
Endurion
31. Dec 2010 路 18:28 UTC
This uses the Hidef profile, so won't run on my laptop. I had no problems with other XNA entries.
Squax
02. Jan 2011 路 17:45 UTC
Ah that'll be why it won't run on my laptop either ;_;
馃帳 idgar
07. Jan 2011 路 00:59 UTC
A bit late maybe, but the "arrow keys" version above has now been updated and should be using the Reach profile.