Autoflotilla by Sparky

[raw]
made by Sparky for LD19 (COMPO)
Command a fleet of ships and discover new islands.

Controls:
move boat
action (pick up / drop)

Quick start:
You begin with a single ship, one stronghold, and a single island. If your crew runs out of supplies, they will die of scurvy. You can resupply (for free) at your stronghold. This limits your exploration radius.

Once you're ready, head out to the island and press space to harvest some resources. Sail back to your stronghold and drop off the resources.

Now you're ready to build ships! Sail near the windmill and space to build a new ships (this costs 1 resource per ship).

Once you're ready to expand, sail near the flag and pick it up with space. Plant it on an unexplored island to set up a new route for your ships.

Ratings

Coolness 2% 150
Overall 3.41 45
Audio 1.23 183
Community 3.35 61
Fun 3.15 63
Graphics 3.62 35
Humor 2.11 128
Innovation 3.74 23
Theme 3.76 34

Feedback

AClockWorkLemon
20. Dec 2010 路 03:41 UTC
Really fun game, although it took a little to get used to.
FireSlash
20. Dec 2010 路 05:05 UTC
Well done. Somewhat awkward to play at first, interface is very cromagnon but given the time constraint it's hard to complain. Really enjoyed this :)
Epskampie
20. Dec 2010 路 05:08 UTC
I like the art style, the sense of exploration, and the feeling of growing as you build more and more boats.
To make it a game, i guess there should be some kind of goal, like a red island to lay siege upon with all your created boats, or something. :)
馃帳 Sparky
20. Dec 2010 路 05:29 UTC
Oh dear. I appear to have broken the UI in my last round of improvements. I'll be uploading a new version posthaste.
馃帳 Sparky
20. Dec 2010 路 05:37 UTC
Odd, is anyone having trouble planting flags on new islands? I experienced a bug which made it impossible to place flags, but I've tested this a few times and haven't run into any difficulties on further runs.
stevejohnson
20. Dec 2010 路 06:22 UTC
Runs at about 1.2 FPS for me on OS X.
wizbane
20. Dec 2010 路 07:30 UTC
Neat prototype! I think this is the start of a really interesting RTS. I'd like to somehow rally my 1st island boats over to another windmill, once they run out of cargo there's not much to do.
Draknek
20. Dec 2010 路 11:15 UTC
At first I thought I was just controlling the camera, didn't realise for a while there was a boat. So perhaps should spawn player outside of the island (would be nice if there was collision detection too).

Was just playing about and then I died of scurvy. Hadn't read the instructions so that came as a rather abrupt surprise, but that was amusing.
KoryWazHere
20. Dec 2010 路 12:54 UTC
I died of scurvy =)
thewinterdrake
20. Dec 2010 路 20:19 UTC
It was a good game. The graphics were pretty simplistic, but once you get the hang of the gameplay, It's just a matter of mashing the space button to create new ships and exploring. Oh, by the way, I traveled so far that I came across another base like the one you start on, and then the game crashed when I tried to dock it.
increpare
20. Dec 2010 路 20:59 UTC
very slow on my laptop, only a frame or two per second. Ah well. (osx/firefox here as well)
Danik
21. Dec 2010 路 00:12 UTC
Fun game. It's nice to watch your fleet rake in the resources.
I would have wanted the camera angle to be lower, but I guess that takes away some of the discovery aspect (and might give performance issues).
Dark Acre Jack
21. Dec 2010 路 03:22 UTC
Love the visual style, but low FPS made it unplayable for me.
wlovas
21. Dec 2010 路 06:17 UTC
Couldn't really figure out the point, so i just made thousands of boats and drew lots of lines :) Even without a clear objective, some measure of progress like a score or some inventory counts or something would help make this fun.
馃帳 Sparky
21. Dec 2010 路 07:31 UTC
There were a number of bugs in the initial upload which affected placing flags on windmill islands. If anyone has played but encountered difficulty expanding past the first windmill, I would recommend playing this new version.

This version which fixes a couple of bugs without adding anything significant.
http://vacuumflowers.com/temp/LD19fix/

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I apologize for the poor performance. I did a bit of culling of offscreen objects, but it could certainly be better optimized. Seemingly the performance is worse under OSX. That's interesting. I wonder if that's true of Processing in general? This is my first time using it for Ludum Dare, so that would be a good thing to take into consideration next time.

I'll be doing a post-competition version with sound and some refinements
dock
21. Dec 2010 路 09:43 UTC
This was really interesting, although I couldn't quite figure out what to do. I was playing your bug fixed version for a while and wasn't able to get past the first windmill. I did like the art style a lot, although found the limited viewing angle somewhat counter intuitive for a sea faring game.
馃帳 Sparky
21. Dec 2010 路 11:29 UTC
I'll be releasing a post-event build of Autoflotilla in the near future. Here's an entry which describes some of the changes:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/12/21/continuing-development-of-autoflotilla/

Dock-
Thanks for giving it a whirl. You might like the camera in the next version- I'm altering the camera angle and rendering the seascape as a curved surface instead of a plane, so that distant islands roll up over the horizon as they approach. So you didn't find any other windmills? I think perhaps I put them too far out in this build, sorry about that. I think in the future I'll plant one or two within easy reach to give us a head start.
Squax
21. Dec 2010 路 13:34 UTC
Has great potential, would love to play a more complete version ^^
refrag
21. Dec 2010 路 20:33 UTC
A neat concept! Wouldn't run on MacOSX at a decent framerate. Ran fine under Windows. Looking forward to seeing how you develop this post-compo!
deepnight
21. Dec 2010 路 23:21 UTC
This game has great potential ! At the moment, it lacks some challenge, but the basis are there :)
Good job
dertom
22. Dec 2010 路 02:06 UTC
I liked the whole graphical style! Good job!
localcoder
26. Dec 2010 路 05:01 UTC
I liked the look, and the lines that show which nearby object is selected were very effective - I quickly learned the difference between the flat and the windmill, for example.

I love the way boats\resources pile up next to the windmill.
LiquidAsh
26. Dec 2010 路 18:58 UTC
Really nice looking game that made me want to understand how it works better. I did like how exploration was limited, but feel like more risks and opportunities could add alot. Nice work.
Endurion
28. Dec 2010 路 16:42 UTC
It's a promising start. As of now the mechanic is interesting but there's no real goal to work towards. What struck me weird was that at finding a new mill island the routes were still targetting my initial mill island.
philomory
29. Dec 2010 路 08:25 UTC
I really digged the graphical style. Other than that, the very poor performance on my machine made it hard to get into the game, though I can see how it would probably be fun with a few more gameplay elements.
diki
30. Dec 2010 路 20:21 UTC
Really cool idea & execution; my only gripe with this build is that all the windmills are ever-so-slightly out of reach.
Big props for doing it in Processing, though :D
joekinley
02. Jan 2011 路 20:29 UTC
No timelapse? Well, there go 2 community points. Although you did post enough.

The game was theme based, and kinda nice. Just was too damn hard, because i died way too often and regularly.

Good work for the shortness of time.
jimlefevre
31. Jan 2011 路 15:23 UTC
This is wonderful. All in processing too? Am very much in awe, it's such a beautiful world.

Obviosuly rushed constraints for Ludlum Dare mean this ask is a bit rich but if there were a win state, even a marginal one, I think I could happily play this for days, it's so soothing.

Big big props to you!