Man And Robot by quoj

[raw]
made by quoj for LD18 (COMPO)
Retro-styled platformer/puzzle where the main character has the ability to temporarily control the enemy robots. Certain robots have abilities that can be put into use, other times controlling the 'bots is simply to get out of tight squeezes. Be careful when you decide to drop your mine and take over a 'bot because you're completely vulnerable while doing so.. other 'bots might come along and pick you off. Most of the level design was the last two hours, so it's a bit iffy. I'm curious if it's even possible to get through the eight levels. Click where you want to move to, closer the better. Double click to drop the mine in your current location, double click to remove it from anywhere.

Apparently some people have experienced really slow animation. I cannot account for it, since it runs fine on my 7-year old XP box and my 5-yr old laptop. It won't ever run in Internet Explorer, you guys.. Okay, well, maybe IE9.

Part of the plan for this game was to do something totally cross-platform with HTML/Javascript, and ideally this sort of thing will run on an iPad or N900. I have only tested it in Firefox, Chrome and Opera and it seems to run well.
Developed in Linux with GIMP, Gedit, etc. Had to dust off my old WinXP box to run an ancient copy of Reason to do the music (the box of which I'll still need to try out everyone else's stuff!!) Still nothing comparable for Linux yet, but very close. Converted to MP3 && Ogg with Audacity.

You can download the "Windows version" and play it locally or just simply play it online through the web link. The "source" tarball doesn't include the audio files which makes for a much smaller file. Anyway, have fun. This be my first LD. -quoj@hoolikon.com

Ratings

Coolness 6% 91
Overall 2.73 97
Audio 3.22 18
Community 1.30 156
Fun 2.32 123
Graphics 3.63 25
Humor 1.70 118
Innovation 2.86 102
Theme 2.95 112

Feedback

GreaseMonkey
22. Aug 2010 · 19:29 UTC
TARBOMB
GreaseMonkey
22. Aug 2010 · 19:34 UTC
It's INCREDIBLY slow on both firefox and opera.
zdanielz
23. Aug 2010 · 01:07 UTC
Nice work, very hard to play and get what is going on...
jakkarth
23. Aug 2010 · 05:34 UTC
Took a few tries to figure out that I was supposed to move the robots out of the way without killing myself. The "mine" in my mind was supposed to destroy them, not start remote-controlling them. Other than that, great work, a lot of fun to play!
Covenant
23. Aug 2010 · 07:30 UTC
Runs a bit too fast here, on Firefox... Doesn't work on IE at all...
The Window is also too small on my TV (I play stuff on the TV, 1920x1080, so it was a bit hard to see the characters). Good exploration of mechanics!
🎤 quoj
23. Aug 2010 · 09:27 UTC
Hmm.. I thought I had worked out the timing code right but apparently not. It runs just a *tad* bit slow on my 5-year-old Toshiba laptop, so I just figured that was it hitting the wall with calculations... <shrug> Glad it's running too fast on *someone*'s system. :)
🎤 quoj
23. Aug 2010 · 09:38 UTC
Oh I see. I forgot to do the animation based on the timer. (bl[i].dx = dirs[d].x * MONSTER_SPEED) Fail! Needs to be multiplied by the inverse of the time since last frame, I believe. Sorry guys!
KilledByAPixel
23. Aug 2010 · 22:25 UTC
I love the retro gamboy style visuals. Gameplay is a little hard to grasp. I still haven't finished the first level but I did manage to collect all the money bags. Also I like the fact that it requires only mouse input but movement controls are a little cumbersome.
Diet Chugg
23. Aug 2010 · 22:25 UTC
This game is not intended for track pads!
fun game though :)
alistair aitcheson
24. Aug 2010 · 05:05 UTC
looks fun, but it runs very slow on my machine. I'm running Windows XP SP3 with Firefox. Tried in IE and it didn't seem to run.

The visuals are really cool and I love the music. But I didn't get the controls, as they all went by very slowly in the opening sequence. Could you put them in the description?

There's probably great stuff here as the concept sounds really interesting, but for now I'll just rate what I can (graphics and audio).
ExciteMike
24. Aug 2010 · 15:06 UTC
I can't seem to figure out how to get past the first level... I did get all the money bags.
stqn
26. Aug 2010 · 07:16 UTC
I really like the graphics and music, too bad there's no sound! Nice polish too (title screen, animations, tutorial - even if it's a bit slow).

Works fine here in Firefox under Linux (maybe that's because I'm using a 5-year old laptop too ;)).

It would be so much better if it was keyboard-controlled and a bit faster! Mouse controls make it awkward and slow. I stopped at the second screen because I was bored.
stqn
26. Aug 2010 · 07:24 UTC
BTW if you've not done it already, I think it's acceptable to fix your speed bug in the compo version!

@ExciteMike: you have to control the dark enemy that's at the bottom to make it open the door.
localcoder
27. Aug 2010 · 20:04 UTC
Very cool, but very unforgiving - I found it easy to get stuck by putting a robot on a ladder or killing an essential robot and I gave up after several attempts without getting very far through the game.

With a gentler difficulty curve I think this would be really good.
pekuja
05. Sep 2010 · 01:56 UTC
Cool retro style. I especially liked the sine scroller in the intro. :-P
As for the game itself... I couldn't figure out how to beat the first level, and the controls were pretty awkward. I imagine you made the controls like that to work on touch screen devices, but I just think a different sort of game would work better for that.
Doches
05. Sep 2010 · 05:33 UTC
Way retro, and...Javascript? Nice.
DrPetter
06. Sep 2010 · 15:19 UTC
Moneybags! Damn, I put the enemies in my own path, for when I respawned. Graphics, animation and music make for a sweet atmosphere. Feels like a tricky gameboy, C64 or game'n'watch game. Maybe gameboy, as you'd probably have 7 lives on other formats ;)
Fun and elegant, but a little bit tricky to play. Not just game difficulty, but control-wise as well. A bit too fiddly and stressful with the short time limits, cramped spaces and repeated clicking. I won't complain too much though. It's a cute game.