League of Adventure by Draklaw

[raw]
made by Draklaw for LD 41 (JAM)

League of Adventure

ld41_loa.jpg

Notice

Please take the time to tell us if the game is broken for you, with as much details so we can work on a fix. If you can, send us the log.txt that should appear in the game directory too. Thanks !

Changelog

2018-04-25: Windows version is now available ! We had to do some fixes in our home-made game engine to compile under Windows, due to changes made last month that where tested only under Linux. It does not change the gameplay: the bugs are still there ! Enjoy !

There is also a "fixed" version. It changes the behavior of turrets that where remembering the player and attacking him, even if he is in the back row with blueshirts in the front row. Also removed a confusing message telling that characters leave the area after being killed.

Description

Destroy the enemy Fonxus before it destroys yours !

This is, obviously, a text-based MOBA. Move around the map and defeat your foes with command lines. Exciting hum ? The game is not multiplayer (but maybe in the future ?). Your allies are played by (rather stupid) bots.

Teams are composed of a warrior, a ranger and a mage. You can play any of them. Redshirts spawn regularly and walk down the lanes. You should probably follow them ! Fight happen in the middle of the lanes initially, you can use your skills to help your team, which is imba because bots don't know how to use skills... :(

The game works well but could need more balance. The problem is that we need a correct AI before we can really balance the game, and we lacked time (and experience) to make a proper one. Anyway, we are still happy of the result given the complexity of the gameplay for a LD game. So that's it.

We hope you will have fun !

How to play

First choose a class by typing warrior, ranger or mage. You probably should avoid the warrior for the first game because of its short range. Actually, you should play ranger because otherwise the game will be very hard. See below.

Then you can type commands. The game is self-documented: type help to get help in bad English.

However, a lot of game mechanics are not properly explained in game, so here is a (not so) quick summary:

  • You play in the blue team, on the left of the map, against the red team on the right.
  • Every time you perform an action (move, attack, etc.) the turn ends and the other characters (AI) plays.
  • You play first, then the other blue heros, then the blueshirts, then the blue turrets. The red team play afterward in the same order (heros, redshirts, turrets).
  • You can move around the map from node to node (old adventure games call them "rooms"). Use the go <direction> command for this, or just g <direction>. You can use the command direction, dir or d to list the paths you can take. You can move around the map using only four directions: blue (toward your base), red (toward the enemy base), top and bot.
  • There is two lanes: top and bot. On each lane, you will find two turrets (displayed as T on the map) plus the Fonxus turret. The jungle and the river (the part of the map between the lanes) are pretty much useless as bots never go there.
  • You can look who is on your node with the command look or l. It's quite useless because it is called automatically before your turn.
  • You can attack with the command attack <target> or a <target>, where <target> is the index of the enemy when you use the command look.
  • Inside a node, characters are placed in four "rows". There is a back row and a front row for each team. When you move from node to node, you always appear in the back row. You can change row with the command move front or move back. You can't go in the red rows and enemies can't go in the blue rows. Rows look like this:

blue back row | blue front row | red front row | red back row

  • Rows are used to compute ranges. If you are in the (blue) front row, an enemy in the (red) front row will be at a distance of 1. If the enemy is in the back row, the distance will be 2 if there is an enemy in the front row, 1 otherwise. In short, empty rows don't count. This mean that you can attack an enemy in the back row from the back row even if your range is only 1 if there is nobody in the front rows.
  • Ranger and mage have a range of 2, the warrior has a range of 1. This makes the warrior really hard to play (among other things...).
  • Warrior and mage are hard-coded to go on the bottom lane, the ranger go top. If you play ranger you can go with the others which gives you a great advantage. Don't worry about the top lane, it is unlikely the enemy ranger manages to destroy your turret.
  • Blueshirts and redshirts spawn every 10 turns, with the first wave on turn 5. For each team, two go top and two go bot. Blue/redshirts can only move forward and attack on sight.
  • Blueshirts and redshirds are always in the front row. This mean you can follow them and be "hidden" behind them. If your character has a range of 2, he will be able to attack the enemies in the front row. Nobody has a range above 2 (except the mage fireball, but the AI don't use it, so you are safe).
  • Turrets and heroes always attack a random closest enemy first. It mean that if you are in the back row with blueshirts in the front row, you are really safe. However they will keep attacking you if they can once they focused you: if a turret attack you because there is nobody in the front row, and during the next turn a blueshirt comes, the turret will keep attacking you !
  • Take care if you play the "LD version" ! Turrets are bugged and will remember you even after you leave the area if they don't find someone else to attack.
  • Your character has 1 skill that has some cooldown and consume mana. The warrior has a heal over time, command use endure. The ranger throw a bomb at a range of 2 max that damages all the enemies of a row, command use bomb front of use bomb back depending on which row you target. The mage has a fireball that deal huge damage at a single enemy with a range of 3, command use fireball <target>.
  • Your skill become stronger at lever 4.

Tips

Play ranger (or maybe mage) and push the bottom lane with your allies. Hero AI are quite dumb. They only move forward with redshirts/blueshirt an go back otherwise. They return to the Fonxus to get heal if they fall below 1/4 of their max HP. Destroy the two bot towers to gain some xp, then you can try to push top or just keep attacking the Fonxus.

Known issues

  • Enemy heroes don't gain levels. For some reason, I wrote a test that explicitly forbid them... Which is a good thing, otherwise the game would probably be unbeatable.
  • Turrets can focus you even with blueshirts in front of you if you don't play the fixed game.

Balance issues: - The warrior sucks. His ability is far too weak. - Fonxus don't heal mana. - Red fonxus heal the enemies way too much when you try to destroy it.

Ratings

Overall 1048th 2.92⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Fun 964th 2.84⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 783th 3.12⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Theme 784th 3.32⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 798th 3.1⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Humor 798th 2.521⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1011th 2.68⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Given 37🗳️ 11🗨️

Feedback

John Timora
28. Apr 2018 · 00:24 UTC
Needs work but I can see where its a good game.
stitchesmagoo
03. May 2018 · 09:25 UTC
Cool graphics and a nice idea! I hope to see more work on the game in future!
Shivur
04. May 2018 · 09:45 UTC
The turn by turn aspect makes it more of a puzzle so it's not necessarily a good idea to improve the ai wich will make it last for hours more than it already last. Maybe reducing the life points of the towers and Fonxus wich make the game last longer for nothing. Also the death should be longer, it's quicker respawning than returning to the base and recharging.
🎤 Draklaw
04. May 2018 · 16:23 UTC
@Shivur Well the intent was not really to make a puzzle game but rather a strategy game where you have to plan some moves in advance and anticipate what the enemies will do (like chess). But of course with an AI that simple you just need to understand how enemies behave and exploit it. Also, currently, the number of available strategies is way too low to make it interesting. So basically, the game lack a layer of complexity and a lot of balance. To be honest, it was expected that we didn't manage to do all this stuff in time for the LD because proper balance require a lot of playtesting.

So I understand that the current version of the game feels more like a puzzle game... with a very basic and uninteresting "solution" which is uselessly time-consuming. :) Actually, aiming for a puzzle game might have been an interesting way to make the game more enjoyable given the available time frame.
Diego Manarim
04. May 2018 · 17:17 UTC
Wow! You really got the old school vibe, that's a lot of dough! Well done man, I think I felt what you wanted to pass!

Congratulations for the game!

I also went to old scholl, if possible, check out my participation in this link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/type-hero-adventures
Lost Dutchman Software
04. May 2018 · 21:18 UTC
I like the concept a lot, the turn-based movement really makes it super strategic. That being said, i feel like the complexity and information density of the ingame instructions kind of work against jumping right into this. Some icons or color coding in the UI might go a long way. Great basis for something really intricate though.
nervous-composers
05. May 2018 · 08:54 UTC
Good idea, however it is too complex. could be simplified to allow users to learn.
Morg
05. May 2018 · 09:06 UTC
Really great idea, I loved it. I'm not a fan of MOBA games but I love text adventure games and this game really hit the spot for me. I like the separation of the playing space with first person view, the map and the textual description. The font also looked really smooth and nice to me. Really awesome idea!
CursedEmbassy
06. May 2018 · 08:54 UTC
this is great! C: fun story!
TwinGhosts
06. May 2018 · 14:03 UTC
Fun game, the concept is great. I actually spent a while playing this and I seem to agree with @Shivur completely. It would be nice if you could continue this project! Id be interested to play it :) Good job.
The artstyle felt a bit lacking at some points, but then again (im no artist myself so I feel horrible to judge you there for your efforts) you made this during a gamejam. I feel that you have great potential in my opinion :D
Budaniel
07. May 2018 · 16:14 UTC
Wow, I haven't played a text-based game *or* a MOBA in a long while, so getting back into both took some time. I did win (as ranger), some 900 turns in. This was fun!
notgreat
08. May 2018 · 19:51 UTC
This was interesting, but I don't think it worked very well. Once I figured out how to exploit the AI a little, there wasn't any part of the game that challenged me. While the time constraints were undoubtedly harsh, the lack of any complex build decisions from items/level ups/whatever meant that there wasn't anything that required me to think past the start (when I hadn't yet figured out the AI)
StrangerYann
08. May 2018 · 22:16 UTC
I didn't manage to run any of the builds, it displays the following line over and over in both cases:
<-[38;5;160;1mrender_g13: OpenGL error: GL_INVALID_OPERATION<-0m
where "<-" is just a left arrow [1 symbol, instead of 2 in the way I write it] :'( - I couldn't play it or grade it unfortunately - now from what I can tell with all the replanations on this page [I read most of them ^^#] it seems to be a little complicated, and a little demanding from the audience to read it all beforehand in order to just try the game...
🎤 Draklaw
09. May 2018 · 00:50 UTC
@Budaniel Someone finished the game ? Wow... To be honest, I didn't play until the end before the deadline. This explain in part why it takes so much time. If I had the time to properly playtest the game, I would have tweaked it to make it shorter, so you can finish is maybe 300-400 turns. I guess removing the Fonxus tower and nerfing the fonxus heal (at least when enemies are there) would really help.

@notgreat Yes, I totally agree. Items and level-ups where planed, but in the end we really lacked time to implement it. Making the AI a bit less predictable was also part of the plan, the current implementation is really a mockup built quickly to test the game.
🎤 Draklaw
09. May 2018 · 00:56 UTC
@StrangerYann Weird. OpenGL errors mean that something is wrong when communicating with the graphic card... Maybe a shader failed to compile or something. Can you tell me what is your graphic card and OS please ? And ideally if you could past the log somewhere on the web and send me a link, it might allow me to find the bug. Thanks.
StrangerYann
10. May 2018 · 11:21 UTC
@Draklaw Thanks for your reactivity, I run Windows 7 @Intel HD Graphics 4000 [dixit DXdiag] and here's the link to the log file - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Yo_tpOyrAuvj0uH_BgqvOIFE7yn-oZji/view?usp=sharing - if that doesn't work please send me an e-mail adress or some other way to contact you directly, that'll be easier to trade log files - have a nice day :-)
🎤 Draklaw
10. May 2018 · 20:36 UTC
@StrangerYann _Thank you very much._ As I expected, the shaders fail to compile. The errors are really straightforward, but NVidia drivers seems much more permissive than Intel drivers. Anyway, I've updated the .zip to add fixed shaders, so it should work now on Intel hardware. If you have some time to test and tell me if it works it would be perfect, but don't feel forced: you already did quite a lot and we have enough ratings anyway. :)
StrangerYann
13. May 2018 · 18:02 UTC
@Draklaw Nah I just downloaded the post-drive build and the same error still blocks the build... better luck next time I hope - talk to you in August the the 42th edition, I hope :-D