Little Scout by Tex Killer

You're a little green alien scout coming to Earth to explore. Unfortunately, you're beamed somewhere underground, and you only have your size change device on you.
Can you get out and explore the world?
Links
Development notes
Little Scout was developed using our own engine, the same one used on some of our previous LD entries. I found and fixed some bugs and implemented new features into the engine while developing this, so it was already worth participating, but I'm also grateful for any helpful feedback!
The images used in the game were adapted from CC0 content found in Kenney.nl, the songs were released by Eric Taylor licensed as CC-BY, the "Pumpkin" font by Bam O is Freeware and the cute Earth image used at the ending screen was released by Mvolz in the public domain. Links to the resources and their licenses are included in the archive.
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/little-scout |
Ratings
| Overall | 551th | 3.091⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 513th | 2.909⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 330th | 3.227⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 484th | 3.227⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 312th | 2.8⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 536th | 2.95⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 31🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
Physics engines are a beast to control, but you either tame it ir not mess with it at all. Would play again.
It did bug out a couple of times and I had to restart, a restart button would have been helpful! The first time I pressed W while in the first small tunnel and fell through the floor. The second time I was small and went under the spring, then couldn't jump afterwards, even when I'd turned big again.
Overall a nice game and I'm amazed you built your own engine! Well done :)
@rokasv @unit684
I didn't have time to program restrictions on growing, so if you grow big while you're in a small passage bad things will happen. :P
If I develop a post-jam version I'll make sure to prevent the player from turning big where that shouldn't be possible.
What does your engine use for collisions/physics?
For the physics simulation I use the Bullet Physics Library, as the icon at the ending screen suggests.
Can you tell me how to reproduce the "falling through walls" bug? Thank you very much!
@porcus-pie, could you tell me what OS are you on?

Thank you very much anyway! :)
When the tutorial was over i wanted more! But alas.
I especially liked the animation and artsyle, the music fit the theme too.
You should continue this project, it's really fun. =)
Graphics are simple but really nice ! Too bad that there is juste the tutorial x)
I really like the music. The idea you had is really good, but we do not see the link (for now) with the theme.
I hope you will continue to work on it, there is a really big potential in this game ! Do not give up !
Really cool entry. I love art style even it's simple or maybe that's why. The gameplay
feels nice and the shrinking element is something you don't see every day. Really liked that! Sadly the game is a bit short but as the others mentioned: There is a lot of potential, keep working on it! :grin:
Summary a nicely done game, good job :smile:
Nice tutorial and good job. It has some good overall finnish and has the main parts of a game covered.
I got a few graphical glitches. From time to time vertical and horizontal lines would appear (texture edges?). I also got stuck once in the wall (or the game crashed) in the bottom left while trying to jump and change size while jumping.
But overall, well done! Looking forward to seeing more of the game! :)
@wildmusketeer, I had already found that bug out, and I'll see if I can solve it. It appears to only happen when you start to jump but grow/shrink before the character leaves the ground from the jump.
@zyxer, do the lines appear while you're changing or are they always there? Do they appear on both sizes? Thank you very much for the feedback!
So I played your game again to find the bug:
I first just played the game in the normal window size and got one very short flash of a line (while changing size). Then I maximized the window and got the lines nearly all the time, this is how it looks like: http://zyxer.net/little_scout_line_bug.jpg
I found another bug (could be the same as when I thought I got stuck in the wall the last time I played): I sometimes get stuck in the jumping animation. Even if I'm standing on the ground. The sprite stays with the open mouth and I can only move very slowly. (Perhaps a floating-point error?)
Haha and just found yet another bug while writing this comment: if you get bigger in the bottom of the map to the left of the tunnel, you fall through the world:

*Nooooooooooooh....* :D
(edit: I just saw that icxon found the same bug)
I believe the "stuck in jump" bug is the same as the one @wildmusketeer reported, and can be reproduced by jumping and growing/shrinking before the character leaves the ground from the jump. I'll fix it when I have some time. :)
I messed with the window resolution a lot here (including maximizing the window), but I could not reproduce the "line bug". I guess it is tied to both the window resolution and the hardware/drivers somehow, because my screen's resolution is the same as yours, and I could not make it happen here.
Again, thank you very much for playing and for the valuable feedback! :)
Can you tell me what is the model of the graphics card you are using? I'm pretty sure the white box character happened because of the graphics card's limitations, since the character sprite sheet is the biggest image in the game (6696x387), although I really haven't seen that happen yet.
**Edit:** I talked to @furiouswitch at her game's page, and it seems to be an integrated graphics card. Using another graphics card she was able to see the character, and she also said the sound had improved, so I might do some testing with low-end graphics cards in the future to avoid these issues.