Really a good game! Well balanced and i like the idea

I really like the idea of having an online game here.
I felt kind of confused at first but then I managed to learn how to play it.
The game may be more challenging if you add some side-challenges or some terrain modificators not used by users like weather changes or different enemies.
Anyway, good job, guys!

With these sorts of "tug of war" multiplayer games, its important to have an acceleration of advantage. So that the game generally comes to a quick end once a solid lead has been established. I felt that was missing from your game. That being said, I love both the aesthetic and music.

Nice game, played it for quite a while. I would have liked to play the other roles, but everytime I restarted the game I spawened as planet. The way the game is set up there is a endless back and forth between the fire and the plants, as the fire spreads faster if there are more plants, but if there are none left the fire will die. Also liked your audio.

This was the second game I actually downloaded to play, it just looked too interesting. I enjoyed playing it, for like 5 minutes. The concept is pretty cool, and although it is a gamejam game, it has potential for a bigger game. This is also why it got a bit repetitive after a few minutes.

Overall good entry tho. :)

@mde Haha I was looking at the server and saw some poor guy get planter 4 times in a row, guess that was you, unlucky!

@lurumdurum Totally agree. Needs more of an end game.

I like the idea of a multiplayer game, but after a while the game became boring, just because there was too little action going on. The fire nearly killed every plant and then the plants overtook the fire and that was the gameplay for 10 minutes. I feel like if there is more stuff to explore and more objects it could become a really interesting game.

Online Multiplayer in a jam is not something you see every day, props for that (although I'm unsure if I was playing against humans or bots... No-one but me was calling out for attention!) The audio and graphics are neat too.

The exercise itself (as a twisted fire starter at least) is rather pointless and boring. The should be some kind of a build up of tension over a match. A simple, say 6 minute, timer would have sufficed for a start. Rousing and dowsing fires could have a resource cost as well, meaning you couldn't simply spam away.

Solid effort.

I am impressed that you got an online multplayer game working. Unfortunately, when I joined as the only person on my team it was a little overwhelming. Some sort of tutorial to explain the growth rules or whatever would be nice.

I like the idea of this game and it has potential for more future features.
On a big screen it was really hard to see everything and I'm not sure if it's possible to win the game, but overall I like the game.

Great innovative idea for a game! Very meditativeto play, especially with the music.

It took me some time to figure out how exactly I was influencing the map. I also wasn't sure if the other players where humans or bots - if there are bots I guess that's a good sign :D

It was very interesting to follow how the map developed overtime, a bit like watching an ant hill.

Awesome idea. I love when games explore the possibilities regarding multiplayer, and goals in a game.

I'd love some zooming option though, or being able to fullscreen the game. Not only the world was small, but the window too ;)

Pretty fun and solid. The systems obviously need to be more complex but it's a great starting point for a later release.

A nice solid little game. It was very innovative with the idea and such. Best things to me were:

-Gameplay
-Music
-Graphics

I always say this to pixel art games, but the graphics were good! Even though for this one, it ended up having simple, little graphics.

So this game seems pretty small right now, pretty good for a few days, but if you could expand on it, I'm sure you could go places.

I loved the overall idea and concept, great job on making the multiplayer work!

There is no goal or anything complex, but as a proof of concept, this was good.

This was really cool - agreed with others; a game jam game that's online (and where the networking seems to work well, no less!) is a rare sight. I played for a while, though I never saw one side win or lose. This did keep my attention a bit longer than some other games.

I think this could be really fun if it were expanded a bit as others have suggested. I like the idea of matches ending a little more quickly. Well done.

Also, the music reminds me a bit of older SNES games, a la Illusion of Gaia or Chrono Trigger. Might just be that I'm a retro gaming kick lately, but it was still nice to listen to.

Thanks, glad you liked the music :) do check out Seventh Beast, he did the music:

https://soundcloud.com/seventh-beast

Always super impressed by online multiplayer games in LDJam!

really good game music is cool

How can I run a standalone server? Does it expect any parameters?

On linux i'm getting:

```
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 1
at net.sleepystudios.ld38.LD38.readFile(LD38.java:43)
at net.sleepystudios.ld38.LD38.<init>(LD38.java:25)
at net.sleepystudios.ld38.LD38.main(LD38.java:155)
```

when I'm running java -jar ./entropy_server.jar

Managed to connect to the official server.

Kudos for the innovative approach in game mechanics! Quite interesting to observe how the world is shaping.

But I feel some resource limitations, resource points and powerups can improve the balance and introduce additional interactivity.

In overall, the game deserves recognition for innovative gameplay and technical achievements.

Agreed. We'd quite like to expand this in the future and making it so you can't just spam is one of the things we were talking about. I think your error above was to do with the server config file getting messed up. The file should look like this:

tcp:5000

udp:5001

bots:3

i.e. tcp port, udp port and number of bots should all be on different lines.

edit: you probably shouldn't change the ports because you can't change the client's ports right now (oops). Unfortunately we don't have time to add the option right now. Will be making a true post jam version soonish.

This is a fun little tug-of-war. It's a really simple concept, I didn't miss a tutorial, the graphics are nice, especially the foliage, and the music was awesome as well. I would absolutely check out a post Ludum Dare version of this. :smile:

There wasn't a lot to do in the game (in terms of variety), but I can see this being fun if you expand the roles. I loved the choice of music, and the layered art creates a great look of chaos. :grin: I agree with @aviland about needing acceleration of advantage to help conclude the end game.

Simple and fun, pretty well balanced. When I was on, it seemed like a perpetual struggle - field of green one minute, field of red the next, back to green the next minute. Kind of like the weather around here. Impressive to see a good multiplayer game made in such a such a short amount of time. Great job!

Needs an endgame, but the rest is amazing for 48 hours in a MULTIPLAYER game. Wouldn't mind seeing something like this again but with a little more direction.

I liked the setup and once I realized what roles the different characters play, I had some fun. Playing blue, I thought it would have been unfair because as I understand they team up with green against red, but I didn't stand a chance. Every time the plants took over 90% of the land, the fire people would attack and the fire spread so fast that the balance tilted in no time.

I have to ask, has anyone ever won this game? Also what happens if nobody's joining? How are chances that I played against an AI?

Anyway, it was a fun experience, great job!

Servers can have any number of bots. Our server has 6. The bots will only move around and do stuff if there are players online (but the world will still continue to do its thing).

The online multiplayer aspect is definitely ambitious, so congratulations on getting that complete during the time limit! Given that there were also AI players though, I'm not too sure it was a great time investment. Not having bots definitely would have prevented some people from playing since it's unlikely that there will always be enough players online to make games viable, but at the same time the bots kind of trivialize the online play; it's impressive to have networked multiplayer, but if the gameplay works without it (and in fact, if most players are just going to be experience it alone against bots), why spend the time on it?
(excluding just for the fun of doing it, of course)

In terms of the actual gameplay, the neverending tug of war is an interesting concept, but I felt like the three factions didn't feel distinct: blue + green might as well have been a single faction since there doesn't seem to be any way for blue to do anything other than suppress red and support green. I also found that the lack of immediate feedback in the world state made all of the player's actions feel very impotent. This may have been intentional given that the gradual push and pull of the factions is put front and center, but it does make it harder to engage with the simulation.

It's a cool entry and definitely a solid start, but plenty of room for improvement!

Great job!

Wait, did you just basically make an MMO for Ludum Dare?

...How??

I'm very impressed!

Haha thanks. Not quite an MMO but definitely an online multiplayer game ;)