LaserJuice (Top Down Shooter) by NoTime4Name
This was my first Ludum Dare entry and im quite happy with how it turned out. I used:
-Aseprite for the pixel art
-sfxr for the shooting sound
-BeepBox for the music track (https://www.beepbox.co/)
-Visual Studio Community 2015 for everything code related
-notepad for the readme (yes im going to note that here.)
currently the only supported platform is win_x64, having trouble compiling for x86 :( (still working on it.)
controls are: WASD and arrow keys for movement, mouse for aiming and space for shooting, menu navigation with arrows and enter :)
The project turned out way better than i expected, and even though its lacking a bit in content, it does have some charming low resolution pixel art graphics, a color shader to swap colors on the fly, and a killer soundtrack, which was my first experience in making music, ever, which also turned out nicely.
One issue i have is that norton says the exe file is "potentially harmful" which is probably because i didnt sign the file with any credible author signature, but hey. at least it works finally. if you dont trust my exe, you can also just compile the included source code, and replace the exe, that way you "know whats inside".
small edit: thanks to user @artish257 `s feedback, i edited a small bit of code to enable LMB for shooting, aswell as still having the Space key. minor adjustment, should help the controls quite a bunch though.
| Windows | https://notime4name.itch.io/laserjuice |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/laserjuice-top-down-shooter |
Ratings
| Overall | 133th | 3.763⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 175th | 3.579⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 67th | 3.842⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 12th | 4.395⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 118th | 3.875⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 138th | 3.444⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 11🗳️ | 13🗨️ |

I tried installing the dll then I got this

You graphics looked really good shame I can't play it
Can you only point & shoot? I didn't see controls listed anywhere so i just sorta mashed around.
I'd like to try this again with a lazer gun that say only shoots a half of a screen length, so you really have to push back at it.
@truc-e i forgot to mention that this game requires the .NET framework to run. usually people have this installed, your pc might be one where that isnt the case. you can try reinstalling/installing the .Net package here:
https://www.microsoft.com/net
or dont download it if you dont want, just an idea that MIGHT fix your problem :) let me know if that helps
Good Job :)
@incinious thanks, i had the rotation set to keys instead of the mouse first, but that was too slow for the hextic gameplay, so i changed it to the rather odd controls it has now :)
@maximelore ive mainly included the Arrow key support for people that dont have a WASD keyboard, as a kind of "backup" control solution, or maybe for left handed people, i dunno. thank you for the feedback though, the color transitions seem like a nice addition, ill note that somewhere, maybe use it in my next game. :)
@kirillr i will definitely make a splash screen with instructions/controls next time, thanks for your feedback :)
Shaders and music are also noteworthy, but gameplaywise the control scheme is not the best, maybe switch to LMB for shooting?
Love the use of theme, had a ton of fun, and it has a great look. One of the best.
Here is my playtest:
https://youtu.be/E-mHdY5NJg8
@truc-e, @camcam, @turbo-torbo try to install OpenAL 1.1 Windows Installer directly https://openal.org/downloads/
Helped me to deal with OpenAL32 missing error.
@artish357 thanks for your feedback, i have updated a small bit of code to include optional LMB shooting (space or LMB works) and ive edited the included source code to include your name in a mention near the edit :) im quite proud of that shader even if its quite simple, thanks for that aswell :)
@eatthepath Thank you for the feedback, first of all. link is corrected, and ive been noticing the slightly annoying shooting sound myself, but for some reason i forgot about correcting/replacing that. welp, better luck next time i guess...
@acuriosity ive been toying around with different ideas for that, main one was a small target sprite, which would rotate when reloading, one quarter every shot, similar to the game SuperHot, but didnt implement it in the end because i thought it would look out of place with the look of the game. another approach would have been to just write a timer on screen, but again, would have messed with the look in my opinion. overall, the GUI could have used a tad more work, i agree, thanks for playing though :)
@icxon i wanted to have multiple weapons originally, but only the laser felt quite right, impactful, powerful. the other guns were sometimes even more effective (the shotgun/scattergun was one hell of a beast) but i was still only ever using my laser, so i went with that. another form of progression i planned was unlockable color palettes, but with how little time every player will most likely spend in my game (its only a jam game, dont forget, there are 100s of other cool games) i wanted to show every cool aspect off from the start i guess. Thanks aswell for playing :)
PS: what a long text there. 2080 letters and counting, phew.
@raktou cheers :)
@cptalbertwesker thanks, 3444 is pretty good actually, my highscore is around 4k i think. will definitely polish controls/tutorial more next time :)
@zoltancoccyx haha, glad you liked it :)
@Everyone thanks for giving me 20+ ratings, even when im not actively advertising on here anymore, glad the general response has been positive so far :)