Tax Rebel by LeReveur
Hi!
As always, I was in a rush to finish my entry, so it's very raw. You'll not find any help nor tips in game, but this is very simple : your goal is to steal power on the upper-right corner of the level, and to get back to the lower-left corner (where you started) to take it. Each power charge is counted on the bottom, and there is no limit nor win condition. You have to avoid the robot-guards, if they see you they pursue you, and if they catch you, you're dead (surprised?) Click on a floor tile to move, but be careful : the automatic path do not avoid guards…
Some useful informations :
• guards can't see through concrete walls, but they can see through glass (and bluish grey thin walls are made of glass)
• guards vision is 6 tiles long
• when they stay somewhere, guards can see 360°
• while moving, guards have a 120° wide vision, centered on the direction they go
• while in alert mode, if they don't see you for 20 seconds, they go back to their nearest patrol point
• alert a guard is a good way to extract it from his patrol path ;) (but it will be faster and will activly search you for a while, so act carefuly with that in mind)
• each stolen power charge adds 0.1 tile/second to the guards patrol speed (wich is 1 tile/second at start)
Edit : There was a bug with the way the guards detects player presence, it's fixed now. To catch it, I had to add a debug mode, wich is showing basic detections points while moving - so, if you want to have a visible clue of the guards's sight, hit F6 ;)
(but, please, keep in mind that this "function" was not existing in published version, so don't take that in count for judging)
Edit 2 : Added a 2nd web link to a fixed size version (framed to have one pixel drawn = one pixel shown)
| HTML5 (web) | http://workshop.xenedon.com/LD39/index.html |
| Other (web) | http://workshop.xenedon.com/LD39/fixsz.html |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/tax-rebel |
Ratings
| Overall | 731th | 2.873⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 547th | 2.952⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 503th | 2.937⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 757th | 2.787⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 758th | 2.333⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 390th | 2.458⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 744th | 2.467⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 106🗳️ | 93🗨️ |
Personally, I found the path-finding to be acceptable, because I only wanted to move short distances at a time. So the path-finding you mentioned in your post did not bother me at all. :-)
I also liked the behaviour of the robots once they saw you because: a) It's exciting, and b) it's possible to run away and eventually lose them if you choose your path carefully.
There was one question I found myself asking frequently during my play: How can I know what areas the robots can see? Are the thin grey things glass that they can see through? Can they see past the diagonal blocks in the middle? If you're thinking of taking this game farther (and if the following idea is compatible with your vision for the game), then I think having a visual cue of some kind (maybe spotlights or lighting tiles?) might be helpful. Just a thought though!
Anyway, was fun! Very happy to have played it. :-)
First, I have to say that it was an exercise to learn how to make a pathfinder (each time I tried before, I failed, so I really had to understand how it works), and after I succeed to make it, I wanted to test another of my leaks : basic enemy IA. And in the middle of that, I find out that I didn't have to change my test configuration, with player character moving with pathfinding too - that's why I warn out about it. ;)
About the robot-guards : be careful, the more you have stolen power, the faster they patrol!
Then, the problematic part : the sight of the robot-guards. Theorically, I thinked it that way : they see 6 tiles far, while not moving, they watch 360° around for 3 seconds, and when moving they watch 120° (60 each side) in the direction they are moving. But in reality, even after debugging it long and hard, I'm not totally sure that they fulfill completly this task… And, yes, they can see throught the glass (I should have mentioned it, the bluish grey thin walls are glass). In the way I have coded this, they should not can see trought diagonals, but I had this feeling some times, so, as I said, I'm not sure of what they can do or not - what is kindly ironic for the one who coded them… Ha ha!
Yes, I could try to materialize their sight, but I'm not sure this would be accurate (and easy, notably because of the walls - I'm afraid it's yet out of my competance today).
I join you about the exciting of play hide and seek with the guards, I barely not passed the submission time, trying to get more points to make the entry game screen ha ha!
Still, despite the difficulty I still wanted to try again and again to score a point, so it is pretty addictive.
The only improvement I could think of is to open up the middle area of the map, as on a couple of attempts I ended up stuck in there, sandwiched between too enemies
@ blaster : it's not very good looking, but as I said, I added a debug mode wich shows the sight of the guards when they are moving (hit F6 to activate the d.m.), and yes, they see fairly far away (6 tiles).
If I find some spare time, I will try to make other levels (I designed this one in short time to test, and didn't have time to make a better one before the deadline)
I know you said that you haven't had enough time, but I kinda miss some music or sound effect.
It was fun to find the way go and back without getting catched!
But good work! :)
It doesn't trouble me not to have a indication of the guards field of view since it's pretty clear when they are looking in a direction or in 360° (and it would be too easy otherwise).
I would have prefered arrows to move, though. I'm less reactive with the mouse. But that's not a major problem.
Also cool mechanics, I would rather play without mouse, but is just my opinion.
Yup, it's not easy, but fun :) .
Anyway, it is a really cool game with nice mechanics! :smile:
Here is a video more about this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg
All in all, Great Work and Congratulations! :smiley:
Fun fact is that, few weeks ago, I watched a video precisely about juicy in games.
Oh, and it was a little hard for me to understand all what was said in the video you shared, because I'm french and I'm not really fluent in english, but it was very interesting because of the good exemple choice, so thank you for sharing this :)
That was very fun. The concept is quite original, and even though simple, very fun to play with. I especially liked when I had to figure out if the best was to run for it or be patient.. :p
Well done !
I really liked the gameplay. It feels so different than the other games I've played in this and previous jams, which I found refreshing. I liked that it was a mix of moving quickly and also planning ahead. Trying to do both at the same time--especially after you've been seen--is an exciting and fun challenge. I think it might be nice to have a clearer idea of where the guards are looking and what they can see. I think it's great that you added the variety in what they can see based off of movement, status, and presence of windows. Mentally, it was just hard to put that all together and so sometimes I was surprised that I could be seen. That might get better with practice, just my two cents. It sounds like you have a number of ideas in mind for improvement, which I think would be fun to see. But great job on getting this done with all the constraints of a game jam!
It's also interesting that your ball can only move to the centre of a tile and not near a corner or near a wall.
There were also times that when you click, nothing happens, but i think it just makes the game more challenging.
As for the maze, there seems to be only a few routes from A to B. But that's fine.
It was fun to play.
I really thought the click adventure / path finding was awesome! I have avoided that in my own games because I know it is isn't easy. Great job
if you haven't already please give my game a try [Zombie Power Station](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/zombie-power-station) HTML5 Thanks
it surely has potential it there was more stuff (more levels, mucic & sounds, objectives.. but I think you already said this yourself :)
I just wanna say something about the art : even if it was not intended to be refined nor polished, I did it as a kind of pixel-art, but I got an issue that I didn't find out how to fix it, nor if I could : Superpowers have some intersting tools, and definitly is a good html5 game maker, that I probably will never use full of its potential, but I could not figure how to get a _fixed-size_ result. And with the auto-sized result, you'll probably never see the art as I draw it, instead of that you have a half-blured thing, that is not good looking at all, especially with pixel-art sprites. :/
But after reading all the comments I had for this LD, I'm seriously considering about working on this entry to make a more complete and polished game with it. This would be a serious improvement of my habits regarding LD's ha ha :D