Stardust by Aaranos

made by Aaranos for LD34 (JAM)

Stardust! From the small particles of dust that flow around each other and slowly compact comes forth the growth of a new star. Not every speck of dust can work its way up to being a star, but maybe you can.

Controls:
Left arrow to steer left
Right arrow to steer right

Bugs:
v1.0 - First post around 8:54PM Dec 14
- Once you get to about asteroid mass your screen gets so big it makes objects not spawn anymore because they are too far away from the player. I will fix soon.
- Once you get smacked by an object it becomes hard to control, really not sure on this one other than it is related to collisions and gravity set to 0.

V1.1 Fixes around 9:30PM Dec 14
- Fixed distance/scale problem by modifying how far enemy can be before removed
- Adjusted enemy spawn limit because field is barren

V1.2 Post-Jam

- Added some object size randomization

- Added an indicator for direction

- Added X, Y, and Category for cool information about your space object

- Tweaked speed to increase as you get bigger

Planned Updates:
- Parallax background
- Glow as you start to get star size
- Gravitational pull
- Fix the awful collision bug that makes control hard
- Fix minor bugs related to object reference
- Add additional objects
- Add different obstacles
- Add Objectives?
- Make better music
- Explosion animations and sounds
- Particle trail for player

Post-Jam V1.3 Files
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-ZNSkiROWFANXY1LTJBczYzX0k&usp=sharing

Web (Post-Jam V1.3)	http://aaranos.itch.io/stardust
Windows(V1.1)	https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-ZNSkiROWFANWlNd2VCU1Q1NTA/view?usp=sharing
OS/X(V1.1)	https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-ZNSkiROWFATy1FcnhUbmdjVTA/view?usp=sharing
Linux(V1.1)	https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-ZNSkiROWFAUXY5eDZld3ZTVnM/view?usp=sharing
Source(V1.1)	https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-ZNSkiROWFALU1EUTFZbUxSSDA/view?usp=sharing
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=51253

Ratings

Coolness	74%	3
Overall(Jam)	2.49	1068

Audio(Jam)	2.11	705
Fun(Jam)	2.28	1041
Graphics(Jam)	2.20	979
Humor(Jam)	1.89	824
Innovation(Jam)	2.45	912
Mood(Jam)	2.20	984
Theme(Jam)	3.40	743

Feedback

Kaupenjoe

15. Dec 2015 · 19:39 UTC

In the beginning it was kinda hard to figure out what was going on, because there are no reference points (Background) there is no real sense of direction, at least I found.
A direction marker would have been helpful.

But after I figured out how to navigate, I liked it :D

freddyw9

17. Dec 2015 · 04:05 UTC

Nice idea, it's a little hard to figure out where you are however.

Neonlare

17. Dec 2015 · 05:14 UTC

Fun concept, but I do agree with the other reviews, it's a bit hard to track where you are. Needs some kind of star background, but it's pretty good when you get used to it :).

deathray

17. Dec 2015 · 06:57 UTC

Unfortunately I couldn't really get the hang of the controls; it was hard to know which way I was going.
But I like the concept! It's actually the same name and very similar concept to one of my games (http://deathraygames.com/play-online/stardust/)

richardboegli

17. Dec 2015 · 08:31 UTC

Reminds me of http://agar.io/

It was hard to see which direction you were traveling until something else appeared onscreen.

maartene

20. Dec 2015 · 19:29 UTC

I don't really get it. Doesn't really seem to work (Web build / Safari / OSX).

AnaglyphCoding

20. Dec 2015 · 19:35 UTC

"I'm feelin' right, music sounds better with you..." (I hope someone gets that reference so that I don't look like a complete idiot)

Well done, nice little take on the theme however it was very challenging. At first I thought you had to dodge the little circles :P Good work :D

dlowe

20. Dec 2015 · 19:42 UTC

Thanks for the game :)

Zenol

20. Dec 2015 · 19:47 UTC

+1 for a star background, but once you understand how you are moving it's getting fun :)

Btw, the linux build works.

TheMeorch

20. Dec 2015 · 19:50 UTC

Interesting take on the theme. Adding stars or other background elements would go along way toward letting the player where they are and where they're going.

🎤 Aaranos

20. Dec 2015 · 20:00 UTC

@Zenol, thanks for letting me know ^^

narve

20. Dec 2015 · 20:11 UTC

I couldn't tell where I was going, and it was really hard to control for me

adsilcott

21. Dec 2015 · 14:26 UTC

Great idea for the theme! It was confusing at first, but it was cool eating planets and stars later.

Grahhhhh

23. Dec 2015 · 00:15 UTC

That was a tough game, I read some of the updates you want to do, sounds like you're heading in the right direction. Was that a real bass playing?

Galvesmash

23. Dec 2015 · 00:21 UTC

Great concept, not very innovative though, Reminds me of Spore. It really needed some background with parallax to me, I was a bit lost at first! Great Game!

Btw, I've tested your OS X build, works fine!

MoonlightBomber

24. Dec 2015 · 01:18 UTC

You need to have better music. The music loop is Hong Kong 97-level kind of annoying.

Scipio Xaos

24. Dec 2015 · 23:04 UTC

Cool game. And the linux build does work, but I feel I should let you know that the web player version (i.e. post compo version) does NOT work on linux.. so as much as I'd like to play the web version because I see you've implemented a few of the recommendations I thought of (i.e. speed increase) I can't because Unity is being lazy when it comes to linux web player development... Don't know if we'll ever get it or not.

I can also see that some of the other things I thought of are on your todo list.. that's good. :)

Anyways, the game is really cool.. though once I got to 60000 score it became too slow to play on the 1.1 version.. I don't know if this was intentional, but as you got bigger it'd be cool if your icon changed as well. So when you reached meteor size you looked like a meteor, etc.

Lastly.. I don't know what "star size" is as I don't recall seeing any stars.. unless one of those planet looking things were stars. :P

And don't let know one put you down for the music.. I liked it. :P

🎤 Aaranos

25. Dec 2015 · 00:12 UTC

@Scipio, I was being lazy and didn't want to rebuild every version. Since there is actually an interest I see I should of just taken the time to do so.

Thanks for the long comment and suggestions. I definitely plan to overhaul even more stuff and as I type this I am sitting on V1.3 which has parallax background and some minor fixes.

NirabazGAMES

25. Dec 2015 · 02:41 UTC

good game, well done :)

Dejvo

27. Dec 2015 · 06:12 UTC

this would be a good game bbut it was really poorly executed. even the post jam version. try to use physics to move around. and also, there's no need for player to move around in this kind of game. instead of trail renderer use particle system and play with it a bit more

DecayConstant

03. Jan 2016 · 22:45 UTC

I was able to become a pretty large sun, but then I couldn't find anymore stuff to get. :P
Sometimes I noticed that you'd start spinning really strangely though?

Mikaza

04. Jan 2016 · 10:03 UTC

Nice idea :)

themadknights

04. Jan 2016 · 10:59 UTC

Miss waypoints, the black background without changing seems to say sometimes that you are not moving. Ignoring this, the mood is nice and audio decent. So nice work.

A-Flat Miner Studios

04. Jan 2016 · 21:07 UTC

Played your non-compo version as well as the LD version, I love the addition of the stars and space dust. Really adds a lot to the depth and helps me feel like I'm in a space, not just flat on the screen. I found it was tough to catch those little dots, they flew by pretty quickly!