LudumData

The Infinite Hotel by mikethewayne

[raw]
made by mikethewayne for LD 42 (COMPO)

LD42. Ludum Dare number 12, for me. I'll admit, I nearly forgot about this one, causing it to become a 24-hour challenge. Nevertheless, here is my complete (no music) entry, all prepared for you to (hopefully) enjoy!

In this entry, you are managing a hotel during a busy tourist season. Your whole business revolves around your guests' reviews on popular fictional travel website 'journeyassistant'. If your guests are satisfied, they'll leave you with a positive review. However, if the crowds of tourists flooding into your hotel can't get a room, as your hotel will be constantly RUNNING OUT OF SPACE, they'll leave you a negative review. Enough of those, and you'll be out of business!

Expand your hotel by adding floors, hire plenty of staff, and hopefully, all of your guests will leave satisfied!

The game is entirely mouse driven, and you can use the scroll wheel when your hotel starts to grow larger. If you don't have a mouse wheel, the UP and DOWN arrow keys also work.

The game has quite a slow start, but after about 5 minutes or so, it should start to pick up and become more interesting. Either way, this is supposed to be more of a chill, run-in-the-background game.

And yes, the hotel can technically be built up infinitely (although some code changes will need to be made for that, I didn't have quite enough time to implement true infinity).

No music again this time (I only had 24 hours!), so plug in your favourite tunes, sit back, relax, and enjoy my game!

Thanks!

screen1.pngscreen2.pngscreen3.png

Source code https://www.dropbox.com/s/scbx40udgxpjadr/LD42%20Infinite%20Hotel%20Source.rar?dl=0
Windows https://www.dropbox.com/s/ww9gn2733uigc2t/LD42%20Infinite%20Hotel.rar?dl=0
Windows https://www.dropbox.com/s/btppv8koc6u22x2/LD42%20Infinite%20Hotel.zip?dl=0
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/the-infinite-hotel

Ratings

Overall 458th 3.225⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 451th 3.079⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 530th 2.842⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 388th 3.5⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 388th 3.184⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 21🗳️ 9🗨️

Feedback

amkingTRP
16. Aug 2018 · 21:12 UTC
This looks interesting, but because it insists on a rar file it's problematic to obtain. Would you be able to create a zip file instead?
🎤 mikethewayne
16. Aug 2018 · 21:19 UTC
Yep, all done! A few years back, I always uploaded .zip files, until someone asked for .rar files. From then on, I only uploaded .rar, assuming it was more standard. Looks like I'll have to upload both from now on!
Deaymon
17. Aug 2018 · 20:34 UTC
For some reason, no objects appear on screen, only the background and UI.
eptwalabha
17. Aug 2018 · 22:17 UTC
Same as @deaymon, no images... The ui is responding though.
_Kassjak_
18. Aug 2018 · 19:19 UTC
A really nice concept, though I suck at holding hotels. It was quite fun. It would be great if you added sound or music into the game to make it more enjoyable.
Astralore
19. Aug 2018 · 00:50 UTC
It was great fun. I always dreamed of owning a 40-floor 5-star hotel... It'd be taller than any building in my region!

I think it would have been nicer to have some time controls to let you speed up the game, so you could play it more actively instead of always letting it run. It also was a little small without the ability to resize the window or fullscreen it. I'd be looking forward to any new bits you add to it!

I also had the issue where no hotel or instructions show up. It went away after I started the game for the third time or so :thinking:

![infinite hotel.PNG](///raw/575/c1/z/1a3b1.png)
🎤 mikethewayne
19. Aug 2018 · 12:13 UTC
Thanks for all of your feedback! I'm amazed you managed to build up to 40 floors, I should've made the game a bit more difficult ;) ! No idea why pictures aren't showing up, is the /res folder in the same location as the .jar? I'll look into it more, but I can't seem to replicate the problem...
Larnin
19. Aug 2018 · 13:29 UTC
What minimal version of java do we need to play your game ?
I have java 1.8.0_25, and it don't want to work :
"Erreur : impossible de trouver ou charger la class principale"
==> "Error : unable to find or load the main class"
MaximeMazet
19. Aug 2018 · 13:35 UTC
It's very good game ;)
🎤 mikethewayne
19. Aug 2018 · 13:42 UTC
I'm also using java 1.8.0, so that should be working. Again, I have no clue what's causing all of these issues, I've used the same methods I always use in these LDs, no idea why it's all of a sudden started messing up, and it doesn't help that I can't replicate the issues myself! I'll have to wait for more information to come through, before I can figure out what's going wrong.
gilborn
20. Aug 2018 · 15:30 UTC
Controls and mechanics were quite selfexplaining. A nice simulator for a ludum dare (once you got it, maybe it is too easy, also some Mechanic for increasing the timescale would have been great).
Good entry!
muzuka
20. Aug 2018 · 17:34 UTC
Nice game! It works really well and has a great simulator feel to it.
Frank Gevaerts
20. Aug 2018 · 20:43 UTC
I needed to do a few fixes before I got this to run properly: first, the code refers to res/journeyAssistant.png, while the file in the 7zip archive contains res/journeyassistant.png. Renaming that got the game to run properly (I got symptoms similar to what @deaymon and @eptwalabha describe), but I needed to change the font to one that's actually on my system to get the display not to be messy. I used Carlito, which is size-compatible with Calibri. Portability is a pain, especially if you're not used to it...

I like the game. Maybe it's a bit slow, but as you say that makes it a nice background game. The people walking around and the traffic on the road keep it lively. The graphics aren't the greatest (says the guy who made a text-only game) but they're definitely good enough, and almost certainly better than what I would achieve.
Maybe you could have people walk at slightly different speeds to make things a bit less regular?
One definite improvement I think would be some sort of indication of which rooms someone is working in. Right now it can be a bit tricky to see if the dirt or breakdown situation is under control.

(Just as a data point, I also consider rar to be a very obscure format, and I'm surprised every time I see it. zip is way more common, although 7zip is catching up. In this particular case though, ideally you'd have all the resources in the .jar file so you wouldn't need any of them)
🎤 mikethewayne
20. Aug 2018 · 21:10 UTC
@frank-gevaerts You might well have fixed the issue, I can't believe I made that mistake! I'm also confused as to why it isn't causing any problems on my machine. Either way, thanks so much, wish I could give you more karma than just the 1!

I always try to use a portable font, but I didn't really think about it this LD, sorry! I'll make sure to keep it in mind for next time.

I had planned to make the people walk at different speeds, but I ticked it off my list as soon as the staff walked faster, and just forgot about it! You're right though, I could definitely see how that would help make the game seem a bit more interesting.

Thanks for all of your feedback, it's all great to read!
CristiHKJ
26. Aug 2018 · 11:32 UTC
Great game! Very cool and interesting! :D
hungare
26. Aug 2018 · 17:13 UTC
Theme hotel is one of my favorite flash games ever, so I had to play your game. I like it! The art and animation are really good for such a short time, and it had a decent amount of gameplay. It seems very well balanced too, which is very hard to do for a jam. For me, I wish there was some more visual feedback. For example, I want to see angry tourists who have to leave if there's not enough space, or having a little animation when you buy something or make money. I know this is kind of nit-picky feedback (Which I guess is a good thing if this is the only criticism I have), but my clicks didn't always feel like they were doing something if you get what I mean. Overall, very good job!
adrisj7
26. Aug 2018 · 21:48 UTC
Still running for me, I like that it's a casual game that can be run in the background, but I wish there was a way to speed it up!

The management feels a little bit bare bones, considering that I can't "fire" employees so I need to make sure to not overstock on them. The game is also very easy and the gameplay somewhat repetitive, but I don't mind it that much since it's still a fun thing to invest a little time in once in a while!

I like the fact that I end up looking forward to my hotel getting one floor higher, really makes me want to make a game like it for the next jam!
🎤 mikethewayne
26. Aug 2018 · 22:15 UTC
Thank you for your feedback! I had planned for button animations and more indicators, but I started this LD a bit too late to implement these, though I do understand their importance. The game balance was the hardest part to get right, and while it is a lot better now than it was, say, 2 hours before the end of the compo, the game isnt quite as challenging as I had hoped it would turn out. This is the reason, by design, that you can't fire employees, and you can't re-increase the cost per night; the game was designed to try and make you struggle a bit financially, so that you would end up taking desparate measures, until eventual bankruptcy set in, meaning only more skilled players would manage to construct a high-level hotel. But alas, game balancing is a huge challenge, and although it isn't as I designed, I am happy with how it turned out. Maybe I'll improve it with a post-LD at some point!
AdonisDevs
26. Aug 2018 · 23:57 UTC
This is a really cool game! I had to reread the instructions a couple of times and play for 15 minutes before I really understood what I had to do. For me, when the instructions are given through a paragraph of text, it can confuse me more than if the game was just intuitive enough to teach me how to play through game play. I really like the art and the mechanics. It's definitely not what I expected. Also, this game is a bit difficult to get up and running. If it's not extracted the right way, none of the images show up, but I was able to figure that out quickly. Overall, well done :)
Rahim_Pxr
27. Aug 2018 · 00:39 UTC
Nice game, I hope to see more updates and improvments sooner.
If you don't bother take a look at our game when we focused on Graphics and visuals and see the results that we got:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/spacelab-42
DarkGuardsman
27. Aug 2018 · 18:05 UTC
Nice game, could use a way to speed up time. As well ability to change resolution/screen size. Along with better visual information to tell what was going on with room status.
saoi-games
29. Aug 2018 · 06:33 UTC
I wasn't getting a lot of feedback about how my actions were affecting the hotel. Did everything either add or subtract money? I don't feel like I understand how to fully play the game. I wish that there was a tutorial level that explained how things worked, or that hotel amenities were slowly added so I could learn what each thing did as my hotel grew.
Lumos
29. Aug 2018 · 15:19 UTC
I like the concept, but I found the game virtually unplayable on my end. Jars don't tend to scale themselves for 4K displays, and also can't be (that easily) forced to behave. In addition, I had immense issues clicking on buttons. The third floor never got added, and I never managed to hire an assistant as well. Odd and unfortunate, as I'd've liked to see how the difficulty increases as the hotel grows larger.
🎤 mikethewayne
30. Aug 2018 · 08:09 UTC
Thanks for your feedback! @saoi-games I tried to make it as easy to understand as possible within the 24 hours, and there was a tutorial screen at the start that outlined pretty much all of the gameplay, it works as pretty much a standard tycoon-esque game, but I understand that more feedback would've been helpful. @lumos I apologize, I don't have anywhere near a 4K screen, so I can't comment! I always restrict the resolution of my LD games to fit on a laptop screen, ensuring it'll work on both laptops and higher definition displays, but I admit, the game must've seemed quite small on a 4K display! The game does not scale, I turned that off as I don't want to have to deal with that in this time frame, so the buttons certainly wouldn't work if you did scale it. If you didn't, are you using a mac? I've heard about portability issues when using MouseListeners and fixed-resolution jars, so it's entirely possible this has occurred. If so, I will attempt to sort it out as best as I can.
Lumos
30. Aug 2018 · 14:50 UTC
@mikethewayne Win 10. Should've specified it in the other comment, apologies.