ECO WARRIORS by FreeLivesGames

[raw]
made by FreeLivesGames for LD 42 (JAM)

We've tried Green Peace, now it's time for Green War!

Eco_Shot1.jpg

Landfills are overflowing, the oceans are clogged with plastic and the space for moderate debate has run out. Shoot your way through tree hating polluters, free the dolphins and make Al Gore proud.

It's time to SAVE THE F*CKING PLANET in ECO WARRIORS!!!

TrashPile4_Smaller.gif

[Note from the team] Due to time constraints the game ended up very short. Given more time we would have loved to have expanded on the shooting parts of the game, improved the woefully underdeveloped tactical play, and properly implemented co-op (be careful about pressing [Enter] during the game, it spawns another player). But we're really happy we got to make a game for Ludum Dare, and the bits we did get in came out better than we expected.

Hope you enjoy!!! Thanks for reading.

Controls:

Use a mouse and WASD to move and shoot. Press [Q] to moderately debate. Press [E] to commandeer vehicles.

Team:

Evan Greenwood [Programming] Jarred Lunt [Programming and Art] Robbie Fraser [Programming] Jonathan Hau-Yoon [Art and Special Effects] Jason Sutherland [Music and SFX] Adoné Kitching [Writing] Filip Orekhov [Additional Art]

Eco_Shot2.png

Eco<em>Warriors</em>ImprovedFaces_32.gif

NEW BUILD

We've made some improvements! Better (but actually dumber) AI. A bonus level with more things to explode. Gamepad controls that actually work (almost as if this were programmed by competent software developers)!

http://www.freelives.net/GameJams/Builds/EcoWarriorsPostLudumDare.zip

Ratings

Overall 31th 4.141⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Fun 25th 4.128⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 624th 3.141⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1198th 2.408⭐ 40🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 16th 4.577⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Audio 27th 4.149⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Humor 11th 4.333⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Mood 93th 3.868⭐ 40🧑‍⚖️
Given 33🗳️ 23🗨️

Feedback

HEXIEZ123
14. Aug 2018 · 04:27 UTC
Very good game, although it has little to do with the theme, I would pay money to play this, love to see more levels made.
tuism
14. Aug 2018 · 08:04 UTC
Quality everything, graphics, sounds, presentation, great effects, juicy, nothing short of what I'd expect from the Broforce peeps. The amount of work and content in this is astonishing for a jam game.

That said, the game feels a bit like an uninspired top-down Broforce. The action feels a bit tepid and uninteresting, getting in range of anyone with a gun pretty much means death by default (that air drop), and the explosive barrels are quite similar, but without as much interaction. The run-and-gun mechanics work, though not super interesting.

I don't know (can't remember) if a lot of the mechanics that made Broforce interesting were in the original Broforce LD prototype, but comparing this to what I imagine was aimed to be a top-down Broforce-like, it's not quite at that level of mechanical interestingness yet. But it's top notch in terms of quality!
EvanGreenwood
14. Aug 2018 · 13:21 UTC
@tuism Thanks for the feedback!!

Yeah. We would have loved to have spent more time polishing the combat. Some of the things we did try didn't come together as well as we'd like, and the design of the final level isn't very good (my fault). Technically the game works in co-op (with up to four players) but a lot got cut due to time constraints.

Broforce (Rambros) was more interesting in terms of tactical play in its prototype form. And I think that was excellent, but for this game idea we felt we had to do so much more work in terms of explaining why the badguys are bad, and we've ended up putting in nearly as much story telling in this prototype as the finished version of Broforce had. I think this was a good move, but it came at a cost.

If we work on it further the run-and-gun mechanics are where I'd like to spend a lot of time. I'm pretty happy to make a top-down derivative of Broforce, but it has to be as tight.

Here's a video of the Rambros prototype for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VBTQ-JaA_k
Diablo
14. Aug 2018 · 16:10 UTC
Absolutely Hilarious and brilliant. The controls, polish, visuals, EVERYTHING was great.
I really appreciated the brick house destruction, the sound combined with the falling physical bricks were sooo satisfying. I must admit, I spent most of my time in the game destroying the house :P. Please make more destructible houses!

Gaia speed.
Original_monkeybot
15. Aug 2018 · 15:43 UTC
Very nice.
Cresceda
16. Aug 2018 · 19:36 UTC
Cool game, kind of brings me back to the old flash games when I was young (but 3D instead of 2D, or think Boxhead).

I should add, there seemed to be a glitch where you can go through the wall if enough enemies push you? I could shoot the brick wall down so I could escape but I figured it'd be good to mention.
manusaiz
16. Aug 2018 · 20:07 UTC
Wow that level of polish my damn god..

I had a blast with the game, just hoped to be able to sneak some narrative skills between bullet and bullet after that promising intro!

Awesome entry
Oneiros
16. Aug 2018 · 20:16 UTC
Absolutely beautiful graphics and nice idea gameplay idea. Game is fun, good looking, has humorous elements and fits the theme. Well done guys ;)
DjeyCreations
16. Aug 2018 · 20:17 UTC
My favorite game so far! We have made a game about ecology too, but not as polished as yours. Well done, you could end in the top games of this jam.
Rodrigo Denúbila
17. Aug 2018 · 03:41 UTC
Amazing game, you guys did so much lot in a such short time. Good job. One of the best game I played this LD.
RenD
17. Aug 2018 · 11:08 UTC
Man the production value is incredible here. How did you manage to fit all of it in 3 days is mesmerizing! And I love all the small details, like the trees bouncing, the decals. And the parachute guys casting their shadow on the ground, impressive. Amazing entry!
Nerzal
17. Aug 2018 · 14:05 UTC
Pretty nice game! Green War is fun :D What i have to say is - EXPLOSIONS!! <3
Nice humor, nice graphics and nice gameplay!
halomegames
18. Aug 2018 · 09:38 UTC
![Screenshot_2.png](///raw/507/81/z/1a2d9.png)

I need this as my new avatar.
Omg i laughted so hard!
Please do tutorials for the effects, modeling and everything. Please teach me how did you do those responsive trees. Please.

Btw, about the jam version:
I think you took inspiration from Wallace & Gromit series :D
Sounds (Especialy of gunfire) sometimes are weirdly silent (this is the only thing that breaks the feeling).
Imho "mission acomplished" should be in green because red is reserved for failure messages :)
But its very polished, fun and addictive.
halomegames
18. Aug 2018 · 10:04 UTC
I just realised that all stuff i wrote about are fixed in Post version :)
_Kassjak_
18. Aug 2018 · 21:13 UTC
Absolutely amazing stuff! I really enjoyed playing this. The comedy and the controls were perfect!
antoined73
18. Aug 2018 · 23:07 UTC
WTF this is so great, Why does it not have more votes ?!
I loved everything !
But as mentionned above, it tested the updated version and there is the sound bug again (i can't hear my shoots or barely).
Continue it, this is super nice ! :D

PS: as @halomegames mentionned, i would love to know how you made the rotation of the trees ! Is it pure physics with joints or a script is handling this ? Thanks !
Cercle
18. Aug 2018 · 23:58 UTC
This definitely needs way more attention! Amazing job! Also, you captured Al Gore's natural beautiful perfectly.
minibobbo
19. Aug 2018 · 00:31 UTC
This was hilarious. I love how everything is over the top. I also love how the player's position wasn't frozen during the cutscene so while the suit was threatening me and telling me I fell right into his trap I could just walk outside and shoot him :smile: I appreciated the fact that he didn't finish his speech even while dead, so I guess you expected that people would do that.

My only comment would be to put more emphasis on the mission objective when it changes midlevel. When I first wandered into the ambush I thought I was supposed to go back out and it wasn't until I was dead on the ground I happened to notice that the mission objective had changed to hold out or whatever it was. That might just be me though.

Excellent work!
BaronB
19. Aug 2018 · 01:30 UTC
Everything about this was great. The humour was on point, the gameplay was fun, and the graphics and sounds were fantastic. My only regret is that there weren't more levels. Great game!
atom0520
19. Aug 2018 · 03:14 UTC
The game is made very elaborately and the graphics and animations look very cool. I like the way you use those interesting dialogues to move the game forward, and many dialogues are quite humorous. One imperfection is that the core gameplay is pretty much a third person shooting game, which is not very related to the theme. However it's still an awesome game, and I really look forward to the dophin allies in your later updated versions.
WrenPirate
19. Aug 2018 · 04:38 UTC
Production values are fantastic. The gun hits are really satisfying. I love slogging through the dead bad guys and the way the tree moves to "talk." I wish there were a shortcut through the tree dialog so I could keep grinding away while waiting for extraction. This is one of my top two for fun. (The other is about old men in sleeping bags, so completely opposite in feel.)
Virtual Turtle Studio
19. Aug 2018 · 10:45 UTC
I absolutely love everything about this game! I genuinely can't believe that you guys made this for a gamejam too, it's so polished.. The gameplay was fun and satisfying, the sound and particle effects were beefy and made everything feel super good and all the UI stuff and screens looked very professional too! The only sad moment I had was when my super awesome quadbike flipped and I couldn't run people over anymore, but I guess I had it coming trying to wheelie over their dead bodies ;) This is one of those entries where I can say: don't change anything, just expand! Very good job everyone, congratulations! I hope you end up winning some categories!
bitowl
19. Aug 2018 · 17:17 UTC
I really like this game! I even downloaded the post-jam version afterwards to play through the levels again just because it was that much fun. I hope you take the time to build more content some time in the future!
EvanGreenwood
21. Aug 2018 · 18:28 UTC
Thanks for the feedback everyone! We're going to work on this at least a bit more (at least a bit next week, @squidcor has promised)

@halomegames The first thing we need to address is that elusive sound bug. I can't figure out what's causing it, the audio code in the project is pretty elaborate (it's ripped out of a previous project), and the bug is hidden deep in there.

And we'll try adjust the way the enemies move (they shouldn't be able to push the player around like how @cresceda pointed out).

A lot of the code in the game either existed in a previous prototype/experiment, or was something we'd done several times in the past. The one big chunk we hadn't coded before was the pathfinding, and it was using some pretty undocumented Unity code. I kind of hate the way the enemies move, in terms of implementation, and I think we'll scrap it and do it better ourselves.

About @rend, @halomegames and @antoined73 comments on the trees: The trees are mostly just a cone collider on a very springy joint (i.e. really high angular drive forces on the joint). The bullets apply a force when they hit and the joint springs the tree back. (It's the same trick we did on the trees in Genital Jousting). It's actually quite quick to implement. We can probably make more things springy!

@atom0520 We're going to try improve upon the top down shooter combat. Robbie (@squidcor) wants to get co-op working (so there are multiple players and the potential for coordination). I want to figure out how to mix up the combat (like the random changing of characters in Broforce which force you to reconsider your tactics). We've also got a ton of jokes we never got to tell. Honestly, I've never managed to create something much better than a standard top-down shooter, but I'm sure we can figure it out if we beat our heads against it for long enough.

I really love this game, but before Eco Warriors could ever be considered to be a commercial project we have to do much better than the standard top-down shooter experience (in terms of combat).

@minibobbo I'd like to work the mission briefings more into the gameplay. Maybe using Al Gore to give clear instructions when the objectives change. Maybe the design of the levels (or elements in the levels) can make the objectives more intuitive. I'd like less up front reading and more discovering information within the levels (like how the tree talks to you).
Vekstr
23. Aug 2018 · 10:47 UTC
Man this is really an eye candy.

Just look at the model, shading, particles, and those ***explosions!*** Even those speech bubbles were satisfying to read. Also nice touch on the destructible walls and dancing trees.

And the humor! Nice job on the humor. Also, was that falling man on the first level a jab at flat earthers? :laughing:
Renier
28. Aug 2018 · 21:21 UTC
Loved the style and gameplay , was really well put together! had a good laugh well done fellow South African Bros :D
Sloyd
04. Sep 2018 · 13:28 UTC
Are you the guys behind Broforce? if so then sweeet :D Finished that game not long ago. So I guess It would be an honour if you'd chek out my game). Dont judge too hard though, its a compo) As for this one - solid entry!
Jonathan Lorenz
04. Sep 2018 · 13:45 UTC
That was hillarious AND enjoyable to play! Good job!
SimoGecko
04. Sep 2018 · 18:15 UTC
what a great game! this was definitely one of the most enjoyable I played in this LD. the final bonus mission really made me happy as I thought I already finished the game! Loved the humor, audio and graphics, not to mention the super animations and effects. Would love to see more weapons and levels for this game as it was extremely fun. Two things you can maybe improve is to make it more clear when you are reloading (more sound/animation) as I was often surprised I could not shoot anymore, and also maybe increase the bullet per mag count. I would **LOVE** to see a tutorial from you on how you developed this, especially animations and explosions, as I think we could all learn a lot from you. Keep up the fantastic work! :smile: