Monolith by jsec

[raw]
made by jsec for LD 44 (COMPO)

Disclaimer: Its not finished, but not that bad to drop it.

W - Accelerate

A/D - Turn

Space - Shoot

You fly thru rooms of alien monolith. Each drone sent costs some of last humanity energy. There is no win/lose condition unfortunately and no real enemies.

2019-04-29 03<em>20</em>32-LD44 - Monolith.png 2019-04-29 03<em>21</em>05-LD44 - Monolith.png

Tech info:

Pure JavaScript / HTML5 Canvas.

Tools:

VS Code

THX! to @saering! Edited text from "Press space to skip" to "Hold space to skip" on intro. Its a cosmetic change, sources are not updated to hold original codebase.

Ratings

Given 33🗳️ 27🗨️

Feedback

commanderstitch
29. Apr 2019 · 05:22 UTC
No sounds, and i noticed you didn't have an endgame. But, i like flying triangle shooters so i shot all the red balls. I think i won! Nice intro vid too, i was waiting to see what was going to happen.
khaotom
29. Apr 2019 · 05:25 UTC
I like the controls of the ship, and how it bounces off the walls. The graphics remind me of old vector games. I destroyed all the red things and then hung out with my monolith. :v:
Furtive Pygmy
29. Apr 2019 · 05:36 UTC
Good job! Obviously a few things could have been done to make it a bit more enjoyable, but loved the spraying triangle of doom!
zondarg
29. Apr 2019 · 12:06 UTC
The intro video was quite good, gave a depth to the story. Gameplay was very vector-game like, maybe you could even use this as a graphics style measure, also for the other elements, like the pulsing globes? I also liked that you need to keep the energy in mind, every time you shoot or accelerated.
🎤 jsec
29. Apr 2019 · 13:36 UTC
@zondarg maaan... It's brilliant idea to do all in this style. To have even rectangles composed from triangles... Thx!
ZAX
29. Apr 2019 · 14:53 UTC
Cool concept !!
wardetta
29. Apr 2019 · 15:01 UTC
Definitely a nice fun game! liked the idea, graphics and movements, needs some SFX and progress bar with end game in the future if you plan to continue it, well done! :)
Saering
29. Apr 2019 · 15:43 UTC
The game is cool ! I had fun playing, it, but I feel like it could have much more nervosity and epicness. The art is simple but it's working well, the movements are good too, I was afraid of the controls because I saw a sliding ship coming but it was easy to get used to !
Also, is it me or you cannot skip the intro sequence ? Good entry overall!
Caspercaper17
29. Apr 2019 · 15:44 UTC
The things I liked:
The art, it was really appealing
The story, it made sure the game makes sense
The overall Idea

The things I disliked:
With the heavy ship, I beat all enemies wiht like 20 energy left, resulting in my depleting all my energy just to go into the negatives, at least send me back to the attack selector at 0.
The intro took too long, it wouldve been a lot more impactful if it was twice as fast.
🎤 jsec
29. Apr 2019 · 15:51 UTC
@saering Thx! My bad man, i wrote Press where it should be "hold" (1s exactly).
Fixed as it dont change anything at all.
mmason
29. Apr 2019 · 15:59 UTC
This could be a really fun game if finished, it's like asteroids but with missions
zubspace
29. Apr 2019 · 20:01 UTC
Man that intro! Would have been perfect with this music:
[this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfe8tCcHnKY)
PseudoBytes
30. Apr 2019 · 09:50 UTC
Pretty cool intro, really ads depth to the game. I found aiming to be a bit hard though because of the quick turning, so i just shot in a circle and killed everything easily :laughing: I like the concept though. Graphics are simple, but still really good looking!
🎤 jsec
30. Apr 2019 · 10:01 UTC
@pseudobytes yes, its hard to balance if You cannot aim with mouse and you cant because Your acceleration goes in direction of aiming so to fast turning and You cannot aim and to slow and You cannot fly where You want or break (where You need to quickly point in other direction).
Hmm... maybe ill experiment with mouse aiming just to check...
Thx for comment!
Avi
30. Apr 2019 · 11:48 UTC
Really cool game! Love the graphics. I loved the movement of the player! And the concept of energy! You mentioned that you want to add to it -- what kind of things are you thinking of?

I feel as though this could be kindof like a rougelike shooter! and maybe the enemies dont even necessarily need to shoot at you, but if they just shoot things in general in the room, that might make it a little challenging (and potentially easier to code!)

Really looking forward to seeing what this becomes! LMK if you have any updates pls!
🎤 jsec
30. Apr 2019 · 12:14 UTC
@avi thx for feedback! Of course ill let You know for sure!

I wanted it to be like:
Game generates maze but its persistant as long as you have "humanity" energy to produce new drones.
Drones can do some permanent unlocks. Or you can abandon drone somewhere to leave energy in it for next drone to collect.
I you fail to shutdown monolith before run out of humanity energy game resets, regenerates monolith and You start over from the begining. Monolith should have like 5 floors and more random rooms.
mrnyarlathotep
30. Apr 2019 · 23:32 UTC
Yeah, its a shame that you obviously ran out of time, because theres a nice basis for a game here - kind of a roguelike asteroids
Neowedge
01. May 2019 · 12:13 UTC
I like the game feeling! Maybe I miss to be able to aim with the mouse. It's sad that you couldn't finish the game, I get trapped in the same monolith after kill all the enemies and I would like to explore the main metagame about manage drones. Otherwise, the concept and graphics are nice. God job!
jellzilla
02. May 2019 · 20:47 UTC
This game looks and feels really great, and I would have loved to see it taken further. It also feels great to "spin to win", but maybe it should be balanced so you can't do that in every room :)

About the aiming difficulty, it might be worthwhile to either:

* Store the event timestamp for key down/up events when turning and prorate the turn.
* This would only help if the tick quanta was high, and might not actually help if the up/down events on keyboards cause this to be imprecise.
* Use angular acceleration to start slowly before getting to maximum angular velocity.
jcmoyer
02. May 2019 · 22:40 UTC
Inspired by https://store.steampowered.com/app/603960/Monolith/ ? You could have at least picked a different name.
🎤 jsec
02. May 2019 · 23:46 UTC
@jcmoyer not at all, im console peasant so never heard of that one. I was more likely inspired by classic asteroids, but cool find!
cogcomp
04. May 2019 · 20:33 UTC
I can easily see this becoming a really good game. You don't need more enemies. Just focus on limiting the resources a bit more and the player will have to think more carefully about when to to move and what direction to be able to complete the level without running out of life/fuel. It'll be more strategic and less of a blaster game, but I think I would enjoy it. And well done making the game from scratch using only HTML and canvas!
tddawson
04. May 2019 · 22:45 UTC
I also basically did a spin-and-fire technique in each room, which was actually very visually satisfying :) It sounds like you've got some great feedback in terms of options in the future already. My two cents is I like the suggestions, but don't try to do them all. Find out what you want to be unique about it and run with it, whether it's a more frantic shooter, a resource manager, etc. You've got a good start, so good work!