Zap Signal by christina-antoinette-neofotistou

An on-rails shooter that you control with only your voice.
You're in a high-tech suit, but all your manual controls are dead. Switching to voice control!
🕹 controls: "pon" to shoot, "waaaah" to reload your gun
During calibration, just say "pon" in a normal speaking voice. The game saves the loudness level, and uses that during gameplay. The targeting reticle disappears when you need to reload. Do not panic, reloading makes it reappear.
C&C very very welcome!
🖥tools used
- photoshop cs5
- construct 2
- audacity
This was my 16th LD!
Re: the theme! I totally failed to keep up with the theme! My initial idea was "at the end of a level, your remaining life is currency used for upgrades". Then I thought what if the upgrades scrolled automatically and you had to say "now" into a mic at the right moment... Then I abandoned the theme in favor of a fun mechanic :id: Don't feel bad rating me 0/5 on theme
| HTML5 (web) | https://castpixel.itch.io/zapsignal |
| Windows | https://castpixel.itch.io/zapsignal |
| macOS | https://castpixel.itch.io/zapsignal |
| Linux | https://castpixel.itch.io/zapsignal |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/zap-signal |
Ratings
| Given | 56🗳️ | 26🗨️ |
Really sad, I wish this worked for me!
(The art is also beautiful)
So I improvised. I played this game using a harmonica! That made it much more fun! I won't say the audio detection was perfect, but it was good enough.
Quite a brave decision going for this form of control scheme. Very innovative.
Certainly one of the most memorable submissions I've encountered.
Good job!
I had some trouble with firefox, chrome worked fine.
Congrats for this entry !
@vinay-rao wow you innovated yourself!! Thank you for the kind words. By the way it isn't doing speech detection, it's only checking for loudness. When it asks for calibration, you can say "pon" very quietly, and it saves your loudness level.
@pndaa Thank you for playing <3
@hygon Thank you for playing! You're right I need to refine when enemies come in and give players some rest. It's not fair as it is. <3
@webox comments like that is why I even make games <333 Thank you!!!!
@le-slo The game displays the target (bull's eye) only when you have bullets. Maybe you need to reload? Or maybe it's a bug! I'll check it out! Re: the audio detection can be calibrated every time you start the level. If you say "pon" with a normal voice (not super loud), then it saves that setting, and will detect a "pon" every time. At any rate, thank you for playing!
@edevjogos omg thanks for playing and for the feedback! I will definitely make the reload shorter :)
Oh, is that so! I figured during the short development cycle it couldn't have been THAT complicated. I thought it was listening for a pattern in the volume of whatever sound it was supplied. Like a hard "P" at the start of "Pon" or the consistent "ah" sound in "Wah". The shooting seemed to work alright with my voice, but I had trouble with the reload. I suppose going just by volume isn't a bad way to do things. It's a pretty compelling bit of player agency to have them calibrate the inputs themselves.
I'm headed to the library later today. I'll make sure to give this game a retest while I'm there.
(You'll be happy to know that it actually works pretty well with a harmonica!)
I really really enjoyed this game.
@mrtroy comments like yours are gold, I'm so happy you had a moment of silly fun <3 Games should be doing that too, sometimes. Thank you for playing!
Very original entry. Congrats!
Then I thought what if the upgrades scroll automatically and you just shout "NOW" into the mic when you see one you like.
Then I thought my theme is weak anyway, let's go for the gusto :D I don't see how it could be the future in gaming... Thank you for playing though :)
to be clear: I don't even vote for themes. I've been doing LD for 10 years now, and what I love most about it is being surprised by the theme. I try to stay close to it, but if I'm not having fun it's the first to go.
@tiagorrech thank you <3
@copper-aardvark-games Thank you for the kind words!
Though I didn't rate for 1 reason (it says the game was published 10 hours ago)
Took a while to realise the targeting reticle was what I was shooting at as it doesn't always appear for some reason.
Also the Linux build starts in a super tiny window. It resizes ok though.
@majana2 thank you ^-^ Would you mind telling me your issues? It helps a lot! Just a heads up, there isn't any voice reognition, it's just waiting for a loudness threshold. During calibration you can say "pon" in a not-too loud voice, and it will use that loudness level throughout
@someone thank you for playing and for the feedback on the Linux version! The tiny window, is probably the native resolution (160x96). I'll add a command to resize automatically. The reticle doesn't appear while you're reloading. If it doesn't appear on other occasions, it's a bug. I'll check it out. Thanks again!
p.s. If you knew your game didn't fit the theme, you could have opted out of the theme category. Following the theme isn't actually an official Ludum Dare rule, it's just a suggestion, a way to give people a starting point and not have them sitting around the whole competition and not knowing what to make. It's completely fine that your game didn't fit the theme, and it's still a really unique experience!
Was pretty fun yelling at my computer screen :D
After I read about using a harmonica I tried to use my Commodore64 as synthesizer. That made shooting reliable, but I was never able te reload completely. It always got to a certain point and then got stuck.
So I didn't come very far, but had fun trying.
a FUN entry.