LudumData

A Genetic Mess by sprawl

[raw]
made by sprawl for LD34 (JAM)
Train and breed your creature in order to escape !

Using (bad) genetic algorithms, the game make the creatures evolve and adapt to this harsh world.
Can you breed the ultimate creature?


WARNING : UNFINISHED GAME. PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK.
MAC AND LINUX VERSIONS UNTESTED.


CREDITS :
Alexis Lessard
Antoine Brouillette

Music :
"One-eyed Maestro" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Fonts :
http://www.dafont.com/the-constellation-of-heracles.font
http://www.dafont.com/messen.font
Windows https://www.dropbox.com/s/ykmlxielupaiffn/GeneticMess_Windows.zip?dl=0
OS/X https://www.dropbox.com/s/7b4wsthr6hucsne/GeneticMess_Mac.zip?dl=0
Linux https://www.dropbox.com/s/8pz01gyxaxdei2y/GeneticMess_Linux.zip?dl=0
Original URL https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=29314

Ratings

Coolness 26% 2073
Overall(Jam) 3.09 732
Audio(Jam) 3.05 492
Fun(Jam) 2.59 921
Graphics(Jam) 2.50 908
Humor(Jam) 3.33 197
Innovation(Jam) 4.14 23
Mood(Jam) 3.19 535
Theme(Jam) 3.95 273

Feedback

ashdnazg
15. Dec 2015 · 00:39 UTC
Cool! Fun idea, and I love the 'monster in a glass box' vibe. The slow pace of generating children was a bit of a hangup -- I wanted to keep running and clicking buttons because that gave me more feedback, faster. Was there a link between the fitness function and the number of points you get?

Also, hilarious quotes after finishing the fitness test.
MercuryXGames
16. Dec 2015 · 11:08 UTC
nice game!
Weeping Rupee
19. Dec 2015 · 16:04 UTC
The good:
- although there was just music and not many other sounds, I LOVED the theme song.
- physics based breeding game!? Who could ask for more?

The bad
- long loading time to generate partners (this could be mitigated by generating fewer than 5 creatures at a time or just saving old ones and allowing the player to delete them as he/she sees fit so free up slots)
WakeOfLuna
19. Dec 2015 · 16:20 UTC
Very special game indeed. Unfortunately requires a lot of patience, but the concept is brilliant. Well done.
anv
19. Dec 2015 · 16:39 UTC
Very nice concept, would like to see it finished and properly polished. Unfortunately, my monsters when trying to escape usually just fell over and chilled until their endurance ran out - I must have failed as a trainer:< Good music selection, UI could use some improvement (font scaling in particular).
Sir Magic
19. Dec 2015 · 17:35 UTC
I really liked this, it showed how genetic evolution worked and kept a challenge.
TiByte
19. Dec 2015 · 17:41 UTC
Works fine on Ubuntu 14.04, but the Font-Size on the Text element is pretty small, so the anti-alias looks bad. (that's a Unity setting thing).
I think you should exclude the "Audio(Jam)" rating, because it's not your music.
doitle
19. Dec 2015 · 17:57 UTC
Very cool game. I don't understand much of what it is doing but that doesn't matter. Music was perfect for the mad science vibe. I never managed to get more than 5.0 to the right but I still like this. Generating children and random creatures does take a long time and hurts the pacing of things a bit.
Trasevol_Dog
19. Dec 2015 · 18:21 UTC
Very ambitious concept!! A shame you couldn't flesh it out more than that really. I did spend half an hour on it before I realize what the winning condition quote really meant... Good stuff!
Wevel
19. Dec 2015 · 18:25 UTC
Interesting idea, seemed quite difficult to get the monsters to go anywhere and generating partners of children took quite a while
yumaikas
19. Dec 2015 · 19:18 UTC
Liked the music, but it was hard to figure out how the monsters were supposed to work.
🎤 sprawl
19. Dec 2015 · 22:00 UTC
@TiByte : Good point about the audio, I was a bit in a hurry during the submission and forgot about it ! Thanks for the feedback on linux version.
Molpe
03. Jan 2016 · 16:08 UTC
This was fun! I don't know if I understood what am I suppose to do, but it was fun xD Great quotes! The generating times are very long, also I couldn't get back to any creature in the family tree, it asked me if I want to, but then nothing happened. The music is awesome, nice choice!

I've made a let's play video if you want to check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuV9jvz80HU