Backcourt Brawlers by Luther-1
A prototype by Luther and Leepic
Made in GameMaker studio 2
Programming - Luther
Art - Leepic
Title card:
Info:
This game pits you up against AI volleyball players in a fight to the death! It's not actually that extreme, just a game of volleyball. We hope you get some enjoyment from playing against the AI for even just a minute or two. It loves to make sick plays constantly, just a quirk of the math :)
Nearly all the features we wanted are in this prototype. Unfortunately we did not have time to properly implement the AI to do more interesting things (though the code for it does exist in the project). Apologies for the wall of text you get at the start of the game, it was the best we could do.
The story of the game (which is completely not implemented in this prototype) is that you are playing volleyball when suddenly your volleyball starts to move on it's own... it's sentient! And it needs your help. Together you work to defeat enemies using the volleyball's incredible strength. Will you be able to win the battles and keep your ball alive? Or are you and the ball doomed to fall to the court?
Extra stuff:
This was our third Ludum Dare as a team and we're excited to do more. Every time we get just bit better and make slightly more complex games. This time, although the game itself is fairly simple, the over arching structure of the code and game feel was a fairly big improvement from last time. We appreciate any feedback you can give us!
Fixes:
-Fixed hit particle's alpha being inverted
-Fixed random seed not being set
-Fixed ball status not resetting in some situations
Known Bugs:
-Jumping into a wall and holding the opposite direction will cause you to teleport in the direction you are holding.
-If you dash into the ball and hit any wall on the same frame, the camera will never reset.
Game is hosted on https://www.freewebhostingarea.com/
If you want to mess with the source code it is provided, you need Gamemaker 2 to use it.
Ratings
| Overall | 614th | 3.75⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 96th | 4.091⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 117th | 4.023⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1846th | 3.341⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1215th | 3.636⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1423th | 2.658⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1561th | 3.19⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 15🗳️ | 15🗨️ |
Honestly, I like the idea so much I want to see an actual game made out of it.
It would also be helpful to have some sort of visual feedback when your dash recharges to help you time it better.
Also what about the controls felt awkward? If possible could you give some recommendations on different key binds that might work better?
I was not successful in finding the bug again where the screen got stuck on the enemies...
However, I found one pair of bugs that is easy to reproduce:
if I jump at the top of the screen and hold down before landing, I teleport to the bottom.
Similarly if I jump at the bottom and hold up before landing I teleport to the top.
Bugs happen... don't beat yourself up. These aren't really game-breaking, aside from the one freeze - which might have been game-maker's fault anyway.
If you're interested: The teleport bug is due to the slight scaling of the player as they move in the air, which also scales the hitbox, something I forgot to account for. The screen getting stuck is a frame perfect bug which happens due to the fact that your movement is calculated after the check to hit the ball, bypassing the check if movement is paused for that one frame. If you hit a wall in that one frame your state unexpectedly changes from 'Hitting' to 'Bonk'. GameMaker may behave really strangely sometimes, but most of the time it's a mistake on my part 🙃