Constituent by Thomas Carey

[raw]
made by Thomas Carey for Ludum Dare 47 (JAM)

Puzzle Game About Coordinating Robots for fulfilling a greater purpose.screenshot2.png

How to Play: You start as a free camera which can move around with WASD and Q/E. Click on Red Surfaces to Spawn a robot, which will then record all your actions. Return to your start point and hit F to complete a recording. Use these recordings to get the ball into the other goal. Once the robots complete the goal all by themselves, you win the level.

Ratings

Overall 727th 3.554⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Fun 804th 3.339⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 596th 3.518⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Theme 973th 3.463⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 919th 3.429⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Audio 456th 3.574⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Humor 208th 3.707⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Mood 825th 3.37⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Given 45🗳️ 42🗨️

Feedback

🎤 Thomas Carey
05. Oct 2020 · 22:55 UTC
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Rhaelser
06. Oct 2020 · 14:29 UTC
Love the narrator and his voice, amazing! I like the game :thumbsup:
KaisenTheGreatOne
06. Oct 2020 · 14:44 UTC
Oi noice geme mate. Now realtalk, I like the narrator and the overall mood. Great job. Good thing is that you made a mouse-sense option. It was very high by default :D Neverthenless a great game.
shipster
06. Oct 2020 · 14:49 UTC
I kept picking up the ball and throwing it into the green box.
Then I spawned another robot, took the ball (from the robot who had it before) and threw it into the box.
I kept repeating this.
Is there a goal?
🎤 Thomas Carey
06. Oct 2020 · 15:02 UTC
@shipster Timing was a bit tight for a tutorial - basically once you create a proper 'loop' where the ball gets to the end, you can let the level finish itself and the level is complete. I'm going to add some extra text to the first level explaining this
offlebaggins
06. Oct 2020 · 15:15 UTC
This was great! I think all the mechanics used were super interesting and worked well together. I really liked watching over my automated robot army put the ball in the hole at the end of each level.

A couple minor gripes:
The next level button kept sending me back to the first level
Some of the later levels can feel a bit tedious. Maybe if there was a way for you to edit a robot mid timeline it would help with this?

Overall though, great job!
Skleembof
06. Oct 2020 · 22:36 UTC
This was a lot of fun to play around with! The presentation was awesome and felt very polished

I don't have any criticism for the gameplay, the gameplay loop was tight and engaging and it was fun to see my actions play out in front of me
Chaoseiro
06. Oct 2020 · 23:37 UTC
Took some time to grasp the mechanic but it is a really well made puzzle game. Good job!
necauqua
06. Oct 2020 · 23:47 UTC
Really cool automation puzzle, I liked the graphics design very much.

Good job :)
TheseusInABottle
06. Oct 2020 · 23:59 UTC
Great fun and the narrator is fantastic. I'm pretty bad at puzzles so I can't give you any real feedback on the quality of it as a puzzle, but I did enjoy myself so that is something.
Nobongo
07. Oct 2020 · 00:02 UTC
Great Game! I'm really impressed by the design of everything and how well it worked. Interacting with past selves was really funny sometimes and it's nice to watch in anticipation as you hope you didn't screw up in the past. I always like being able to jump in first person games, but that's more personal preference than anything.

I wanted to make a time rewind mechanic for a game in the past but I couldn't manage to store position values and the like without the game lagging. How did you pull it off?
MatchaFlavor
07. Oct 2020 · 00:08 UTC
Glad to see someone hosting on GitHub that actually put a release in! The last few games I came across that were hosted exclusively on GitHub didn't have a release but kept their build in their source code so I had to download the entire source in order to play :joy:

This is exceptional. Simply exceptional. There really isn't much I can nitpick at at all!

The only possible feedback I can think of is the menu font was really hard to read and the win info screen could use a facelift, but I'd love to see a full version of this fully realized. Bravo and encore please!
🎤 Thomas Carey
07. Oct 2020 · 01:25 UTC
Thanks to everyone for the feedback :)

@nobongo, we got the playback working by recording the movement input and a timestamp (WASD) at a certain frequency - I think I settled on 20Hz. Then the robots playback the input with the same code. We do the same thing with rotation but instead of recording the input we record the raw rotation, since that needed to be really precise. Actions are recorded just with a timestamp and what type of action it is. The playback keeps track of the current and next motion with the round timer, and just interpolates between the inputs/rotations. The playback just uses the same exact code the player does for each action. Its not perfect if you are extreme enough with the controls but I was very happily surprised that they were able to throw and pass to each other so well.
Nobongo
07. Oct 2020 · 01:43 UTC
@thomas-carey thanks for the insight! That's a really smart way of handling it!
BGSulz
07. Oct 2020 · 05:31 UTC
I'm astonished! This is truly and deeply excellent. It took me a few tries to get my bearings, but the thrill of catching a ball you had just thrown into the ether and then watching your past selves work in harmony is potent. I think the only thing standing between this game and a Steam release is a whole bunch of polish. Amazing work!
Henry Du
07. Oct 2020 · 09:54 UTC
Top-tier narrator. Reminded me of accountant simulator's light hearted mood haha.
etrealjunior
07. Oct 2020 · 10:43 UTC
I liked your game my congratulations, I also did one if you want to know, and give me your feedback I am very grateful, this is the link https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/resurrection
Eugenik
07. Oct 2020 · 10:55 UTC
Pretty good. I like the premise.
AfroAnt
07. Oct 2020 · 15:00 UTC
Thanks for sharing! It's mind-blowing what people can do in 48-72 hours! This game has it all: graphics, audio, humor, innovative. Sometimes the player speed felt a little slow, and that last level was surprisingly long. Overall, great work!
natpat
07. Oct 2020 · 16:41 UTC
Cool take on the theme! The sfx and narrator were good - I thought the graphics were a bit simple and a bit hard to read sometimes, especially the red robots on the red cube.
Fatsheep
07. Oct 2020 · 19:29 UTC
Played this live on https://www.twitch.tv/fatsheep__ Really enjoyed the puzzles, and the voice over was pretty funny!
Annie Owl
07. Oct 2020 · 20:54 UTC
You've done a great job designing those puzzles! I've spent quite some time on "The Elevator" :grimacing: But it was fun and engaging! And the operators were doing a great job of adding a little bit of humor to the puzzles :smile: I only wish they gave a little bit more comments during the longer puzzles (like the elevator).
Giordas
10. Oct 2020 · 21:33 UTC
This game was simply AWESOME. Everything was just perfect, from the gameplay idea which fits the theme just right to the graphics and the narrator. This game really put me in a good mood. I would even buy it ngl :))))