Autoexec by reheated

made by reheated for Ludum Dare 46 (COMPO)

YOU have been tasked with bringing THE LAST HUMAN to the HIGH PROTECTOR. But the EXCEPTIONS have become aware of your mission and will throw everything they have at you in order to capture the human. As per your programming, you must develop a SOLID AND COMPLETE PLAN before embarking on this mission.

It's a shmup with a level-up system. But instead of choosing your skills at the time of level up, you have to plan them all out in advance. Not every skill combination will work! A successful run through the game is only about 5 minutes or so, but you might need a few practice runs, to see how all the skills work. (Tip: consider getting a weapon as your first skill!)

Tools and resources used: - Programming: VS Code, Debugger for Firefox and my Typescript code base and bundling tool: pH - Music and Sound Effects: FL Studio and several of its instruments, plus Miroslav Philharmonik and EWQLSO - Art: Krita and Endesga 36 colour palette - Fonts: m5x7 and Fjalla One

Youtube	https://reheated.net/games/autoexec/
Youtube	https://reheated.net/games/autoexec.zip
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/autoexec

Ratings

Overall	154^th	3.857⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Fun	118^th	3.87⭐	29🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	283^th	3.589⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Theme	1052^th	2.446⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	385^th	3.643⭐	30🧑‍⚖️
Audio	127^th	3.759⭐	29🧑‍⚖️
Humor	744^th	2.25⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Mood	561^th	3.173⭐	28🧑‍⚖️
Given		13🗳️	15🗨️

Feedback

Kiddy

21. Apr 2020 · 00:28 UTC

I love it, really well balanced.

AdamWatters

21. Apr 2020 · 13:35 UTC

Really interesting take on the shmup genre.

keanutah

23. Apr 2020 · 01:25 UTC

Great job, love a good shmup, and this delivered. I think more wave patterns would obviously be an improvement, but this was a fun play. Fun to think about how the skills best interact.

jsec

23. Apr 2020 · 15:08 UTC

Fun take on ganre. I like it. It balanced pretty well. I also like that its shor but You want to play again and again.

Peter Jonsson

23. Apr 2020 · 15:45 UTC

I really like the sound and music! Well done! :)

Trusty

23. Apr 2020 · 19:31 UTC

Fun game, the slowdown when gaining a new ability is a nice touch

rolferm

23. Apr 2020 · 19:43 UTC

Was really fun!

Cobear25

24. Apr 2020 · 21:01 UTC

Super cool concept with the custom keybindings. Audio is great, the UI and backgrounds look really good. I think some higher contrast in colors would help quite a bit, but overall I loved it. Well done.

Lakrits

24. Apr 2020 · 21:22 UTC

I think you should have removed mana cost from the basic forward-shooting attacks and just have them be always on and stack for fun (no key bindings). The game can get hard to play on non-gaming keyboards that don't support that many keys being pressed simultaneously, for example on my keyboard if I press 1 and 2 the right arrow key stops working. Also could have used automatic keybindings 1, 2, 3 etc as the default. Bothersome to set everything up if you play again, especially with that short wait after pressing a key. First wave of enemies should have randomized their shots a bit, no need to dodge anything there except if you want to get more experience.

elmo

24. Apr 2020 · 21:26 UTC

Great game, loved music, solid entry.

🎤 reheated

25. Apr 2020 · 03:13 UTC

Thanks for your comments everyone!

@cobear25 You're right about the contrast.... I am starting to think I should have made enemy bullets look bigger too.

@lakrits Letting the basic attacks stack is an interesting idea but maybe that would compel players to choose all four of them? You're certainly right about the other issues. Maybe I should have made the basic attacks just require a keypress to turn them on, instead of holding down, to help with the rollover problem. (I mostly used z, x, etc. which don't seem to have as big a problem with the arrow keys, at least on my keyboard.)

DrEvilBrain

26. Apr 2020 · 02:04 UTC

The movement feels a bit floaty. Almost like the acceleration and deceleration is too low. Also, the bullets are a bit too small, especially at the pretty tiny resolution the game is at.

LeviDSmith

26. Apr 2020 · 03:36 UTC

Nice little shooter! I liked the idea of being able to plan out your upgrade beforehand. Seemed like I was always low on mana. Nice variety of enemies.

Laura del Pino

26. Apr 2020 · 10:37 UTC

I really appreciated the effor in making the autoadjustable keyboard to trigger the different actions and the quite IT humor.
However it's quite inbalanced since if you keep pressing your canon in the middle of the screen you can go on for a little long time and get three levels just by keep pressing a button. Maybe a cooldown sistem will help in this aspect.

Congratulations for your entry!

🎤 reheated

28. Apr 2020 · 05:37 UTC

@drevilbrain Yeah, I kept turning the acceleration up and up until it seemed "fine" at the time but in retrospect it should have been even higher. (maybe infinite?)

@laura-del-pino Yes, I was trying to make it easy to survive the initial waves, but hard to farm XP. But I didn't quite spend enough time playtesting and balancing the waves, and it turned out waay too easy and slow early on. I kinda knew that I hadn't left myself enough time for that job, too...

Rojola

28. Apr 2020 · 12:17 UTC

This was fun shooter! Nice idea of player being able to select its upgrades and then trying to achieve them through progressing in the game. Good song! Nice and functional game, well done for a weekend.

Sharks

30. Apr 2020 · 14:39 UTC

The shmup mechanics (Movement, weapons etc) felt really polished and well done, I was missing something to tell me how far through the level I was and maybe and auto keybinder? Like you can set keybinds for specific slots that way I don't have to manually set the keybind everytime I change things. Really complex game, congrats for finishing on time!

natpat

30. Apr 2020 · 17:59 UTC

I thought this was one of the best games I've played so far this LD! I really liked the core idea, planning out and considering which upgrades to take and which would work well together. I liked the mana system, it added another good layer on top - the ghost ships were a cool idea as well! I died a few times on the way to the boss - I thought there were some interesting spikes in difficulty, I think some time in the third wave was the hardest spot, when both the ghosts and the main ships were on screen at once. I thought the ghost ships could have been a bit more obvious - I could sometimes barely tell which was which. I got to the boss twice, but I didn't manage to kill it sadly. I enjoyed the game though, great work for the 48 hours!

AdamV

02. May 2020 · 04:10 UTC

Really cool game, I liked it a lot! It felt incredibly polished and I was really impressed how many abilities you implemented and how well designed they were! I did feel like the enemy bullets were a bit hard to see as they blended into the background a little. Great work and I'd love to see more of this in the future!

NoNumbersGames

08. May 2020 · 18:00 UTC

Very good music, multiple layers really gave the feel that it was more than just a few nice notes on a loop.

Nice consistent art, shooting projectiles, death animations. Smooth level up time slow, satisfying movement and shooting. Player sprite could use a bit more love to stand out from environment, maybe just making it slightly larger would work. I think increased dodging difficulty would be a fine trade for more clarity.

Only minor nitpick is shooting and enemy death sounds are not as satisfying as they should be for this genre, I think (with how well developed everything else is, I understand you had to cut corners somewhere).

------------------------

Overall lots of good content, and it is polished - feels like a complete game. Extremely impressive to deliver this much content of good quality over such a short time.

WanS24

10. May 2020 · 08:12 UTC

This game is very cool. I like the main idea, never thought about the level-up system this way. Controlls are smooth, shooting is fun. However, I would make enemies' projectiles brighter to make them more distinct from the background. Overall, enjoyed your game very much, cool for a Compo submission. I'll add yours to my list https://wans24.itch.io/he-needs-healing/devlog/140983/what-ludum-dare-46-did-to-me