S.E.N.T.I.N.E.L. by rnlf
NEW: Web version added! If you can't run it, please try the Windows or LÖVE version! I made it with Motor2d, which is an experimental LÖVE clone for the web (http://github.com/rnlf/motor). Especially if you don't get any background music or very slow display, please play and rate one of the standalone versions!
UPDATE: Thanks to to ashdnazg for helping me find a problem in my shader that broke the web version on some windows browsers!
S.E.N.T.I.N.E.L. is the operating system and artificial intelligence built into humankind's strongest weapon against the ever growing slime population.
Can the growth of the slime be stopped? Find out!
***** Bugfix 1.01/Dec. 14: Slimes should be easier to hit now when they are really close to the player.
***** Bugfix 1.02/Dec. 14: Sometimes the games crashed when killing enemies which are very close to walls.
You can get the original versions by changing the version number in the URL to 1.00 or 1.01!
UPDATE: Thanks to to ashdnazg for helping me find a problem in my shader that broke the web version on some windows browsers!
S.E.N.T.I.N.E.L. is the operating system and artificial intelligence built into humankind's strongest weapon against the ever growing slime population.
Can the growth of the slime be stopped? Find out!
***** Bugfix 1.01/Dec. 14: Slimes should be easier to hit now when they are really close to the player.
***** Bugfix 1.02/Dec. 14: Sometimes the games crashed when killing enemies which are very close to walls.
You can get the original versions by changing the version number in the URL to 1.00 or 1.01!
| LÖVE 0.9.2 | http://www.base13.de/ld34-rnlf-sentinel-1.02.love |
| Windows | http://www.base13.de/ld34-rnlf-sentinel-1.02.zip |
| Web (HTML5) | http://www.base13.de/ld34 |
| Source | http://www.base13.de/ld34-rnlf-sentinel-1.02.love |
| Timelapse | https://youtu.be/v-Z83p5Qhzs |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=30930 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 62% | 3 |
| Overall | 3.75 | 129 |
| Audio | 3.74 | 79 |
| Fun | 3.62 | 167 |
| Graphics | 4.45 | 20 |
| Humor | 2.84 | 269 |
| Innovation | 3.15 | 483 |
| Mood | 4.19 | 19 |
| Theme | 2.64 | 921 |
The terminal on the side is a very nice touch as well.
The combat itself is nice and tense, since you're always able to outrun/outmaneuver the enemy, but have to get in vulnerable positions to fire.
Or rather, the combat would be nice, if the cannon shots registered consistently. There's a deadzone directly around the SENTINEL in which you can't hit the enemies, and that deadzone is exactly where the spawners aim for. I could see that being by design, but half the time even when I move away I can't hit the bastards.
Most of my damage was due to shots that visually appear to hit not registering.
Get that fixed and this would be a great game.
But other then that great game, and great job!
I also really dig the terminal next to the game. I love those messages running along, and it's a great way to tell the story without getting in the way too much.
I played the updated version and ran into very little trouble. It works quite well! The audio is also nice. The simple musical drone is fine for the atmosphere of this game and the sound effects are quite good. I just wish there were some cool metallic robot sounds to really finish it off, haha.
The plot twist in the end is also a very nice touch and works to give the game a feeling of closure.
Very well done, especially in the ridiculously small timeframe of just 48 hours. I wouldn't mind playing a longer version of this game!
intel_do_flush_locked failed: Input/output error
AL lib: ReleaseALC: 1 device not closed
Additionally LOVE would continue to quit with this error on *any* project (including the no-project screen -- though only the first line is shown) afterwards until I rebooted -- I ran it again to confirm that it was the game that was causing this. Very strange.
A real shame as the entry looks wonderful! Hopefully I'll find some means of getting to try it out.
aiming is kinda hard sometimes.
The graphics are A W E S O M E
A bit tricky with the limited aiming capabilities, although it wasn't a huge problem. Pretty light on content.
Beyond that, really nice graphics style. Very 90s, but I mean it in a good way. Great background drone, basic but moody and functional. Good sounds. Startup screen/output terminal was awesome.
I liked the twist with the visual system. I'd have liked to see a new game plus mode where you.. see things more clearly. Overall very nice!
Very good graphics indeed, am happy that your recent work on depth-buffer stuff paid off.
Expected some more gameplay though.
We shall talk on IRC about the noisy lighting.
**SPOILERS**
The background sound was actually quite effective. Although drones are used everywhere in LD games, I'm a big fan of the minimalistic backing track. An idea that may (or may not) spark your fancy is the use of a texture rather than a drone. While the drone sounds nice and I enjoy it, perhaps using something clicky or more mechanical. I know I'm not explaining myself well. Instead of trying to think of it like music, think of it as an ambient aural accompaniment. Players will frequently forget about the music anyways while playing a game, so you can really replace it with anything acoustically pleasing that makes sense with the theme of the game. For an example or two of things like this, look at my LD game Fluidity, and rxi's Fragment.
Again, I did like the drone and I think it was a good choice, but other accompaniments are possible as well as relatively unused in the LD world.
Initially I thought the footsteps of your massive robot were underwhelming. However, thinking about it after playing the game, they make sense. You have to think of the footsteps as being heard from inside the cockpit. I still think the footstep could've been modified to be more effective, but I also think you could've added more sounds to put the listener into the spot inside of the robot rather than outside.
I liked how your slimes were portrayed, and I liked what they represented, however I don't know if it makes sense with the story itself. The fact that they are just representations of whats in the playing field could be portrayed a bit better. Such as overlaying them with a grid, keep the slime but show the quads/tri (triangles make more sense, quads look better) that go into the slime shape would help enhance the effect that you are looking through the computer's eyes.
Another small thing would be to make the robot's on and off position different. Maybe droop its head or have it sit like a chicken when it is booting up. It would be a nice detail, but also indicate to the player that they can't control the robot. In fact, at the end of the story I stopped controlling before I went to the next area (joke, there wasn't a next area) and didn't realize that I actually lost control until I was idly pressing buttons.
In the end, your terminal was really well done, it felt real and not faked, it gave a nice bookend approach to the story telling, and it added background information that couldn't be easily shown. Your graphics may of been hacky in the backend, but came across great in the front end. Seeing things through walls was well done, as well as the general white-wall dirtyish style.
I think you did a great job!
The shooting sound is very satisfying for some reason, mixes well with the background music too :)
The terminal was incredible!
**SPOILERS**
The moody track kinda betrays the surprise in the end, it's obvious from the start that it's not exactly a happy-shooty kind of game.
Maybe a little slow for me, but the gaphics are really amazing, good job !
The gameplay reminds me a lot of stuff like this from Super Mario Sunshine: http://i.imgur.com/9VWVEzl.jpg
This is really well polished, great work. The directions did take a while to figure out though.
Here's some gameplay footage I took (720p60fps):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytL2hH3DR88
lust/statemanager.lua:54: attempt to index field'?' (a nil value)
And thanks for the web version of my game!
The boot up sequence is awesome. The soundtrack is menacing and ambient. The gameplay is fun and deliberate. The mood is amazing, I'll bet this takes top 20 for mood.
The log at the side really helped with the atmosphere, for me.
It was a bit easy but it allowed a fluid storytelling using the console, until the awesome ending.
Visuals were really nice, and controls pleasant,such as sfx and atmospheric track.
Also thanks for the amazing timelapse !
The gameplay, however, felt slow-paced, too easy and especially lacking in variety. It was just positioning yourself right and repeatedly pressing the attack button until everything is dead, with only a slight difficult ramp as you progress through the game. It just didn't feel very interesting.
I agree that the terminal was extremely well-executed. The plot (or, pretty much, the twist, as there's not much to the plot beyond that), however, was extremely predictable (I saw it coming when I first saw the boot-up failures at game start); the twist is too obvious and overdone, as well as lacking in any impact (even if I didn't see it coming, I'd have probably just thought 'oh, so that's what I've been doing'). This is not helped by the disconnect between the mech vs slimes gameplay and the 'real' situation; the enemies behave nothing like they should (plot-wise), you die if you do not kill them, and you are a mech (read: murder machine).
All in all this is an awesome game. Superb graphics with see-through effects, great sound, and I really really love the BIOS sequences and the black humor!
One of the best games of this year's LD! I'm glad I finally tested it...