Defense Engineers by Jiri Hysek
Beware
I didn't have time for creating proper tutorial levels or somehow explain how it works. So you have to figure it out (should be that hard), sorry for that :) You can at least check this video and read a description here, it should help a lot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNqq9D1TNuE
About the game
The goal of each level is to harvest a given amount of energy using a power plant(s). The thing is there are some strange energophobic space bugs that get mad whenever they stumble upon an energy field. Fortunately you have various components you can connect in order to create a defence mechanism. There is no right solution pre-designed, you can win using your own strategy. From mining and staying at least noticed as possible to complex space bug killing machine. There are often multiple places where you can get energy but more places you use, more attention you'll get.
Defence Engineers is an attempt to create rogue-like programmable tower defence in 48h :) More details will be added soon.
Building blocks
Power plant - used for "mining power" and powering other buildings
Radar - whenever it receives an energy pulse, it scans its surrounding for enemies. When an enemy is spotted it broadcasts a remaining power with the location of the enemy.
Laser Turret - whenever it receives an energy pulse, it converts it to a laser beam that is immediately fired. When it receives also location data of an enemy, it turns in that direction which usually causes some discomfort to the enemy that could even lead to extermination of that poor bug.
Battery / buffer - it can store energy. When it receives an impulse it stores that energy. But the best thing is that it broadcasts smaller amount of energy every 1 second. Can be used for better enemy detection and faster shooting. Did you know that a batter can charge another battery? That could be used for transfering energy further from a power source.
Laser Absorber - whenever it's hit by a laser (fired by a turret or by an enemy), it converts it's energy to an energy impulse that can power other buildings. Can be used for transferring energy to distant parts of a map or for absorbing enemy shots (and reusing it for example for charging batteries)
The theme
The theme was "every 10 seconds". Fortunately, the most important building - a power plant - uses that inconvenient technology that can extract power every 10 seconds, not less not more. Every 10s it harvests a bunch of energy and releases an energy impulse to its surrounding at the same time. This impulse can/should be used for powering other components that could help with defending against those energophobic space bugs.
Tools
- Godot engine
- Inkscape, Gimp
- Audacity, sfxr.me, dictaphone
- bandlab.com
| Link | https://github.com/jhysek/LD51 |
| Link | https://jhysek.itch.io/defense-engineers |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/defence-engineers |
Ratings
| Overall | 67th | 3.913⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 107th | 3.674⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 85th | 3.761⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 233th | 3.587⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 99th | 3.891⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 141th | 3.477⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 121th | 3.571⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 15🗨️ |
I like the game, it's a bit hard, and I couldn't beat level 3, might not have understood the function of all the towers.
Very nice game :D :thumbsup:
I knew it's way over the scope but I really wanted to explore that concept :)
I even managed to make an infinite shooter with two out-of-sync batteries pulsing and filling each other in turn. :D
Nicely done!
I run into a few bugs, i build some batteries and the audio and graphic of my turrets bugged out, couldn't see a thing under all that pink laser light - but still got the lvl done so no real problem ^^
Btw. lasers fires only when receives a power impulse. Every building has input and output, mostly in a form of power impulse. They work only when they have power and power is distributed in pulses (except battery/buffer that has it's own storage).
But those are small considerations, because overall I think the core of the game is good, and I'd encourage everyone to try it out.
I'd like to have had more feedback when placing buildings, though. It was hard to tell if building A was in range of build B -- a little highlight while placing them would do the trick!