The frame rate is pretty unstable and the music isn't playing correctly. It sounds as if it's only playing a few milliseconds/samples at a time and then abruptly turns silent again. I'm not sure if the track keeps playing and just isn't audible most of the time or if the track is just played reaaaally slow with a lot of pauses inbetween. I've listened to the "around the corner" file in the directory and the track would probably be pretty cool in the game. I guess the composer was aiming for an aesthetic similar to the Soundblaster cards of the 90s? Sounds pretty authentic to me, although the synth brass sound in the intro seems to be clipping in a few places.
The artwork is pretty solid so far and captures the NES/home console style of the early 90s pretty well.
The movement speed is a bit slow and I got stuck on the bridge before the final building once, so there is still room for improvement. But designing an own engine is still pretty impressive, especially in the scope of this jam. Good luck with improving it!
I've had flawless audio on Mac and Linux during development and testing. I'm still improving the Windows output, but I was hopeful I had smoothed things out, so I am disappointed to hear it's still not behaving.
I've been building the engine core for a couple of months prior (started in June), but all the high-level pieces (Entity-Component-System, tile-map parsing, physics, collision, etc) were all produced during the span of this jam.
If you were finding a slow framerate, the music will have been affected also, but I wonder what's causing the slowdown. I'll investigate that.
We were definitely going for a early to mid-90's feel. The game is heavily inspired by the movie Hackers from 1995, as well as MSX/NES era games.
I hope to continue working at it, chipping away on the bugs and issues until it's perfect, so hopefully you'll come back when it's working better :)
It looks interesting, but the Windows version doesn't start on my computer (Win10). It just prompts an error message about a missing SDL2.dll file and recommends reinstalling.
Sorry to say that, but it still won't load. The .dll file is there and running the .exe doesn't lead to an error message, but the game still doesn't start. It just does...nothing. Grid.exe is listed in the task manager for a second, then disappears again. Compatibility mode and running it as an admin didn't help, either.
I've also tried it on OSX 10.12. It wasn't really successful, but at least the terminal gave a little clue about what went wrong:
The red parts are mostly my user name, the only exception being the beginning of the third line, where my device name was listed. The last line translates to "process terminated".
I think I've figured out how to correctly bundle SDL2 with my engine on OSX, so I've updated that version. If you could give it another try, I'd much appreciate it. I'll get to work on why the Windows version is failing now.
In fact, I think I have solved the Windows issue properly now also, so please take a look at that when you get a chance. I really appreciate your feedback :)
Comments
Short but good game. I included it in my A Game By It’s Cover 2018 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :)
Alright, now it works! Well...kind of.
The frame rate is pretty unstable and the music isn't playing correctly. It sounds as if it's only playing a few milliseconds/samples at a time and then abruptly turns silent again. I'm not sure if the track keeps playing and just isn't audible most of the time or if the track is just played reaaaally slow with a lot of pauses inbetween. I've listened to the "around the corner" file in the directory and the track would probably be pretty cool in the game. I guess the composer was aiming for an aesthetic similar to the Soundblaster cards of the 90s? Sounds pretty authentic to me, although the synth brass sound in the intro seems to be clipping in a few places.
The artwork is pretty solid so far and captures the NES/home console style of the early 90s pretty well.
The movement speed is a bit slow and I got stuck on the bridge before the final building once, so there is still room for improvement. But designing an own engine is still pretty impressive, especially in the scope of this jam. Good luck with improving it!
Thank you so much for your feedback!
I've had flawless audio on Mac and Linux during development and testing. I'm still improving the Windows output, but I was hopeful I had smoothed things out, so I am disappointed to hear it's still not behaving.
I've been building the engine core for a couple of months prior (started in June), but all the high-level pieces (Entity-Component-System, tile-map parsing, physics, collision, etc) were all produced during the span of this jam.
If you were finding a slow framerate, the music will have been affected also, but I wonder what's causing the slowdown. I'll investigate that.
We were definitely going for a early to mid-90's feel. The game is heavily inspired by the movie Hackers from 1995, as well as MSX/NES era games.
I hope to continue working at it, chipping away on the bugs and issues until it's perfect, so hopefully you'll come back when it's working better :)
It looks interesting, but the Windows version doesn't start on my computer (Win10). It just prompts an error message about a missing SDL2.dll file and recommends reinstalling.
Apologies for that, I haven't tested the windows version on a real machine yet. I've now packed in an SDL dll. Please redownload and give it a go!
Sorry to say that, but it still won't load. The .dll file is there and running the .exe doesn't lead to an error message, but the game still doesn't start. It just does...nothing. Grid.exe is listed in the task manager for a second, then disappears again. Compatibility mode and running it as an admin didn't help, either.
No worries, I'll look into it. I've had a lot of problems with producing the Windows version. Hopefully I can sort it soon and you can try the game!
I've also tried it on OSX 10.12. It wasn't really successful, but at least the terminal gave a little clue about what went wrong:
The red parts are mostly my user name, the only exception being the beginning of the third line, where my device name was listed. The last line translates to "process terminated".
I think I've figured out how to correctly bundle SDL2 with my engine on OSX, so I've updated that version. If you could give it another try, I'd much appreciate it. I'll get to work on why the Windows version is failing now.
In fact, I think I have solved the Windows issue properly now also, so please take a look at that when you get a chance. I really appreciate your feedback :)