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MagnoDrive's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #1 | 4.111 | 4.111 |
| Controls | #4 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Accessibility | #6 | 3.278 | 3.278 |
| Audio | #7 | 3.778 | 3.778 |
| Overall | #10 | 3.556 | 3.556 |
| Theme | #13 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
| Originality | #17 | 3.389 | 3.389 |
| Graphics | #22 | 2.833 | 2.833 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
v3.3.3.stable.official [b973f997f]
Wildcards Used
Mobile Friendly
Game Description
Be the pilot of a magnetic drive vehicle in space. Do your training and reach 3000 points to qualify to a real race. Get certified now!
How does your game tie into the theme?
There is a magnet inversion in this game, that makes you jump and roll over by 180 degrees. Hence when jumping you always have to jump to the opposite side of the race tube, which is quire challenging.
Source
Not planned.
Discord Username
SDwarfs
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
This is the first participation for me.
Participation Level across all Jams
I've never attended a game developement contest so far.
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Comments
What's your highscore? Did you pass 3k? :P
Yep! I did... I'm currently getting to about 4332 without issues. Mostly messing up the gapped spiral.
Just in case you wonder how it feels behind the 3k ... I've put this one on YouTube recently. Should also be linked somewhere on the games page among the previews.
PS: Just noticed this is not the submitted version. The inner ring in the new version scales down with the speed to match the current speeds jumping distance (which increases with speed). Also the FPS rate might be better and the rings rotate together with everything else. That might make a difference in the difficulty. The game level however is 100% the same.
PPS: Just tested the original submission. Got to 4333 on the second try. Don't know if that is the technical max, since the jump distance changes. But at least you can for sure get over 3000.
Very fun game. The guide rings help the game be much more legible while also not being too intrusive. I would've loved to see a speed boost to blast through the early part of the stage once you get used to the mechanics. The song is amazing and I'm adding it to my main playlist.
I'm curious about the level itself. Is it just a single mesh, or is something else going on there?
Hey! Thanks for the review and feedback. I recently got an idea how to implement collectable items, without changing the way the whole rendering works (hence, I could not include those until now). The level is just a 2d map which is used like a texture folded around an endless tube, but instead of setting the "color" it makes the map visible or not (like alpha channel). The color is defined by a second texture which is mapped the same way. There are no meshes anywhere. Just a procedural pixel mapping. The shader then just gets the information about how much time has passed, the current rotation and shifts the textures accordingly which are sampled as repeatitive textures. Additionally a y-offset is sent into the shader, which is used for effects like the flip-jump or falling off from the platform. The starfield is currently another texture thats rotated in the same way. The HUD was implemented in GDScript sampling the input texture in the CPU at given distances from the time offset, and then drawing lines in circular pattern, while the according colors. This caused a lot of CPU use and issues on slower mobile devices. But, it's now it's implemented in the shader too, which has all the needed information anyways. Just needs the current speed as a parameter for pre-calculating the jump distance. All the animation (e.g. flip-jump, rotation, falling down) is then just scripted in GDScript by adapting the shader parameters.
That's a really clever way to do it! Thanks for going over your process, it's a really interesting read. Shaders are amazing.
Yeah... you also get a lot of inspiration on http://shadertoy.com/
It's aweome what they do there. Some put the whole game logic into the shader...
My favourite game there is "Alien vs. Humans" https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XldGDN
For some reasons the sound doesnt work anymore. But, just open that music in background to it as the soundtrack (make sure to put it on repeat with right click on the video => REPEAT). Have fun shooting some alien ships!
So addictive. Really neat concept and music keeps you wanting to play more. Such a good track.
Was really intuitive to play. The controls were nice and having the rings really helped to give the player the most chance of success. Keep it up!
Haha! Seems those rings are THE important thing in that game. For the concept I have really give partial credits to the Jam topic... I really pondered hard, what could I do with inversion, thats quick to implement... but not totally the thing just everyone else would probably do. I mean I thought about time inversion, even a adventure game point and click. But as a solo developer that had near to no experience with Godot yet, I could not do "learn the Godot API" needed AND create a lot of game assets at the same time. I found lots of ready made game assets, but well... that would have taken to long to put together. BUT, I worked a bit with fragment shaders in the past and for some reason stumbled across an example where they applied this to textures to create some effect... this was the whole start. It seemed so easy and quick to put this rendering together... I had other rendering concepts first, but more and more reduced the compexity to what it is now. All due to time pressure... Had I have weeks of time, I would have tried totally complex stuff... and finally maybe even given up. The rings were in fact just a debug code to see, why that silly GDScript did not line up with the rendered "holes" in the tube to fall through. Later I added the second ring for the jump guidance... after I decided without the first ring the game just looks empty.
And, yes, EIGHTECS is just a real good Synthwave composer. I do similar music, but he's just a insanely good.
Super addictive! The gameplay is seen before but the perfect difficulty and the invert-jump made it super worthwhile to play! I almost got to 2000 while on the bus and damn the game is perfect for small sessions!
The graphics reminds me of old flash games, and the red-green rings is a super cool addition for legibility!
Well done!
Thanks for your review! I've not finished your game, yet. But, got quite far and then give you my comments about it, too. Still have to find out what that newest actually inversion does. While on the bus? So you were playing it with your Smartphone? -- Did that work well for you FPS-wise? Did the music stutter?
The red-green thing was originally just the debug mode, because I had issues to get the rotation and stuff aligned with the rendered version. If you don't do this stuff daily you often confuse "adding a rotation angle" or needing to "subtract it" and stuff. Well and then when I disabled it I felt like it's needed to be there. Then I added also the inner ring for the jump... I believe this code (written in GDScript) is rather slow and causes some performance issues on slow devices. in the current version, that you cant see, I've put all this into the Shader code... and that inner ring now is shifted and rotated as like the track and scaled to match the current speeds jump distance.
Thank you... and come back for a free training whenever you like! 😉
If the red-green thing had not been there, I think the game would have lacked feedback, so I am glad you kept it . It just shows how much of game-dev is just capitalizing on ideas and inspiration found during iterations on the core ideas.
I played it on a Google Nexus 4a and both the music and the visuals very running perfectly. The controls were slightly finnicky as there was no way to hold down a direction, but I got used to it quickly. (It was maybe even intentional?)
Again, well done!
I have an in-official version, you might try out... https://worldtalk.de/uploads/GWJ-39/ - please do your voting before looking at this version, as this is not the submitted version and anything else would not be fair. This is just for let the development continue until updates are possible again. So you can give me feedback on this.
That version now runs fluently on my very crappy 4 year old Smartphone (Motorola G5) and has HDPI enabled during the export, which before caused a quite bad resolution on most mobile devices. Now the distant part of the tunnel looks quite crisp. The controls are designed to not be pressed continuously, pressing them initiates the simulated control jets to be enabled and accelerate the vehicle into the given direction. The longer you press it, the more it accelerates sideways. So you have to press it in intervals. Also it does not immediately stop, but overshoot and you have to "decelerate" the movement by steering in the opposite direction. The steering feels quite aggressive at the slower starting speed but is needed, when it's getting really fast. Or you wont be able to steer around corners or stay on the loop anymore. If it feels a bit like ice skating that is exactly the intended amount of slipperiness.
Would be nice to get some feedback on the controls and visuals for that new version. Thanks for your time! 👌
Great game! I always liked those tunnel speed racer games. I didn't reach 3000 but I'llprobably try again to reach it! If you push the development further, I agree with @Memao that some kind of checkpoints/levels would be a great addition
Thank you! I'm already working on it in the background! 😉
Getting so much positive feedback encouraged me to do that. But, development currently slows a bit down, since I review all your games. I'm like 50% through them now. It's a lot of cool stuff among the submission. Especially some games probably deserve better preview screens to attract the amount of players that they should. Thanks for that feedback! 👌
This _is_ addictive! Had so much fun. My only complaint is that maybe a speed up option/collectible something could have made it even more thrilling. Not to say that I got to 3000, but maybe I will!
Collectables or collision objects aren't easy to do for the way the rendering currently works. But, I might find a way to do it... which would bring the game to a whole new level of possibilities and diversity in game play. Thanks a lot for your review and the feedback!
Well, since you are now addicted to the game, you'll either reach 3000 points or die. You had been warned! 🤣
Congrats on submitting!
Cool idea!
It's fun and it invites you to keep playing and beating your score.
I tried scoring extra points by doing tricks, but that didn't work :D might be cool though. Also the static star background would add to the overall game feel if it was moving.
Yeah! Thought about giving points for looping inside the tunnel and stuff, too. Might be added in a future version. Also thought about a training mode where you start inside a complete tube and need to stay within the "laser projected" limits. With some trainer telling you "Well, you just would have died now... haha!" and yelling at you when you have to press that inversion button and stuff.
Actually I 'stole' this star field background as a screenshot from one of my programmed parallax scrolling implementations, but had no time to re-implement it in Godot. This would definitively add some neat little details to the game... that passing by obstacle (bug in the map) near the curvy track gives me a good impression of how this would feel. I totally love to pass by that one... and felt the urge to keep that bug in the game as a "feature"; but, yeah... just a few closely passing by stars now and then and slowly moving ones in the background would probably be a great replacement. Thanks for your review! 👌
But, yeah... was just all too much for me as a solo developer in the given timeframe. Getting to know Godot programming, Programming, Level Design, Testing if the level is possible to do. However, I'm very satisfied with the outcome under the given conditions. And I'm very happy to get so much positive feedback for it...
Very fun and engaging game... found myself chasing new personal high scores, but I didn't make it to 3000 :D
I also like the music and the visuals (especially when falling through one of the holes - that's oddly satisfying lol).
I love it, well done! :)
Thanks for checking it out! Those 3000 need a bit of training... hehe. But, I managed to get over 4000 yesterday (you gain more points quite quickly after you just got to the other side of the spiral part just before the 3000 score). So I can now say: it IS possible.
The sound and especially music just make up the whole game in a way. Kind of feels like the sound effects of the steering (left/right) are a bit too silent. But, I didn't want to take too much focus away from the music. Guess, I'll add a "flip" sound after the voting too. That action really needs to have some acoustic feedback. That "falling through the hole" visual really took me a while to get right, because the math of the render fragment shader is very simplistic. Finally just switched off it's rendering of the tube and just render the star field for certain conditions - and that worked out.
3000 definitely needs some training...
And I wish I could do shaders like that! Looks really cool..
This is my favorite submission! This game is a lot of fun and I love the music. I keep dying at 2833 but I'll get to 3000. I will say, the slow speed in the beginning is fine, but the track is really boring. The first 1200 pts feels like a chore to get to the fun part of the game. Maybe throw in some of those hard left spiral jumps in the beginning to help ease the player into the move on the faster parts.
Haha! Hope you make it to 3000... I finally just achieved 4809, was also dying at 2833 a lot of times before... keep close to the left edge of that spiral just before the "jump" and then continue steer hard left to not slip off to the right. The spiral part behind the jump isn't positioned optimally - didn't have enough time for that last minute adjustments as a solo developer (and game tester at the same time).
I'll probably cut that game into multiple levels. Or introduce something like checkpoints in the game. So once you finish one level, you can just "resume" there... and don't have to fall back to the ultra slow speed. It however did not feel right to me to just put the player back on the track and just continue as you'll probably need to adapt to the speed for correct timing of actions. I appreciate your input on that. Thanks!
Very groovy soundtrack, easy to pick up! got 1200 so far! will be back to try again soon!!
Thanks for Testing. 1200 is when you directly inversion-jump onto the spiral... steer hard left just before landing on the spiral, then you should do it.
Or as that evil trainer would have said: "Naah? Givin' up that early...?! Yeah... well, I knew it... you don't have the skills needed!" 😅
But, me personally will be glad to see you come back and let me know your new high score! 😉
2832 :D
Yeah! Guess thats just before the spiral having the two halfs.
You are getting close to the 3000! 😉
Did you play with mobile device or desktop PC (keyboard controls)?
I like the 3D space flight obstacle course! Keep up the good work :)
Thank you! What flight obstacles do you mean? Are you referring to the "shooting star" that passes by on that slightly curvey part of the track? (it might make your wishes come true, if you are quick enough 😉)
PS: Some might claim it's a bug, but in fact it's a built in feature for the professional speed racers to show off their abilities to quickly jump on that part of the track and back. 😅 (Don't try. The angle is impossible for a jump on, but I might adapt this in a future level design! 😂)
With 'obstacle' I meant the challenging holes and spirales one must deal with :D