itch.io

Try it ;-) 

Of course, fantasy setting is the most popular and there is always a lot of demand for it, however, because of this, there is a certain overabundance of fantasy-style assets, while there is a lot less for sci-fi (you can check this by comparing the output in search queries by tags here on itch.io). But in both settings, it is possible to use common archetypes, changing only the details: you can change an archer to a sniper, a knight to a rifleman, the thief to a spy, skeletons to robots, spiders to robospider, Kobolds to xenos and the wizard...well, any highly advanced technology looks like magic))) Therefore, this is one of the growth points.

For example, you could try experimenting with cyberpunk: you have a good sense of color, and color is one of the key features of cyberpunk aesthetics serving as a narrative tool (a strong contrast of dark with vibrant neon lights and futuristic glow, glitches, symbolism in minimalism and so on, that's exactly what you can do well). Well, the dystopian atmosphere of "high tech & low life" and neon noir is great for an adventure game (including in the scenery of "dungeons"). And that's the first thing that came to my mind looking at your palette)))

And to get a better feel for the cyberpunk aesthetic, you can try watching anything from Ghost in the Shell (anime), Blade Runner, Tron, Dredd, Robocop, Total Recall and even Cowboy Bebop (mashup between space spaghetti and cyberpunk) and etc. And also play to Syndicate (90s), Shadowrun, System Shock, Deus Ex, Katana Zero, Transistor and so on. If you're not familiar with this, then it might be an interesting adventure.

BTW, the Shadowrun game universe is literally a fantasy set in a cyberpunk/sci-fi.

Great job! I have some assets from this list and they look just great. You have made excellent assets, at the level of a ready-to-use commercial product 0_0 (and I think someone is probably already on the way to create a game based on your assets).

 
But I have a small question. Can you include the unity package in this collection, as other creators do (for example)? Judging by the description, the Unity package already includes animation clips, animation controllers, and some basic prefabs - it's not a problem to repeat the same thing, but it will take some time (especially considering the number of assets), for this reason, the same base price for both the Unity Asset Store and ithc.io It looks a little unfair :-/ Sorry if anything, I don't want to offend anyone — personally I don't use Unity Mecanim, but use my own solutions for sprite frame-by-frame animation in Unity (it always works out better for many reasons), however, I think it would be more convenient for someone to receive packages via itch.io than through the Unity Asset Store as an alternative distribution channel, and the inclusion of unity packages for example and demonstration for asset in itch.io it could be a nice bonus for someone, I think.

It's just amazing! Amazing style, amazing colors, but at the same time everything is very minimalistic and it looks very organic in the context of Rogulike. Exactly what is needed for a charming Roguelike-game that still stands up to the minimalism of its ancestors but looks artistically beautiful.

Have you ever thought of doing something else like this in a Sci-Fi setting (maybe for example like TraumaRL) or maybe some Cyberpunk?

What a lightning reaction! Cool! 

I'll take a look. Thank you!

And it turned out very cool and organic!

Moreover, I found that this whole array of ships is very easy to organize. It's funny, but if each pixel is taken as a 1x1 meter reference point, then the classification of modern naval warships surprisingly falls on your ships (this is, of course, an approximation, since the area is taken into account, not the volume). But this is generally expected, since marine classifications rely on displacement. And if, in addition to this, the size of the engines and types of weapons are taken into account, then ships of different classes and purposes can be very organically distinguished by endurance and power, as well as maneuverability. Surprisingly, the design can affect the game stats of ships :) You can see example bellow:





Well, then I tried to divide the ships into families by design elements (for example, triangular shaped ships) and it also worked, although not so easily. But I managed to do something:



Yes, I also noticed some similarities with Star Wars for some ships (I think I've seen a few TIE-fighters).

That's why I asked if it was some kind of original or if it happened naturally ))) Well, it's just a great job! There are a lot of different ships in your asset pack with a wide variety of sizes and design elements. And this set of ships, it seems to me, covers most of the development needs, not only for a strategy game, but I think also for something big - something big like Space Combat and Trading videogam, for example, like Escape Velocity.

Great asset pack! 

Tell me, did you follow any specific concept and prototypes when designing the ships (classes, roles of ships and their purpose, maybe some design tropes and etc.)?

It seems to me that all these ships can be divided into different classe (I'm not just talking about size) and into different families (based on their shapes).

Upscale in 10 times is too large. In fact, uscaled pixel art sprites find their use in games (this is especially useful when turning, moving smoothly, and zooming). However, x4 and x8 upscaling are sufficient for most purposes and higher than x8 is redundant — you can look at famous sprite rotation algorithms (for example, EPX, Scale, AdvMAME2, Eagle, hqx, xBR, RoSprite and etc) and find that they are used by upscaling in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and by a maximum of 8 times, however, I would recommend using a power of two everywhere, and I've never seen a situation where it would be necessary to upscale a pixel art image more than 8x for any operation (x4 is enough for most purposes). 

Also, one big spritesheet with 10x upscaled images is very inconvenient, as it turns out to be a huge 11200x5440 canvas 0_0. We usually work with smaller spritesheets when it comes to pixel art. Moreover, such a big spritesheet will not be possible to use as an asset source in any game engine - just keep in mind that the latest DirectX 12 has a texture size limit of 16384x16384, and newest mobile devices have a limit of 4096x4096, and the safe size is 2048x2048 (so in any case this huge spritesheet will have to be repacked into compressed sprite atlases).

For these reasons, I would recommend that you make one archive that contains 2 versions: one in 1-to-1 scale, and the other in x4 or x8 scale. At the same time, the 1-to-1 version is a priority and it should contain both spritesheet and sliced sprites, since if necessary, we can all simply increase the size of the sprite ourselves or write a shader that does it for us already in the game. But an x4 or x8 version in addition to the x1 would be a nice bonus.

I would also like you to divide the sprites into groups (characters, UI elements, special effects, and so on). This applies to both spritesheets (each group has its own spritesheet with reasonable size) and individual sprites (by folders).

Hi! Everything seems to be in order now and you solved the download problem. Keep it up !

Where are the sprites? Something seems to have happened and now the archive contains only a GameMaker project with two textures (Space station and BG tile).

I like the concept and graphics (the visual style is very original). However, I have a couple of recommendations: 

1) You need a HUD that would indicate the FPV (positive and negative) on the radar plot and flight director. For inspiration, you can explore the control panel of real spacecraft

2) Also, for the game need a radio altimeter.

3) in fact, spaceships have several turn control modes: indication of angular velocity, the direction of rotation and direct control, and as I understand it, only the last control mode is implemented in the game, which is very rarely used IRL. Also, the inversion of the keys is a bit confusing, the fact is that traditionally only one axis of rotation can have an inversion of control - this is the pitch, I understand what the logic is, but the control of any aircraft is always designed in such a way that it is convenient for a person (the control must be ergonomic).

4) It seems that the game aspect ratio is 4: 3, but I doubt that such monitors are still left, the vast majority use monitors with 16:9. I think you should also focus on this aspect ratio, and you can use the additional areas on the sides for additional game elements.

I like the concept of the game (a never-aging classic), I also like special effects but the implementation is a bit lame:

1. I think that you need to swap the destinations of the right and left mouse buttons. The fact is that in 99.999% of the game with mouse control, the attack is carried out using the left mouse button, well, in about half of the game, the right mouse button is associated with movement and context menus, so the current control constantly confused me.
2. I think that small arms need mechanics to overheat is to limit the duration of the shooting. 
3. Ships should be smaller, I have worked a lot on this before and I can say that the optimal ratio of the size of the spacecraft to the height of the screen should be from 1/20 to 1/10. 
4. The friction is too strong, ideally, it should not be at all.

Graphics: I liked the basic style and post-processing, but it's better to redraw the spaceships.

Protection of the base on the contrary. Very fun :-)

An interesting concept, it seems to me that it can be developed into a full-fledged game.

Very fun and hardcore game. I like that the game uses procedural generation and the resulting graphic style. Very original approach. 

Still, it would be good to come up with a way that the difficulty of the game rises smoothly.

Wow, man! You do a very useful job: so many video reviews of published games, I didn't even have time to watch everything. Try to make a review on this game:

https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2020/rate/839075 

I got it randomly, and the number of ratings is very small, although the game is very original! It seems to me that this game is undeservedly overlooked.

The visual style is awesome!

Brilliant! Great idea! it works and looks great. I also wanted to implement the same one.

Brilliant! Great idea! it works and looks great. I also wanted to implement the same one.

Hi! Different classes of spacecraft use a different control scheme. Control scheme like classic lunar lander using fro large spaceships with the turret.

Thank you very much! In general, I'm thinking about it now, in fact, we managed to complete about 1/3 of the game, and most of the art is ready (and some of the art is not used, for example, only 2 ships are available out of 6 and only half of the weapons are available in the game). I plan to wait for the game jam to finish, get feedback, and then finish the game based on it (at least bring it to the demo stage). Basically, I am now thinking about the fact that I need to increase the dynamics of the game, rework the user interface and refine, make a smooth intro, and finish what was originally planned: enemies and dynamic missions.

We started later than the game jam started and in total the game spent about 1 week developing the art (you can find both packages on the artist's page, they are released under CC0 license) and about 1 week programming, so it probably takes about 2 more weeks to complete this. I think I can try to finish the game after the voting is over for the Christmas holidays.

Hi! Unfortunately, the game's goals are one of those things that has fallen under the onslaught of time :-(
At the moment, you need to fly and search for astronauts to save them, as well as periodically return to the base for repairs and refueling. The relative location of targets is indicated using a green marker on the radar in the upper-right corner. However, in fact, your main goal is to survive :- ) I sometimes need to change several ships myself before I can save an astronaut.

Initially, the game was supposed to be more dynamic, where the player had to first fight with enemy spaceships, but this part was not completed before the deadline. So you're actually playing an early prototype with a few core mechanics

So. I'm use Google Chrome on Windows 10. I also have another browser and I have already noticed that there is a difference between them for WebGL, maybe I should try and restart the browser, clean cookies, cache and see what happens. In fact, I was surprised to find that WebGL is very unstable from platform to platform, from browser to browser, form user to user and etc., but I do not understand what this is due to (the old Flash technology seems to be more reliable). Additionally, I can check with my XBOX-controller.

Ok. I understand. I also think that we should change the field of view. I'm thinking that if I increase field of view by about 1.5 times (camera is orthographic) , it should improve the game experience - the player will have more room to maneuver, more free time to reaction, and also allow for a higher dynamic speed range. The main problem is that initially the game was planned to control an astronaut, for these reasons, spaceships were drawn large enough (so that it would not turn out that the astronaut is larger than the spacecraft). Another feature is how I have implemented the render workflow: gameplay resolution is 640x360 pixel, than I'm scaling all sprites (with point filter) in 3 times to 1080p full hd resolution, because this approach allows me to freely use sprite rotation without fear of losing the aesthetics of pixel art. Thus, to increase field of view, I need to either reduce the size of all sprites 1.5 times, or set the gameplay resolution to 540p, then it will look like this:

I hope this will be enough.

As for the sluggishness of the ships, this is somewhat more difficult, because I need more experiments to understand which linear and angular accelerations are optimal. For slow ships with turrets, I think that I need relize movement with 4 degrees of freedom (in other words, the ship should have engines around its perimeter and move in any direction without having to turn). For fast small ship I need adjust thrust and angular speed. There is some difficulty in adjusting the parameters. The fact is that most arcade games use the friction, so that the ships slow down very quickly, but in my case, honest Newtonian physics without friction is used, so that the spaceships have high inertia. I plan to increase the thrust of all spaceships, but I'm thinking about how to discreetly limit the appetites of players so that they don't accelerate to superluminal speeds :-) Either I have to do fly-by-wire for spaceships (like, Wing Commander, Elite and Star Citizen),  or I somehow have to create obstacles for players so that they only accelerate to reasonable speeds. Perhaps the game needs some helpers for navigation. At least that's what I'm thinking right now. 

Thank you for your feedback.

Great art style!

Thank you very much for feedback! I will convey your words of gratitude to the artist (it took a long time to work on the visual part).

What exactly caused the frustration during flights and shooting? Could you explain in more detail?

The flight mechanics are quite typical for games of this kind (Lunar Lander, Asteroids, SpaceWar!) — you just need to fly in the field of gravity to the objective point and land like in Lunar Lander to take the astronaut on board. Flight control is quite smooth in my opinion and similarly to same type games, but it took a lot of time, because both angular and linear motion is provided by physics, in the absence of friction with the help of a simple regulator, and it was quite problematic to balance (given the fact that there are no speed limits) and suddenly it is very closely related to art (because it is pixel art), given that the game uses two different control schemes for large and small ships. So with movement, I need to map out specific growth points in advance. For larger ships, I plan to slightly expand the control system and make it 4DOF by thrusters, as I did earlier.

As for shooting, it was originally planned to add full-fledged enemies, but other aspects of the game took too long and the enemies were not completed (primarily AI and problems with and the mission system), so shooting is more of an auxiliary ability. Finally, shooting is primarily intended to shoot asteroids, because a collision with them can be fatal, especially if the propulsion system is disabled at high altitude. 

So in fact, your entire mission is to fly and rescue an astronaut, periodically shooting asteroids and avoiding collisions with mountains, with breaks for refueling and repairs at the main base — for this you earn points. We didn't have enough time to implement more :-(

There are really no limitation, I thought about getting around this in the following ways: punish the player if he flies too far (it seems that this should be done first), wrap the world around myself (here I encountered jerks in the background, it seems that this issue should be studied better) and procedurally generate an infinite world in blocks (for some reason, this does not work in the WebGL version, so I had to abandon this, the demonstration of level regeneration is only in the PC version, but without an infinite world).

As for the sounds, we didn't have time to finish this part, although I have already started to pick up a collection of freely distributed sound effects, perhaps later if I do a rebild of this game (this will be next year after the voting is completed).

Now I'm trying to collect a detailed feedback. after that, I will decide what to do next: finish the game and add the missing features, or make a new project based on this with a total rework, or do nothing :-)

Cool game! I hate orange flying eye...

It would be nice if the gun and jetpack were duplicated on the mouse buttons (left and right). Also probably missing some roll/dash action in order to abruptly go to the side. It would also be nice to be able to go both left and right from start location

Nice style and topic!

I haven't been able to get very far (it seems that this is very hardcore in my taste), but overall the game looks fun and I like it. 

It seems that the game lacks a fog that would hide the appearance of obstacles.

Hi! I use, regular mechanical USB keyboard. It seems that this is just another random webgl bug related to the combination of platform and browser. In PC version all Ok. I also observe with my game in the WebGL version, for example, some have problems with rendering, and someone does not start the game at all, although the PC version works fine for everyone. I don't really understand what these things are called for.

Thank you very much! Yes, the damage system of the ship's subsystems was one of the core-mechanics that we wanted to test and figure out how to better balance it. There were other ideas, but we didn't have time to implement everything on time.

This seems to be a problem with my mission generator, which should place astronauts on the map in random places and show them the path on the minimap - I did it on the residual principle, and it seems that it sometimes places the astronauts too far away from the player.  In general, this is normal, I myself sometimes lose several spaceships before I get to the astronaut :-)

I planned to make a dynamic mission system, where the mission controller will alternate between different missions: exploration, attack, rescue and defense depending on the situation in the game, but I did not have time to finish this part of the game as planned before deadline :-(

Hi all!

Our game is inspired by the classic Lunar Lander game, where player have to fly in the field of gravity of the moon around mountains, destroy meteorites, and rescue astronauts who will join to crew. This is an experimental game in which we decided to try to implement space with a wide range of subsystems that include:

1. Flight computer
2. RCS
3. Main engine
4. Fuel tank
5. Life support system
6. Damage control
7. Fire control computer
8. Weapon

Each spacecraft subsystem can fail for a short time in the event of damage to the spacecraft, and has its own unique effect on the control of the spacecraft. Unfortunately, the game is only partially implemented with a minimal set of game mechanics (some special effects, enemy spaceships, homing missiles, and the mission system were not implemented) therefore, only the game prototype is available.

Game pages:

• https://crazyfizik.itch.io/lunar-rescuer
• https://itch.io/jam/game-off-2020/rate/839119

Authors:

• https://crazyfizik.itch.io/
• https://mattwalkden.itch.io/

Nice game! The shooting is very good, and the visual style and sound in my opinion is original. However, I ran into a some problem, for some reason the input didn't work in WebGL (I played in the downloaded PC version).

Awesome game! The art style, graphics and special effects are great and I like the feel of the game. Although I'm not a fan of tower defense, but I liked this game.  But after a while, the game becomes very difficult and I'm completely swept away. It would also be interesting to have regular troops (infantry, armored vehicles) in addition to the towers.

Great concept, graphics and sound. I like the overall design of the game. Although it seems that it is a bit hardcore — I did not always have time to dodge the cracks and appeared suddenly (BTW, how are the cracks growing? Is this a procedural?)

Yes. This is possible, I think you can set any speed record you want to fly off the map :- ) Maybe I should somehow punish players who fly too far and accelerate too fast :-)

A good interpretation of the theme and a fairly complex gameplay with the control of the rocket and the character in turn (I also initially planned to move in a similar direction, but did not have time for finish all).

Great game! Very hardcore, but interesting :-) Very intertying art style. 

But there is not enough keyboard control. Also I need tooltips in shipyard menu and I have enough opportunity to install a radar. 

Cool! Excellent interpretation of the theme, excellent art and sound! I like it!

Thank you very much! Of course, I'm just thinking about what I can try to continue developing the game further, maybe I can start this next year.

I like the Intro when I have to overcome the Starlink barrier :-) The approach with alternating different mini-games is great, I like it. Yes, and the idea to make the Oregon Trail in space is good (although there is already such a game in Steam).