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Frenchie14

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A member registered Apr 27, 2017 · View creator page →

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The FAQ says

When?
...
All times will be 12AM GMT.

However, the countdown timer for the jam start is going to 11 AM GMT (11 hours later)

I saved the kingdom as a tree. Now everyone knows I'm the one true King Tree.

Fun game! The boss fight was pretty well done. One feedback: would be nice to have an auto-attack when holding down the mouse. I think I almost broke mine by the end

Glad you liked it! It's already on the BBS! https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=44564

Go for it! Source code is here: https://github.com/maxbize/LD45

I just uploaded an MIT license to the repo so you can do literally anything you want with it! Attribution appreciated but not required

Put the engine in front of the cockpit so that it gets destroyed instead

(2 edits)

Hint: Don't put the cockpit in front. In retrospect I should not have made that level 😅

Chain portals together to collect all the gold!

Portal Golf is a deterministic physics puzzle game with portals. Place portals around the level in order to get the ball to collect every gold bar. You have no control over the movement of the ball and can only place portals before you start the run. Try to use as few portals as possible to earn medals, or just fill the whole level with portals and have fun!

Link to the game

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GUIDE

This guide will go over the basics of how to play, some necessary techniques, and some advanced tips. Hopefully, with this guide, you'll be able to beat the game without losing too much hair. If you haven't tried playing yet, check out the link above and come back once you're feeling stuck.

The Basics

Objective: Your goal in Portal Golf is to collect all the gold bars in the level using as few portals as possible. You collect gold bars by touching them with the green ball. You have no control over the ball. Instead, you place portals around the level in order to get the ball in just the right trajectory.

Gravity: The ball is always falling downwards. Use this to your advantage to get some free movement.

Portal Chain: Portals chain together. This means that when the ball goes into portal 1 will come out of portal 2, when it goes in to portal 2 will come out of portal 3, etc. You can place as many portals as you have room for.

Portal Orientation: When the ball travels through a portal its direction will change depending on the orientation of the portals. If the ball enters straight into a portal, it will exit straight out of the other side. See the pictures for examples.

iu_436387_6057782.png

 iu_436388_6057782.png

 iu_436389_6057782.png

Key Strategies

Deterministic Runs: When you hit PLAY, the exact same thing will happen every time. The only way to change the outcome is to change the portals. Don't hit PLAY a hundred times hoping that something will change.

Iterative Solutions: Don't try to plan out the entire path for the level and then hit PLAY. Instead, play the game one portal at a time. Each time you place or move a portal, hit PLAY to see what happens before making the next change. The series of pictures below illustrates this point by iteratively solving level 2. Tips:

  • The purple trail will show you the last part of the trajectory. Use this to guide the position of your next portal.
  • Any gold bars you collected in your last run will be drawn darker. Focus on getting the rest.
  • The ball must be able to fit completely in a portal or it will bounce off. Sometimes this means you have to tweak a portal to get the ball to not bounce on the edge of a portal.
  • You can press C as a shortcut for PLAY and STOP.

iu_436390_6057782.png

 iu_436391_6057782.png

iu_436392_6057782.png

 iu_436393_6057782.png

Maximize Each Portal's Impact: This is best when combined with the iterative strategy above. Each time you place a new portal, try moving it around a couple times before moving on to the next portal. You might find that a slight tweak to a portal's position can get you a few extra gold bars for free!

Advanced Tips

Portal Looping: If the ball enters the last portal it will come back out of the first one. Sometimes, you can use this to your advantage to beat a level with one less portal. Hint: there's a way to beat level 2 using this strategy in 5 portals instead of 6.

Portal Clipping: When you place a portal, you're actually replacing a piece of a wall with a portal. This means that if you place a portal on a wall where the ball will touch the corner, the ball will now pass the corner instead of bouncing on it. Another possible portal clip is by placing two portals directly adjacent. Whereas the ball might have hit the side of the wall before, it can now pass through since there's no more wall. Sometimes you can use these tricks to your advantage, and sometimes you have to watch out for them because they can mess up your previous path.

iu_436394_6057782.png

Easter Egg (Stars)

Every level has bronze, silver, and gold medal scores. The gold medal score was the best score I could find when designing the levels. After a while I found out there were even better solutions on some of the levels! Rather than lowering the gold medal score I decided to add the stars as a bonus. Now you know - every time you get one, you beat the dev! :D

Good luck and have fun! Have any questions? Ask below

You have to make sure that your cockpit stays alive! Here's a hint: make sure it's not in front

Hey there!

Factions is a silly little Action-RTS where you take control of the world to win! Command your pawns around the planet to capture all the bases! Outsmart up to three AI opponents to see who will become the world dominator! Slow time to command your army with speed!

Good luck and have fun!

https://frenchie14.itch.io/factions

Woohoo! Submitted!

https://frenchie14.itch.io/portal-deal

Didn't have time to add any of the "deal" part except that you're collecting gold bars. Might spend a little more time polishing this up before posting on bbs ;)

Thank you! Glad you had fun!

Thanks for playing! Glad you liked it!

Good news! I've added autosave! It only took 1.5 years :P

Alright spent a few minutes converting my 2 portal system into an n portal system!

https://twitter.com/MaxBize/status/1264092964474597377 (sorry for the link - MP4 upload wasn't working here)

Running into a game design problem D:

The cube moves way too fast for the player to have any chance to put portals in its trajectory. I tried a quick hack where I let the player slow down time, but I find myself just holding the "slow time" button, which takes out a lot of the fun of seeing this cube zooming around. You can play around with it here: https://maxbize.github.io/portal_deal.html

In traditional Portal, this isn't a problem because you just need to look forward to anticipate where you're going to hit a wall - here we're playing from an "observer's" perspective.

To solve this I'm considering allowing the player to set up a chain of portals at the start, then hit go, and watch the madness unfold. They can go back and tweak their chain until they find a combination that lets them beat the level. Anyone have other ideas?

Added velocity rotation going through portals! Hoping I can get to a point where I can create levels before the weekend starts :)

Love the cloud/dust particles when the baseball hits!

Thanks for this! One note for anyone who sees this code in the future: with this code, an 8x8 sprite has a width/height of 7. If you want to treat the width/height as 8, subtract 1 from the width and height in each of the lines above when comparing

First basic portal running. Still a lot to do :)

Movement / physics test with bounciness set to 0.9! Next up - portals :)

Looking good!

Got edge detection working for portal placement! Data is coming from the map and there's support for different walls that only allow portals on certain sides 

Happy, backstabbing frogs? :D

Whoa, that is not the gameplay I had in mind at all but it's awesome! I have to think if there's a way I can incorporate something like that into the game!

(1 edit)

Gonna take my first theme and run with it!

STORY

TBD. All I know is that I want some character dialogue boxes to add some humor  😄 

MECHANICS

This will be a physics / sandbox / puzzle game

There's a pile of money that you have to get to the end by creating a bunch of portals. While it's going to use the infamous two portal system, there will not be a character for you to control. You have to get the money to the end by using the portals alone! 

I'm not sure yet how to make the puzzles interesting if you don't need line of sight to create portals. I need to figure out a way so that you can't just portal straight to the exit. Maybe you'll need to collect some floating money along the way 🤔

TOOLS

PICO-8, Sublime Text

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Got a few good ones from my ten rolls! Just need to pick one and come up with the game :D

  • Portal Deal
  • Elder Brew
  • Famous Threat
  • Witch Ball
  • Monolith Mechanic

Glad you liked it! Agreed on the sound effects - this was made for a 48hr game jam and I ran way out of time 😅

Fun game, loved the boss fights!