Swarming: Eradication - A simple planetary conquest game

[Justin_C]

I figured I'd just post this here in case anyone was interested in seeing it.

Swarming: Eradication started as a OneGameAMonth submission for September 2014, but I decided to continue development of the game because it's a fun project. Consider this an Alpha release. Any feedback is appreciated.

Swarming is a planetary conquest game in the same style of games like Galcon and Eufloria. Players fight the AI for control of the solar system. Each planet you capture produces ships, which are then used to capture other planets. The game goes on until one team eradicates all opposition.

You play as the Green team and fight against the challenging Blue and Red AIs. Or if you want you can just watch three AIs fight each other.

Controls:
Click and drag on a planet to choose the number of ships you want to select. When you have units selected you can click on any other planet and they will go there.

If you want to move all units from one planet to another you can just click and drag from the starting planet to the destination planet.

Hold the middle mouse down and drag to move around the map.

Download:
Game Jolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/strategy-sim/ ... ion/35622/
Itch.io: http://justin_c.itch.io/swarming
IndieDB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/swarming-eradication

The game isn't much to look at, but I am pretty happy with how the gameplay and AI turned out. I think the graphics are making a lot of people overlook the game since there is nothing in the screenshots to really grab their attention, but I have received positive feedback from everyone I've talked to who has played it.

This is the first game I've made using LÖVE/LUA, and I have to say I have fallen in love with LÖVE. It makes simple projects so easy to throw together that I am likely going to start using LÖVE instead of Unity for all of my small projects. I'm already using it for October's 1GAM project, and I think I am likely going to use it for most of them in the future as well.

Itch.io is having a procedural generation game jam in November, so I am practicing for it with my October 1GAM project. I already have a pretty neat dungeon generator done in LÖVE, as well as my own implementation of Conway's Game of Life, which I will then use as a starting point for playing around with Cellular Automata. And all of this was much faster to implement than it would have been in Unity.

Anyway, let me know what you guys think. If you enjoy the game please like/comment/rate it on Game Jolt/IndieDB to help it move up the list a bit and get some more exposure.

[kikito]

Hi, welcome to the LÖVE forums!

I think the graphics are making a lot of people overlook the game since there is nothing in the screenshots to really grab their attention

The fact that those are only static images also doesn't help. Try putting a video or at least an animated gif instead / in addition to the static images.

Here're some low-hanging fruit that I think would improve the game:

• love.graphics.circle does not alias circles when drawing them with "fill". Your gray circles will look nicer if you draw "a filled circle and then a line on top of it, with the same color".
• When the "ships" (insects?) orbit around a planet, make them alternatively "appear above/disappear below" the planet.
• Those explosions need sound! (a small one, preferably location-and-distance-aware)
• The mouse-based controls need some explanation, i.e. how to scroll. Being able to zoom in an out would also be nice (my library could help you there, hint, hint)

[Jasoco]

Here're some low-hanging fruit that I think would improve the game:

• love.graphics.circle does not alias circles when drawing them with "fill". Your gray circles will look nicer if you draw "a filled circle and then a line on top of it, with the same color".

What if you turn on FSAA? It'll antialias them then. Though it also depends on if your card supports it.

[Justin_C]

Hi, welcome to the LÖVE forums!

I think the graphics are making a lot of people overlook the game since there is nothing in the screenshots to really grab their attention

The fact that those are only static images also doesn't help. Try putting a video or at least an animated gif instead / in addition to the static images.

I was thinking about that as well.

Here're some low-hanging fruit that I think would improve the game:

• love.graphics.circle does not alias circles when drawing them with "fill". Your gray circles will look nicer if you draw "a filled circle and then a line on top of it, with the same color".

What if you turn on FSAA? It'll antialias them then. Though it also depends on if your card supports it.

I did both. Anti-aliasing is on, and now I have a thin outline that is slightly lighter than the color of the grey planets, which adds a bit to the aesthetic.

[*]When the "ships" (insects?) orbit around a planet, make them alternatively "appear above/disappear below" the planet.

I think that would hinder the player's ability to tell how many units there are at the planet.

What I do plan on doing, though, is stop always rendering one color ship on top of the other color ships. I think just mixing the colors together will improve the aesthetic of the fights.

[*]Those explosions need sound! (a small one, preferably location-and-distance-aware)

There's no sound in space!

Seriously though, the reason there is no sound is because the game isn't quite done yet, and sound effects are always at the bottom of my list.

[*]The mouse-based controls need some explanation, i.e. how to scroll. Being able to zoom in an out would also be nice (my library could help you there, hint, hint)[/list]

There will eventually be a tutorial.

Zooming in/out will likely make it into the game later, because it will be necessary once I allow players to make games with arbitrary numbers of planets. I already have basic zoom functionality written into my procedural dungeon generator, so I will just use that. I appreciate the offer though.

Thanks for the feedback guys!

Here's what the game looks like now:


Definitely much better.

[IndieRetro]

Seriously though, the reason there is no sound is because the game isn't quite done yet, and sound effects are always at the bottom of my list.

I'm sure you probably already know this, but this site is great for generating sound effects for free: http://www.bfxr.net/, I often use it for game jams myself.

[Justin_C]

Seriously though, the reason there is no sound is because the game isn't quite done yet, and sound effects are always at the bottom of my list.

I'm sure you probably already know this, but this site is great for generating sound effects for free: http://www.bfxr.net/, I often use it for game jams myself.

I've used multiple tools similar to that, but they all seem to produce extremely low quality sound effects.

[pacman]

simple ~= low quality

[Justin_C]

simple ~= low quality

16-bit explosions are low quality, and they would sound out of place in this game.