Prospora

[sarako]

Hi all! I've been a long-time user of LÖVE, but I finally pulled together a complete game: Prospora, wherein you control a colony of spores trying to take over the universe.

Prospora screenshot

prospora-screenshot.png (113.53 KiB) Viewed 7960 times

You can find it on my website or GitHub:

http://www.zenzoa.com/games/prospora/

http://github.com/sarahgould/prospora

UPDATE 17 May 2015: Version 2.0 of Prospora is out now! http://sarahgould.itch.io/prospora

[micha]

Welcome to the forum and congratulations for finishing the game.

The graphical design is really neat and the graphics are very polished. I like it. Also the controls feel smooth and easy.

For the controls, I should differentiate between the different mouse buttons. Currently I can use all three mouse buttons for clicking. It should only be the first mouse button (initially I thought left button is for actions and right button for camera control, but that turned out to be wrong).

Also you could give the player a more distinct color. I found it a bit difficult to find out which my own planets are. Why not make the players spores in the same blue as the GUI?

Thumbs up for the "how to play", but I still haven't completely understood what I am supposed to do. I managed to conquer some empty planet but I was unsure about how to successfully conquer planets. Should I increase "travel" so that more spores go to other planets or is that "attack"?
You should consider implementing some fixed "missions" that train the player how to play.

By the way, if you draw circles in "fill" mode, their outline is not anti-aliased. To fix this, draw another circle in "line" mode on top and you get smooth filled circles.

[zorg]

Different enough from Eufloria, and it plays really well; congrats on finishing it! (or do you intend to expand it perhaps?)

My only peeve was that i usually use the right mouse button for moving the camera, and left for actions, so a control redefinition menu would be nice.

[Murii]

Nice looking game,also cool gameplay!

[SiENcE]

Looks nice.

But I get this Error using Love091.

Intel(R) HD Graphics
OpenGL 2.1 (Intel(R) HD Graphics with 112 ext.)
GL Version: 2.1.0 - Build 8.15.10.2622
GLSL Version: 1.20 - Intel Build 8.15.10.2622

[sarako]

Thanks for the feedback! Especially the usability tips. I like the idea of creating learning missions, but I wanted to get a more-or-less complete version of the game out the door so I could walk away from it for a bit to work on other projects. At some point I want to try it as an Android app - hence the lack of right-clicking - so I'll probably re-visit the game later in the year to polish it up some more and implement some of these ideas.

Each other spore colony has random and fixed settings in attack, spawn, and travel, and you'll have to adjust your colony's settings depending on which colonies you're most directly engaged with at the moment. For that reason, I find a good strategy is to limit the number of connections you make early on, and focus on dealing with one enemy at a time.

As for the error... I'd need more info on that error message to debug it. Right now it looks like a bunch of blocks, so I wonder if it's an internationalization issue?

[SiENcE]

When I remove the {fsaa=16} it works. So i sugges you to check for fsaa support or put it in the options menu.

[sarako]

Okay, I removed the forced anti-aliasing and used the line-on-filled-circle trick. Odd that filled circles can't be anti-aliased on their own...

I also made the player spores blue - to keep with the blue HUD theme - and used HSL color conversion to make sure all the other spores stay away from similar colors.

https://github.com/sarahgould/prospora/ ... s/tag/v1.1

Thanks again for the tips. I was thinking of putting Prospora up for an optional small fee somewhere. Any suggestions? Itch.io looks promising so far.

[SouL]

Hello Sarako! Really nice game, congratulations!

Is possible to end the game? There's one enemy spore left but I can't kill it.

Screenshots:





Thanks for sharing it

[CaptainMaelstrom]

Sarako, kudos on making such a cool game.

I love the colors and the overall design. The interface is so clean and readable. I'm inspired by how you took 2 simple mechanics (knob turning and spore sling-shotting) and made a rather deep and engaging game out of it. The music is fitting--tense and galactic.

I do have a few ideas for you, in order of pertinence:
-Perhaps there should be a sound for when a player flyer connects to a new world. Sticking a long shot is hard and should feel rewarding.
-I like how the screen flashes red when your homeworld is attacked. I would like it if there were a more subtler flicker for when any of my spores die, or perhaps a subtle sound, some sort of feedback.
-Gravity-affected flyers. Would really make it a different game, and I'm sure you've thought of this. I'd just be interested in seeing it.

Finally, I recommend having some way of showing relative meme strengths/unit count. I've taken the liberty of implementing a somewhat crude example of what I mean in the attached .love. At any time during play, you may hold "tab" to see meme strengths (they are also displayed on the pause screen).

meme strengths showable

capture.PNG (73.96 KiB) Viewed 7309 times

edited love:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dSai ... sp=sharing

Also, are you still planning on implementing multiplayer?