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[Zaphos]

Looks neat!  It does seem a bit hard to tell depth -- is the rocket house sometimes flying, or always on ground level, in the youtube video?  ... some cheesy shadow circles might help?
And yeah -- playing as the rocket house would be sweet (maybe if you have some time to add stuff post-competition?) 

[lowpoly]

Originally this game was going to be a vertical shmup with a semi-serious tone about falling home prices and destroying an evil Bank. Playing as the rockethouse was kinda cool, but I just didn't feel like making a shmup at the time. I wanted to do something where you were in constant fear of being attacked by the house instead, kinda like Yar's Revenge.

But who knows, maybe one day I'll make a versus mode or something, where you hunt the ice cream man instead. Sorry to disappoint 

Looks neat!  It does seem a bit hard to tell depth -- is the rocket house sometimes flying, or always on ground level, in the youtube video?  ... some cheesy shadow circles might help?

yup, definitely will add some sort of shadows one way or another before the deadline.

[cactus]

I don't quite understand the gameplay, but the graphics in the vid are hot 

[ChevyRay]

Way too cool. Way.

 

[lowpoly]

new pics, my brain is fucking fried 

[lowpoly]

and I'm done!

download now:
http://26k.org/play/erh.zip

new gameplay video:




WASD to control, space to bring up the sell menu, 1-9 to match the icon. Right arrow plays music / fully enrages the house. Let me know if you have any issues with slowdown or resolution. have fun

[lowpoly]

updated the readme file to make the instructions a little more clear...

[Melly]

Well, these are some damn awesome graphics right there. I love how good and clean the low polyness looks. It really needs music, though.

the rocket huse itself is awesome, and the gameplay was enjoyable for a while. With justa bit more polish this could get even better.

[moi]

This is one of the prettiest game so far, did you use something like Gile(s) for the lightmapping? It's really neat.

[lowpoly]

Thanks!

Everything was modeled, lit, and textured in good ol 3D Studio Max 6. The base lighting is global illumination, similar to what you'd get from Giles, but I also had a sep key light to source and project the long shadows. Combined everything in photoshop then added some layering/levels magic to balance everything out. All the objects in the game are fullbright so there's no actual real time lighting or anything clever going on. In the future, I'd like to do stencil shadows or something else, because the entire process of baking shadows is a bit of a bitch

[moi]

Wanna try the Devils child libraries?

[lowpoly]

I messed around with them last night a bit, pretty impressive. I would need a way to efficiently work it into my code tho, gonna have to research it more I think. Would probably kill this game considering how unoptimized everything is right now  :D

[moi]

Yeah these libs can do very impressive demos at the moment and I also saw a couple of libraries with some kind of bump mapping that looked neat.

[Chris Whitman]

I'll confess I had a bit of trouble figuring out what was going on (are there winning conditions?), but in general the gameplay was super fun. Trying desperately to escape from the swoops of the rocket house had a good, manic feel to it.

The graphics just showed what you can do with a few polygons and absolutely no technical tricks. The only place where dynamic shadowing would have helped would have been in determining the relative height of the rocket house, I think. Other than that, it looks fantastic.

[William Broom]

I didn't like this game. The graphics were very good, but the blackness at the edge of the level made it look unfinished. The truck controls horribly, although I like the way you have to stop and open a menu to feed the kids. But the worst thing was that there was no ending or objective. I mean, obviously you had to feed the kids, but there's no variation in them, so you've basically seen all the game has to offer after feeding one kid.

Also, you didn't get penalized very much for being caught by the rocket house, so it didn't seem very urgent to dodge it. I think the game would have been more fun if you died instantly when the rocket house caught you, and you had to try and get a high score without dying.

[PHeMoX]

I think the game would have been more fun if you died instantly when the rocket house caught you, and you had to try and get a high score without dying.

Yeah, seconded.  Apart from that it's a very cool game and it's quite an achievement that you made it 3D and all.

[lowpoly]

I didn't like this game. The graphics were very good, but the blackness at the edge of the level made it look unfinished. The truck controls horribly, although I like the way you have to stop and open a menu to feed the kids. But the worst thing was that there was no ending or objective. I mean, obviously you had to feed the kids, but there's no variation in them, so you've basically seen all the game has to offer after feeding one kid.

Also, you didn't get penalized very much for being caught by the rocket house, so it didn't seem very urgent to dodge it. I think the game would have been more fun if you died instantly when the rocket house caught you, and you had to try and get a high score without dying.

thanks for the feedback, so a couple things came to mind:

First, about the truck handling horribly, I've seen this comment a few times now but I haven't really seen anyone describe what exactly is bothering them. Is it too hard/unpredictable to maneuver? Is it just not responsive enough? Does the slow acceleration annoy you? I tried to make it feel like you were driving an actual ice cream truck, so tight turning radius and anti lock brakes were never in the cards. But if you feel the truck's handling is making the game unplayable/unfun, that's a legitimate gripe. The only advice I can offer is try to better time your sales with moments you know the house can't get to you. It's possible to get into a rhythm where you're constantly one step ahead of the truck.

As for the lack of objective/ending, agreed that's a legitimate gripe and possibly something I would add to the game if I was looking to increase its longevity. However, it's still an arcade style 'highscore' game at heart so staying alive and scoring as much as possible before you die is really the only objective I ever intended

I probably should have included an in-game instructions/scoring table and not relied totally on the readme file. In regards to the urgnecy, the more enraged the house is, the more you score per sale. You are rewarded for making as many sales as quickly as you can. At the same time, the more sales you complete, the more enraged the house becomes (the upper left red bar) and the more frequently he attacks you. Also, the more enraged he is, the more damage he inflicts per hit.  That being said, if people are already complaining about the controls, I think one-hit kills would make the game completely unenjoyable. Try playing the game with the ice cream song playing (right arrow). you'll find the urgency you were missing before

again, thanks for the feedback I appreciate your comments

[moi]

I think the game would have been funnier if instead of being too slow, the ice cream truck was moving very fast. Imagine that.

[Oddball]

I liked this one. The gameplay is a little limited, but most of the entries suffer this problem. Probably something to do with limited dev. times. Other than that everything was great, smooth controls, silky graphics, and everything but the ice cream van fitted in perfectly with the title. Good stuff.