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Dimlit

A topic by gruebite created Mar 08, 2018 Views: 610 Replies: 8
Viewing posts 1 to 9
(6 edits)

Hey guys. My project is Dimlit! I still have a couple days for polish and would love some feedback and critique before submitting.

You play as a sage defending against grues and infinite darkness using light, structures, crystals, and artifacts found across the infinite map. I'm classifying Dimlit as a "fault tolerance" game. There are random events that test your system — you cannot prevent these, only prepare for them.

Some tips for those who wish to try.

  • Keep your glowsuit charged — it is your health. It loses power while walking in darkness and can only be charged at structures which provide light.
  • Find artifacts deeper and deeper into the darkness. Use these to unlock more powerful secret structures.
  • Light providing structures can only be built on light. Build yourself a network of self-reliant structures.
  • You can run! There isn't a hotkey for it, though. When you continue to run in the same direction your speed increases up to 5. Changing directions reduces your speed back to 1. Running expends more glowsuit energy in darkness, but is free if you run in the light.
  • If you see dark spots in the light, you can guess what they are.
  • Don't get eaten!

Cool concept! It is hard to say something meaningful about the gameplay, because I experience some technical issues. 

I noticed that the "quit game" dialog opened when I was walking around with the arrow-keys (and not pressing Q or ESC). Sometimes the next move closes the game completely. I don't have an precise way to reproduce the bug, I just walk around and it randomly happens.

Maybe it has something to do with some keys having multiple functions? (H & L are both used to move and to go back/select). I've played the Mac 64 version.

Hopefully I can play this game properly at the end of the jam! :)

That's a bummer! And also odd.  I have not experienced anything like that. The Q or ESC thing could be a terminal compatibility issue. Which terminal are you using?

(2 edits)

I'm using the OSX standard terminal. This is what it says after a crash:

panic: invalid argument to Intn

goroutine 1 [running]:
math/rand.(*Rand).Intn(0xc42007c2a0, 0x0, 0x4016adf543c1a99a)
/usr/local/opt/go/libexec/src/math/rand/rand.go:166 +0x9c
main.roll(0xc42007c2a0, 0x2, 0x2, 0xc42000e6f0)
/Users/mpatraw/Development/src/gitlab.com/gruebite/dimlit/util.go:47 +0x3d
main.(*darkSurge).update(0x11fd8d0, 0xc420098200)
/Users/mpatraw/Development/src/gitlab.com/gruebite/dimlit/darkness.go:76 +0x108
main.(*darkness).update(0xc42000a120, 0xc420098200)
/Users/mpatraw/Development/src/gitlab.com/gruebite/dimlit/darkness.go:55 +0x1fa
main.(*world).update(0xc420098200)
/Users/mpatraw/Development/src/gitlab.com/gruebite/dimlit/main.go:491 +0x6b5
main.main()
/Users/mpatraw/Development/src/gitlab.com/gruebite/dimlit/main.go:1378 +0x388
logout
Saving session...
...copying shared history...
...saving history...truncating history files...
...completed.

And this is what it looks like:



I hope this helps!

(2 edits)

That does help! Thanks for this info, I really appreciate it. I had a piece of code that was trying find the random number between 0 and 0. It's weird that it did not show up when I was playing. I have fixed the bug and uploaded new binaries. What about the issue with Esc/Q?

Friday before I submit I will be doing a lot of playtesting/bugfixing, haha.

(1 edit)

That's fun so far.  It crashes occasionally?  I don't *think* I'm doing anything, just walking along.  This is the windows-x64 version, on an older Thinkpad running Windows 7.  Seems like the same error message every time:

    panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference
    [signal 0xc0000005 code=0x0 addr=0x0 pc=0x4ac2fb]
    goroutine 1 [running]:
    main.(*grue).switchTo(0xc0420eec60, 0x3)
            /Users/patraw/go/src/gitlab.com/gruebite/dimlit/grues.go:104 +0x4b
    main.(*grue).enrage(0xc0420eec60, 0xc0420605d0)
            /Users/patraw/go/src/gitlab.com/gruebite/dimlit/grues.go:95 +0x192
    main.(*grues)._enrage(0xc042074000, 0xc04206e000)
            /Users/patraw/go/src/gitlab.com/gruebite/dimlit/grues.go:211 +0x12d
    main.(*grues).update(0xc042074000, 0xc04206e000)
            /Users/patraw/go/src/gitlab.com/gruebite/dimlit/grues.go:239 +0x301
    main.(*world).update(0xc04206e000)
            /Users/patraw/go/src/gitlab.com/gruebite/dimlit/main.go:475 +0x705
    main.main()
            /Users/patraw/go/src/gitlab.com/gruebite/dimlit/main.go:1352 +0x38f

Is there any special trick to finding more artifacts? I found a second one on my first run, but after that I haven't seen any more.  Am I just not travelling far enough from my lighted areas?

Heyo. Thanks for playing! I encountered that error prior to reading your post and have since fixed it.

There is no secret to finding artifacts, you kinda have to keep exploring. The artifacts keep spawning further and further away. There are structures you can unlock to help you, though, if you choose to go down those upgrade paths. I don't want to spoil which category of structures it's under.

interesting idea!

I like the concept with light view. It makes game more horror like. You see only the surroundings.

With no memory? (Map memory)

I'm calling this game a success! I am going to continue to work on this game because I enjoy the concept and theme so much, and there is still so many different directions this can go. For now, here it is: https://gruebite.itch.io/dimlit I'm excited to hear any critique and suggestions.

Some things I'd like to add that didn't make it:

  • Artifacts. They can only be revealed by light. Some additional tech and structures would require these.
  • Randomly generated structures or bases in the dark you can find. Some of these structures are unique and can only be found.
  • Cleverer random event grouping, and more of them.
  • More advanced grue AI, and more types of grues.
  • More structures and tech trees.
  • Grue's drop teeth that the Sage can use for upgrades.
  • Different modes: Journey (how far can you go) and Sandbox (focused on exploration).

 It was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to playing everyone's games!