Copod

[hereBeBen]

Survive as a little creature in a strange world.
The game is written in scala and uses the jMonkeyEngine.



Trailer

Download here

Website

Twitter

IndieDB page here

[doppler]

This was a fun little demo! The player expressions, easy controls, and graphics; I loved them all!

I totally didn't expect the "love" feature. I was like, "What the hell happened to my character? Why do I look like a white dot with a tail...oOoOOOOOOOOO..." haha.

Keep up good work. This could easily be one of the "Featured Projects" on this page!

[Drenius]

Awsome!
Nearly no content, but already really fun!
It's also a very interesting artstyle.

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[hereBeBen]

Thanks for the feedback!
I agree, the lack of content is a big issue at the moment that I'm going to tackle in the coming weeks.

[gongalf]

Cool!    It reminds me cell stage of Spore. Will it evolve? Could you tell us something about future features?

[hereBeBen]

Cool!    It reminds me cell stage of Spore. Will it evolve? Could you tell us something about future features?

You will "evolve" when you collect an ovary, but not in the same way as spore. Rather than focusing on making you stronger (but that will happen), I want the evolutions to change the gameplay a bit. This could be changing up melee and shooting projectiles (acid bite or shooting mines) or maybe even having something that makes you play stealthily (you are cloaked, but have a pounce ability that does a lot of damage). I need to see what works.

Also want to expand the number of enemy types. Going to try my best to make them as varied as possible.

I want to expand the number of consumables to. At the moment there is only a push back ability but I have ideas for more interesting ones. One idea I have is that one rare consumable can to turn you into a ghost/zombie state where you lose your ability to evolve and lose your healthbar. You instead use your souls as health and maybe do a more powerful attack.

Basically, I just want to explore ways in making each play through as different as possible.

[Drenius]

@gongalf: exactly what I thought first!

[hereBeBen]

New version 0.1.4a is out!
+ Four new enemies
+ New plume obstacles that can appear
+ Commad line options for settings
+ Options menu for your convenience
+ New "shields" that have a chance of appearing on certain whirlpools

Download here.

[Drenius]

The new features are making the game much more interesting!
It's a game where you dont really know what you are doing, you just play and enjoy the colorful sceneries and creatures, so the more features the better.
What you should change is the file format. A zip-archive with files and a folder is not very user-friendly.
Please use something like JarSplice or a launcher.

[hereBeBen]

What you should change is the file format. A zip-archive with files and a folder is not very user-friendly.
Please use something like JarSplice or a launcher.

Thanks for the feedback.
You are 100% right about the current format not being user friendly. I'll look into JarSplice.
The next release should be a single jar, no doubt about it. Maybe later I'll look into native launchers.
In the meantime, version 0.1.6a is out to try out now.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[gongalf]

I've tried the new version and it looks so good. I've only seen three of the four enemies cause I played with a touch pad and it's so hard not to die I love the furry one. I'll try again we I've a mouse

P.S.: The red and yellow coloured enemies are so hard

[hereBeBen]

Yeah, I like the furry ones too
However, I don't like how the circle orange ones look atm. Need to redo their design.
And yes, the red and yellow enemies are hard, but they are asleep initially so you don't have to engage them. Since they are so hard, I've made it so they don't spawn on the first stage.


In other news, I have been working with Case Portman to get some music for Copod.
While it is not in the game yet, you can listen to one of the tracks he has made here:
https://soundcloud.com/kc_portman/aquasition-copod-ost

[gongalf]

The music is amazing Did you make it alone? How many time did you spend to make it?

[hereBeBen]

No, I didn't make the music. It was made by Case Portman.

[hereBeBen]

New version is out now. Revised the way the terrain looks, added new followers, new music and many other tweaks and fixes.

Download it here

[Drenius]

Liked the old colors More...

[hereBeBen]

Sorry to hear that. I will most likely to continue to fiddle and tweak the visual appearance of things. It is an iterative process.

Here is a screenshot of the old colour scheme for comparison.

[saucymeatman]

I like the new colors alot more.
Keep up the good work, this game is really unique!
Is it open source, or are you going to try to sell it?
I would try to sell it if I were you. 

[vbrain]

The yellow on the new version just ruins things for me. Yellow causes great amounts of pain to my eyes with the contrast. Revert it to the old one please.

[greenOwl]

I like the new colors, but I would go for a more consistent color palette. Don't go too far away from one color or just accent it.

Cool game overall!

[hereBeBen]

Is it open source, or are you going to try to sell it?
I would try to sell it if I were you. 

Yes, I'm going to try and sell it at some point I can't afford to keep working on Copod otherwise. Desura wouldn't be a bad place to start. I'd love to give steam greenlight a shot in the future, but I need to add more content to Copod until then.

Yellow causes great amounts of pain to my eyes with the contrast. Revert it to the old one please.

I'm going to add a brightness option in the next version so you can dim the colours a bit. Hopefully that'll help you out.

[bilznatch]

Jeez, this is quite a pretty game. I really like the way it looks.
I think you'd do pretty well on desura with this, from what I've seen. Good luck.

[gongalf]

I like the new version The colors are cool and the stage with the spermatozoid too.

[hereBeBen]

Been a while since I've posted (life, distractions and what not). A brand new version of Copod is out now. Now with a bit more polish, features and new sound effects. Of course, it still needs more work, but thats what an alpha is for. Download it here.

[Drenius]

Still very nice, the colors are still absolutely ok.
The new features you seem to have implemented are quite funny, but what are these shielded balls you can just move around and how can you get through those shields around ...how to call it... swirls? portals?... ?

[hereBeBen]

I call them whirlpools. The shields go once you kill all enemies inside the area that you are in. I did consider adding a particle effect (a beam joining them together) to makes this connection more obvious. Looks like that is the best way to do things. There are things I need to telegraph to the player too, like when they can use certain powers so they can more easily figure them out. Hopefully these will make it in the next version.

[hereBeBen]

Another new version is out now. Download here

Major changes made since version 0.7.0 alpha:

• Added new beam effect to make connections between enemies and shields more obvious
• Revamped UI to show a powers effects if they are too subtle
• You can't use powers in situations where they are ineffective. Hints given to what is needed
• Reworked 360 pad controls so you don't need to hold down the "a" button in order to move
• Made the shooting creatures a little easier to deal with
• In certain circumstances, you can now hold multiple powers of the same type. There is a new power that effects the quantity of powers
• Added 6 new powers, bringing the current total to 21
• Added new cave trap type that can appear in levels
• The size of the Copod now effects more powers
• Slightly reduced the cost of some evolutions
• New enemy that fires a laser
• Follower eggs now spawn with a shield and now need to be dashed into in order to open them

Here is a little preview of the new laser enemy:



Also got a new little website for my game.

[Slyth2727]

Hey, sweet looking game I love it!

Just a side note, you don't have robots.txt blocked on your site. It's not a huge problem, I mean hell the Whitehouse page doesn't block it, but it's good practice to not let people access that.

[hereBeBen]

Thanks!

As for the robots.txt, doesn't it need to be public for the web crawlers to see it? It shouldn't matter anyway, it is automatically made by tumblr since I'm using that for hosting atm.

Also, is there any chance I could get this thread in the featured section?

[hereBeBen]

Version 0.2.9 alpha is out now.

• Added Copod icons for mac osx dock and windows
• Added new enemy creature with an exceedingly long tongue
• Totally new camera transition animation to make it clearer which direction you are travelling in
• Added new sound effects for power usage, gui prompts and laser attacks
• Fixed sleep visual effect from initially being visible at the origin (0, 0, 0)
• Window name on mac now says "Copod" rather than "Game"

Download here!

Here is a little preview of the new enemy.