Thanks Laxwolf, hopefully it should be there soon, im still trying to decide how much I still want to use the map I built for the more arcadey version, or if I go much more Metroid influence as far as traveling between missions, I think ill try both.  It could be cool to have the player trek out to each mission through a series of rooms etc, but might stack up the work also.

It could be cool navigating enemy infested forests and caverns and rivers and alike to try and find your mission, the game is setup for that sort of stuff, It will come off alot closer to a Metroidvania however....

EDIT: ZELDA 2 MAP system.  It works beautifully.

Credits and opening town level and first mission, and lots of adjustments, tanks and stuff, playing nice.  Ignore the ripped (and kinda low bit-rate) Rambo tunes and other misc music, Chris has already started replacing a lot of the sounds as you can hear.  So base camp is done, which is the first little town of the game, up next is the jungle caverns, still tons of bugs and stuff but its getting there.  Check out progress, more to come in a few days.  I imagine things will start to slow down a little next week as im making a follow up sequel to Under the Garden late next week, I doubt it will start to crawl though with two projects on the go, im pretty much psyched to get the first demo rocking and beyond.

[The easy/safe choices]

Good idea man, they actually started out originally with a coat of arms type symbol with a parasite in the center, but that got scrapped at some point.  Another idea ive been throwing around is the weapon collection / use scheme:


The easy/safe choices

-Standard collect the weapons, select them at the start of the mission from a drop down list.
-Collect weapons, swap them whenever you want via 2 more keys (not preferable due to lots of controls)
-Collect weapons and swap current weapon for them via crates/etc.


Or go full retard...

-Use a Gradius top down shooter type approach to things where you level up a bar and essentially add another weapon to your arsenal as you fire.  Dying resets the progress, or at least reverses it a little.  Might match the stupidity level pretty well when your character is like dual firing a machine gun, a lazer gun, and every second or two shooting off a rocket.

Might be too much...

Thats really cool guys, was quite a good series of suggestions so ive added the following:

- enemies spawning from doors during alert stages
- randomizing some enemy locations
-I'm considering adding barricaded type wall off sections that the enemies create, sort of like a barricade with a firing squad guarding doors and such, so players have to bust through it.

And to go even more full retard I want to add:

-underwater / submarine stages will flood in alert phase (its still in planning- haven't blocked the levels out yet)
-Stages that fall to bits during the alert phase, things like collapsing rooms, etc.


In other news, ive added the following non alert stuff to tonight's update:

- The player now enters the level via parachute after crash landing his plane at the start of every level.
-A whole heap of mission complete/mission start type prompts.
-A bit more responsive prisoner AI.
-Tanks bitches, tanks.

Fairly big update today, lots of visual updates, one major gameplay addition to the level structure (dividing the gameplay into a entering/escaping phase), all of which can be seen in today's video, so tell me what you think of the changes!  Text is a bit rough and temp, a lot of minor stuff thats still very temp (POW teleporting/etc).  NPC's are in but they need a bit more graphic love so ill save them for the next video, still trying to figure out how to structure the level setup stuff to work best with the map.

Oh and Chris Geehan has offered to do the audio for the game which is super win  

god rays are cool, but seem oddly hyperrealistic. Clashes a bit with the style. Maybe roughen them up a bit/flatten them out? Maybe that would help with the cpu load too. I was hoping for a video!

Haha jk

Hmmm I wonder what it might look like with stencil/cutout pixel shadows, ill probably run some tests later today I guess.  I do agree that it maybe too realistic, but the subtle colour changes in the background are pretty.  Npcs are working now, and I should have something to show tonight, and demo in a few days of the first area hopefully!

Tonights progress has been a massive sidetrack, added lots of grass, dripping water, god rays, glows and all that, the first of many graphical passes, it now runs 20 percent slower, woot. (grass is temp)

Another update, working on adding level progression, saving, and putting a lua scripting layer in the game, thanks to Zephni from the MMF forums.  So another thing thats slightly changed is the resolution, long story short I had to change the game resolution due to the way the backdrop objects are pasted in mmf2, its probably minor to people who haven't been looking at it on repeat.  Ive also added (as you can see) shit loads of particle effects, there is no way this is going to be running in flash anymore though. Up next is all things Lua, getting NPCS talking from scripts and other assorted things that I will need to script, I will probably ship this with a editor of some sort with some basic modability, more to come.

Oh also im working on adding cash into the game (the light green paper things that fall from enemies, its very wip atm)

In complete agreement with most people here about the style and look. Love the dogfighting too, seems like a nice change of pace from the standard levels. I love that a lot of the inspiration is from Bionic Commando.

The empty shells being ejected from the guns is a great choice and a nice touch. Adds to the chaotic feel of the combat. As for player speed, I think its a matter of taste...but having the choice to walk or dash would be nice. It's like what happens after playing mega man X after a while: when you're learning you walk through most levels, but after awhile you just memorize all of them and dash through the entire thing because you know enemy and item placement, etc.

As for level design, I say go with the bionic commando style setup. Metroidvanias are cool and all, but you could definitely encapsulate that experience into the level-by-level design of bionic commando (like it did in the original anyway), making backtracking both possible and less cumbersome, depending on how big you intend the game to be (judging from screens, decently big!)

Anyway, great style, looks fun, and hope to get to play it soon!

I think ill definitely add a dash at some point, but for now just stock running should be fine.  Hmmmm I guess the initial thing is I started this and thought, I might just knock out a small little freeware game, but ambitions a bitch, and complexity is kind of getting thrown in the mix.  I think ill just try it all the different ways, metroidvania/level to level/mini-levels, and toss up if I want to sink a few months into a more complex game, I think the core run n gun mechanics are at the point where they are solid now, pretty decent fun, but the thing the game lacks is kind of depth and a bit of character, and id rather not release anything than put out another crappy game...

As for making it more serious ive been putting notes down all arvo about a alternate reality Vietnam era war, kind of riffing of what bionic commando laid down but a little more light hearted, we shall see how it turns out.

It is indeed looking sick. I like the style and everything - I could only suggest that the character slows down a bit while walking. Maybe his current speed could be a dash, but it feels almost too fast to me.

Good idea, I think ill slow it down a bit, I think ive been playing it a bit too long that Ive kinda lost focus on the stuff like that.  Just tinkering with gearing the gameplay toward a more metroidvania type deal, I think the best way to decide the path to progress ahead with is to just throw it down to what everyone thinks, so ill post some side by side videos/and or demos pretty soon (ideally within a week) and anyone who cares can help me pick a direction for the game.  If it does lean towards a more story heavy exploration shooter, I may have to make it a little more serious, time will tell.

Cheers bro, its not all quick though, just to break the speed I think ill spend today toying with adding some more complexity to the gameplay, considering mixing in some elements of a metroidvania to see how it plays, I think it will add a lot of time to the development but I have a perfectly good code from another half finished project which has a editor and Lua scripting and such which could work pretty good, though it totally rules out porting it to flash quickly.... I guess its better to have a good game on pc, than a half good game on flash and pc... more to come.

Lots of changes tonight, new 2 player UI, new time frame, added lives ingame to see how it plays, added Prisoners of War, dogs and flying enemies also, and the stock enemy's also now throw grenades which should be somewhere in the video also.  I think I want to add a barrel throwing type enemy straight from bionic commando and that should be enough enemies for 20 or so levels roughly.  tomorrow ill probably add some sort of destroyable wall type enemy that has bits that can/cant shoot, see how it plays I guess.

So back from the break/holiday, tonight im going to be adding new enemy types to the mix, over the next few days expect the following to appear:

-Dog enemies, mostly for gameplay reasons to create some charging type enemies that can take a few hits.

-Flying enemies/bombers/etc, something that has some sort of erratic movement that either slows or stops the players progress for short periods.

-Prisoners of war, they will be scattered in mobs of enemies to ensure the players use a little more tactics than sweeping the enemies up with bullets, shooting them will major kill the players score.

All of these will hopefully create a bit more challenge as the gameplay is quite short/easy currently, video to follow!

This is nice. I like it.

COMMANDO BROS

Haha the voice over is temp, if anyone wants to do a better voice over for the title that would be awesome 

I might actually give this a try... I've never tried voice acting, but many people tell me i have a deep throaty voice. I'm not sure if my microphone can handle it, but i might be able to cut out some of the noise post-processing.

Awesome man I hope you do, look forward to hearing it if you can get a good recording.  News today is I spent a lot of it fucking around building a game cabinet for another project, tidied up a bit of the project code, and overhauled some of the button input and ingame menu stuff, nothing really show worthy but since its the last day before I disappear for a week ill put a youtube video up tonight with any luck.  Lets do this.

Oh and I finally got the intro good... Atleast to a level where I don't want to change it too much anymore.

Me and a mate are planning to make a custom cabinet for a indie game we are collabing on, feedback appreciated, the game is sorta hell themed, hence the skulls n such.  First steps in 3d, spot the grim fandango inspiration.

Sorry you wasted your time yesterday but it was defietely worth it, looks great!

Cheers guys, maybe im getting to tied down in the details, I think i figured out what I dont like, theres not enough movement in the posing thing at the start where the bullets are scattering around them, im going to try putting a extra frame with there heads down and then all cheesy like looking up.  Apart from that today is finalizing town scenes, onward!

This is nice. I like it.

COMMANDO BROS

Haha the voice over is temp, if anyone wants to do a better voice over for the title that would be awesome 

Tonight's progress, or lack of, is the revised intro screen.  Man I wasted so much time on this one tonight, I have new found respect for those epic early 90s code animated intros.  So apart from losing almost an entire day to trying to nail the arcadey intro thing, Im still not all that happy with it, I think ill come back to it another day as there is more important gameplay stuff to sort out.

quick edit: I figured out what to do with towns also, they are gonna kinda be like a rampage level where you just go and shoot a whole heap of off duty enemy patrols, its pretty fun.

Hopefully I should be able to start pulling out all the temp contra music pretty soon and putting some original stuff in, it looks like it will be after my holiday at this rate, so a week or so, but I will have to start temping some of the sounds in pretty soon I think.

I also tested out the mmf2 flash exporter if anyone is using mmf2, it actually works pretty nicely, might give the IOS exporter a shot soon see how much trouble it is to get this running also...

Another 2 weeks, but ive got a bit of a holiday in the middle, so another 3 weeks I reckon.  Ill put up something playableish soon though.

Another video update today, menus are almost as cleaned up as they need to be, ive added a short little video of some of the menus and dogfighting minigame, still needs a bit of graphical work.  Found a musician also so thats good news, today Ill be smashing around some enemy fighter plane sprites, and hopefully do something with the towns because they are kinda dull at the moment.

Hey guys I found someone for the music, thanks for the awesome responses guys