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[Snow]

Pistaco and Snow, were the cases zooming forward?  (Not just sliding around)  You might have to press space twice!  Once to clear that message and once to start them going.  Then when you move the mouse, the ship should dodge around the screen.  If the cases are zooming forward but the ship remains stuck then I broke something!

Sounds like it worked for Cavalcadeofcats though!

Thanks for trying it out!

Hmm, I think I hit space twice. I tried the game on Windows XP Pro. Will download again on a different computer to try it out. I can't wait to see how far you get with this. It kind of reminds me of when I was a kid - at the time I wasn't allowed to play video games... tool of the devil blah blah blah. Still I was so enthralled by anything "video game" that I would look at things and mentally make video games out of them. So yeah, do your best.

[VinceTwelve]

Got the base platforming code in.  Running and jumping.  Collisions.  Easier said than done in AGS, but I had always wanted trying to build a platformer in the engine.  Turned out pretty nice.  Next step is adding in traps, doors, and save platforms.  Then enemies and shooting.  Should have an hour or so tonight to work on things.  I'll probably post a new alpha tonight with whatever I get done.

[VinceTwelve]

http://www.xiigames.com/files/infinitybit/InfinityBit0.2.zip

New Alpha.  Just kind of demonstrating the jump'n and run'n.

Arrow keys to move dude.  Jump into ship to take off.  Mouse controls ship.  If you die you'll have to press F9 to restart.

Still to do: (lots!)

-Doors leading between levels.
-spike traps
-Items/powerups
-enemies
-shooting (player will shoot through the levels away from the screen to kill enemies and break barriers.  Possibly be able to "bend" shots by moving the levels with the mouse.)
-landing the ship
-Level design!!!
-saving/loading
-probably more

Let me know if the jumping feels natural or needs tweaking.  It's coded from scratch.

[VinceTwelve]

New Alpha 3!  I added a simple particle system to make things asplode.  Tweaked a number of other things to optimize drawing and to make room for future gameplay.  Also improved the game's ability to interface with Mappy.

I just tested this out on a better machine than the one I'm developing on and the game goes way too fast.  Stupid dev machine.  I'll have to slow some things down a lot.  Let me know if you're experiencing things going faster than you think they should.

[Pishtaco]

I tried alpha 3. The controls work now, but I'm getting a really low frame-rate, which, together with the weird way the perspective works, makes it hard to get far without banging in to something. I'm running it on a rather old computer.

Also, what's up with the "winsetup.exe" file that comes with it?

[VinceTwelve]

I'll work on that frame-rate issue, but no promises for older computers!  AGS may be a bit slow for what I'm trying to make it do!

winsetup.exe is just a program that lets you choose whether the game will be run in full screen or windowed plus a number of other options.  You can choose between graphics drivers there, too.  If Direct Draw 5 (the default) gets a slow frame rate on your computer, you might have better luck with Direct 3D 9.  Try it out!

[VinceTwelve]

Download Alpha 4

Alpha 4 has a close-to-final level one. There are still a few bugs getting squeezed and features to stick in.  I've got to get the save squares working as well as the gas squares.  Initially, your ship will have next-to-no gas and you'll have to step on that gas square before you'll be able to take off towards the next level (which isn't out there yet, and if you get far enough, the game will crash! )  But you can imagine how that works.

This should give you a pretty good idea of how the game will start out.  When you take off with your ship, you'll be on to the next level.  Each consecutive level will be harder with some new twists thrown in like enemies and breakable blocks, etc.

Now, I know that this build is getting some pretty miserable frame rates.  My dev machine was getting around 15 fps, and then when I tested it on another, it ran at 20, and the guy ran too fast and became difficult to control.  Once I can get the frame rate under control, I'll have to tweak the speed of everything to feel right.  Unfortunately, Adventure Game Studio isn't really intended to do all the things I'm forcing it to do right now (go figure), so, I've got to find the best way to optimize the drawing routines.

I'd be interested to hear what kind of frame rates people are getting on different hardware.  It's intended to be run at 30, though that is almost certainly unbearably fast, since I tweaked speeds on a machine that was getting 15 (but I hadn't noticed at the time).

Thanks for trying it out! 

[Melly]

Doesn't AGS have some kind of delta timing thing you can use to make sure your tweaked movement works the same in any framerate?

I tried the recently beta. worked at 20 FPS on a pretty beefy rig, and the levels were pretty punishing. Having to restart all the way on the first part made it impossible to even get to the spaceship.

I'm really liking the direction you're going though.

[VinceTwelve]

Unfortunately no delta   And yeah, the save points will definitely help with the difficulty!  Thanks for trying it out!

[VinceTwelve]

Went on vacation for a week.  Just got back and here's a new alpha:

Download Alpha 5

New features:

-Saving tiles work.  Step on them to save.
-New level zero which serves as the load-a-game and options menus.  (I always liked when game menus are built using the games' mechanics, so I wanted to try that out!)
-Level one significantly updated.
-Ship now lands on new levels to allow actual progression.
-Tweaked guy's running speed for the intended 20 fps.
-Gas tiles now fill up the ship.

Still to do:

-All levels after the first. (Right now your ship will just die at the end.  This will change when an actual level two gets dropped in)
-Fix that damn frame rate.  It still chugs on slower PCs.  I'm working on it, but not sure how much I'll be able to improve it, especially in the time frame.

Try it out and please let me know what you think!

[allen]

Such a fantastic idea.

Runs 20fps when I'm controlling the green dude (which is fine and feels ok) but when I'm in the ship its sluggish from 9-14fps. My pc isn't too new but it's not old either, it should run better I think.

[VinceTwelve]

I get pretty much the same as you on my main testing computer.  I aim to improve that, but am focusing on gameplay first.  And the slow graphics library the engine uses may be a tough wall to break through.   

[Theta]

I love the concept of this; the mashup of very different genres is quite well-done.  One thing - I like the effect of seeing all of the colored rectangle extending into infinite, but I think the ones in the background could be subdued a bit (perhaps make them a little darker), so that they don't distract from the foreground.

[Melly]

Looking pretty good. I agree with Theta, if possible subduing the background images would help differentiate the foreground.

Works at 20 fps here most of the time, though it slows down to maybe 18 during the flight sequences.

[VinceTwelve]

Excellent suggestion guys.  I do have the levels get darker as they go back, but only slightly.  I played around with making them much darker and it definitely helps.  Thanks for that!

I'm going to slightly re-factor the graphics here aiming to improve framerates and I'll make deeper levels much darker to help readability.