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[PaulMorel]

Disclaimer: This is my first videogame since high school (8 years), so be gentle.

I don't really have a title yet... for now I am calling the game 'The Last Colonists', but that sounds way too serious.

It is a shmup/music game.  I wanted to make a game where the user had direct control over the music, rather than the 'enhanced audience member' role that the player usually gets in music games (GH, AudioSurf, Rock Band .. etc).  I am kind of achieving that with this game, but the music is only just started.  There will be much more of it in the final version.

The generative elements are the expected ones.  The size of the stages and the enemies that come at you are PG.  Of course, the gameplay is synced with the music, so the music is also PG, but it's also user-controlled ... that's the kind of unique thing here.

Also, I know next to nothing about graphics programming, so please forgive the line graphics.

Oh, and it's a java browser game (OH NOES!! RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!!)

http://www.thisisnotalabel.com/lastcolonists/

I'd love to get some feedback, but I'm not sure how much more I can do before the deadline.  I may add one more tangential feature, like scoreboards or co-op multiplayer ... or maybe a cell phone version (j2me ftw), but I am not sure that I will have time.

EDIT:
There are only 3 stages.  It can be beaten in about 10 minutes.

EDIT:
Screenshots

[moi]

Interesting, although it's more a prototype at the moment.
I would have liked to have more musical input than just the tempo beat. Maybe more weapons and/or protective elements that would have alternate sounds.
I haven't played all the latest music based games or shmups, so I don't know if it's really new but I like this concept.

[BobFM]

I played the demo for a few minutes. I haven't played too many music-based games either, but I really like how each enemy adds its own part to the music.

I feel like the ship should have some inertia, but that may be from playing Asteroids too much.

[moi]

Alas, you used that f*cking WASD...

(didn't pay attention the first time because I didn't move. BTW moving doesn't seem to be very useful in that game anyway)

[Noyb]

Fun! I felt kinda bad killing the enemies since they made the soundscape more interesting. I agree that new music for each level would justify the sudden decrease in musical complexity at the start of each stage. Maybe you could increase the firing speed/tempo at the least.

[PaulMorel]

Right, I'm going to try and increase the tempo.  One problem with that is that I can only use tempos that divide evenly to an integer number of milliseconds per quarter beat.  This is due to the fact that most timing classes use milliseconds as their base.  Obviously, there are workarounds, but I don't really have time to implement them.

And good idea about having each of the pickups start different sounds.  I think that I meant to do that originally, but just forgot.

Alas, you used that f*cking WASD...

(didn't pay attention the first time because I didn't move. BTW moving doesn't seem to be very useful in that game anyway)

Wow.  I didn't realize that people used non-qwerty keyboards that often.  I will put in numpad and arrow-key controls.

Moving basically isn't useful until the colonists die, at which point you can still play on to the end, you just get a different ending.

[Sar]

Wow.  I didn't realize that people used non-qwerty keyboards that often.  I will put in numpad and arrow-key controls.

People who live in non-English-speaking countries use non-querty keyboards all the time. I remember French people complaining about shooters because their 'Z' key isn't in the bottom-left like ours is.

[C418]

This game is rather cool. Everything is nice synched and the minimalistic effects are fitting.

But I hope you will polish the music matching a little more. If the bass suddenly stops, it is kinda awkward. Maybe add a little release (or reverb) or something. Would be awesome

[PaulMorel]

JUST ADDED:
-arrow key controls
-inertia on the fighter
-a few more enemies
-colonists now follow you around the screen

[PaulMorel]

ADDED:
-new music on each stage
-loading screen for each stage
-fixed up the graphics a bit

Could someone give me some feedback on the difficulty level?  I want to make sure that everyone reaches stage 2, but it's still pretty tough to get through stage 3.  Since that's all generated by equations, I'm having a hard time figuring out if it's too hard or too easy.

Also, the game freezes up for a second occasionally, and I can't figure out why.  No exceptions are being thrown, there is no bug, and there is no loading at the time. Anyone know a good way to profile an applet?

http://www.thisisnotalabel.com/games/

[Sar]

Could someone give me some feedback on the difficulty level?  I want to make sure that everyone reaches stage 2, but it's still pretty tough to get through stage 3.  Since that's all generated by equations, I'm having a hard time figuring out if it's too hard or too easy.

I found the difficulty to be pretty OK. After a couple of abortive tries getting used to the game I got to about waypoint 2 on stage 3 before losing the colony ship, although after that I managed to survive 'til most of the way to waypoint 5 before dying. Annoyingly when I did die it was 'cause the game froze up for a short period and I was dead when it came back. :/

[PaulMorel]

Thanks Sar.

Yeah, I've got something odd in there that I need to fix.  I think it's something in my draw routines, but it blows my mind that it's not throwing an exception but still pausing for that long ... unbelievable.

[Benza]

Awsome game, but I'm not digging the whole protect the collosnists thing. I preferd it when you just fly around shooting shit.

Also sucks with a laptop trackapd

[Sar]

Awsome game, but I'm not digging the whole protect the collosnists thing.

As it goes, I kind of like it. I don't think I'd want to play too many games with the same thing, but it's nice to mix the formula up a bit sometimes.

It'd be supremely annoying if there were bad guys shooting at us instead of just ramming us, since it's plausible enough to dodge stuff in the little ship but probably not the huge hulking colony shop, but as it stands...

[Pacian]

This is really fun.  Strong, simple concept, and very original too, as space shooters go.

And I like the music.