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[necromian]

Hey there! I need a lot of beta testers for this little shoot em up I've been working on (and mostly off) for the last two years. It's called Grid Defender 2, and it's an arcade shooter in the vein of geometry wars and asteroids. It features a bunch of swell game modes and a customizable ship (you can change the weapons and such). I think all the controls are explained in the tutorial, and I'm planning on adding an instruction manual with the finished game.

I'm posting it here since I'm waiting on my music man (the wonderful flashygoodness - you might know him from the indie game Tower of Heaven) to make some final adjustments to the sound effects.

Anyways, I would love it if some of you guys could try it out and give me some detailed feedback! I've playtested it relentlessly, so I think it's safe to assume that it's bug free, but nonetheless, if something pops up please tell me. Also, if you could give me your opinions on the money system (how hard it was for you to buy what you wanted from the store, and how long you had to play to get it), I would greatly appreciate it! ALL suggestions will be taken into account.

Oh and lastly, the game is 99% done. The only things left to do are:
-One button in sandbox mode (changing the size of the grid)
-Two achievements
-Saving/loading highscores externally


Screenshots:




Trailer (like a year old):


Size: 11.71 MB
Made in: Game Maker 7 (Sorry mac users  )
Download - http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mzd2dzti1dz

Cheers!  

[godsavant]

Oh, hey! I remember Flashy telling me about this during one of his gallery updates. Looking great, although you might consider posting a new Youtube trailer showing off its much-progressed status.

Despite the past inundation of neon-themed arena shooters in the bast, I must say this this is one the highest-quality titles in the genre. I've never played the original Grid Defender, but I'd say that the pure wealth of content - achievements, full-fledged Asteroid/Sandbox game modes, different ship customizations, etc. - gives the player a lot more incentive to play and re-play the game beyond just going for a high score (because, after a certain point, that Atari-2600 style mindset just loses its impetus); the fact that I earned points to spend in the Shop after each game, even if I performed poorly, gives the player a real sense of reward (for the first time, I was grinding in an arena shooter ). It's clear that a lot of heart went into this game, and it's all the better for it.

A few nitpicks during gameplay, though:

• You might want to consider replacing the current arcane symbols for lives and bombs on the HUD with recognizable icons, such as the player's ship as lives and a recognizable cherry-bomb icon for bombs. The current counters a.) are unrecognizable, so that the beginning player has no notion of what they represent until they either die our use up a bomb, and b.) clash with the sleek, techno feel of the rest of the interface.
• For the current in-game Achievement notices, I'd recommend using a different font - preferably the futuristic one used in just about every other place in the game. Right now, the Times New Roman looks generic and, like the previous point, clashes with the rest of the game's vibe.
• Especially in the later parts of the game, it'd be great to have new enemies of different shapes and sizes, instead of just various colored circles filling up the large void of the grid, which leaves a lot of empty space that could foster new and interesting enemy types.
• Just a note, I love how the game spawns an enemy right on top of you if you start camping. :D

Great work so far, I'd love to participate in any future testing events you've got planned.

[AuthenticKaizen]

really nice!
any chance for dual analog gamepad support?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

analog stick coding is in gm, i remember taking weeks to get it right for one of my old gm games

[AuthenticKaizen]

analog stick coding is in gm, i remember taking weeks to get it right for one of my old gm games

oh, didnt knew that.
well wasd + mouse is also ok but if there should be an easy way to support gamepad then it would be great
(as you said that you tried it on an older game...maybe the newer gm versions are more user friendly on that topic?)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

mark actually hasn't changed much of gm's code since gm6, and gm6 was what i made that game in

the main problem as i recall is that it has no way to get the direction of an analog stick (e.g. 150 degrees etc.), it instead only gives you the degree (between 0 and 1) that it's moved in a particular axis, so you have to code a way to convert that to degrees. worse, the variance between 0 and 1 varies by joystick type (some joysticks are centered more towards 0, others more towards 1, it's idiosyncratic), meaning a method that works for one joystick won't work for others.

so you have to code:

a) a way to convert something like "0.6 up, 0.3 left" into "125 degrees", and
b) a way to convert "0.6 up, 0.3 left" into a number between 0 and 1 which indicates how far it's pressed (e.g. you could average them, so it'd be a speed modifier of 0.45, or you could take the highest, so it'd be a speed modifier of 0.6, or other methods like partial adding or distance from 0,0 or whatever -- each gives a different feel)

[AuthenticKaizen]

hmm sounds pretty complex...

[necromian]

Oh, hey! I remember Flashy telling me about this during one of his gallery updates. Looking great, although you might consider posting a new Youtube trailer showing off its much-progressed status.

Despite the past inundation of neon-themed arena shooters in the bast, I must say this this is one the highest-quality titles in the genre. I've never played the original Grid Defender, but I'd say that the pure wealth of content - achievements, full-fledged Asteroid/Sandbox game modes, different ship customizations, etc. - gives the player a lot more incentive to play and re-play the game beyond just going for a high score (because, after a certain point, that Atari-2600 style mindset just loses its impetus); the fact that I earned points to spend in the Shop after each game, even if I performed poorly, gives the player a real sense of reward (for the first time, I was grinding in an arena shooter ). It's clear that a lot of heart went into this game, and it's all the better for it.

A few nitpicks during gameplay, though:

• You might want to consider replacing the current arcane symbols for lives and bombs on the HUD with recognizable icons, such as the player's ship as lives and a recognizable cherry-bomb icon for bombs. The current counters a.) are unrecognizable, so that the beginning player has no notion of what they represent until they either die our use up a bomb, and b.) clash with the sleek, techno feel of the rest of the interface.
• For the current in-game Achievement notices, I'd recommend using a different font - preferably the futuristic one used in just about every other place in the game. Right now, the Times New Roman looks generic and, like the previous point, clashes with the rest of the game's vibe.
• Especially in the later parts of the game, it'd be great to have new enemies of different shapes and sizes, instead of just various colored circles filling up the large void of the grid, which leaves a lot of empty space that could foster new and interesting enemy types.
• Just a note, I love how the game spawns an enemy right on top of you if you start camping. :D

Great work so far, I'd love to participate in any future testing events you've got planned.

Thanks a lot! ^_^

You might want to consider replacing the current arcane symbols for lives and bombs on the HUD with recognizable icons, such as the player's ship as lives and a recognizable cherry-bomb icon for bombs. The current counters a.) are unrecognizable, so that the beginning player has no notion of what they represent until they either die our use up a bomb, and b.) clash with the sleek, techno feel of the rest of the interface.
For the current in-game Achievement notices, I'd recommend using a different font - preferably the futuristic one used in just about every other place in the game. Right now, the Times New Roman looks generic and, like the previous point, clashes with the rest of the game's vibe.

Good point! I'll change the bomb and life images to something more recognizable. I'll also change the achievements font to something better.

Especially in the later parts of the game, it'd be great to have new enemies of different shapes and sizes, instead of just various colored circles filling up the large void of the grid, which leaves a lot of empty space that could foster new and interesting enemy types.

-I don't really see what you're getting at here. There are actually 7 vastly different enemies that appear in arcade mode (the last one appearing at 30,000 points). Originally, some of the asteroids would actually appear after 50,000 points, but I found that it made the game too hard, so I took them out. By the time a player gets to 30,000 points, I would hope that they actually don't want another enemy type to appear, since it would make the game too confusing and difficult.



Also, I don't know how to program dual analog support, and I also have no controller to test it out myself. I suppose if someone could give me an example I might be able to implement it.

[SpacyRicochet]

Great game, though I really need to train my reflexes more.

Anyway, a couple of things I noticed:

• You might want to put in a delay before entering the high score screen after you die. Right now it pops up so fast that I've already types at least three characters and have to delete them all. A preliminary game over screen would be nice.
• When I used the beam charge, I immediately got the 'Failure' achievement when I started a game. This is probably because I use a tablet, so my 'clicks' are a little more pronounced and it did a microsecond beam the moment I started.
• A nice achievement would be to keep track of the amount of times people quit a game prematurely. At first, I thought the 'Failure' achievement meant I was quiting too often after only losing one ship. That was funny. Then I noticed the real reason.
• A pet peeve of mine is requiring people to switch from the mouse to the keyboard and vice versa on a GUI. When I want to change settings, I like to lean back and just use my mouse and not have to shift position to return to the main menu (by moving to the keyboard and pressing ESC). Same goes for when I want traverse the menu using only the keyboard, which isn't really possible now.
• While it makes sense to let achievements only pop up once, it's usually more fun to let them pop up whenever you get them for each game, even though they were already achieved. They give a nice sense of progress during a game.
• At the moment it's rather unclear at what rate you get money in the game. Some kind of indication would be nice.
• An 'Exit' button in the main gui is also nice. Or at least an indication that you quit the game with ESC. But like I said before, I want to be able to do everything with only the mouse or only the keyboard (except for the main game of course )

Those are my cents. Perhaps I'll have some more if I play more. Hopefully it's helpful.

edit:

Couple of more things:

• It's really annoying that you lose the 'Double Gun' upgrade you bought when you die once. True, it might make the game more challenging, but it also slows down the pace significantly, since you don't kill beasties as fast. Lessens the enjoyment for me, since killing beasties is what it's about.
• On the subject of powerups. Currently you're able to get the 'Double Gun' powerup even though you're already got that from buying it. So that's a completely useless upgrade! That counts as a bug methinks.
• When you get a second upgrade, you always revert your guns to the new upgrade. Even though you were previously shooting awesome-like in all directions and would keep doing so for several more seconds, suddenly you're just shooting the same damn thing you shoot from the beginning (double shot). If a new powerup you get is 'worse' then your current one, perhaps it should just refresh the battery on your more awesome powerup in use.

[necromian]

I added all the suggestions regarding actual gameplay, but didn't change the aesthetics or the menus. I'll probably implement those changes in post-release updates.

I updated the first post with the final beta of the game (the only thing unfinished about this beta is that there's no icon yet!). If I could get some more detailed feedback on the game before I put it out in the wild, I'd greatly appreciate it!

(The only update not in the final beta is that when you get powerups, they will not downgrade. I just added that feature a couple minutes ago because I didn't see the new post in this topic! It will be in the final release though!)

[dspencer]

mark actually hasn't changed much of gm's code since gm6, and gm6 was what i made that game in

the main problem as i recall is that it has no way to get the direction of an analog stick (e.g. 150 degrees etc.), it instead only gives you the degree (between 0 and 1) that it's moved in a particular axis, so you have to code a way to convert that to degrees. worse, the variance between 0 and 1 varies by joystick type (some joysticks are centered more towards 0, others more towards 1, it's idiosyncratic), meaning a method that works for one joystick won't work for others.

so you have to code:

a) a way to convert something like "0.6 up, 0.3 left" into "125 degrees", and
b) a way to convert "0.6 up, 0.3 left" into a number between 0 and 1 which indicates how far it's pressed (e.g. you could average them, so it'd be a speed modifier of 0.45, or you could take the highest, so it'd be a speed modifier of 0.6, or other methods like partial adding or distance from 0,0 or whatever -- each gives a different feel)

That doesn't actually sound very hard... treat it like a vector - its length is how hard it is being pressed in that direction, and then normalize it and take the inverse sin and/or cosine to get the angle.