next »

[skaz]

Thanks Xonatron! Expect new builds soon, I'll spend the few next days on the project, lots of coffee and not that much sleep on sight... I'll try to get as much as I can from my free time.

[skaz]

New build is out! Let's call it the pinballsteroid build.

Grab it HERE!

Asteroids are now a lighter, more balanced threat. You can collide with them, but you will get pushed away, so beware! It will damage your ship heavily, collect destroyed ships scrap to repair. The scrap has been redesigned, it should be easier to see and understand what it is.


Pics or it didn't happen.

The shield is useful to prevent collisions with asteroids, but it will deplete it's energy very fast. It will destroy small and medium asteroids, but is of no use against the huge ones.

Collecting scrap now heals the ship, I added an interface feedback: green flashing of the ship, and a healing symbol flies from the ship to the health bar.

I added new asteroids spawn patterns, you should see a huge difference, and a more varied and demanding game overall. As in the previous build, the score is simply how long you can survive.

I'll redo all the screen shots soon, they are no longer representative of what the game is right now.


As usual, feedbacks highly appreciated

Skaz

[facture]

Have you considered making the background a starfield which actually moves? You could have several levels of opacity which move at different speeds relative to your player

[skaz]

The background moves at a fixed pace, there is actually several layers of stars moving at various speed, but it was meant to be a placeholder... that I failed at replacing so far :p The camera is at a fixed position, moving the background with the ship wouldn't make much sense.

I'm less and less sure of the interest of the project, I'm wondering if the turret is not a problem. Having the freedom to aim at 360° may spoil a lot of the interest of positioning. I'll think about that... Any opinion?

[skaz]

I've put my free time to good use. Here is the Mouse Free build!

As usual, grab it HERE!

I tried a few things, and finally conviced myself to dump the mouse and cursor altogether. I think the main problem with my (poor) design choices, the one that led to remove any other weapon than the turret, was the mouse aim. There was a weird dissonance between having a cursor to aim but weapons not taking it into account and shooting straight.
Also, sitting anywhere on the screen and spamming the turret was an easy win versus the risk of positioning your ship and using the plasma canon.

So the mouse cursor is gone, bye!

"How do I aim now?" can I hear you asking through the interwebz. Simple : use the arrows. Pressing a direction automatically shoots and aim the turret in the appropriate direction. You can only shoot on four axis, up, down, left and right, yeah, just like in the binding of Isaac. Except you don't shoot tears, you tear the enemies in pieces with HARD STEEL BULLETS. Consequence is, you have to move a lot to get in position, and you have to cross enemies lines of fire. The enemy turret is not redone yet, but it won't get a free pass for the 360° circle, it will suffer from the same constraints as you do. Another interesting consequence is that you can now focus more on the piloting, looking at the aim is no longer a handicap.

So, what can I learn from that? Maybe constrains can give you more than they take.

Can we expect to see the plasma canon or the missiles back? Maybe. the competition is now less savage with the turret.

I tweaked a bit the asteroid spawn algorithm and a few other stuff, the bullet disappearing while shooting on the right side of the screen should be gone.

Also, SOUND. But there's not much to say, it's cheap. I'll let you judge it so far...

Asteroid particles are gone until I re-implement them in a proper way. Let's just say I did it BADLY. Really bad.


Enjoy!

Skaz

[fingerman]

Hello again Skaz,

I have taken some time again to play your newest prototype. Wow that certainly is a change and in my case it took some getting used to again. Your game has a steep learning curve and I think I need to use the shields more... kleep forgetting they exist . That being said, the change isn't a bad thing!

Just some thoughts:

• Still really enjoy the premise of outmanouvering enemies that come from behind, not your standard shmup.
• How about diagonal fixed position if two neighboring arrow keys are down simultaneously?
• Survival time = score, ok fine... how about a timer, so that you know how you are doing prior to death?
• Why not have changeing weapons occasionally, maybe depending on the last enemy you killed if you salvage their gun? Or additionally mounted in one direction with limited ammo and fired when you fire the turret i.e. a temporary perc...
• Some asteroid patterns are still impossibru (especially when that laser organ is directly behind you)!

One more thing: The download site still says that you fire with the right mouse biutton.

Take care, fingerman

[Xonatron]

So I finally tried out your game:




I died immediately before I knew what was happening. And pressing "R" would not reset the game for the first 30..60 seconds. Not sure why. I tried using an Xbox 360 controller and it didn't work. A dual-stick shmup really needs controller support. Keys do not aim accurately enough. I was somewhat lost on what to do the entire time I tried playing. Just watch the video! I didn't know how to kill the first enemy, if it was even possible with the controls. I generally felt out of control and the game felt unfair. I was overwhelmed. I think a solution to this is controls. And maybe don't have an enemy so tough right off the bat. Give a moment for the user to acquaint themselves with the game and its controls -- even to figure out which object on the screen they are controlling, before jumping full force. I think you have some nice graphics, and the gameplay needs to be hashed out!

Good job so far though. This has potential!

[Zorg]

I played the latest build for some minutes, but it felt very unfair and discouraging. Enemies and asteroids take many many hits before any effect occurs -> the turret feels powerless. I'd rather like to play a powerful ship which is able to wipe hordes of enemies.

I'd like
+ shooting diagonally
+ less asteroids, but from any direction (the asteroind warnings are pretty useless, at the moment )
+ weaker enemies, more enemies

[Xonatron]

I agree with zorg's input. Only replying about this as zorg mentioned asteroid warnings, which made me realize what they were. It was not something I understood natively. Hope this feedback helps!

[skaz]

Thanks for the replies!

@fingerman:

Yep, the shield is a core mechanic, without it it's really not possible to survive. I should find a way to make it clear and streamlined in the way it works. For now the whole survival stuff is really more an excuse to put the gameplay to the test than a final design decision. As for the diagonal shooting: it's in!
Alt weapons are also coming back, I'm trying to make the missile launcher useful. Some powerups modifying the way the turret operates could be welcome too, I'll work on that.
As for the asteroids, I'll remake the way they are spawned in a much clever way, guaranteeing that to some extents, it's POSSIBLE to make it through.

@Xonatron

Glad you gave it a shot! Thanks for the video, it's kinda weird to see someone else playing, but I guess it's the best way to figure out what works and what doesn't. First enemy is a mistake from my part, shouldn't have been there from the very start.
Controller support is in, but I'll have some more work to make it feels great, a key push and a joystick are tow very different things. Right now it's still binary, full speed or nothing, I will work on a way to control precisely the ship with the stick. Shooting on the other hand is great with the right stick.

@Zorg

Thanks for your time! I get what you felt, right now the difficulty doesn't ramp up so well, it's to hard to soon, and pretty imbalanced. Unfair situation occurs, I'll have to make sure it doesn't. I might go in the direction you mentioned, with an emphasis on the feeling of power, and more random asteroids from left and right might spice it up. Shooting diagonally is in.


To all of you, thanks again, I appreciate the time you put in the game and that you gave me your feedbacks. Next build will take all of that into account.

See you soon!

Skaz

[skaz]

Tired of polishing stuff, I gave up and allowed myself to revamp some graphical stuff... The turret was to small, not enough detailed, I didn't liked it that much. Here is a new version! It's also rotating while shooting, which is a small addition, but I enjoy doing those small details. As you can see, aiming is locked on 8 axis.

You'll also notice a new weapon, a shotgun. Short range, huge spread, and a HUGE recoil. the ship knock back is an interesting mechanic, I'll explore it. It makes it feel really powerful.



Not ready to release the next build yet, I'll need more time to make it meaningful... Se you soon!

[Xonatron]

Glad my feedback helped out!

[skaz]

Still working, I'm introducing a brand new feature to the game: Asteroid physics!

long story short, here's a gif:



Spent quite some time to program this stuff, I like the challenge. I'm not using a pre made physics engine, I do it for the purpose of learning, so, it's a good training. BUT far from perfect! So far the pushing part is OK, I still have to re implement damages on collisions depending on the speed of the objects. Slow pushing will be totally fine, fast collision, deadly. So, you can guess that pushing asteroids on enemies is a good way to go :p The "shotgun" has an amazing stopping power as you can see.

Physics is also working between ships, and bullets pushes ships too. Everything has a nice physicality, it's quite funny to push enemies on asteroids by colliding with them. You won't be able to test it before the start of the next week though.

Still a lot of stuff to do!

Skaz

[Zorg]

This looks cool. 

[Xonatron]

Looking much better!

[skaz]

Thanks!

Here it is, stick controls that controls like a stick , not buttons . There's a whole world between -1 and 1 



There's a system inside the controls logics that allow you to change direction pretty fast, when changing direction brutally. I maintained it with the precise controls. Change from a direction to the complete opposite still grants you this boost, so dodging is still fast, but moving slowly is possible too. I also corrected a mistake in my diagonal motion: now diagonal goes 45° diagonally, and you still can't bypass the speed limit. Thanks Pythagoras!

I worked on the collisions too. I kept the more or less physically accurate model when asteroids collide together, but I made a simple bump when ships collide with them. The bump will also occur between ships, taking weight and speed into account so only the faster/heavier one bumps the other. Crashing enemies on asteroid will be a fun game.

[Xonatron]

Here it is, stick controls that controls like a stick , not buttons . There's a whole world between -1 and 1 

Awesome!

[skaz]

Honest criticism leads to nice improvements

I stopped coding for a while and got to something I want to make for a long, long time and never touched: BACKGROUNDS. The current background is the only thing that's present since the very beginning, everything else was remade at least twice.

This is highly WIP, but you'll get the idea of what I'm trying to make. A lot more rings, refinements and hand-placed stars to do before calling it done, I'm taking inspiration from this picture. Space offers so many beautiful pictures.

[Xonatron]

I am a big fan of your pixel art.

[EvilDingo]

You have to shoot the asteroids way, way too many times. Just hit them once, or maybe twice for the big ones, and be done with it. There is no enjoyment watching them flash over and over.