TIGSource Forums

(http://i52.tinypic.com/20jmlbn.png)
(Working title)

What is Invaders: Corruption?

Invaders should be my personal take on the tried and true genre of arena-shoot em ups. It will involve several fresh Ideas to spice up the core gameplay mechanic, to add replay-ability and new gameplay mechanics for the player to cope with.

The game will feature an retro look, which besides being popular nowadays, also serves well to highlight the game's main feature:

Procedural content
Most content for this game will be generated on the fly. The generation will based on a seed value, which the player provides. Giving an indivudal experience to everyone playing. Of course you can exchange particularly interesting seed values with your friends.

This means obvious things such as ship graphics, effects and enemies will be generated procedurally. This means for example an almost infinite (Okay okay ... 33,554,432 only!) amount of enemy invader looks. It will also mean emergent AI behaviors as AI "parts" will be mixed together procedurally as well. Which brings me to:

The corruption
The name giving feature of this game is the so-called corruption. It will slowly spread from corruption-nodes which the player must keep in control, to remain in command of the arena.

The corruption will glitch sprites (think NES sprite errors) as it goes, turning normal enemy invaders into unpredictable hazards. Stats such as Health, AI and appearance will be mixed amongst other nearby corrupted invaders, resulting in newer stronger enemies. To survive the player will have to adapt new strategies.

The approach
I will be updating this as I go along, sometimes quickly sometimes there will be probably draughts of anything happening at all, as I also have a full-time job to take care of. None the less I'm 100% intent of reaching my goal of a GM release!

Content and gameplay wise, I will be referring to my design document, and if that fails I will make it up as I go along. Gathering input & criticism from few selected pre-alpha testers. Later in development, I plan to extend the group of testers to the whole of TIGsource.

Okay, okay -- I wanna play!
No problem, recently I released an alpha-demo:

Grab the latest version/info -> here (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=15919.0)!

Without further ado, here's the first working screenshot: Showing the working "basic" invader generator. Each invader is generated in a 3 pass process:
First the geometry is created based on a ruleset for each invader type. Then the sprite is drawn and colorized and stored in memory. Last but not least the glow-map is being calculated and applied to each invader sprite.

(http://i56.tinypic.com/qnqplh.jpg)

Looks interesting.

Those generated sprites look positively awesome, and the idea and gameplay behind this sound fun. Looking forward to new updates.

I love pixels with that fake arcade glow on them.

Progress Report
Okay looks like I reached some milestones in the process of making this game and I'd like to share those with you. I'm not sure if I can always regularly update - but I'll try.

Of course you can provide your input anytime, so feel free!

Technical Stuff
I managed to port most of the Earth 3D engine over to the new game unscathed. This also means I have now a modular engine for any future game productions that I had in mind.

I also extended the engine to allow me to render to textures, thus allowing for vital frame-buffer effects like Bloom, Depth-of-field, Motionblur and others. It already runs at a nice clip, even on my Atom Netbook. Of course there isn't much game going on right now so that might change.

For the sake of development speed & cross-plattform-ness I decided to ditch DirectX for now. I might put it back later when there is demand for it.

Game Contents
I started branching off various cases for the invader generator, allowing for generation of varied types of enemies and player ships. Pictured here are some kind of MiniBosses. I'm still unsure wether they will make it into the final game or not.
(http://i56.tinypic.com/2dqvzpu.png)

A quick test shows that my snake locomotion does what it should do, so expect the staple-of-shoot em up's in there, too. Snakes and centipedes that is!
(http://i53.tinypic.com/fa6blg.png)

The particle manager also does fine, is tried and true from my previous game "Earth is a 3D Planet" and thus doesn't even break a sweat with 2.000 particles on screen. Good! :)
(http://i53.tinypic.com/s3lxs2.png)


The glory shot
A quick shot of my engine put together so far. A couple of generated invaders chasing my .. erm. white block around a mostly empty playfield. The glowing squares are created in the back buffer and are thus smooth/low res.

(http://i54.tinypic.com/aloopk.jpg)

 :monoclepop:

Very interesting! Will this be free or paid for? What platform will it be on?

It will be free as in "Beer", so please buy me a lot!  ;)

It will be on OS X, Linux and Windows. A.k.a. for everyone! :)

Are you going to put in a warpy grid or something?

Because arena shooters haven't done that enough have they?

Looks really cool! I suggest you let players enter their seeds with alphanumeric characters, which are then converted to an integer and then used as the proper seed. It would make seeds easier to share and more memorable.

Sweet looking generation and especially colours.

It's great that you're going multiplatform.

That's already the case. :)

A seed can be any 20character-alphanumeric word.

Tesselode: Nope. Maybe something comparable, but nope no grid.

Also thanks for the kind words everyone! I'll try to keep on the ball!

Quick Worklog digest:
-Graphics engine mostly completed, that means frame-buffer effects, "pseudo-shaders" and other effects are now available at my disposal.
-Fixed a couple of bugs as they cropped up, there's probably dozens more in there but hey.
-Player sprite generation!
-Rudimentary Sound/Music tracker system.
-Support to upload your generative "Avatar" and scores to my server online, via a strongly encrypted string that gets decrypted server-side to thwart hackers. The server-side PHP scripts still need work though.


But there's also a couple of "setbacks":
-Namely the player generation. I first wrote an incredibly elaborate algorithm (A) that generates a VAST array of different spaceships, but I found them kind of clashing with the general theme of the game. So I stuck with a more predictable algorithm (B) that results in very cool ships as well, but they are all kind of similar.

Don't take my word for it and have a look:
(http://i52.tinypic.com/5kiyj5.jpg)
What would you chose, my dear readers? I'm open for ideas!  :)　[I might use the "inferior" algo for enemy generation, as there are still 3 kinds of enemy without a graphic now.]


On the sound front:
I'm going to be using one of those, and see if I can eke all the game's sounds out of it:
(http://i51.tinypic.com/34gom74.jpg)
(For those that don't know - this is a MOOG Analogue synthesizer, as featured in the DIY GAKKEN magazine.)


Last but not least, a bit of eyecandy for all of you:
(http://i54.tinypic.com/vgt1g.png)
(I'm not happy with large parts of the effects and other things, yet but I guess I have to keep you in the loop! :) )

As been said, this looks utterly amazing. I would love a classic space invaders mode as I'm kinda fed up with arena shooters. Aside from the procedural generation of enemies and player ships, will there be something unique in terms of gameplay?

Thanks for all the flattery. I hope to meet all these expectations here. Better get back to work. ;)

-Yes, there will be a unique element, and some different ideas for enemies. The main unique element being the name giving corruption. Which will slowly infest the arena and modify the characteristics of invaders (their looks, AI and stats will be jumbled in a semi-random manner). Also I want to try some new kinds of enemies (Mine layers, Enemies that flee after seeing their "mates" die, and enemies that will only attack when they are in a clump of 10 or more enemies...)

-Last but not least I will want to reward risky play, as that was fun in Earth3D. Like bouncing off the boundary while closely missing an enemy and sniping another one across the field in one swift move = extra big points. (With tony hawk-esque announcement)

-And again yes, there will be a classic mode, which will also work as a kind of introduction to the various kind of enemies. At least that's how I wrote it up. I have to see how it all comes together.

It may not all be in the first version tough, as I'm a strong believer in RERO. (Release early, release often.)

Devlog
-Completed: Positional Stereo Audio
-Completed: 11 different enemy types with graphics and AI
-Completed: Graphic engine and Frame-Buffer Core
-Completed: OOP Main Menu Code & Ini-File writing/loading
-Added: Two easter-eggs ;)
-Started: Balancing
-Started: Work on Corruption

To Do:
-Add the final enemy type - A flocking/swarming enemy type that will only attack when with others. Otherwise it will feel
-Add Corruption!
-Make Player's Shield Functional
-Add Online-Highscores (Server side Scripts)
-Add Mission Mode (Defend your "Server" etc.)
-Add Classic Mode (Space Invaders)
-Tons of Balancing

Excursion: Communicating power
Now when I say power I mean RAW BRUTAL power. Almost every game contains items of varying power. So how do you communicate to the player that he just set off or encountered something powerful.

After some 2-3 hours of experimenting with how to implement the "Smart Bomb" I came upon these findings:

-Speed: if it takes forever to unwind it doesn't seem very powerful.
-Sense of scale: In a game where every explosion fills 1/4 of the screen, one that fills the entire screen doesn't feel that powerful by comparison.
-Brightness: Bright means hot/painful
-Sound: Use sound, or lack thereof (There may be no air for the sound to traverse through after a powerful blast.) Use deep sounds
-Physics: Big explosions push stuff away - don't spray your particles randomly, push them away from the explosion.
-Effect: Last but not least, if it looks powerful, it also should bring the expected results. A giant explosion that only kills 3 enemies feels unsatisfactory.

And thus, without further ado the results of my hard work:

The frazzled player sets off a bomb. The force of the initial blast distorts the entire screen.
(http://i52.tinypic.com/2uiits6.png)

The shockwave unfolds, together with various particle effects. Meanwhile the screen distortion subsides.
(http://i51.tinypic.com/15e8mtj.png)

The shockwave crushes everything in its path. Note that there are no explosion sprites drawn. This is because this way it weirdly enough seems even more powerful. Probably because the blast pushes the away the air as well.
(http://i55.tinypic.com/2s1sklc.png)


Aand that's it for today. Hope you like it! :)
PS: Don't mind the FPS count, I was mashing the screenshot button (Yes the game has one!) like crazy to capture the effect, which lasts maybe 0.7sec.

I demand video capture of that explosion STAT! :D

Looks really good, I love the idea of procedurally generated AI and enemies... Actually had a little thread going for it in the design section a month or two ago.

As to the player generation Algorithms... I think I like A best, but maybe not for player ships. I love variety, but B seems to work best in terms of readability, which is a must for aiming and the like. So B would work for players, but I think A should make an appearance somewhere in the game... (maybe a boss-like that has really nice AI and controls like a player?)

Keep up the good work! Now I have to go find this Earth 3D you speak of  :whome:

Will do later, right now I'm at work so maybe I should keep a low profile.  :whome:

But none the less I will post a quick progress log:
-Cleaned up some code from the weekend coding frenzy (Bugs Fixed, neater code)

-Optimized the particle engine, now accessing GL direcly netting a whopping 70% speed increase!

-Added my last (planned) enemy. A "boids" like AI, that flocks together to form swarms. While each individual is passive and poses no threat, a swarm will actively chase the player. While being swarmed the AI gains some perks like speed etc. Thus the player has to watch out for "clumps" of liniment swarms and dispose of them before they flock. I'd show some screenshot but it's mostly being chased by white boxes, for now.

-Tweaked the menu and ini reading code further, almost ready for primetime.

-Laid out the classes for the AI director. It will monitor how you are doing and thus spawn enemies/extras or nothing at all accordingly. I want to give the player short breaks in the action if there was a "close call" recently.

And that's it. :) (video coming later via Edit, watch this space!)

Tigsourcers, your wish is my command.  :)
As promised here's the video showing the bomb (in slow-motion even!) and a bit more:

Vimeo here: http://www.vimeo.com/15391555 (http://www.vimeo.com/15391555) (Meh quality)

Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdqLwcXUdXU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdqLwcXUdXU) (Even worse quality)

Right now I'm super busy between work and moving to my new apartment, so I don't get around to doing much updates to the code. Also the moving boxes are starting to stack on my desk, and I very well might be without internet for a while. So I thought I'd better brief you before everything goes dark for a while.
 
-I've been doing some code cleanups here and there and refined the flocking code for the "Boid" type invader.

-I've also sketched up some method to either do the power-ups procedurally as well, or a good way to redraw them - as I'm not quite content with the current look.

-Lastly I have implemented some cooool looking  :addicted: new physics-based feature which is mostly eyecandy-for now. I'll disclose it later to give you something to look forward to.

The explosions look out of place; I hope you change them.

Also, this is looking a lot like a Geometry Wars clone. Hopefully you'll avoid the wrath of the creators.

Is that the game of life working as a trail?

OMG, I want this :3

Yeah I'm still playing around with those. Maybe I will pixellate them like the shockwaves, seems like a cheap way out.

Oh and I hope not to be a "clone", certainly I have cherry picked some elements I liked from the game but the overall "feel" when you play is already quite different. The same could be said for Robotron, which I played a lot back in the day. :) And hopefully not to sound like an ass, but when you say clone I think more along those lines: http://www.pixelprospector.com/2010/08/annihilation/ (http://www.pixelprospector.com/2010/08/annihilation/)


Thanks I'll try to hurry up - even with moving and other things going on.  :)

And yes that's Conway's game of life, it is one of 10 selectable backgrounds for the game. (Okay 9 as "OFF" isn't really a background, heh.)

I downloaded that :P Gives me something to do while I wait for yours :D

Also, I think the explosions work quite well... Would have to play it to be sure though... *hint cough*

Also, if you end up looking for playtesters, I would be more than happy to help :)

640KB is enough for everyone - NOT! _{I am aware Bill Gates didn't every say that fabled line, but eh.}
The game's source-code (plain text, no art assets) has reached 653KByte today! Most of it is the procedural generation stuff. (In comparison Earth3D was 379KByte.)

Update time:
Sorry for the dearth of updates guys, but as usual life has taken prevalence over game development. That is with moving around the country, a new job and what not. But fear not - I am extremely dedicated to finishing this, as I have with all my games so far. Well all but one.

Additional Gameplay Mode! DATA DEFENSE
Defend valuable data nodes against an onslaught of invaders, corrupted data fragments and other mischief. Download the valuable data to gain upgrades and of course HiScore. The nodes will be upgradeable with shields, turrets and whatever else I come up with.
This mode coexists with the arena shooter mode that is still in there.

Right now I'm still not 100% happy with how the nodes and the cables connecting them to the player look, but I'm sure I will tweak it to look nice over time, of course any additional ideas and input are highly appreciated! :)

To Do:
- Revise online HiScore system
- Complete Data Defense & Arena Shooter modes
- Add algorithm to generate Data-Node add on graphics like turrets etc...
- Generate new seed with a nice GUI, rather than kicking the player out of the game
- Hunt any remaining bugs

Done:
- Make it run FAST - it runs with 50-117FPS with almost everything enabled on my netbook now :)
- Add the three last enemies bringing the total to a diverse 15
- Various visual tweaks and tweening. All effects now fade in and decay properly
- Add fully user customizeable control, give the user the chance to tweak every GFX and gameplay setting
- Music, 12 retro-esque music tracks add a nice soundtrack to the action
- Dynamic music scaling, the music adjusts wether things get hectic or not
- Stereo positional Audio, Unique sound generation - behold the power of STEREO
- Player Shield Fully added and implemented can overload the enemies shield's/ laser grids on contact
- Some basic balancing, AI director fixes
- Bug fixes by the truckload

Screenshot time!

The cables can either be affected by gravity (Inverted here):
(http://i53.tinypic.com/102phrl.png)

Or be moved in a beizier-spline like fashion.
(http://i53.tinypic.com/35m2w09.png)
(http://i51.tinypic.com/34ysjf4.png)


Which one do you prefer TIGsourcers?

PS: I'd like to show it off in motion later, also maybe some of the new enemy types..

Just wanted to stop by and say that this looks great, and I really like the music you have in the trailer. As far as the tethers go, I think I like the second one, but would really have to see it in motion  ;)

I prefer the inverted gravity ones :)

To help the decision, I made a quick hacky video for you: http://www.vimeo.com/15589634
I disabled some effects and all of the enemies, so that you can see it better. So don't wonder if the game seems empty.

What if you made the effect of gravity subtle? So the chains would slowly pull taut upwards if you stopped, but they can be yanked around if you're moving.

Ooooh... its close between method 1 and 3 for me... Can't decide.... umm... UMM.... UMMMMMM...  :handshakeL: :'( :handshakeR:

I think I have to go with numba 1.

Same here. Both 1 and 3 are good, but 1 seems more normal.

I made something:
(http://i56.tinypic.com/6octwn.jpg)
Put your ATARI 2600 Joystick Controllers in the fridge and get ready for some smoking arcade action!

In other news:
-I got someone aboard to help me with the sound of things and general feedback: John Nesky Thanks!
-Internet score submission is completed, both server-side and client scripts are up and running
-The AI director is fully implemented and functional, it also directs sound effects like a "tension music loop" when you are under pressure
-I added two new kinds of enemy, one smart the other passive
-Another kind of background, for your tweaking pleasure
-I tweaked the animations of all entities to use tweening and inter-frame blending
-I started balancing out the game, this is probably a longer and drawn out process

The game is definitely getting there and I believe that, if I and John don't get sidetracked, a public beta test for initial feedback is now in the not-so far future.

In completely unrelated news, one of my previous games -- Blobbit -- suddenly has developed a huge Czech following, starting with this (http://www.novinky.cz/internet-a-pc/hry-a-herni-systemy/211924-hrajeme-zdarma-blobbit-vybuchujici-balonky.html) rave review. I have no idea why...  :o

it's only been 3 days, but.... How's it coming? :)

I'm not dead - I swear! (Everything, save the fonts, in the below screenshot was procedurally generated.)
(http://i54.tinypic.com/5n4vt2.png)

Yeah - basically work life has taken over and claimed huge swaths of development time. Work sucks currently, too - thus being a huge drain on my creative "battery". Also I'm jittering around issues such as balancing & the final implementation of corruption etc.

The good news is though, that the game as it is now, is fully playable, has 95% of the sounds implemented and is very fun albeit soul-crushingly hard at times.

Development wise, I made some more gameplay tweaks, giving it a more gradual difficulty curve, also I have added better net-book support (Sub 800x600 resolutions), fixed some bugs here and there - got online scoring ready for "prime time" and coded up a quick score-display website.

Also - I went out and bought my very first USB gamepad, went on to add joypad support. Even though it supports analog input, I find it quite hard to stay alive using the joypad... maybe, I just suck with it.  :-X

The plan at this point is: Turn off some features (the tower-defense-esque mode) for the public demo, get that demo out as soon as I get the new sounds. I want to get some feedback ASAP and establishing a feedback-release-cycle that will ultimately result in the final version.

For the first version, I guess I'll be shooting for next weekend, if not earlier.

I was gonna say release now and let us monkeys give you balance feedback :)

Okay, okay - I give up!  ;)

First of all: Stuff that is missing/not even close to final:

• Data defense mode is NOT in. Right now it's ultra-bugged & crashy. I don't even let my closed-beta testers have it.
• Some sounds, although partner-in-crime John Nesky is working very quickly, some sfx are still missing.
• Resolution control, requires ini diving for now, is quite buggy
• Music is ripped from my previous game and thus unfitting. Any help welcome! ;)
• Corruption, as the game is quite hard already and I'm out of ideas how to implement it. Guys?

Nothing is set in stone, everything is subject to change!
Also: this game is hard. -- I yell at my computer hard. I warned you!  :handanykey:>:(
I am in the process of toning it down, but it still sometimes can get very hard/confusing.
As this is an arena shooter I believe that's a good thing - in small doses, which is sadly not always the case.

Any constructive feedback is welcome! (Graphics, Gameplay, Sound, Music... ok. but subject to change anyway.)
Deconstructive feedback, too -- as long as you make a good effort.  ;)

[Links redacted see first post]

Online HI-Score list available in-game or here: -> Click (http://www.manuelvandyck.com/scores/) <-

PPS: Creative ideas for a new, more fitting name welcome!

If you downloaded the previous versions, please re-download this version(748)! The last versions contained a serious crash bug!

Hm...asteroids-style controls? At least they're not too bad since the ship doesn't have so much inertia.

The seed does seem to have an affect on gameplay, although different seeds don't always generate very different gameplay experiences.

Also, you might want to consider using WASD/mouse instead of asteroids-y controls.

Very cool game! Love the generated enemies! :)

It runs flawlessly on my Mac.
and I am at the top of the leaderboard! :P

It is difficult, but fun! I kind of miss having sideway movement, but I guess this also makes it more challenging.

Although, maybe this part is under development: In the control options there are settings for moving left/right, but they act like turn left/right. This makes the game far more difficult when playing with a joystick (or with kb-only controls), since you lack the freedom mouse aiming provides. I'd suggest implementing free aim with gamepad/joystick, and perhaps only have "keyboard+mouse" and "joystick" controls.

Another suggestion: Mouse pointer can get lost in the chaos, and it can make you turn direction when going forward (when you pass the pointer). Since the pointer looks like an enemy (same size etc), maybe making it stand out more could solve this.

Overall, the gameplay is great! Looking forward for the data defense mode!

I quite enjoyed it, but for me it seemed safer not to move because I could only move in the direction I was shooting. I would enjoy some sort of strafing mechanic and I think it would improve the game that much more... Oh and #1 on the online highscore table! (Not for long I'm sure)

Really cool so far! a few notes:
 * The ship's physics seemed pretty stiff (acceleration was slow and such). Can they be loosened up?
 * I'd have to echo the desire for a strafe mechanic. A good way to implement it might be to have the ship point to the cursor, and the WADS keys strafe/move forward and back.
 * The main difficulty comes from quantity of enemies and oddness of control scheme (for an arena shooter anyway). If you made dropped the initial maount of enemies and made it ramp up over time, then it would be way better.
 * Corruption could be implemented by either making the enemies "smarter" (dodges your shots and homes in on you) or reducing the power of the ship (shots dont last as long, weaker, maneuvering is tougher).
 * My Xbox 360 controller doesn't seem to work with the game. This may be a system issue, but it works with a game i'm developing (on XNA).

You are right about the seeds not affecting gameplay much, basically I had to prune it way-way back in order to stop the game from becoming seriously unbalanced, as some seeds were ridiculously easy to play while some others basically meant insta-death.

It's a so-so solution, like many other compromises I had to make. Ideas welcome! :)

Thanks for the kind words!

Yeah the joystick and keyboard support are only halfway there. I kind of need keyboard support as some of "my" players only have a keyboard available (track-pad), and if I took it out the complaining started. I will try to improve it though. My ideal for joystick control would be FPS-like dual-stick control.

As for the mouse pointer getting lost. Have you tried using another cursor? There are like 12 different ones, some color cycling ones too for extra attention. It's hidden away in the controls menu. Maybe I should make it more visible...

Thanks.

Controls: Yeah ... see below..


Hey you're the first one to complain about the actual physics vs the lack of strafing. Is it the inertia or the slow build up of the acceleration of the ship?

As for your XBOX 360 controller not working, yeah Joystick support is super-rudimentary atm. Honestly at this point you're not missing out. What's your OS though? And how many pads do you have connected?

Strafing Controls:
Okay I decided to give this some focus, as basically everyone said this more or less.

First: I guess I should explain my "intent", which was to have a more "haptic" control of the ship. I'm not a big fan of the controls of most arena shooters where the input is direct and entirely frictionless. Besides being twitchy, there is little finesse involved. I wanted the ship to feel more like, well, a ship.

Obviously this is not working as I had hoped.

Now I have added strafing. Strafing obeys still the same physical rules as the rest of the controls, which I've also loosened up a bit.
But - I find this control scheme to be even more confusing than before. Maybe that is just me, though.

A game is ultimately about game-play in the end, so if nothing helps I will probably have to stick with the tried and true here.

Anyway try it out and let me know if it's a step in the right direction or not!
Thanks!

I updated both versions now, see the original post.

Mainly the inertia of the ship, it feels like revving up revving up revving up top speed! instead of an actual acceleration :)

win7 64 bit and only the Xbox controller.

Regarding procedurally generated gameplay: What if you generated the gameplay like before then ran some metrics on the generated gameplay and tweaked a few stats to compensate? So if the enemies have high health and the players gun has low fire rate, then you come up with some solutions (like skewing up the player gun's damage or reducing enemy ship speeds or something) and pick one at random.

OK, tried the new controls. They're very interesting, though i'm not confident that they're the best setup. I'll test them some more.

The loosened up ship physics feels almost perfect! Much better :handthumbsupL:

Hmm strange, what does it do when you configure the controls? You have configured the controls right?
Does it show blank text (buttons not recognized) or doesn't it react at all?

As for the control scheme - yeah I'm also not that hot on it. I'll try to think of a better solution. Ideas welcome as usual. :)
Glad you're at least liking the loosened up controls.

The generative gameplay, yeah I've been going back and forth about that a ton. I actually tried compensation mechanisms like you stated but it always ended up being iffy, probably because different enemies required a different amount of compensation and so on. I never was really happy with it. In the end I opted for pragmatism & predictability.

PS: The above download links now contains the updated versions.
It has the new - experimental! - control scheme.
I made some minor additional fixes to the HUD when you beat the HI-Score and some other small tweaks.
Colorful explosions are also back, I like them better. Sped up the animation a bit.
Small data fragments retained the dusty black & white version, though.
Also fixed a really embarrassing Windows XP crash. (Read an array beyond what I initialized... )

Really fun game ! Proud to be 3rd on the online hightscore =p

I just find that the canon's bonuses are a lot more powerful than others, but it's a problem in a lot of shooter I played :/

(Little bug ? I paused the game ~20mn, and when I came back and restart playing, I had no music. (on windows 7 64)

Edit : Ok I'm addicted. (I'm not 3rd anymore :p)

WOAH what happened to the controls. I don't think when people wanted strafing they wanted it to be relative to the ship. Or maybe they did, I don't know.

I think it would be good if the ship had Geometry Wars-y controls except with inertia. That would be pretty unique.

I've always held the opinion that FPS-like controls don't work in top-down games. This control scheme is yet another proof of that.

Personally I think you should try something like 8-directional movement with space-like inertia along with mouse aiming. Just make it so that changing direction can still be done relatively fast so that players can still pull of tight dodging maneuvers at relative ease. The main reason why arena shooters have very precise controls is exactly for the fact that you need to be able to dodge tons of stuff, and this game certainly has tons of stuff to dodge. And since you reward the player for tight dodges, the more reason there is to have a very solid control mechanism.

Anyway, with that said, the visuals are looking very good. Though I only managed to get one powerup (the double cannon), which wasn't really all that exciting... Some pickup suggestions would be temporary powerups (multiplier x4, piercing bullets, limited ammo superweapons) and stuff like a shield etc.

Once again I'll toss out a quickly banged together windows only experimental control-scheme. Sorry for the lack of "real" updates to the thing, but I am super loaded down with work. Sorry folks!

This time is's the classical 8-WAY control mixed with mouse aim. Joystick and keyboard "standalone" have 8 way control, too. (And hence are easier to play, methinks)

I'm not sure if I like this new scheme, but I'd love to hear your opinions! Thanks! :)

[Links Redacted]

PS: For fairness sakes, this version uses a different online HI-Score list & checksum, so don't be surprised if your previous scores don't show up. Also it will delete your old score-file - sorry about that!

If you downloaded the previous versions, please redownload! The last versions contained a serious crash bug! (I didn't allocate memory for a certain sample that plays when a laser Mine is spawned.)

The ship is a lot easier to control now. But to make it more interesting, you could give the ship more inertia (and have it accelerate slower).

Hey Tesselode,
Thank you for your continuous feedback, it's what makes this community so great!
I just coincidentally added more inertia and a slower acceleration curve to the current control scheme, without reading your post - even. I also buffed the speed of some "unique" enemies slightly to accommodate for the players newly enhanced evasion skills.

Also I fixed a serious crash bug, due to a stupid mistake of mine. Please consider redownloading. Cheers!  :beer:

You - my very observant friend - are right! Fixed, thanks! :)
vvvv

The windows link should end in win, not windows. :)

Re: difficulty. It just occured to me: you said that when seeds affected gameplay more, you ended up with some levels that were easy and some that were hard. This seems fine to me, as long as you categorize seeds by high score. Tie that in with my next suggestion and you could realy have something here :)

Finally, i'd like to have an option where it will rotate randomly through a seed list i provide (a new one for each game). I found a coule of really cool ones and am looking for more! :)

This is by far the best control scheme so far. but...


...Seconded

Also, one problem... I love the deep sound effects, but when I literally jumped outta my chair when I died. And I died on purpose! I turned the volume way up (I wear headphones by the way) so that I could hear the gun blasts and the explosions, but when I died that sound was just so high pitched that I think it broke my ears lol. Still, gameplay is looking fantastic and I am enjoying it very much.

Have you come up with any ideas for the corruption aspect? I was thinking maybe something along the lines of it spawning little nodes that don't move and these nodes produce small weak enemies in high numbers until they are destroyed... just my 2 cents. Again, great game!

Yeah what you said was basically my initial idea it all started out on.
Well other than the fact, which you just discovered yourself if I'm not mistaken ;), that generative stuff can look dang cool.

Basically my main hang up right now is how I want to share seeds. I already have the interface and code in place to click on a online score to grab that seed.

But: I'd like to give people some privacy. Because they might put things into seeds which are of personal nature, which they inherently don't want to (involuntarily) share with the internet. Now I could encode seeds - but that in turn would make them look rather boring....
Ho hum!

In other news, I think I have what may be the semi-final control scheme.
I'll package it together with some GUI and Menu inconsistency fixes (can now right-click all toggle-ables to toggle) - probably later today or tomorrow.

CC: Sound issues. Yeah I can see where you are coming from, and have some other "complaints" from other testers as well, so I'll forward this to John.

A simple idea to me is you add a "seed is private" box. Then when you go to send the high scores, you hash the seed and if that box is checked, you only send the hash. Otherwise you send both.

So can we have more varied random generated gameplay now? :beg: ;)

BTW: there were SFX? i didn't hear them... :/

P.S. you inspired me to make this thing (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=15536.0). :)

holy shit, i read through the whole topic on work today (yea, totally counterproductive i know) and my fingers really started to itch when lookin over screens and videos and man, this game is sweeeeeet, when i finally got the chance to play it.

my seed was holyshit, now i'll try something different, to see if i notice any changes in randomness  ;D anyway, it ran smooth, fluid, it looks awesome, it sounds awesome and it's awesome in general. can't wait to play that data defend game mode  :)

great game!

I recommend RCIX or VomitOnLino for seeds :)

I also just came up with an awesome idea: what if you borrowed a mechanic from Burnout and made near misses and such give you some sort of super meter which you can use to spit clouds of bullet-laden death at enemy swarms whenever you want?

finally nailed the highscore 8) :handthumbsupL: :handmetalL:

Hey guys I apologize for the long time without updates, but it seems that work life caught up with me.  :-X
Even so I still managed to plod along nicely updating the game steadily and it's coming together nicely.
Oh and also I have a new composer aboard: Carlo Castellano!

He's writing the absolutely fab music for the game now. Make sure you have a listen at his Site (http://carlocastellano.cc/invaders-corruption/).

Then there is a huge laundry list of new features - such as:
(http://i55.tinypic.com/33y3syx.jpg)

New Version - Coming Tomorrow!
It contains tons of stuff, but see for yourself:
-Overall gameplay balancing - starts out easier gets harder (More perks, Collision checks more lenient in favor of the player)
-Corruption finally implemented (Nodes, Corrupted enemies, Infection of other invaders)
-Two new enemy types, some other enemies changed
-Player and "Spinner" generator tweaked (More interesting shapes)
-Online hi-scores improved (Better ranking, Playtime tracking, Monthly Scores)
-Seed sharing, Seed catalogue (Grab seeds from the on/off-line hi-score list)
-Frenzy mode added (Near misses, Close Encounters and other dangerous maneuvers fill a 'Frenzy' bar)
-More dangerous moves are rewarded, such as: shooting enemies at extremely close range, or rebounding of the border to evade enemies
-Seed influence on gameplay strengthened, a bit more random, less deterministic - gameplay
-Better joystick input (Better analog input support)
-Explosions and mayhem! Graphics tweaked fore more eye-candy
-More and better animations. Score is animated now.
-One all-new power-up
-HUD Revised, Now uses final graphics
-New sounds, old sounds revised & improved
-New Logo, new Icon
-Completely new soundtrack, featuring a whopping 8 tracks - courtesy of Carlo Castellano!
-Many more easter-eggs for you to uncover
-Main menu, about-screen typography fixes
-All menu options (Resolution etc. functional)
-The usual laundry list of technical improvements & fixes (Slowdown mode gains 9-12fps on netbooks and low-spec cps)

Hope to see you here again soon! Cheers!  :beer: Small teaser. (http://vimeo.com/16614445)

There's only one word i can use for this:

 :-*

It's here! Go and grab it now, while it's hot! :handmetalL:
Oh and if you have feedback please consider that my personal deadline for this game is the 20th of this month. (November)
Not that this should deter any kind of feedback, but just so that you won't be cross in case your awesome suggestion doesn't make the deadline.

Why such a rush?
The Japanese magazine MacPeople decided to have a (probably small-ish) feature on some of my games together with all of them on their cover DVD. The magazine always comes out on the 29th of each month, thus the hurry to get something good to them in time. I don't normally do this but the free publicity seems well worth it.
[...]
This is also why the 'Data Defense' mode won't make it until post v1.0. I would rather have a very polished shooter mode than two half-assed game modes in my game - and I think/hope you agree. :)

Okay without further ado here the downloads:
Grab the latest version/info -> here (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=15919.0)!

Well, first things first.  It's gorgeous. Now the negatives,  I know other people asked for it, but I'm not a fan of the weightiness of the player.  Personally, I feel that in an arena-shooter like this, the ship has to be an extension of the player, i.e. the control needs to be tight and crisp. There were more than a few times where I was moving in a direction, an enemy spawned on my path, and I wasn't able to correct in time. 
Other than that, I'm not sure if I didn't last long enough (although I did last long enough to get above 85,000 twice), but I'd like a few more enemy types.  Unless I'm incorrect there seem to be 3 (the random floaters, the followers, and the corrupted) current types. I feel like one or two more behaviors would add a nice bit of variety.
Anyway, these are just nitpicky critiques, and you have something really special here.  You are certainly an inspiration to me. 

Thank you very much!
I'm checking out your procedural Zelda-thing out atm. Nice! :)

Well the weightiness of the ship is obviously intentional and is actually part of the gameplay as in such that there are upgrades, which make the player's ship faster and more agile. So I'm kind of opposed to throw it out of the window completely and go the route of every other arena shooter, where I feel that I'm controlling a weightless cursor. (Direct input yields direct results, no physics.)
But, none the less I can probably make it feel less weighty in the beginning.

Is there anything specific that makes you feel this way about the controls? Besides the weight of the ship?

There are actually dozens of different enemy types and behaviors in the game - a total of 18 behaviors in 10 enemy types.
Also there are 10 different power ups, and 5 different ways to get Frenzy. So I hope that this, together with the seeds, will make for enough variety until I get around to implement the 'Data Defense' mode.

This is looking brilliant, and done in BlitzMax too! It's a great language.  :beer:

I just played the new version, and it's certainly a lot more fun and balanced and satisfying than it used to be. I'm not sure what you did. :P

But I still haven't figured out what corruption has to do with it.

Warning! It's very addictive :o

(http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/1899/corruptionscrn201011140.th.png) (http://img146.imageshack.us/i/corruptionscrn201011140.png/) (http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/1899/corruptionscrn201011140.th.png) (http://img823.imageshack.us/i/corruptionscrn201011140.png/)

We need to fix something yet, but any feedback on music is wellcome too.

The game runs in Linux... kind of...  :'(
(http://i54.tinypic.com/246owet.png)

Just posted: version 0.7.9.9!
With mostly incremental stuff. All links have been updated, or grab it in this post:
-Should fix some problems with the soundtrack by using a new compression algorithm, better mixing
-Also the shuffle function now won't ever repeat a track until all tracks have played at least once.
-Fixes runaway generation of the starfield and grid backgrounds when changing seeds, no more washed out colors
-The background choices of the user are now retained more reliably
-Some minor gameplay balancing stuff (difficulty curve made more gradual for post 750k scores)

Grab the latest Mac version -> here (http://www.manuelvandyck.com/corruption_alpha_799_mac.dmg)! [10.5MB]
Grab the latest Windows version -> here (http://www.manuelvandyck.com/corruption_alpha_799_win.zip)![9.6MB]

where could we learn more about this procedural generation of ships - from the "how to do it" angle?
it gives me an idea on what I could aim to do, which doesn't concern spaceships or anything that looks similiar actually, but hmmm... you inspired me.

any chance you could point me in the right direction?

@by MSLF
I think this is a good starting point. 
http://www.davebollinger.com/works/pixelspaceships/

The methodology is solid, all you need to do is change the template to follow and you can generate some pretty neat stuff.

Really? I'M ASTOUNDED  :tearsofjoy: