TIGSource Forums

INVADERS CORRUPTION - TRAILER (http://vimeo.com/15391555)
(http://i51.tinypic.com/nbejgz.png)
(http://i55.tinypic.com/fn8g3a.png)
After I had a nice homely devlog going on here (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=14874.0), the deadline is dawning upon me and it's time to hear what you guys think!
I'm super psyched -- and I'm sure my partners in crime, are too! :beer:


About the game
Invaders: Corruption is a take on the tried-and-true arena shooter genre. It aims to expand upon the genre with some evolutionary steps and some stuff that hasn't been tried before. This, of course, means there are some unique bits and quirks about the game, for one the control scheme which has inertia which people either seem to love or hate. But the main focus is:


Procedural Content
That's right! Almost everything in the game you can see has been generated procedurally by the 'Seed' that you initially provide. You can change the seed any time, grab new ones from the HI-Score list and share it with your friends. Besides appearance it also affects the flow and, to an extent the difficulty of the game.


Game Credits
Code/Direction/GFX   - Me
Sounds/Pewpew        - John Nesky
Music/Composing       - Carlo Castellano


About your feedback
I'll happily receive any feedback for this game, but as I have an important date coming up on the 29th, where I will be published & linked in a printed magazine, (wohooo!) I might not manage to cram in all your valuable feedback in time to sync up with the mag release.
Still, rest assured, your voice will be heard none the less!


EDIT: GO HERE INSTEAD (http://invaders.manuelvandyck.com/).

ONLINE SCORES (http://invaders.manuelvandyck.com/hiscores.php)

SOUNDTRACK (http://carlocastellano.cc/invaders-corruption/)

YOUTUBE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EflZlQhhi3M)

Thanks,
Manuel

Looks fucking beautiful! Dl'ing ;D

Please consider downloading again - I had to add a small hotfix that likely won't affect you, but better safe than sorry.  :beer:

(http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg220/Kyubi66/rec-1.png)
Fun game! Very solid design (sound and visuals are perfect);]
Would like a faster acceleration speed, though...

Ooh! I just noticed the option to change background effects! :handthumbsupR:
It's also a nice touch that you have the "You almost died"-warning/bonus; reminds me of Touhou^^

Would like to see weapon upgrades appear more regularily, though, as you're pretty screwed if you don't get one :/

Very fun little game!

I think it would really benefit from having a global leader board so we could compare our high scores with other people around the world.

The visual clutter sometimes can get a little bit confusing as there are times where I can't tell within a split second if something on my visual periphery is a white enemy or some points or particles flashing up on the screen.

Still, good stuff!

Very cool concept and style! It reminds me of Geometry Wars but maybe that's put me at a disadvantage because I can't get used to the controls. I keep wanting to control the ship using thrust (forward/back) in the direction I'm facing. Looks great tho, keep it up!

Glad you like it so far! .... and yes the backgrounds were bound to the seeds at first but I learned quickly that everyone has their favorite, so the first is still seed bound and after that you can chose if you so wish.

The power up frequency actually was related to a bug, along some other bugs that somehow snuck in back again. Basically the game refused to give you a break power-up spawn wise.

Thanks a lot for the feedback! It makes me glad that you folks are enjoying this little time waster we cooked up.

Um, I'm pretty sure I misunderstand you but the game has an online-score board which can be both viewed & submitted to in-game. Together with monthly-tiered top scores. Or do you mean something else?

And yeah visual clutter is probably inherent with this genre, not that this should be an excuse though. I'll see what I can do besides cranking down the particle effects. Maybe destroying effects in the vicinity of the player faster? Or have some sort of infra-vision to highlight nearby danger?

Actually, hah -- you should have seen the dev thread. I had the controls like this for the longest time. A bit like the classic Asteroids. Everyone and their grandma hated it. If you want to give it a spin none the less hit me up via PM or so. ;)

UPLOADED NEW VERSION - 0.8.1.3
-Powerups spawn properly again
-Data fragments also spawn properly again (notice the pattern?  :facepalm: )
-Data fragments can now sometimes shatter in more than just two parts
-Power-up spawn quantities and AI director revised slightly
-The player accelerates & decelerates very slightly faster
-Sometimes invaders would be removed during infection process, without an infected replacement spawning
-In rare circumstances the slow-motion graphical effect would have glitches
-Smarter auto-ordering of OpenGL calls for _slightly_ better performance (Doesn't affect D3D of course)
-Some visual polish for the HUD

pretty fun :) I suck at these games but I enjoyed it

one thing I noticed, and is a tactic I settle into- up until the bigger enemies appear which fragment when you shoot them, you can survive quite comfortably just sitting in a corner and shooting anything that comes near you. I do this every time up until the enemies upgrade

if I had to suggest a fix for this, maybe just very occasional enemies spawning which fire some plasma ball directly at your position? a slow projectile, and easy to dodge, but enough to force you out of the corner

PS, if I can suggest something to make enemies clearer, what I would do is render a transparent dark outline around them which renders ontop of the particle effects- just enough to pop them out and seperate them, but not so much that it changes any of the visual style. Either an outline, or simply a 'dark glow' like a blob shadow which picks them out. The same for the mouse pointer would also be appreciated!

PPS, love the sound effects

Pretty fun, hard.. but fun.

Joypad is not working for me, don't know if it's a bug or it was not implemented yet. When I change the main controls to joypad, everything stays the same, except that mouse aiming stop working.

The game doesn't know which port your joypad is plugged in and which button should be fire etc, so you have to configure your controls. In the menu below. I could do it automagically but it would only work for people with a certain button arrangement.

Maybe I should make it glow briefly, when you change the main controls.


Yeah you gave me an idea for an enemy to drive you out of the corners. Not the shooting one (It's against my principle - heh.) But what about a shot istelf spawning, aimed straight at you, it cant be destroyed but shatters on wall contact. That ought to keep the player moving.

About the mouse outline, yeah I'll add some more shadow to the cursors. But you know you can change their appearance, right?

For the enemy visibilitiy - hmm I'll think of something that I can make work in my tight time constraints.

Once again thanks for the valuable input guys, this is the kind of stuff that I want to hear.

yeah, I reckon that'll work as long as its chrystal clear that you can't destroy it and it doesn't look too much like a regular enemy

I never knew about different mouse pointers, I changed it and the position is much clearer :). But people might not know that option exists (I thought the control setup was fine, so I never looked in that menu)

Yeah, for now I've ditched the idea after thinking about it for a while longer and proto-hacking it.
It seems likely that especially when implemented under these time constraints that it will more likely deter them from the game altogether. With my test I sometimes ended up crashing into it when it was hidden in a cloud of enemies which die just fine from your canon fire. Also as you can't kill them (which would be against the principle if you could) they are no fun.

So, for now, I decided to go with a more light-Handed approach:
The game limits how close to you enemies can spawn - so you basically have a "comfort zone" as I call it. I have halved the comfort zone when you are in corners now.
So enemies will not spawn on top of you but they will spawn uncomfortably close so that you need to take action within 1/4s or you're dead - making corners no longer such a "relaxing" place to be.

On the updraft: As I prototyped the "Bullet" I found a slight bug with another kind of enemy, so that's that. :)

I think you should get bonus points for killing all of the enemies on the screen. It feels pretty satisfying, and I think a bonus would make it more satisfying.

Great idea, adding right away!
Could be called "WIPEOUT BONUS" or something like that... :)

NEW VERSION OUT - 0.8.2.1 - Grab it in the First post
-Rudimentary Dual Analog Input for Joypads
-Camping in corners has gotten more dangerous (Thanks RedProduct)
-Added "ENEMY WIPEOUT BONUS", gives 150 points plus 2 Frenzy points (Thanks Tesselode)
-Fixed that sometimes Spinners could become erratic spinners after spawn
-Disabled "JOYPAD and DUAL ANALOG" showing up if there is no Joypad connected at all
-Now comes pre-set with a more visible cursor
-Slight Menu Fixes

Make sure to check every new feature, especially the Wipeout Bonus, I'm a bit queasy about it, because I added it so quickly - I pray that it's bug free! Now I have to go out for a couple of hours so I'll be back later if there's any fixing due...

Cheers :beer:

That was fast.. my 360 controller is working now :beer:

I still have to configure all buttons every time I change the main controller but other than that, working fine :)

 

No, that was it. I was scoring so low I was only getting the local scoreboard at first and I thought that was all there was to it. Got my score submitted to the online score board now. :beer:

Makai: That's good - then we are both happy!    :):handthumbsupR:
Ah, can you elaborate a bit?
Like when you change between Mouse/Keyboard/Joystick controls? Yeah it doesn't save each control layout individually. I didn't realize that people had the need for that. If that's what you meant I'll try to look into it, although my allotted time is running out quickly.

In other news, a smallish new version is out: 0.8.2.5
-Score security stuff, nothing huge, added some annoyances to would-be hackers, took a couple of mins to implement
-Fixes a problem with the music playing at a slightly soft volume, due to the final master being more quiet
-Some polish here and there, more animations, more tweening
-There might be more easter eggs. Might be.  :durr:

If there are no major complaints from your side and if I can fix the issues Tuba pointed out, then this will probably very close to the thing that I'll call the final version, for now.

Feels like "Crimsonland meets Geometry of War" :)
I like it a lot!

Fullscreen mode looks a little odd on wide screen monitor...
Probably it's worth to add an option to fix this with side bars?

p.s. download link is not working now - file not found :(

Very glad to hear you like it!! :)
Yeah the aspect ratio thing, is an issue I have been trying to tackle every now and then - with limited success. I've now contacted OddBall who should be more knowledgeable about this as he made the module I'm using.

The links are fixed now, it was a weird server-side permissions issue.

Also another version: 0.8.2.7
-Control settings are now retained per control scheme & controller (Thanks Tuba)
-Fixes a bug where sometimes it would not read your joypad input when setting it up

(http://i56.tinypic.com/o02obd.jpg)

I uploaded the complete soundtrack on my site here: http://carlocastellano.cc/invaders-corruption/
(same link as the first page if you miss it)

Soon we will release a downloadable version too.

Nice album art.

Aaand I have uploaded version 1.0.0!

It contains some small fixes to the cursors, gameplay and so on. Again - nothing huge.

But please, TIGspeople, help me out and find any remaining annoyances and/or niggles, or just input/criticisms in this vital 24h incubation period. After this we'll be going public!
That's right everyone is invited to play, share and distribute it!

Oh I also hacked together a new trailer, here: http://vimeo.com/17081346
(Emphasis on hacked - running out of time here...)

Mood: Antsy as hell...  :crazy:

Changing the controls is working like it should now.. nice :)

I was going to complain that you changed the look of the ship then I noticed that I have used a different seed and the ship changes with that.. that's pretty awesome! :D

I fell in love with the graphical style very quickly, and the game-play isn't lacking either. I did find it quite difficult; but that's not a problem at all. Difficult games are fine when you hook the player well enough to stick it out.

Great job!  :beer: