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Community => Cockpit Competition => Topic started by: ras on March 02, 2009, 09:39:00 AM



Title: EliminH8 - The Tunnel (now with demo)
Post by: ras on March 02, 2009, 09:39:00 AM
Perhaps just EliminH8, or just the Tunnel. I am not that good with names. Anyway, the fabulous story is that of:
You are a pixel, living life so wonderfully in your bitmap world. Then suddenly, you are beaten by this weird thing made up of lines and awaken inside a weird world, a world of lines, inside vehicle, a vehicle speeding down a tunnel towards certain doom. Will you be able to blast your enemies, avoid the obstacles and finally exit this nightmare?

Or something. I am not that good with stories either. The game will be something in the style of Eliminator but in vectorish graphics. I started adapting my OpenGL 2D engine towards 3D and will hopefully soon have my first screenshot.

Edit:
First build:
EliminH8.zip (http://wikisend.com/download/612000/EliminH8.zip)

Control the ship with arrow keys and shoot with space. Escape pauses. If you destroy an entire group of enemies your cockpit flashes yellow and you either get better control or higher rate of fire. The ship is destroyed after 3 hits, and you have 3 lives. Avoid destruction.

I've noticed an occasional bug, sometimes the screen turns completely white (but the game continues running) - press escape to pause to fix it. I think I know why this happens, so I should be able to fix it.

Comments and critique is very much welcome.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: ras on March 02, 2009, 10:07:46 AM
Behold, the first screenshot:
(http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/4861/eliminh8.th.png) (http://img114.imageshack.us/my.php?image=eliminh8.png)
Glorious glorious lines! I've been working on some weird blur thing that looks pretty good, but it looks better in motion.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: increpare on March 02, 2009, 10:21:49 AM
that does look not un-nice ;P

how are you doing the blur?


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: Hempuli‽ on March 02, 2009, 11:28:18 AM
Could you change the compo icon to this thread?


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: ras on March 02, 2009, 11:32:06 AM
that does look not un-nice ;P

how are you doing the blur?

Well, every 0.066 (or something) seconds I copy the view to a texture (which is half the size of the view) and append it to an array of textures. When I draw them, I draw the last image append with strongest opacity and the others with falling opacity. So it is like some kind of motion blur or something.

BTW, I've just made a .3ds converter to my internal format, soon there will be a HUD! And perhaps enemies, or at least projectiles.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: ras on March 02, 2009, 11:32:45 AM
Could you change the compo icon to this thread?
Yeah, sorry, I am new to this.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: Mikademus on March 02, 2009, 11:35:23 AM
I always enjoy graphics that reminds me of Vectrix or Tron. I'm looking forward to see what more you'll make of this :)


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: ras on March 02, 2009, 12:48:46 PM
No enemies but a cockpit and shooting:
(http://img365.imageshack.us/img365/1683/screenshot1403060.th.png) (http://img365.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot1403060.png)

Next will be enemies and collision detection.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: fiber optic asparagus on March 02, 2009, 01:50:45 PM
will you be able to move between a number of lanes, or freely back and forth?


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: ras on March 02, 2009, 02:28:32 PM
will you be able to move between a number of lanes, or freely back and forth?
Freely left, right, up and down. That is the plan anyway. I am perhaps thinking of having it be on the ground but you can jump glide or something, but I think it might be harder to make it fun that way.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: ras on March 02, 2009, 03:05:40 PM
Beware, enemies:
(http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/6044/screenshot1868563.th.png) (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot1868563.png)

The enemies have shadows, but it's just a test. The idea is that it might make it easier to aim, but I don't think it really does any difference. They kind of look nice though.

I can now make models in Sketchup and convert them with my converter, it's a pretty easy setup :)

Collision detection is almost half way or something, it sort of works, but sometimes acts pretty unexpectedly, so making it work better is my next plan, but unfortunately first there is sleep and school...


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: Mikademus on March 02, 2009, 04:30:29 PM
Seriously, this is looking really good! Video?


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: Fuzz on March 02, 2009, 05:16:35 PM
Looking really good! I suggest you call it The Tunnel.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: ras on March 03, 2009, 04:23:35 PM
Collision detection is more or less working now, and collision response as well (polygons flying to the left and right)


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: Synnah on March 04, 2009, 03:03:37 AM
I am glad at the appearance of several wireframe vector games in this competition! This looks really nice, too.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: Hideous on March 04, 2009, 03:14:04 AM
Beware, enemies:
(http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/6044/screenshot1868563.th.png) (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot1868563.png)

The enemies have shadows, but it's just a test. The idea is that it might make it easier to aim, but I don't think it really does any difference. They kind of look nice though.

I can now make models in Sketchup and convert them with my converter, it's a pretty easy setup :)

Collision detection is almost half way or something, it sort of works, but sometimes acts pretty unexpectedly, so making it work better is my next plan, but unfortunately first there is sleep and school...

You should give me that converter :P


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: ras on March 04, 2009, 07:29:17 AM
New screenshot:
(http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/3247/screenshot161327.th.png) (http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot161327.png)

Updates:
New color system makes the color transitions look nice
Enemies move all pretty now (wave sine)
Player has health and lives
Cockpit flashes red when you get hit
Players rate of fire and speed slightly increases when it kills a "group" of enemies, also the cockpit flashes yellow. I will probably instead make them drop powerups that you need to catch.

Video should come soon, but my internet connection is really slow, so it might take awhile...

About the converter, perhaps if someone is interested after I post the first build or so.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: Synnah on March 04, 2009, 07:46:37 AM
Oooh, it's like a 3D Geometry Wars! Nice colours.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: ras on March 04, 2009, 08:32:55 AM
Bad news on that video thing, I am not used to making videos so they look bad and take up too much space for my measly internet connection. There is some good news though, I am instead of a video working on releasing a build. I am going to implement some new kind of enemy or something to spice things up and make the difficulty increase over time and then I will release it.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: nihilocrat on March 04, 2009, 08:52:20 AM
These vector entries are tempting me to ditch my realistic space sim for some game where you just randomly blow up a bunch of floating tetrahedrons.

Looks pretty awesome!


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel
Post by: ras on March 04, 2009, 09:26:35 AM
Ok, here is the build:
EliminH8.zip (http://wikisend.com/download/612000/EliminH8.zip)

Control the ship with arrow keys and shoot with space. Escape pauses. If you destroy an entire group of enemies your cockpit flashes yellow and you either get better control or higher rate of fire. The ship is destroyed after 3 hits, and you have 3 lives. Avoid destruction.

I've noticed an occasional bug, sometimes the screen turns completely white (but the game continues running) - press escape to pause to fix it. I think I know why this happens, so I should be able to fix it.

Comments and critique is very much welcome.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel (now with demo)
Post by: Inanimate on March 04, 2009, 10:27:45 PM
Okay, may I suggest a targeting reticule, and also some better firing rate and control? Yeah, you did say that we would get these upped if we destroy a group of enemies, but so far it's been really hard to do that.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel (now with demo)
Post by: Günter on March 05, 2009, 11:44:12 PM
The upgrades could use a bit of tuning, but only a tiny bit. It was really easy to get upgrades to start with, but it jumps up in difficulty so much when the ships get stronger that it becomes incredibly difficult to get upgrades. I would suggest either making more of the upgrades count towards rate of fire and making them slightly more powerful, or making the upgrades for more difficult enemies more powerful.
As for the aiming reticule, I don't think you need one. What you should do is make the cockpit more prominent so you can use the vertice in the middle of the screen as your crosshairs in the heat of the moment. I managed to do it early on, but it tends to fade into the background with all you've got going on in the graphics.

Aside from those quibbles I'm really digging it so far. This is the only game (so far) that I've been interested in enough to download the demo.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel (now with demo)
Post by: ras on March 06, 2009, 10:01:28 AM
Thanks a lot for your comments, I haven't had time to work on it since the release and won't for a couple of days but I appreciate your comments and I will keep them in mind when I get time to at least think about the game.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel (now with demo)
Post by: Synnah on March 07, 2009, 04:28:04 AM
This is pretty nice! I have a couple of suggestions, also;

Like Günter said, the power-ups don't add enough to your firepower, so eventually the enemies become too difficult to destroy entire groups of them. The difficulty of the enemies should only increase when your firepower increases, really, otherwise you'll get into a state where if the player messes up too many times, the enemies will become too strong for them to realistically destroy. This way the player is powering up in order to score more points, not because not doing so makes the enemies too difficult for them to beat. Some kind of display of the current fire rate and ship speed would be nice, too; perhaps a bar on either side of the cockpit showing the individual levels. It's good to let the player know how powerful they are.

Also, I found a few bugs; Z and X seem to speed up and slow down the craft, and generally make things unplayable. Are these debug keys? Also, taking focus away from the window breaks things quite badly, and the game stops responding.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel (now with demo)
Post by: Aaron P on March 07, 2009, 11:16:09 AM
I crash by left clicking every time.  :( Interesting so far though. Surreal atmosphere with the blur...


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel (now with demo)
Post by: JLJac on March 07, 2009, 11:20:52 AM
Cool  8)

The only thing I would change is the controls, to me they are a bit too slow and floaty, I'd like more responsive, fast-moving controls, for a better hardcore feel.


Title: Re: EliminH8 - The Tunnel (now with demo)
Post by: ras on March 17, 2009, 03:34:50 PM
Unfortunately I have not been able to work on this very much, there are loads of things I would like to add but I probably won't have enough time. Here is the newest build anyway:
EliminH8.zip (http://wikisend.com/download/506712/EliminH8.zip)

I've added a boss (but only one, so it repeats...), tweaked the gameplay quite a lot and added some sort of levels (but only 3, so they repeat after that, and they are quite similar since I haven't had time to make new enemies). Still, it is a lot more fun (IMO) than before, so please give it a try and tell me what you think.