this looks crunchy! looking forward to play it

[Ballistic Bullets]

Hey,

thanks for your Feedback! These sort of questions about game ending/progress and antagonists/difficulty are my primary concerns, too. For this next iteration, I was trying to pin down 3 things:

• make shooting more fun
• introduce an increasing difficulty level
• have some sort of progression

Using the following elements, those aims were met with varying success:

Ballistic Bullets
Instead of a simple, steadily moving bullet, I tried a more 'ballistic' approach with a pellet that slows down (and comes back at you if it does not hit anything). Although this makes the bullet slightly more fun to watch, it does not add much fun to the gameplay and instead complicates it (because the player ends up hitting things he didn't want to). I doubt that 'hitting things from behind' can be used as a main mechanic, as it currently requires an unusual amount of planning & luck to pull of.

Targets / Level
The targets are now 3 different sizes & no longer spawn randomly, but 'wrap around' when they reach the edge of the screen. It is a lot easier to aim for a specific target this way, and also makes the world feel more persistent. This mechanic also led to the idea of 'replacing targets with cops', so I'll chalk it down as a plus.

Cops
In trying to make things more challenging, I introduced cops, which are indestructible ships that shoot back at you. Right now, cops appear in the place of targets when they are shot (it was the easiest implementation at the time). Although they make the game more difficult, it is now a lot less fun! The player is kept busy dodging cop bullets instead of shooting the targets, which I feel takes away from the central game mechanic instead of supporting it.

Graphics
Although it is much too early to know where this is going, the temptation to pixel some art was too big & I started messing around with Alchemy to come up with some spaceships. This is a bit of a first try with pixel art, so I don't mind the funny outcome. It remains to be seen wether the final game is really about spaceships or a more interesting metaphor can be found ...

Current build
Mac OS X: http://www.polyfaktor.com/temp/game/Space_Piracy_MacOS-2.zip

[Video:]

Hey fellow TIGSorcerers,

after a long time lurking I've finally decided to give it a go & try writing a real videogame! To keep it simple, I'll tackle a Space Invaders clone first; shooting moving targets sounds like a solid foundation to build some high-level game mechanics on
In a nutshell:

Video:




The Premise:

• Shoot Things
• Things will drop coins when shot
• Coins are used to buy more shots

Other mechanics to date:

• Things can snatch away coins dropped by others
• Things move in six lanes of opposing directions and different speeds
• More difficult shots will yield higher coin values

This is still a first prototype of a game, so there's not much to see here. But since I'm taking my first steps in a new programming language (Racket, to be precise), I would really appreciate it if you could give it a go - just to see if it works for you at all Thank you very much!


Downloads:

Windows: http://www.polyfaktor.com/temp/game/Space_Piracy_Windows.zip

Mac OS X: http://www.polyfaktor.com/temp/game/Space_Piracy_MacOS.zip

These tutorials are wonderful and a great starting point for novices! They explain the basic concepts & how to put stuff together, what scripting can do & where to look for more help - a great kickstarter!

You, Sir, upped my motivation back to 100% after previously running into those horrible brick wall tutorials of "have a gig of assets & drag them this way". 

Sorry for bumping an old thread, but I'd like to mention that after recently acquiring a Windows OS, I came here specifically to get this game after being hooked by the polished & intriguing look of the screenshots back when it was first made public.
The game does the amazing job of holding up to the bliss of that imaginary "way you imagine the gameplay to be without ever playing it", that is to say, it plays absolutely wonderful. Just wanted to put that out here.

quite fun & atmospheric! the music and graphics fit very well. level 2 and 3 felt a tiny bit drawn out (the radio chat about how the shark just won't give up appears at about the same time that i thought this to myself ;)), but that's almost nitpicking. thanks for the experience!

i think the visual changes work great & improve the sense of speed.

two other things i've noticed:

• to achieve maximum speed, the mouse has to be at the very rightmost edge, where it easily slips out of the frame, leaving the player without control
• at high speeds, i often found myself rapidly glancing left & right to be able to see both where the ship was currently at & where the next obstacle would appear

it would be interesting to see wether a more generous padding of the mouse controls, or a different mapping for the throttle (e.g. leftmost-edge-to-center instead of center-to-rightmost-edge) could improve usability and still remain intuitive…

liking it, too!
feels responsive, and the idea of 'scratching' opponents for points is neat.
and yes, it definitely has a canabalt vibe to it, in a good way. funny how big pixels, fast scrolling to the left & a wide image aspect ratio can do that ;D

this looks really cool; pity there's no mac os x build