The aesthetic of this is excellent (but maybe the "powerup appeared" and "yes!" sounds are weird).

WHAT!? Are you crazy? That "yes" sound effect is brilliant.

The 'yes' sound is straight out of Scoregasm actually, where it fits much better!

Cheers
Charlie

Ok, well it sounds like the mouse controls are something you either love or hate. I will be adding keyboard and controller support for those who prefer them.

Cheers
Charlie

I ported the Blob moster to the new Monkey programming language. Link is on this page: http://www.charliesgames.com/wordpress/?p=543

HTML5 canvas version is here (you'll need a recent version of Chrome, Firefox, IE9 or Safari to run it): http://www.charliesgames.com/monkey/MonkeyGame.html

I've also been working on a new game with some pretty new blob monsters. there's a demo here: http://www.charliesgames.com/wordpress/?p=583

Cheers
Charlie

Plays nicely, and the Linux binary works just fine (which I've learned not to expect). I don't really like the slight viewport wiggle with mouse position though. It doesn't seem to serve any gameplay purpose, and it's bothersome in that it screws up my ability to develop a sense of the space.

I try with Linux, and sometimes it works! It feels a bit like a moving target at times though.

The viewport wiggle, as you put it, would probably make more sense if there was a background in place. I'm still undecided on that though, so the wiggle may disappear in future versions.

Cheers
Charlie

Ok, cool. I was planning to add keyboard and joystick controls, but i'm more interested in what people make of the mouse controls for this build.

Good to know it's running on fairly old machines as well. The code isn't terribly well optimised yet, so there's room for more improvement there.

I'm intending to keep a similar format to the first irukandji game (http://www.charliesgames.com/wordpress/?page_id=11), but with more levels.

Cheers
Charlie

I was surprised when you said this was made without shaders and stuff and designed for low-end equipment.

And it works great on this old laptop with onboard graphics. Nicely done.

How low end is low end? I'm trying to work out a minimum spec...

Thanks for having a go

Cheers
Charlie

Thankyouthankyouthankyou

Cheers
Charlie

Thanks chaps

I'm getting the feeling that the mouse tracking speed is far too low by default. Lot's of people have mentioned that now.

1440*900 is a different aspect ratio to the usual HD resoultions isn't it? I'll take a look and see if it's scaling properly....

RE the score mechanic, i just threw it in there. This demo is more of a proof of concept thing than an actual representation of a finished game.

Cheers
Charlie

I'd love a massive screenshot if that's possible? my monitor only goes up to 1680*1050....

Cheers
Charlie

Still shots don't even nearly do the game justice.
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3
It's hard to play the game whilst making screen captures.

cheers Dave, They're HUGE!

Cheers
Charlie

I only played it for a tiny little moment, but it seems awesome and when I have more time I'll certainly try it. The creatures make me think a bit about Bio-Hazard Battle, a game that was made for the SEGA Genesis a long time back. The particle-effects and shaders are amazing. Great job!

Thanks!

It's actually a shader free zone. The idea is to get this one running on very low power/intel GMA computers.

Cheers
Charlie

This is awesome, but I wouldn't expect anything else from you. Found it much easier than the first one, I still can't beat that damn crab in the first game BTW. I set the resolution to 2560x1440 and it looks stunning. I thought the original looked amazing, but this is on a whole other level. The bullet scraping mechanic is nice, but it did mean I spent more time looking at my ship than the sumptuously animated enemies. Can't wait to see more of this.

Glad you like it

I'd love a massive screenshot if that's possible? my monitor only goes up to 1680*1050....

Cheers
Charlie

It looks quite fun but I can't play it with a touchpad and WASD doesn't seem to control, is it possible to add that?

I kept pressing space and the level restarted each time? Was a bit confusing at first.

I tried to read the readme but just got a wall of text on one line when I opened it in notepad (which doesn't work for text that isn't \cr \lf I think?) bit hard to read.

Can't play with a touchpad as in it doesn't work, or can't play as in you don't like playing with a touchpad? If it's the latter, you can adjust the mouse tracking speed with the left and right arrows. I usually turn it up when i play on a laptop.

Also, you can right click on the readme, and choose open with -> Wordpad, which should make the text a bit more readable.

Thanks for trying.

Cheers
Charlie

Hi all,

Irukandji 2 is a shooty game i started a couple of months ago, and spent about 2 weeks on. in the game, you shoot pretty (well, at least i think so!) procedurally animated sea monter things.

I was hoping to get some feedback about this, specifically the mouse controls, and whether it works on your system.

One thing i'll point out is that you may need to change the screen res in the resolutions.text file if the game won't start. You can set this to any size your monitor supports. It looks pretty cool at super high res.

Here's a link to the download page, the zip contains versions for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. The readme tells you how the scoring+bombs etc. work.

http://www.charliesgames.com/wordpress/?p=583

There's a video on that page too. I couldn't work out how to embed one in this post

Gratuitous screenshots:




Please let me know what you think!

Cheers
Charlie

The blob monster has now been ported to glBasic, by the super Bence Dobos! Link: http://www.glbasic.com/forum/index.php?topic=5702

Cheers
Charlie

Charlie: Very nice tutorial but I can't help but wonder how you handled collision checking.

As i recall, i just used rect collisions. I think i just placed rects in key places on each monster, i.e. one for each of the crabs claws, and a larger one for the body.

Cheers
Charlie

Ah that makes sense, also do you optimize your collisions i.e quad trees or regions or is it just brute force checks?

Brute force. Rect collisions are extremely quick! The speed bottleneck for Irukandji was rendering. Max2D (the built in blitzmax library) isn't really all that quick as it creates a new surface for each textured quad (or at least it did, it may have changed now!).  It's fast enough on most systems though, it even runs pretty well on my old laptop with Intel GMA graphics.

I probably would have been better off using the OpenGL based particle thing i've written for Scoregasm, but Irukandji was a very quick project (about 2 weeks), so i just kept things simple for myself.

Cheers
Charlie

Charlie: Very nice tutorial but I can't help but wonder how you handled collision checking.

As i recall, i just used rect collisions. I think i just placed rects in key places on each monster, i.e. one for each of the crabs claws, and a larger one for the body.

Cheers
Charlie

No problem!

Cheers
Charlie

If it helps, only the little dot at the front of your ship is a collision zone, and the little dot in the center of the bullets too!

Cheers
Charlie

Irukandji does indeed look stunning, but unfortunately I still can't beat the first level so have never gotten to see most of it. I tried so hard to beat that damn crab. I'm still amazed it's all done using only one sprite and a shit load of trig.

Shoot it's claws off first, then go nuts with your missiles! <-how to beat the crab!

Wait, Irukandji was made with BlitzMax?

I love you.

Yep, All in Blitzmax!

I love you too!

Cheers
Charlie