ah, sounds good,. I really like the graphics with the patched together machines, wires running all about., remindes me of my old drum machine days,. . 

oh this looks nice.,  fits very well with the theam here too.  radar will be my next addition too,. although my battles are a tad less vast.   

well it is very interesting,. I quite like the tracers flowing off the back of the plane,. what are they?  tinny boxes?   must be a million of them..,

not sure how this will be played yet,. the controles now are quite strange to me,. but fun to see the plane stall an spin about,. not sure I could sully glide with out massive casualties though,. perhaps with stick controles and a first person view.

try the ZGameEditor if you don't want to worry about the GL crap,. .

Wow the pixel work is very cool!  lov the wood-grain dash and the smoking ashtray is the sht!  i understand the forward flying setup and think it could work quite well,. although a tad more responsivness is probably needed,. it's a fine line of limits vs freedom as in all game design I guess,. I tried to strafe the neat little truck on the road but the shots don't seem to connect,. yet.

Thanks for the comments, video of current state of the affair, for Mikademus! 





(can I embed the video here?)   

I am going to hold off on posting the demo just yet,. still working out the basics of the game,. and I don't want to get bogged down in setting up some form of control mapping for those ppl without a 360 controler,. guess I should figure some mouse/keyboard as well,. .

older screen,..


 I reworked the cockpit into a 3d design. No gages or dials just yet,. not sure if a radar will be added,. perhaps just a proximity alarm,. I built in some kind of 'air-ship' that drops what have evolved into some type of 'spider-crab drones',. now I will have to devise a way to destory that air-ship thing too., humm,. . perhaps a stop-shift-form-aim-and-shoot device that it takes a few seconds to do where you can't defend?

Synnah - yes those are one of the particle effects,. the cool thing is they fly way up in the air when exploded,. then fall to ground and lay flat till they cool off and fade away. It just looks real cool, but it may become a resource that player can collect.., metal?

thanks for the comments 

[Updated ver:]

Ok this is the 'final' entry,. .

   http://iterationgames.com/vectorLocust_079.zip   [ 96KB Original On time entry!]

   http://iterationgames.com/vectorLocust_080.zip   [ 122KB updated ver.]

Updated ver: tweeked some sounds, removed the 'kkruncky' compression in favor of UPX (loose some compresion but less(/no?) virus false positives.) Doubled the line weight of the Spark Shots (due to popular request), added a Global Line Render thinkness setting, press Number Keys 1-5 to set at any time.

REMEMBER; the program needs to read the settings file so extract them both!  Other wise, you get crap values to start,. guess I could fix that,. but man there is always something eh,. .  never enouph time/energy.

 I was able to get a lot of what I had originally intended into this.  I think it got to the level of 'fairly awesome' although I could just keep working on it forever I suppose, and perhaps reach the 'super awesome' level. 
 The main thing missing in my opinion is a set of progressively larger levels,. there is currently one medium size battle,. and it is rather dependent on some randomly emergent behaviours as well as your actions as to just how complex and difficult (or dead easy) this skermish becomes,. so you ARE intended to play it a couple of times,. and try some different things, to see what situations you find emerging from the self replicating machine system,. .   there are no winning conditions just the end of the Orange Vector invasion,. (guess that is yet another thing to be added,. again perhaps at a later date) so if you find no more targets you win! 
 The controler default is set for my preferance; left-handed on a 360 controler,. if anyone has a widely used controler and could post there settings file for other to use./ feel free. the game needs 3 axis and at least four buttons, so any controler with those can be mapped.  The settings file is set to Keyboard/Mouse by defult as it seems that is what most people are using.
 oh,. the iteration GAMES logo will play that little random noise/visual endlessly if you don't press SPACE
also if you are on a older machine, you can press the F key to get the FPS display,. not sure where it becomes unplayable,. but I would think you need to be getting >50 to have much fun with this,. 60 is the desired FPS rate.

==> OLD POST BELOW <==


I started on a six degrees of freedom type thing but quickly got boged down in crazy maths that I find no fun at all,.
Scraped that, and now working along nicely on a much simpler vector style ground based setup,. .  not at all sure what the game will be yet,. starting as a shooter but hopefully it will develop into something more interesting,. .  gota start from somewhere though.   


 -new screen pic

Should have a demo for you shortly,. [ look down this tread! ] just gota flesh out the controls. The ZGE now has gamepad support, so some form of dual analog stick control,. right now it is just too weird for human use,. as I was only quickly hacking out the basics needed. 

I got a quite cool vector explosion effect, that I like, so there will for sure be somethings to blow up real good,. .

Super nice!  those remind me of a DC mech game I used to like,. Gundam Side Story 0079!

http://dreamcast.ign.com/dor/objects/11025/gundam-side-story-0079/images/bg02.html

Only this sounds like it will have much more TURBO! can't wait. I really like the flags on the robots,. .

PS: I may get something going for this compo, if I can only work out the damn trig. I really should have paid attention in highschool math class

Nicely done,. an indicator of how many levels to go would be welcome,. you are a sadistic bastard! thanks.

[balance]

New release,. This is a new ZGE ver. of my 2003 GM game lockOn. 



get from;
http://iterationgames.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Games.LockOn2

Being build with ZGameEditor this is openGL rendering,. In this case however it is basicly a 2d sprite based game,. the sprites are all generated (mostly superformula) helping keep the distribution size down to 119KB!  It is packed with UPX so some virus sniffers will throw an alarm as they don't seem to like self extrating .exe files of small size. (working on this issue) 

The game is a 'Proximity Shooter' in that you don't really aim,. the main shots seek the targets,. and the secondary shots seek the targets fire,. there is also a burst fire and that releases a mixed blast of both types of shot, however you drop a POW level to use it. The player has 3 POW levels possible each giving slightly better seeking shots (both primary and secondary) the game is not just about shooting,. you must collect PODS to stop them spawning into more bad guys, also when you get enouph PODS a POWUP will spawn, get this to increase your POW level AND increase your Multiplier,. this is crucial for high scores.., the Multiplier has no limit, however if you get hit not only do you lose a POW level you also have your Multiplier RESET! 

The game seems hard at first,. however once you find a balance between shooting stuff and managing the PODs by collecting them,. it's not so tough.

enjoy.

Wow the visuals are incredible! I tend to agree with the general assessment of the sounds although they are sufficent,. (if you ever want sounds for another project I would be glad to contribute waves or procedural synth )
The game play is good,. it is almost ambiant,. and re-active to the player,. i.e. if you don't try real hard time just runs out and the game ends,. and if you do well the game goes on and gets progressivly more difficult/hectic.  One thing that I did not like was the spores escaping through the walls, while I keep hitting them.  I did think that the gamespace could have larger as the forward movement looks so good with the particle 'soup'.  Great effort for sure!

Question about how it was made,. did you use your Gaia system and Chaos Core Engine? 

half-DEMO posted,. 

I know a lot of you'all like the techyness of retro hardwares,.(often so do i  ) and are a picky bunch or good o'l eggs  ,. however for this de-make we are not really focusing on any real-word hardware. So the alpha, (beta, block rockin' and any other hardware) debats although theoreticaly and historicly interesting don't really apply. 

The ideas of adding more rythmic and music based elements to the game are also very interesting and are being considered, however time is short, and I am just working on getting the bare-basics of the game working in 2d,. it does have some interesting mechanics as is,. and de-making to 2d provides it own challanges,. larger changes to the basic gameplay may not make it into this iteration,. just don't want ppl to b expecting too too much,. they may, perhaps, come after the deadline, or in the form of another game, based on the learnings from building this one. not sure just yet..,

I must disagree with Bezzy about the gameplay being just 2d though,. that is like saying a plane by having only pitch and yaw can only fly in 2d,. moveing the rectial in 2d actually moves the camera in 3d,. and re-oriants the view,.  yes it is a limited control set, and the player's avitar is not moved (positionaly) by the players actions, (it's a rail-shooter) however I really don't see the game as 2d gameplay,. I suppose, like all things, this is a question of interpetation,. so feel free to consider it how you like,. that's just my thoughts though.  I do agree with you that many games miss opportunities for gameplay, and that was infact what lead me to want to build my own games,. I do find however that once you build a game, ppl come along and just gloss of what you achived, and mentally add more to it, or expect more from it,. forgeting all the effort that it took to get it to that place to begin with,. I know now, that I am very guilty of that   
However those human desires for MORE, and our never satisfied tendancies,. are what lead to greater inovations.  Keep pushing the edges!

looks like there will be at least one or more likely two other versions of REZ., so it will be interesting to see what others as focussing on as well,.

[single patterns]

We are not actualy working to a specific systems specs., with the res. that low,. it could perhaps be an Amiga, or perhaps an ST,. NES would be more retro then we are going, as we are using alpha for some effects,. but rotation is still undecided,. (most likely not on sprites, but perhaps on some effects) the music is being done with an old tool I was building years ago,. that I lost the source to, and can not change but it should work as is;

 http://gmc.yoyogames.com/?act=ST&f=11&t=231844&st=0#entry1616372

It is a couple .dll files that emulate the old ATARI C012294 chip 'POKEY' so the music will be 4 tracks of stario square wave noise.  :D
 If any of you are up to creating some music using that tool, you can still get in on this project! With all the codeing needed, I will have little time/energy left for making the tune-age,. . We could perhaps use MODs, however I have not found a .dll that lets me loop single patterns from code? anyone know of a way and we may change to MODs,. I doubt if I am left doing the music that it will referance the REZ stuff,. it will just be what ever I come up with,. we'll see.

Here is the half-DEMO,. sorry kids, but we ain't done it!

  http://iterationgames.com/overscan_DEMO_001.zip

Clysm lost his electric power with the big storm that hit the gulf,. and it may be WEEKS till he is back online   and I have been lost in otherworldly buisness that has eaten all my time/energy,. As you can see we knocked out some of the basic gameplay,. in our own lo-fi 2d sota' way, but we really do have a lot more to do to get it done,. Clysm has drawn many more sprites,. and some very cool backgrounds, and a couple bosses,. that I would like to see in the game.  As well we have talked of many fine ideas that will eventualy show up in there,. and I would lov to do more music and the sounds are few and just placeholder,. it is really not even a propper demos, just kinda trails off,. but I post it just to show we did try, and got this far,.  so the demo is there for those that are really interested,. and we do intend to keep working on it,. so score us an incomplete for this challange,. and we will just post the finnal ver. when we get'er done.  thanks for your support. peace.


<original post follows>

We started a bit late, and have not been posting, due to being working on getting this thing playable,. but I am avoiding starting on it this mornning,. waiting for the coffee to kick in,. so you get a post!

It's a little GM project with myself doing the main coding,. and Cly5m doing the sprites.  We are designing it together, as we are both huge fans of the original,. in fact we have talked about doing some form of re-make or game 'inspired by' this for many years. When I started doing research I noticed Cly5m's shrine is listed on the Wikipedia entry for the game!
  http://www.autofish.net/shrines/rez/index.html 

Just yesterday I got the original game working in an emu,. (DCver) and now I can work from it rather than memory, I had purchased the game for both the DC and the PS2 however sadly both where lost,. interestingly I also found that K-Project (early ver. of the game) has been leaked to the net, and you can find an image file to burn and play, if you still have a DC, or just run it in emu,.
  http://kotaku.com/tag/rez/

Of course, we can not hope to touch the brilliance of the original,. and know it. So we are embracing the DE-make idea and doing a simple side-scrolling low-rez (320-240) tribute ver. hope you enjoy.

peace

I lov the clunky feel it evoks,. with the sweet 3d model lurpin' around to show its nice details,. the sounds/music are workin to,. if you can make a fun game out of it you'll have a great entry.  have fun with it.

Ha, nice work!  i lov tha art so far,. just not sure if there will be enough movement options in the 2d map,. need to have a couple ways around and out of the spawns, .  good luck with this,.  also looks like it would make a decent 2d tower defence type game actualy,. all the different units,. and the spawn rooms asthe castles,. would be very diferent gameplay,. but may work if you can't get the 2d mouse shooter stuff to be any fun,. .

very nice,.    do have another one as it seem to be working,..

[Procedural Generated Content is NOT equal to Random Element]

Daniel - thanks,. yeah, it is just a simple game currently,. I had hoped to add a bunch more stuff but time being limited, I had to stop there,. I will add to it though, time permiting.

jbrodack2008 - Procedural Generated Content is NOT equal to Random Element.  I have said that a few times now on these boards talking about my game and the games made by others,. as a few of you seem somehow confused by this,. you CAN use PCG to create randomly tweeked content, however this is not the only way to make stuff using these tecniques.
 As far as the use of randomness in my game, there is loads,. not sure why you don't see it. I did make an attempt to balance Game Design with Random PG elements however,. .  The bitmap parts for the trees and background are uniquely created for each tree, the trees are randomly placed/sized/rotated/animated the bad bugs are randomly placed, and the AIs that contol them are state machines, that randomly move between states creating some complex behaviours and proceduraly generating a vast array of movements and patterns,. many more than I could have hoped to create by hand. The results of blasting a bug is random as well, some times you get nothing, sometimes more bad guys, some times Stars.  Hope that helps. Peace.

[haowan]

thanks haowan, yeah I am fairly stocked about the new camera system, should improve overall playablity,. just gotta find time to work on it,. if you have a 360 controller then you must try my game designed for one;  http://iterationgames.com/gyoza_360contoller.zip its a single level so far but a good one! 
 I would love to have 360 controller support in ZGE!! If anyone has experiance implemeting it, and knows a bit of pascal,. then head on over to zgameeditor.org and contribute to that great open-source freeware game creation tool!

and gnome I think the gameplay speed/action will pick up on a later level,. I am still coming to grips wil implementing what I want in ZGE,. I came from GM and was spoiled by all the given math functions,.  so if i find the time,. I will get it to where I want it to go.  peace.