[1. Dive!]

@kraed nothing special with the particles, they're billboards with lots of color and shape changes over time. There's also a lot of them, which helps!

The original version of Brigands suffered from a couple of glaring design flaws, the biggest being how unbalanced the battlefield was for players higher up on the screen. With limited firing angles, it made sense for players to get beneath their opponents and fire straight up, making counterattacks impossible without taking a few hits before reaching their altitude. Worse, it constrained most of the game's fights to the bottom of the map and severely limited any sort of creative fighting around the floating platforms. So far I've made two pretty big changes to address this:

1. Dive! You now have the ability to quickly dive at your opponent and attack from above. I'm hoping this will open up the entire playing field and create a lot more tactical fighting in the upper parts of the map. It's also really fun to do!



2. Drown! Dropping below the bottom of the screen for longer than 10 seconds results in death now, all the more reason to stop camping and fight like a real brigand!

[BRIGANDS]

BRIGANDS

If the name looks vaguely familiar to you, Brigands was my entry for the Versus Compo long ago, taking home the highly coveted 4th place trophy. It's a shared screen, 2 player competitive game somewhere between Joust and the old Artillery games. Firing and movement speed is slower, so positioning and smart shots mean the difference between life and death.

I've always had a soft spot for this game and after years on the backburner, I decided to dust off the old girl and give her a proper run in Unity (compo version was my last game in Blitz3D). My immediate goal is to remake the original level while adding some improvements around the horn. From there, some new ships, new levels, and maybe a co-op mode somewhere down the road.


Download and play now:
http://26k.org/brigands


Here's some wip of the new version:




And some bandwith killing, gif action:

Rebuilding and improving Brigands (Versus compo) in Unity:

crossposting from my devlog


fire demons!

This looks great! Curious why the background doesn't move in this one compared to your older gifs?

[@nss_aries]

@nss_aries, awesome time! Also, your screenshot has 2 bugs on it, so thanks for the unintentional QA work

@Floresy, thanks for the feedback, interesting you mentioned the screen shake, I was worried it was overpowering at times. Maybe not so much tho?

In regards to the edges, for the longest time the physics would freak out when you hit them wrong and flung you vertically into the sky or tipped the car onto its side. I probably overcompensated in fixing that, I'll see if there's some room for improvement cause I agree with you about having that tension when you're on the edge.

@Impmaster, I'm not sure if what you're experiencing is a result of the game's performance, or just generally struggling with the controls, but I'm thinking it's more the latter? As others have mentioned, there's a decently steep learning curve and this car in particular is 'heavy', so you end up in the water a lot at first. It's frustrating, I know. Appreciate the feedback tho, especially for being an osx guinea pig!

@WillyChyr, re: the water, it's just a big animated mesh. I wanted to do displacement but in the end I found the roughness of the water matched the game's aesthetic better so I just rolled with it. Animation could be smoother tho...

One quick update, I started digging back into my collision code in preparation for the next track (which will have far less insta-death) and of course, the result of doing so immediately broke how the camera works. So, I guess those two things are on tap for right now.

Thanks everyone!

[OSX]

ok, uploaded an OSX version here:
http://26k.org/ultrawide/play/ultrawide_120113_osx.zip

Fair warning, since I don't have a mac this build is untested. I assume a .zip file is ok? Let me know how it works for you guys!

@HD, thanks for the feedback and suggestions. Agreed that this probably isn't the best choice for a starter track, the one I'm sketching out right now is a lot more boxed in.

@Zaphos, good point about the respawn, maybe as a difficulty setting? Either way, I have to rework some code to make that possible, but nothing too crazy.

@nss_aries, I'll give it a shot

I was thinking about the addition of barriers today and want to test out the idea of destructible ones in strategic locations. That way on a missed turn you can hit one and keep the race going, but next time through you lose that safety net.

[@xerus]

@xerus, right now yes, I've been considering adding brakes to the equation but probably not as the method for initiating drifts. I still prefer flooring it through the turns.

@Alec S, you'll find cutting the corners a bit to be pretty forgiving, so maybe it is just your entry point into the turns like you mentioned. Once you figure out the lines, it's possible to race the entire track without ever letting off the gas. But that's probably a good section for me to test out guard rails in, just to keep things moving

[@Alec S]

thanks for the feedback everyone, really appreciate it!

@Alec S, you're right about the acceleration curve needing work, it's definitely up there on my things to do. I do have a setting in there for adjusting slowdown during turns, I was trying to balance this car's speed against another that handles a lot tighter, but it would probably make sense to revisit those numbers again. Are you accelerating throughout the turns or letting off before and powering out?

@siskavard, I was originally going for f-zero but I'm not sure how much it resembles it anymore.

@nss_aries, probably at some point, I'm just not really set up to test other platforms right now.

@Impmaster, made in Unity

Glad people are digging the visuals too, it's something I constantly stress over.

Not sure of the background meshes with the low poly foreground. This should be easier, damnit!

This is looking good, definitely go with a simpler background and maybe extend the draw distance if you can


Bit of a cross-post, but I finally setup a devlog for Ultrawide (formerly 'blue'). You can play it too!
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=37447.0

[Ultrawide]

Ultrawide
Ultrawide is a challenging arcade racer built for aggressive, high speed driving through unforgiving tight turns and jumps. Inspired by the breakneck style of hover racing games of the past and way too many hours spent sitting in traffic on the way to work.

Download and play
>> Latest Release [v.01 - 12.01.13] <<

This game is about 5 months old now and I finally have it at a place where I could really use some additional eyes and hands on it. This version only includes a single track and car but gives a fairly close representation of how I imagine the gameplay to feel. The game is pretty hard right now and you'll probably fly off the track a bunch of times until the handling starts to make sense. I'm leaning towards adding some guardrails on a few of the turns to keep the frustration level down, it's a bit more punishing right now than I would ultimately like. The playable car in this version is tuned for speed over handling, so it admittedly may not be the best 'starter' vehicle, but, it's more fun to drive fast...





Visually this is about 85% there, audio needs a whole lot of work. Give it a run through, I would love to hear some feedback & impressions and if you can pull it off, under 1:30 runs...

This is looking pretty cool, especially the first person gameplay. I'd love to see a video of the Oculus stream if you can

@phi6 that lighting is looking really good!

latest:

Added a whole bunch of art to the track over the weekend, but really in need of a color pass:

new track, animated water, and some fun simple engine fx

still in graybox, but fun:

I like the way this guy came out:

Waaaaaalteeeeeeeeeeer

he is the one who knocks

Haha, shit... that, um definitely wan't my intention, but now I can't unsee it. Hmm, that kinda adds a weird subtext to my game I wasn't going for. Honestly, I was more worried he was looking too Ned Flanders in a lab coat while I was making him

I like the way this guy came out:

pissed at myself for not checking out this devlog earlier, game looks really cool and considering how the project started, it's impressive that you were able to build it into your own original idea.

thanks guys, glad to hear you all enjoyed it! 

Are you planning on texturing the world or will it be solid colors like that? If you're not going to texture it, the very least you could do is add some color to the buildings. Everything being gray is so depressing and it's difficult to make out shapes.

Not traditional textures (right now it all uses 1 simple texture that's just a color palette) but there will definitely be a lot of color to give the world some variety and more importantly form. I know that's really lacking right now, it's hard to get a read on things at a distance but for the time being I'm still working out metrics and can't be bothered with setting up uv's