[Trigger Time is now on Steam Greenlight!]

Trigger Time is now on Steam Greenlight!


So, it finally happened! Trigger Time is now on Steam Greenlight!

Please help Trigger Time pass Steam Greenlight, it all depends on you!

Click here to vote!

[Game name change]

It's been a while since I last posted an update, nevertheless, I kept working hard on the game. I did report some of the progress on my twitter feed, but today I want to post a small, but important update here.
Game name change

First of all, I'm changing the name of the game to "Trigger Time". The game remains the same, nothing is changed but the name. There're 2 reasons for the game name change:

• "Military Force" felt too generic, hard to remember or lookup using search engines. This was a temporary name right from the start and I knew that someday I'll have to change it to something better
• Preparation for Steam Greenlight (see below)

Preparation for Steam Greenlight

Yes! It'll finally happen! The game goes to Steam Greenlight very soon! This was also a reason for the game name change, I really wanted the game to have some catchy name on its Steam Greenlight page. Stay tuned for more info, I'll post another status update once the game hits Steam Greenlight.

Trigger Time 0.23

I've also published a new build of the game, it's version 0.23. There aren't much changes there:

• The name of the game is changed to Trigger Time
• Theme music is changed
• Some of the grammar mistakes were fixed
• Some of the character names were changed

Trigger Time 0.23 is the build that'll (probably) be linked to from Steam Greenlight page. Actually, the game progressed much further now, it continuously receives asset updates and new features are being worked on. Since the game is currently in somewhat "non-stable" state it's better to link a tested, stable, but a bit outdated build and that'll be 0.23

More status updates

So, as was noted earlier, a lot of stuff changed in the game, but they weren't reported anywhere but my twitter feed. It's time to fix the situation! Once the game is on Steam Greenlight I'll be providing constant updates on what was done and what's being done. I'll probably use Greenlight announcement feature or just post the updates here, anyway, stay tuned, more exciting stuff coming soon!

A boat:

Brightness settings:

That nasty machine gun hallway:

If it's only for testing purposes you can use Android emulator. It's also slow, so it's good for testing performance i.e. if it runs smoothly on emulator it'll run smoothly on almost anything.

riding a subway car:

[Military Force 0.22 is now available!]

Military Force 0.22 is now available!

This is a rather small update, just some visual tweaks, nothing more.

What's new in this 0.22 release:

Weapon recoil

Added weapon recoil, i.e. the player now leans back a bit while shooting:



(GIF converter dropped some frames, so this looks a bit awkward, but you get the idea )

Persistent debris and gibs

In previous Military Force version things like crates and barrels already produced debris on destruction
and the enemies produced gibs, but both faded away quite quickly. It felt a bit unsatisfying - you destroy something
and a moment later there's absolutely nothing left of it, like it even wasn't there in the first place.

So I decided to add persistent debris and gibs. Debris/gibs still fade away, but not all of them, some of them
will stay there forever:



It's also interactable, e.g. when you walk over it, it's moved a bit, nothing
gameplay changing though, this is purely a decoration:



BTW, those debris/gibs also react to blast waves:



So now when you're in a room full of enemies and stuff like crates/barrels and you use
your rocket launcher/proximity mines (or enemies use it ) it's pretty fun to watch how debris and
gibs flying all over the place and there's blood everywhere and stuff...

Improved blaster effect

Blaster uses particle effect for trails, but because of blaster projectiles are so fast, they're moved by more than
one particle length in a single frame (the game is in 60fps). This caused visually unpleasing trails like these:



i.e the gaps between particles aren't looking very nice. So I had to implement
sub-stepping to avoid these, now blaster particles are calculated at 120fps, this
gives much nicer effect:



Improved explosion effect

While I was generally happy with how explosions look like in the game, one thing I didn't like is when
two or more explosions happen at the same time in a single place:



This "white blob" happens because of explosions use white light of high intensity. After changing it to be
a bit red and less intense I got this:



This looks a bit better.

Colored lights

I always liked how colored lights are used in SteamWorld Dig:



So I decided to give it a try in Military Force:



But something isn't right about this, it just doesn't fit into this game. Though being
a nice idea in theory, in practice colored lights are not always that good. Military Force does use
colored lights in some places, e.g.:



But sticking them into every single light source isn't such a good idea after all.

Shadows for characters and objects

Another visual improvement idea that I had is to implement shadows for characters and
objects, something like this:



Though it looks nice in some situations (like in that GIF above) in others it just doesn't fit. Especially
when characters use lights themselves. So for now I decided to drop this idea, m.b. I'll come back to that later...

So, that's it for this update. As usual, I'm open to comments/suggestions, you can leave'em here.

Cheers!

Thnx

Just wanted to say that your game looks awesome Good luck!

Visual improvements: shadows for characters and objects.

This is absolutely awesome! But I also wonder what will gameplay look like exactly. I mean, raising those things, but how ? And how do you play with them afterwards ?

Hi, sungk. Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated Let me comment on your points below.

- I know you'll be changing the character art later, but I found it kinda funny in the beginning of the game when everyone was pointing a gun at each other while talking.

Heh Do you think I should leave it that way ?

- The explosion sound effect is too loud

Agree, will change that

- I find myself just staying near the door area while it's opening even though I'm surrounded by enemies. I have a suggestion: while the door is opening, I recommend shaking the screen. The closer the player is to the opening door, the more the screen will shake. This might make the player not hog the door and explore the room a bit more while dodging projectiles instead of waiting around to head straight to the next room (I'm not sure if this suggestion is good or not, I'm not even sure if I should be giving suggestions at all).

I see, so I need a way to make the player understand that the door will open eventually. m.b. just start opening it right away, i.e. without the delay... I'll think about it, thanks for pointing this out.

-I was pretty impressed with the gravity gun. It definitely upped the fun factor by A LOT.

Thanks

-I'm also glad that you can shoot your first gun and the gravity gun at the same time, although I did ended up just using one gun at a time. Maybe I'm not too good at multitasking.

Yeah, most of the time you just use one gun at a time, but you can also grab an enemy and shoot him. The thing is
that when an enemy is grabbed it's stunned, i.e. it doesn't attack and you can kill him easily. It's not that important in level 1 since enemies are still weak here, but it can make sense in further levels.

-I don't know why but the door in the scene from your first random screenshot wouldn't open. It's the part right after you get the gravity gun and you used it to move the boulders and you enter a room with lasers. The last doors I went through opened automatically after killing some enemies. But for some reason, I can't get passed the next door at all.

Heh, that's the first actual physics puzzle spoiler: you need to deactivate scorpion spawners by stuffing small stones into the holes where red lasers hit.

1. Yea, I found the game interesting.

That's cool

2. Well, I couldn't finish the first level but I wanted to play further though. I think finding more awesome guns would be fun.

Yeah, there're more guns further in the game

3. The game was very easy. I had a lot of health and the enemies would even drop some health kit for me to pick up.

Yeah, that's because it's the very start of the game. In general, level 1 is relatively easy, but the game gets harder on next levels, you will probably even want to use the item/booster shop to buy more lives. First, I wanted to make level 1 harder as well, because I got some feedback from people who played the game that level 1 is pretty easy. But then I got more feedback that level 1 was quite intense. So, it's a hard decision... It turns out that different people have VERY different top-down shooters skills and I kinda want for all of them to at least complete level 1 without loosing, i.e. to get them involved. Starting from level 2 things do get harder. But m.b. I will make level 1 just a bit more harder. Thanks for your opinion on this one, it's particularly important to me.

Cheers!

Thanks, TheCams

Bump. There's a big update available for Military Force, the details are here:
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=54659.msg1243963#msg1243963

It would be extremely helpful to get some feedback on it, so don't mind sharing your thoughts here

[Military Force 0.21 is now available!]

Military Force 0.21 is now available!

So, after another month of work I'm proud to present new and improved Military Force version 0.21. You
can download it here - http://www.indiedb.com/games/military-force/downloads

What's new in this 0.21 release:

• More content - Now the demo includes 3 campaign levels
• New UI - UI had been entirely reworked to match the style of the game
• Video, audio and controls configuration - These are now can be changed by the player
• Item/booster shop - You can now buy stuff in exchange for gems that you collect during the game
• Other small improvements - No more debug output, end of mission statistics, etc.

More content

That one is the most important. The first 0.18 demo contained only one level - that definitely wasn't enough to get a taste of the game.
Another downside of the demo having only one level was that there weren't enough enemies and weapons for player to check out.

Hope this update will fix the situation, you'll get to try more weapons, such as the rocket launcher and proximity mines, face deadly enemies and more



New UI

The second most important update is the UI. The old UI was sort of a stub, with this update UI now matches the style of the game:



The UI is designed with html/css, it's powered by awesome UI library - libRocket (http://librocket.com)

Video, audio and controls configuration

Those are also very important, you can now change your video/audio settings.



The video settings include 2 particularly important options: fullscreen mode and vertical sync. So you can now
play the game fullscreen if you like. And you can check/uncheck vertical sync if you have stuttering problems on your system (e.g. that can be the case if you're running system with multiple GPUs).



And, well, you can customize the controls.

Item/booster shop

Another thing that was a bit confusing in the previous demo is the gems that you collect during the game:



Now they'll make sense, because you can now buy stuff in exchange for these gems right before the mission starts:



There're currently 4 items/boosters to choose from, but there will be more

Other small improvements

There're also other small improvements that were made. The end of mission statistics stub was removed and it now counts correctly:



The debug console was removed (it now logs to a file) and stuff like logo screen and credits were added, that makes the game feel more like an actual game.

There were also many other small internal fixes as well as improvements, but those mostly go to further game levels.

And as usual, I'm open to comments/suggestions, just leave'em here

Cheers!

I strongly recommend libRocket - http://librocket.com It's lightweight, engine agnostic and can be easily integrated. I've recently reworked my game's UI using it, here's the result:


All those menus and controls are custom-made using css/html, it was fairly easy to do. BTW, I also though about using imgui first, but then I realized that imgui is better suited for in-game debugging, it doesn't allow one to customize stuff and make everything look pretty, so I went with libRocket and I'm pretty happy

P.S: BTW, libRocket integration into my OpenGL-based engine took a little less than 1 day

First take on one of my game's mini-bosses. It turned out pretty nice in the end, but the first version was slightly... obscene

cool

Thanks, suny. BTW, I've looked through SHMUP Creator topic before in devlog. Just wondering, can you make that kind of games without programming at all in SHMUP Creator ?