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[Ashkin]

BITROCKET

GET HIGH

You, a daring new rocket pilot, are about to embark on a daring journey.
 How far will you get? Who knows! How will you die? Who cares! This game
is a daring journey through space. Dodge meteors, collect fuel, and most
importantly, survive!




LAUNCH

(This is new as of Oct 24)

Okay, I'm glad I finally got this to a playable                 CREDITS
build. This is by no means done, and I will continue    The good folk on IRC
to work on it until I deem it to be in a releasable      For all their help
state. Please, comment, and tell me, what do you
want added? Obstacles, stats, anything. I need your          My Brother
help for ideas. Your critique is much appreciated,      A good wall to bounce
and I assure you it keeps me going constantly!                ideas off.

Thank you,                                                   CONTROLS
Ashkin                                                     Arrow keys to move
                                                         Double tap up to dash
                                                     Space to select/pause ingame
                                                          That's about it...

[BrixxieBee]

This is cool, really really cool. Some suggestions though. It's too hard. Maybe make the fuel run out half as fast. As far as gameplay goes, I like how you can't attack.

You can build off that. But I also think maybe a pulse gun that you can shot and it wastes fuel but is like a reverse black hole when it hits a meteor and pushes things away from it. So, it can clear a path, but wastes your fuel.

Also, sometimes no fuel crates are generated. This leaves too much to chance. It shouldn't be that you can be really good but chance will make it so that you can't get far. This is unfair and discouraging. So, to balance it out, maybe a fuel crate is created when you're under 1/4 fuel, but also are a few meteors.

And, maybe you can really really really slowly speed up the game, but that might not be reasonable.

I do really like the way the screen is split in half. It gives it really cool aesthetics.

Good work so far!  

[BrixxieBee]

Also, it wasn't clear that you could dash, and that you can dash into meteors to destroy them. This makes things a little different. You might want to add that in the intro when it starts up.

[Ashkin]

Thanks for the kind words, James!
I will modify the fuel speed. As for the pulse gun, that may be a good idea, and I'll see along the way if I can implement it.
The fuel crates are a bit mean, so yeah, that suggestion is good. Also, I will add some kind of animation or something for the dash.
Thank you again!

[MaloEspada]

Hey Ashkin.
Here are my suggestions:

-you could make smaller asteroids
-make sure that more refuelers spawn
-make dash useful (like, if you dash into a small asteroid you break it)
-make easier for the player to turn left or right cause it's really frustrating right now

[Ashkin]

Okay. My goals right now:
High priority:
   Tweak the meteor graphics and numbers
   Make the boost more obvious, like have the ship glow red
   Add some type of instructions screen (If you dash, you smash meteors)
   When your Fuel is below 100, have fuel spawn
Medium priority:
   Tweak fuelcan graphics
   Perhaps mess around with controls a little
   Add stats to fill up the space in the HUD
Low priority:
   Make some type of black hole obstacle
   Tweak the galaxy's graphics so they stand out more
   Prototype some kind of pulse gun like James suggested.


Thanks for the suggestions Ein, but when you say make the meteors smaller, is this because they are too hard to dodge? Or do you mean to make a separate set of weaker asteroids?

[BrixxieBee]

My high score is 6346!!

[Ashkin]

Wow, I don't think even I had gotten that high.
Must..... Beat... Your score.

[droqen]

Damn thing is still loading!

But immediately, I would personally advise against guaranteed fuel crates once your fuel gets too low: instead make the system such that they come exactly once every ______ time/distance.

|__X__|X____|____X|_X___|

There a | is a 'distance marker' of, I dunno, 100 units of time or distance.
And of course X is a 'fuel crate spawn' event.
Don't cheat to be nice to the player: just be fair!

Okay, it finally loaded. Nice work, Ashkin :D It's laggy on my netbook but nice.
I hold by my one-per-interval suggestion above :3

[Ashkin]

Ah, THAT is a good idea, and would be extremely easy to implement.
Thanks!

[BrixxieBee]

I think the game would be boring if fuel crates were guaranteed at certain intervals. Giving them to you at random, but also if you're running out of fuel and haven't received one in a while is the best approach I believe.

[droqen]

Why do you think that? Keep in mind I'm not suggested a fixed interval -- just a system to ensure that the average rate of fuel crates is consistent, and to ensure that there is no unlucky drought of an unreasonable length.

[Ashkin]

So, they're spawned randomly, but whenever one is spawned, a timer is set, and if a new one isn't spawned, then one is spawned when the timer hits zero?

[MaloEspada]

Or do you mean to make a separate set of weaker asteroids?

^ this.

Also, it could be kinda cool if you forgot the graphics for now and concentrated on getting the engine/game done. There is no problem in using placeholder graphics. Just my 2 cents on the matter.
This way you can concentrate in different areas at different times (make the engine first then the graphics then sound etc..)

[BrixxieBee]

Why do you think that? Keep in mind I'm not suggested a fixed interval -- just a system to ensure that the average rate of fuel crates is consistent, and to ensure that there is no unlucky drought of an unreasonable length.

I think I pictured it wrong. If it were a fixed interval the game would be boring and I thought that's what you meant. Are you saying that there's a specified time interval and a fuel tank is guaranteed to be generated at a random time within each time interval? Cause that's sounds like that would work pretty well.

[droqen]

Ashkin: That could work too, it's probably simpler than what I had in mind...
but I'm not sure if it would be as good!

Moldering: Yes, exactly that.

Pseudocode Snippet Time!

Code:

current_time = 0;
spawn_time = random 0 to 99;

every update
{
  current_time ++;
  if (current_time == spawn_time)
  {
    SPAWN_A_FUEL_CONTAINER();
  }
  else if (current_time >= 100)
  {
    current_time = 0;
    spawn_time = random 0 to 99;
  }
}

Replace 100 with X
Replace 99 with X-1
and you're all set!

[maxwell]

I like it! The ship feels really good to control, which is probably the most important part of this type of game. I'll throw in my suggestions.

- You should improve the collision detection for the asteroids, right now it seems like you're using a rotated bounding box maybe. It feels unfair to get pushed back when not really touching it.

- If you use a pixelated look, in my opinion it looks best to have a single pixel size. You've got a mix of 1- and 2-pixel blocks in your sprites, and 4 in your text. There's also the issue of rotating your sprites, which even if they're all made of 2x2 blocks will break the grid. There's a couple solutions I know of to that problem: 1) use pre-rotated graphics, kind of a pain. 2) Draw everything to a flash bitmap 1/2 the size in each dimension of your game, then scale it up 2x with nearest neighbor filtering to double the pixels. Harder to control the look.

- A common technique for hazard-aversion games is to reward the player for getting close to the hazard without colliding. You could give a little extra fuel for buzzing past the asteroids.

Also, regarding fuel, here's another way to try out:

- A fuel comes by regularly, maybe every 7s +/- 2s
- fuel consumption vs reward is such that if you can get 50% of these, you break even, and if you get more, you'll have a little buffer.
- as time goes on probably the obstacles get denser, which makes getting 50% of the fuels more difficult.

That way, regular fuel is assured, but conservation is still encouraged, eg. the player isn't rewarded for running out.

Good luck with your game!

[Ashkin]

Well guys, sorry I haven't updated, but I haven't been able to find the motivation to work on this. I have been chipping away at this, implementing the fuel system, tweaking this and that. So don't give up, I'm still working!

[BrixxieBee]

How's this coming along? It looked pretty cool when I saw it last.

[Ashkin]

Haha, I was hoping that everyone had forgotten about it

But since I am the nicest guy ever, I will post a new build. It won't be complete in any way, but I've fixed the fuelcan spawning, added better graphics, a menu, and some stats and junk. I haven't actually been working on it much (as it usually turns out), but I will post this build and maybe, through feedback, find some motivation to work on it.
Right now, my top priority is setting up some type of money system.
When you smash a meteor, it drops ore chunks, which are cashed in at the end of your play for Olyar, which is a stupid name for money. Then, you can use your Olyar to buy pointless stuff in the shop, like new themes and color schemes, as well as modifications to change how your ship looks. None of these would affect gameplay, as that would give some people an advantage over others. But your ship's appearance will show up on the online leaderboards (which I hope I'll find a way to implement...) so the more pimped out your rocket is, the better you are at Bitrocket!

Of course, none of this has been implemented yet. But feel free to play around with this demo:
http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1287948700

I'm actually getting a bit of lag on this myself, although I'm not sure if it's a result of the game or my computer.
So please, post feedback and new ideas! Right now I'm going to try my best to implement Olyar, then on to snazzying up the HUD. And then I'll probably tweak the menus a bit more, as they are rather incomplete as is. For example, the options menu isn't even working, you can't buy anything at the shop, and the help screen is incomplete.
Oh, by the way: I suggest you mute it for now, as the music and sfx, which I made myself, are understandingly horrible. Either I'll have to get better, or I could find someone to make me some music when I'm done.