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[György Straub]

You can't have enough StarCats, right? RIGHT?

「 Star Cats IV 」 Sebastia` Lo´pez／Graphic Designer　Official Site In Star Cats IV you have to return to the Feline Galaxy to save it from the Evil Mice Empire. This is a 8 bit shooter where you control a spaceship through 8 levels full of enemies, explosions and tuna fish!

In Star Cats N you have to return to the Feline Galaxy to save it from the Evil Mice Empire again. This is a 32 bit shooter where you control two spaceships through levels full of enemies, explosions and tuna fish!

A C++, SDL, OpenGL and XRhodes love affair.

First screenshot with not a whole lot of action:

[s0]

This is was one of the choices I considered, but I ended up picking something else because I didn't feel like making a shmup again. Looking forward to what you'll do with it, the first screenshot looks intriguing.  

[György Straub]

thanks.=)

I had some hard time getting back to wanting to code at all, but I've tackled some challenges in the last couple of days (with not a lot of free time).

Implemented a modular shmup system comprising of ship Hulls (shield, acceleration, max speed etc.) that can have an arbitrary number of Guns, which, in turn, can point to an arbitrary direction. Maybe I'll up it to support multiple simultaneous shots per Gun.

Next is to code some enemy behaviour; presumably Phase based. With the last shmup I've been working on, the inspiration wore out before I got around to implementing bosses. This time around, all enemies are based around the same logic; that should make it easier.

[György Straub]

Crunching on.

Reimplemented the modular shmup system (with indeed multiple shots per gun) so that your ships (hulls) and gun( classe)s can be serialized from text files, like:

Code:

hWidth = "4.0f"
hHeight = "6.0f"
shield = "100"
acceleration = "600"
maxSpeed = "140"
gunCreator	<
	position	<
		x = "5",
		y = "6"
	>
	direction = "2"
	classFile = "gc_jack.xrsf"
>
gunCreator	<
	position	<
		x = "-5",
		y = "6"
	>
	direction = "-2"
	classFile = "gc_jack.xrsf"
>

The engine is coming together, with some visuals also added. Next up is the AI.

A little less conversation, a little more action, and no bitmaps at all (for now):

[Melly]

I like the modular ships idea.

[György Straub]

Implemented the enemy scripting. It can do with some fine tuning, but the system feels and looks good and only serializing objects from polymorphic classes was a pain in the ass. I opted for a cop-out. (Kids, always opt for a cop-out.)

Each enemy is comprised of a starting position, a hull (defines shield, guns, acceleration, speed) and a behavior.

Sample (eksample):

Code:

move = "2.0f 90 .5 'move for 2 seconds, to the right (expressed in degrees, relative to 12 o'clock), with 50% of its full
 speed (depends on the hull.'"

aim = "'turn guns in a manner that their average direction will be towards the closest player. no need to specify time for aiming, it's
 instantaneous.'"

attack = "2.0f 'keep shooting for 2 seconds'"

accelerate = "1.0f 270 1.0 'accelerate for 1 second, to the right, with its full acceleration (depends on the hull).'"

die = "'Happens instantaneously. The program doesn't care about these comments so long they are after the arguments
 it does care about.'"

'follow' (accelerates towards closest player) and 'wait' (this one's a surprise) and whatever commands I can come up with will also be supported (suggestions are welcome).

Next thing I'm going to implement is the level / timeline format. Once I've done that I post a demo to play/script around with. I love how my enthusiasm keeps creeping back with this project.=)

I've also tampered with music -- I'll post some soon.