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[AdamAtomic]

http://games.lastchancemedia.com/nano/

Nano is a simple arcade shmup that I made in about 7 days.  I used Flex Builder 3, Photoshop 7, SFXR, and FamiTracker to create it.  The "screen" is 90x90, and the game does not use any floating point variables or trigonometry.  Over the next few months I'll be adding a high score table and generally more of everything - more enemies, more weapons, more backgrounds, hopefully a boss or two.

If you see anything just tragically bad going on here, or its slamming your CPU, or you have some ideas, let me know!  Thanks 

[Zaphos]

It seems like a small thing, but the game has no automatic repeat fire and rewards the player for smashing the fire button as fast as possible.  So it gets kind of tiring to play.  It became especially awkward when I realized I could get a faster fire rate with my right hand than my left, so there's a reason to play with my hands on the wrong sides of the keyboard ...

[Farbs]

This is coming along really nicely.

Can I ask how you've kept framerate high and tearing low? These are the two things stopping me from using flash at the moment.

I reckon you're at the right stage to start thinking about medium level dings. What's the player achieving every 30 seconds or so? What makes them feel like they've done something cool? Obvious examples are checkpoints, bonus boxes, level transitions, and background changes.

[Friendly Rhinoceros]

I liked this.  I like how I have to press shoot over and over again; I personally think autofire is a bit boring after a while.  Having to hit shoot every time is more intense, especially when the screen is so small.

It reminds me of the challenging stages in Galaga, because a lot of it is based on positioning before the next wave comes since the enemies don't shoot.  I enjoyed this, and the big random waves split it up nicely.

I went crazy trying to collect those little blue dots and was a bit disappointed when I only got an extra ship Will those give power-ups later?  I think it will be a lot of fun with bosses and power-ups.

Two critiques: if I die during the big random wave, I almost always die again after the invincibility frames are up.  I don't know if I just don't shoot fast enough, but maybe you could wait to respawn until the current wave is over.  Also, once when I died on the big wave and then restarted, there was a ship left over that was still flying in the new game.

Thanks for a fun little game!  Simplicity is usually best with these, and you nailed it.

[AdamAtomic]

Hey thanks guys!

Farbs - I think the small resolution helps a lot - I render to a 98x98 sprite which I just scale up to 4x.  Also, great point about the mid-term goals, I will definitely think that through as I think about new enemies and bosses especially, pacing in shmups is I think the hardest thing to get right!

Friendly Rhino - Cool, I've gotten some mixed responses on the non-autofire, but I like how it feels too.  I think to try and please both crowds some of the weapon upgrades will be auto-fire beam weapons/missiles/etc.  Also, I'm thinking about having a charge shot for the basic weapon, when I was playtesting yesterday I found myself wanting to charge...that's a good point about spawning during the wave.  You have a pretty small core, but something about where the bullets spawn or how they spawn in relation to invulnerability turning off and the rate of the enemy ships is still not quite right I think.  I'll check that out asap.  Also, I'll try and replicate that leftover ship, that definitely shouldn't happen!!  I thought I was cleaning all the arrays but I'll doublecheck.

Thanks for the feedback guys!

[Farbs]

Ah, that explains the chunky pixels. Nice one.

A couple of really minor points:

• The menu should probably be keyboard controlled rather than mouse. Switching between the two is slightly annoying.
• Can you shoot while invincible? I died a second time occasionally 'cos I had no way to clear the screen on respawn.

[AdamAtomic]

Ah, that explains the chunky pixels. Nice one.

A couple of really minor points:

• The menu should probably be keyboard controlled rather than mouse. Switching between the two is slightly annoying.
• Can you shoot while invincible? I died a second time occasionally 'cos I had no way to clear the screen on respawn.

1 - it is both   it's just you have to click a flash plugin to give it focus

2 - you can't, and honest at this point i have no idea why I made that decision

[ThetaGames]

Very nice!  You really implemented the retro style well, something that is rarely seen in Flash.  I like the music, as well as the retro sound effects.

I would personally prefer autofire, but that is just my opinion.  I don't think there is much skill required to repeatedly press a button, as opposed to holding it down.  Therefore, I don't think the game will lose anything if you implemented it.

How do you regain those bombs?  I saw I was getting more toward the beginning, but it later stopped.

Excellent work!

~ Theta Games

[AdamAtomic]

right now you can't regain any bombs (i dont think so anyways!), those will be pickups that i'll put in with the proper weapons system

[Friendly Rhinoceros]

I couldn't tell if not being able to shoot while invincible was just my half-broken keyboard or not when I played earlier.  My Z key works fine for typing, but for shmups it's bad news

I looked at it again, and I think being able to shoot during those frames would alleviate the respawn problem.  That way the ships wouldn't always be right on top of you when you come back.

Also, I'm thinking about having a charge shot for the basic weapon, when I was playtesting yesterday I found myself wanting to charge...

Just an idea, but I think it would be awesome if the shot's spread increased as you charged.  I don't know if any shmups do this, but it could be a lot of fun.

[dustin]

cool game the two things I found "wrong" were...

I got two "stuck" blue pixels I don't know how it happened but they were blue in the middle and then up/down/left/right were light blue I assume this is because of the 4 times stretching.  They just stayed blue the whole time it was weird...

By staying right were you start and shooting you never die (or at least i didn't I played for a while this way but didn't want to wear out my keyboard z key )

[joshg]

Cool, ran super-smooth even on this non-gaming borrowed laptop I'm using right now.

For what it's worth, I'd vote for autofire if I had a choice.

[MekanikDestructiwKommando]

Woa, a *fast* shmup right from the start? Hooray.
Please, tell us how you made it run smoothly! I've been thinking about getting into flash but horror stories about frame rate have kept me away.

[Corpus]

Cool, and very nice graphics. I'm looking forward to new enemy patterns.

The fact that I can't destroy most of the onscreen enemies (short of bombing them) when the big load of them comes at me (not in one of the sinusoidal patterns, when there's just a big wall of them) bothers me, though. It makes me feel like I've failed.

[AdamAtomic]

Corpus - Yeah that sort of thing is better for like clearly inanimate objects I think...I was just running out of ideas for easy-to-program patterns   I think I'll strip those once I have some more enemies...

MDK - I don't think I'm doing anything *too* crazy, but I'm sure some stuff I'm doing helps.  I wrote my own array functions based on some good advice I found for doing particles and other short-lifecycle elements.  Basic flash array programming for particles would go something like this:

particles.push(new particle()); //do this for all your particles
particles.remove(thisParticle); //called to remove a particle when it's played out

Array resizing can be a very expensive CPU operation when you're doing it with say, particles, enemies, bullets, powerups, etc etc etc.  Especially since flash doesn't even have remove, it has splice or some crazy crap.  My push and remove functions are designed to change array sizes as little as possible.  Every time you push an element into one of these arrays, it checks if any slots in the array are unused.  If they are, it just fills em in.  Likewise, to remove, it just sets the entry to null and gets on with its day.  As you can see, this does make accessing the array slightly more time consuming, as you have to check if its null, but generally that is safe programming practice anyways!

Beyond that, rendering into a small (< 100x100) buffer and avoiding costly handholding type functionality (such as LOTS of tweens and scaling) seems to yield decent results!

[MekanikDestructiwKommando]

kewl

[AdamAtomic]

Completely rebuilt the back end to use a modular set of helper classes, added in high scores, and fixed the "no more waves" bug!  Think of this as a patch rather than a true release, I've got a pretty short list of tasks before I can do a proper update though, and most of them are pretty fun!  Also looking at a way to possibly massively optimize the way my sprites are being drawn...

[Friendly Rhinoceros]

I got a high score!  I doubt it will last long, though.  Games like this are perfect for high scores.

Glad you are still working on it.  I can't find time for any game stuff recently.  Maybe if I was coding instead of reading this.  Nonetheless, I hope one of the updates is a different enemy

[Farbs]

...and fixed the "no more waves" bug!

Nope, bug's still there
It's running in a seperate browser window as I type this. It's a shame too, 'cos it means I can't submit my high score (77600, 2 lives remaining).

I like the way the waves start overlapping in the later game. It adds gameplay variation and scales the difficulty all at once. Lovely!

[dustin]

Nope, bug's still there Grin
It's running in a seperate browser window as I type this. It's a shame too, 'cos it means I can't submit my high score (77600, 2 lives remaining).

I like the way the waves start overlapping in the later game. It adds gameplay variation and scales the difficulty all at once. Lovely!

yep I also got there...

score: 101200

Also may I add I got there without moving and simply tapping the fire button at a reasonable rate.  I was going to do it again to but die at the end to prove it but it got to boring (the game is fun but sitting in one place tapping z is not) so I eneded it soon and got 4th place.  I see this as a pretty serious bug but not that hard to fix.  Either make the bullet hitboxes smaller then the player or make things that can hit him on the side.