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[VomitOnLino]

(Working title)

What is Invaders: Corruption?

Invaders should be my personal take on the tried and true genre of arena-shoot em ups. It will involve several fresh Ideas to spice up the core gameplay mechanic, to add replay-ability and new gameplay mechanics for the player to cope with.

The game will feature an retro look, which besides being popular nowadays, also serves well to highlight the game's main feature:

Procedural content
Most content for this game will be generated on the fly. The generation will based on a seed value, which the player provides. Giving an indivudal experience to everyone playing. Of course you can exchange particularly interesting seed values with your friends.

This means obvious things such as ship graphics, effects and enemies will be generated procedurally. This means for example an almost infinite (Okay okay ... 33,554,432 only!) amount of enemy invader looks. It will also mean emergent AI behaviors as AI "parts" will be mixed together procedurally as well. Which brings me to:

The corruption
The name giving feature of this game is the so-called corruption. It will slowly spread from corruption-nodes which the player must keep in control, to remain in command of the arena.

The corruption will glitch sprites (think NES sprite errors) as it goes, turning normal enemy invaders into unpredictable hazards. Stats such as Health, AI and appearance will be mixed amongst other nearby corrupted invaders, resulting in newer stronger enemies. To survive the player will have to adapt new strategies.

The approach
I will be updating this as I go along, sometimes quickly sometimes there will be probably draughts of anything happening at all, as I also have a full-time job to take care of. None the less I'm 100% intent of reaching my goal of a GM release!

Content and gameplay wise, I will be referring to my design document, and if that fails I will make it up as I go along. Gathering input & criticism from few selected pre-alpha testers. Later in development, I plan to extend the group of testers to the whole of TIGsource.

Okay, okay -- I wanna play!
No problem, recently I released an alpha-demo:

Grab the latest version/info -> here!

Without further ado, here's the first working screenshot: Showing the working "basic" invader generator. Each invader is generated in a 3 pass process:
First the geometry is created based on a ruleset for each invader type. Then the sprite is drawn and colorized and stored in memory. Last but not least the glow-map is being calculated and applied to each invader sprite.

[tesselode]

Looks interesting.

[Inanimate]

Those generated sprites look positively awesome, and the idea and gameplay behind this sound fun. Looking forward to new updates.

[Carrie Nation]

I love pixels with that fake arcade glow on them.

[VomitOnLino]

Progress Report
Okay looks like I reached some milestones in the process of making this game and I'd like to share those with you. I'm not sure if I can always regularly update - but I'll try.

Of course you can provide your input anytime, so feel free!

Technical Stuff
I managed to port most of the Earth 3D engine over to the new game unscathed. This also means I have now a modular engine for any future game productions that I had in mind.

I also extended the engine to allow me to render to textures, thus allowing for vital frame-buffer effects like Bloom, Depth-of-field, Motionblur and others. It already runs at a nice clip, even on my Atom Netbook. Of course there isn't much game going on right now so that might change.

For the sake of development speed & cross-plattform-ness I decided to ditch DirectX for now. I might put it back later when there is demand for it.

Game Contents
I started branching off various cases for the invader generator, allowing for generation of varied types of enemies and player ships. Pictured here are some kind of MiniBosses. I'm still unsure wether they will make it into the final game or not.


A quick test shows that my snake locomotion does what it should do, so expect the staple-of-shoot em up's in there, too. Snakes and centipedes that is!


The particle manager also does fine, is tried and true from my previous game "Earth is a 3D Planet" and thus doesn't even break a sweat with 2.000 particles on screen. Good!



The glory shot
A quick shot of my engine put together so far. A couple of generated invaders chasing my .. erm. white block around a mostly empty playfield. The glowing squares are created in the back buffer and are thus smooth/low res.

[RCIX]

 

Very interesting! Will this be free or paid for? What platform will it be on?

[VomitOnLino]

It will be free as in "Beer", so please buy me a lot! 

It will be on OS X, Linux and Windows. A.k.a. for everyone!

[tesselode]

Are you going to put in a warpy grid or something?

[Carrie Nation]

Are you going to put in a warpy grid or something?

Because arena shooters haven't done that enough have they?

[nihilocrat]

Looks really cool! I suggest you let players enter their seeds with alphanumeric characters, which are then converted to an integer and then used as the proper seed. It would make seeds easier to share and more memorable.

[sereneworx]

Sweet looking generation and especially colours.

It's great that you're going multiplatform.

[VomitOnLino]

Looks really cool! I suggest you let players enter their seeds with alphanumeric characters, which are then converted to an integer and then used as the proper seed. It would make seeds easier to share and more memorable.

That's already the case.

A seed can be any 20character-alphanumeric word.

Tesselode: Nope. Maybe something comparable, but nope no grid.

Also thanks for the kind words everyone! I'll try to keep on the ball!

[VomitOnLino]

Quick Worklog digest:
-Graphics engine mostly completed, that means frame-buffer effects, "pseudo-shaders" and other effects are now available at my disposal.
-Fixed a couple of bugs as they cropped up, there's probably dozens more in there but hey.
-Player sprite generation!
-Rudimentary Sound/Music tracker system.
-Support to upload your generative "Avatar" and scores to my server online, via a strongly encrypted string that gets decrypted server-side to thwart hackers. The server-side PHP scripts still need work though.


But there's also a couple of "setbacks":
-Namely the player generation. I first wrote an incredibly elaborate algorithm (A) that generates a VAST array of different spaceships, but I found them kind of clashing with the general theme of the game. So I stuck with a more predictable algorithm (B) that results in very cool ships as well, but they are all kind of similar.

Don't take my word for it and have a look:

What would you chose, my dear readers? I'm open for ideas!  　[I might use the "inferior" algo for enemy generation, as there are still 3 kinds of enemy without a graphic now.]


On the sound front:
I'm going to be using one of those, and see if I can eke all the game's sounds out of it:

(For those that don't know - this is a MOOG Analogue synthesizer, as featured in the DIY GAKKEN magazine.)


Last but not least, a bit of eyecandy for all of you:

(I'm not happy with large parts of the effects and other things, yet but I guess I have to keep you in the loop! )

[RotateMe]

As been said, this looks utterly amazing. I would love a classic space invaders mode as I'm kinda fed up with arena shooters. Aside from the procedural generation of enemies and player ships, will there be something unique in terms of gameplay?

[VomitOnLino]

As been said, this looks utterly amazing. I would love a classic space invaders mode as I'm kinda fed up with arena shooters. Aside from the procedural generation of enemies and player ships, will there be something unique in terms of gameplay?

Thanks for all the flattery. I hope to meet all these expectations here. Better get back to work.

-Yes, there will be a unique element, and some different ideas for enemies. The main unique element being the name giving corruption. Which will slowly infest the arena and modify the characteristics of invaders (their looks, AI and stats will be jumbled in a semi-random manner). Also I want to try some new kinds of enemies (Mine layers, Enemies that flee after seeing their "mates" die, and enemies that will only attack when they are in a clump of 10 or more enemies...)

-Last but not least I will want to reward risky play, as that was fun in Earth3D. Like bouncing off the boundary while closely missing an enemy and sniping another one across the field in one swift move = extra big points. (With tony hawk-esque announcement)

-And again yes, there will be a classic mode, which will also work as a kind of introduction to the various kind of enemies. At least that's how I wrote it up. I have to see how it all comes together.

It may not all be in the first version tough, as I'm a strong believer in RERO. (Release early, release often.)

[VomitOnLino]

Devlog
-Completed: Positional Stereo Audio
-Completed: 11 different enemy types with graphics and AI
-Completed: Graphic engine and Frame-Buffer Core
-Completed: OOP Main Menu Code & Ini-File writing/loading
-Added: Two easter-eggs
-Started: Balancing
-Started: Work on Corruption

To Do:
-Add the final enemy type - A flocking/swarming enemy type that will only attack when with others. Otherwise it will feel
-Add Corruption!
-Make Player's Shield Functional
-Add Online-Highscores (Server side Scripts)
-Add Mission Mode (Defend your "Server" etc.)
-Add Classic Mode (Space Invaders)
-Tons of Balancing

Excursion: Communicating power
Now when I say power I mean RAW BRUTAL power. Almost every game contains items of varying power. So how do you communicate to the player that he just set off or encountered something powerful.

After some 2-3 hours of experimenting with how to implement the "Smart Bomb" I came upon these findings:

-Speed: if it takes forever to unwind it doesn't seem very powerful.
-Sense of scale: In a game where every explosion fills 1/4 of the screen, one that fills the entire screen doesn't feel that powerful by comparison.
-Brightness: Bright means hot/painful
-Sound: Use sound, or lack thereof (There may be no air for the sound to traverse through after a powerful blast.) Use deep sounds
-Physics: Big explosions push stuff away - don't spray your particles randomly, push them away from the explosion.
-Effect: Last but not least, if it looks powerful, it also should bring the expected results. A giant explosion that only kills 3 enemies feels unsatisfactory.

And thus, without further ado the results of my hard work:

The frazzled player sets off a bomb. The force of the initial blast distorts the entire screen.


The shockwave unfolds, together with various particle effects. Meanwhile the screen distortion subsides.


The shockwave crushes everything in its path. Note that there are no explosion sprites drawn. This is because this way it weirdly enough seems even more powerful. Probably because the blast pushes the away the air as well.



Aand that's it for today. Hope you like it!
PS: Don't mind the FPS count, I was mashing the screenshot button (Yes the game has one!) like crazy to capture the effect, which lasts maybe 0.7sec.

[Dozer]

I demand video capture of that explosion STAT! :D

Looks really good, I love the idea of procedurally generated AI and enemies... Actually had a little thread going for it in the design section a month or two ago.

As to the player generation Algorithms... I think I like A best, but maybe not for player ships. I love variety, but B seems to work best in terms of readability, which is a must for aiming and the like. So B would work for players, but I think A should make an appearance somewhere in the game... (maybe a boss-like that has really nice AI and controls like a player?)

Keep up the good work! Now I have to go find this Earth 3D you speak of 

[VomitOnLino]

I demand video capture of that explosion STAT! :D

Will do later, right now I'm at work so maybe I should keep a low profile. 

But none the less I will post a quick progress log:
-Cleaned up some code from the weekend coding frenzy (Bugs Fixed, neater code)

-Optimized the particle engine, now accessing GL direcly netting a whopping 70% speed increase!

-Added my last (planned) enemy. A "boids" like AI, that flocks together to form swarms. While each individual is passive and poses no threat, a swarm will actively chase the player. While being swarmed the AI gains some perks like speed etc. Thus the player has to watch out for "clumps" of liniment swarms and dispose of them before they flock. I'd show some screenshot but it's mostly being chased by white boxes, for now.

-Tweaked the menu and ini reading code further, almost ready for primetime.

-Laid out the classes for the AI director. It will monitor how you are doing and thus spawn enemies/extras or nothing at all accordingly. I want to give the player short breaks in the action if there was a "close call" recently.

And that's it. (video coming later via Edit, watch this space!)

[VomitOnLino]

Tigsourcers, your wish is my command. 
As promised here's the video showing the bomb (in slow-motion even!) and a bit more:

Vimeo here:

(Meh quality)

Youtube here:

(Even worse quality)

Right now I'm super busy between work and moving to my new apartment, so I don't get around to doing much updates to the code. Also the moving boxes are starting to stack on my desk, and I very well might be without internet for a while. So I thought I'd better brief you before everything goes dark for a while.
 
-I've been doing some code cleanups here and there and refined the flocking code for the "Boid" type invader.

-I've also sketched up some method to either do the power-ups procedurally as well, or a good way to redraw them - as I'm not quite content with the current look.

-Lastly I have implemented some cooool looking  new physics-based feature which is mostly eyecandy-for now. I'll disclose it later to give you something to look forward to.

[tesselode]

The explosions look out of place; I hope you change them.

Also, this is looking a lot like a Geometry Wars clone. Hopefully you'll avoid the wrath of the creators.