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[eigenbom]

I think they're too big, and they look like red rotating bug catchers or something. Although I've only seen a tiny compressed gif .. :S

I personally reckon an electric bone would be awesome. Especially if he chomps it and you see an xray flash of his bones as he powers up!




 

[SolarLune]

Hey.

. Shows the GUI, the alarm light, as well as some BGM, which is filtered when boosting.

[Udderdude]

Wait, wait ..

Blender lets you make games now? >_>

Kidding aside, I hope there's a way to build up the ionise bar if you happen to get stuck with no enemies to kill quickly to build it up again.

[eigenbom]

Looks smooth and I like the music filtering!


Those alarm lights though ...

[SolarLune]

Wait, wait ..

Blender lets you make games now? >_>

Kidding aside, I hope there's a way to build up the ionise bar if you happen to get stuck with no enemies to kill quickly to build it up again.

Yeah, the gauge grows back gradually over time. You can't use it if there's less than 10% left in the gauge (currently).

Looks smooth and I like the music filtering!


Those alarm lights though ...

Curse you, Moonbom! Fine, I'll see about changing those lights to something more logical...

[eigenbom]

> Curse you, Moonbom! Fine, I'll see about changing those lights to something more logical...

Lol, I'm saying 99% of the game looks great.

[Eendhoorn]

@omgnoseat - Thanks. I haven't had that question asked a huge number of times, but I have been asked it before. It's kinda hard to explain.

Basically, I feel that $1500 is just too much for what Unity Pro gives you. Soldier Of wouldn't have needed any of those features, and so could be made with Unity Free, but I use a bloom filter here in Sparky, which, to my knowledge, is impossible in Unity Free. As far as I can recall, Unity runs alright on my computer. It just didn't grab me. I don't think I liked the GUI and object placement features in the editor, but I used it for probably just an hour overall, and I'm sure I could get used to it if I stuck with it. So, I don't really have any complaints against the engine itself.

It just feels like it's too costly. I feel like I would never buy the Pro edition because I would never purchase anything for that much money outside of something that I really need, which means that I would infinitely be stuck with an engine that wouldn't get new features like dynamic shadows or anything. But on the flip side, those features are not enough to warrant $1500 to me. Also, while you're getting a game engine with those features, you would get that same engine without the $1500, so you're paying that much money for some pretty non-essential stuff.

EDIT: If they wanted to, the Unity devs could kind of merge CryTek and Unreal's licensing idea with their own - I'd be glad to pay them, say, 50% of my profits until I pay off $1500. All at once is just not gonna happen from me.

Still hard to explain, even after explaining it, heheh. I do investigate other engines, though - jME3 looks pretty powerful. I don't really know a lick of Java, but on the other hand, I could see learning...

EDIT 2: Looking at Unity now, it looks kinda good, especially this shot from Kiyaku on the Unity Forums. Knowing that that's possible in Unity's pretty encouraging.

Yeah it really is expensive. Especially when your working on your own. I've worked with the free version for a while and it was great to get to know the software. But missing things like shadows and even occlusion culling was kind of limiting. Using the unity pro trial atm and it's pretty nice. But $1500 is way too much indeed.

Haha the voxel engines are also what grabbed my interest. Tried making one in the free version, but I was having way too much performance issues

[Udderdude]

I hope there's a way to build up the ionise bar if you happen to get stuck with no enemies to kill quickly to build it up again.

Yeah, the gauge grows back gradually over time. You can't use it if there's less than 10% left in the gauge (currently).

It sounds like it would be boring to sit around waiting for it to recharge, is what I'm saying.

[86kilobyte]

i really like the look and feel of the game, great potential there, you just have to flesh out the game mechanics...for example: i was wondering what the purpose of the lights was und why i should bother destroying them? can they detect me and alarm other enemies? also the ionization sounds interesting, but what stops me from using it all the time? and whats the benefit of being non-ionized - so to speak. ;-)
but anyway, i will defintively follow your development! looks awesome.

[SolarLune]

@omgnoseat - Yeah, everyone likes voxels. Been looking at Panda3D, as well - it seems pretty powerful, and it uses Python, which I'm used to.

@Udderdude - I was actually thinking that maybe an additional way to build Ions with Sparky is to press the arrow keys rapidly to build your gauge from static electricity. That might be a good idea. That, or I'll just have to keep the enemies coming.

@86kilobyte - It's like the latest Sonic games - if you can boost, you probably do. The lights are destructible objects to recharge your Ion gauge. I'll try to make it more obvious in the future what it does. Well, being non-ionized is certainly easier to control. Perhaps I'll have to make certain situations where you should be non-ionized.

EDIT: @eigenbom - Thanks. :D I guess I'll just have to figure out what would fit in the game better / be easier to hit...

[SolarLune]

Okay! So, an update. Got working on this, and implemented water. If you're ionized and running at speed, you can run across the water - otherwise, you'll sink. I got the idea from Sonic.

EDIT: I want to add some more interesting effects to the water in particular...

EDIT 2:



EDIT 3: The waterfall should prolly be transparent.

[Kramlack]

Everything is bloom. Also not a fan of the waterfall look. It seems kind of sparadic with how it's placed, I guess for a more realistic look? I feel like if the ripples were like \/\/\/, it'd have a much nicer effect, also transparent as you mentioned.

This game is going to be balls-to-the-wall awesome though, and I still can't wait to play it.

EDIT: Kind of like this.

[SolarLune]

Everything is bloom.

Is that good? Perhaps I'll tone it down. I'm still trying to find good settings for it.

I like your waterfall idea - it's more in the style of the game, I think.

And thanks. :D

[Udderdude]

No way man, bloom is so Next Gen(tm).  Throw that shit everywhere. >_>

[Kramlack]

Everything is bloom, in my opinion, is not that great. It was cool for a few things here and there, like when you did it first with the lava, but if everything's bloom, I think it starts being overused. See what other people have to say about it though, it's just not my thing.

EDIT:

No way man, bloom is so Next Gen(tm).  Throw that shit everywhere. >_>

Hahahahahaha.

[SolarLune]

Thanks for the opinions. I also didn't want to implement bloom if it didn't add anything to the game. I don't think that it adds too much, so maybe just a little would be fine. So, I toned it down a bit to be less noticeable.

In truth, if I want bloom (which I do), I probably should write a correct filter that would bloom only light objects (i.e. dark objects aren't sampled at all, while pure white objects are sampled the most), rather than just an 'additive blur' filter that I kind of have now. Not sure if it's possible (for me), or if it would improve the effect any, but I think it would.

I got the first enemy (and spawner) implemented, as well. It's a kind of flying kamikaze bug. They just fly toward you, and if they touch anything, they explode.



The bug's look can actually improve - it doesn't look too much like an alien insect, huh?

[r0ber7]

It kinda looks like a baby vulture. I'm not sure why.

Reminds me of this (one of my favorite games ever).

[Kramlack]

The pincer mouth is hard to read, yes. I thought it was a beak first too.

[SolarLune]

Thanks for the feedback. I re-colored the pincers to make it a bit easier to read.



I also fixed the bloom to make it shine more on light areas than dark, so it's not just 'blurring' the whole screen.



Next up should be the bugs' implementation as actual enemies, as well as their deaths.

[r0ber7]

*nod*

More like a mosquito now.