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[ScaryPotato]

This is just a little game I wanted to do in order to get back into game making mode, as well as play around with some ideas floating around in my head.

Basically, while Mitch is chasing after Horatio Hawk, his buddy Otis has recovered, and is sent on a mission to collect crystals from the asteroid belt. These crystals are the same type that were used in the artifact Horatio Hawk stole from the Mayan temple, and Dr.A will need them to construct a time machine to keep track of the dirty bird!

It's a single-screen game, with randomly generated asteroids that need blasting. That way you can grab the crystals...but you'll have to keep an eye on your fuel, as well as your shields, because alien creatures will try to stop you from blasting their precious asteroids!

The objective is to get a highscore...so no time limits or epic bosses. This will be the kind of game where you can pick up and play for a few minutes at a time and put it down at any point without worrying about your progress (I realize I went a little overboard with my first game, the Mayan Mystery), so this one will be nice and casual like  

[ScaryPotato]

New art style for asteroids. There will be several varieties, right now, just the crystal-laden ones are shown.

Physics-based collisions are in place, and it's cool seeing the asteroids deflect off each other and the ship. The ship has a little force field-glow thing, but it needs some work. Hoping to get a title screen done today, along with learning more physics coding 

[ScaryPotato]

So I've added some enemies, and started thinking about what the HUD might look like. Also flipped the orientation and think I like it!

The physics right now is a bit weird (everything interacts with everything else with), so I'm planning on reducing the amount of interaction between things.

Enemies so far:

Circular things randomly move along, opening up every now and then.

Purple fanged things eat the green crystals you worked so hard to blast out of the asteroids

Squid things dart after you with they pointy heads

The gray spiky things follow you and shoot. Look out!


Right now, everything is shown all jumbled, but only some of these enemies will be present at any given time. As you get more and more crystals, different baddies will show up to harass/hamper your crystal extraction. The next step is to implement a timer to control how many asteroids fly across the screen, as well as enemies!

Am thinking powerups for weapons and such will be gained through space debris, while your shields and fuel will be gained through blasting the bad guys (central hex in the HUD tracks both right now, the outer ring is shielding, the inner is your fuel)

[ScaryPotato]

So, I've gone and made a bunch of changes....the biggest change being getting rid of physics altogether. Now it's a matter of adding all the different powerups and enemies. It's neat right now, with everything spawning randomly, so each experience is new:)


Another screenshot...numbers are different variables and are used to check they're working properly. More to come soon!

[ScaryPotato]

So I've implemented a bunch of things in the game, but haven't done as much as I'd like!

-Starfield and galaxy in background are randomly generated
-Asteroid/enemy spawning locations are random
-Added a bunch of weapons (regular gun, wave beam, ice cannon, missiles, bombs). You can upgrade the rate of fire and range for all but bombs, as well as achieve a spread-shot state to really increase the devastation!

-Still a ton of things to do before I get a demo set to test out, but I'll be making a video soon

In the meantime, here are a couple screenies


Almost done the title screen:



Reworked the HUD, and added some different asteroid types...got to do more enemies though!

[ScaryPotato]

After having struggled with motivation for this project, I'm stopping work on it.
 
The game itself is actually fairly fun to play as a casual game, but the lack of action involved in it made it a real struggle to want to plug away on it. Also, I love drawing, and thought it would be a neat change to make the game with all hand-drawn elements, but my own personal preferences are going to lean towards small, pixel graphics.

The overall concept of the game isn't totally dead though! I've changed the storyline to be a little more interesting, changed the gameplay, made the character more obviously a monkey (as opposed to a spaceship piloted by a monkey), and am using tasty pixel graphics again

Will post some early shots soon!