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[skaz]

First prototype is available!

  HERE!

BULLET VOID

Changelog version 0.1.1
- bullets are now tracer bullets. Fancy colours!
- your bullets are faster, less affected by your own motion (easier to hit)
- incoming asteroids are shown by orange warning signs on top of the screen
- missile enemies now display their loaded missiles correctly, have a delay between tow shots
- don't press P. It's half of a pause function right now :p


Screenshots! Who cares about TEXT, RIGHT? Well ok I do.


Ok, right here, you're dead. Period. Sorry.


I this some missiles trying to get inside your nozzle???


Plasma canon is cool. Plasma canon is HOT.


PEW PEW PEW KABOOM PSRRCCHT. Yeah, no sound effect yet...


This dude should watch those asteroids instead of spreading bullets like that. Whatch the road, man!


He has a shield too buddy, except he can drop FOUR BOMBS AT A TIME. FOUR.




Hi!

So here we go. I gave a lot of thoughts about starting a devlog or not, but I’m kind of stagnating right now. A lot of the pieces are done, what remains is the overall shape and balance. The hardest part.

I already started a game about a year back, a metroidvania featuring a dwarf, and the whole thing collapsed under its own heavy pile of crappy code, disorganized assets, not clearly defined objectives, and bugs. I spent more than 6 months in the project... Lessons learned, tried to bite more than I could chew! My objective now is simple: FINISHING SOMETHING. I remember a talk by Edmund Mcmillen, he said something like “your first game’s gonna suck”. So I embraced it. I’m gonna make a game that sucks. Actually, I’m going to FINISH a crappy game. Funny thing, he added that you shouldn’t do stuff like a space shooter or that kind of generic stuff. Which is funny, that’s exactly what I was doing when I listened to that talk…

A crappy space shooter.

Onward!

GOALS:

- Learning more about game maker, especially GML.
- Learning more about assets management, usage of sprites.
- Learning about data structures.
- Try to make a space shooter that sucks as less as possible.
- Completing a project, throwing it to the crowd to see it tore down to shreds, or totally ignored.
- Feeling relieved.
- Start a bigger project.

You don’t know how relieving it is to start something and knowing from the start i’s not going to be good. Or maybe you know. No pressure :p

Project story :

One day, I started thinking about an overambitious project. A RPG in space with dual stick shooter fights while on foot, SHMUP combats in spaceships, spaceship customization, crew management, advanced character sheets, never ending procedural content, a living, breathing, dynamic universe, factions wars, all the stuff even a tactical turn based rpg to simulate hacking. Wasn’t even high. Sober and all.
Yeah you know, because failing a platformer wasn't enough.
Then the little fairy of wisdom whacked my head with a cricket bat. Twice. And I changed my mind.

But still, it was possible to cut this into smaller games, and by making every single one, making what would be a BIG game in the end. So I chose the SHMUP.

Now I know it’s never going to be anything more than some kind of SHMUP. That big game will never exists. The SHMUP part will.

Enough blabbering! Show us some pictures already!


A typical day in Bullet void, bullets and the vacuum of space. Notice the artistic, highly elaborate stars background. TOW LAYER OF STARS. + subtle parallax. Mindblown.


I went for a 640*480 pixels screen, upscaled to match the actual screen resolution properly. This in itself was a great progress for me. I did it and it WORKED. OH MY! Flip side is, on odd resolutions, the playing area will be cut a bit (no big deal).



It’s an arena shooter, you aren’t free to go outside of the screen. Enemies come to get you, you see them coming on your little radar, and you fight them. Ships are actually quite tough, you can’t take them down extremely fast. Well, you can in fact, but you have to be clever. Random shooting from the other side of the screen won’t be efficient. Weapons have a fixed direction, front, sides, back, or arcs or rotation for turrets, ranging from 1 to 360°.


I do like particles. How subtle of an effect.

Ships have 3 ressources :
- hull, it can only go down, 0 = death.
- Energy, it’s regenerating constantly, plasma and beams use it, shields use it.
- Heat. Heat starts at zero, making it go up will put you in serious troubles. Like, overheating, and turning all red. And death.


Plasma PEW PEW. Heavily DOOM inspired. Plasma gun was my all time favourite gun.


Right now there is 3 types of weapons : bullets, plasma and beam. Big ships can use an trigger-able shield. The shield absorb all incoming projectiles, but it cost you energy. Plasma and beams cost energy too when used. Taking projectiles in the shield converts damages to energy loss. Weapons are not efficient in every aspect.

Bullets do relatively low damages on hull, but fully impact shields, and produce no heat.
Plasma produce high damages on hull,but nothing on shields, and impact moderately heat.
Beam makes no damages on hull, impact moderately shield but OH BOY they cook you up.


Oh no, the hoes again...

That’s the resources/weapons trinity. Hull/Energy/Heat. Manage that wisely.

Enemies are not your random SHMUP mindless pattern following guys. They try to fly and look wise. In fact, they’re dumb as anvils, but at least they try to look like they’re not. They chase you, place themselves where they need in order to hoes you like firemen on acid. small ones are fast, big ones aren’t. Big ones have the firepower, as well as the shields. Toughs guys.

There is rear attackers, side attackers, turret ones (so 360° of pain in the neck), bombers that drop canisters of fun in front of you. And mixes of that.

Your ship have tow weapons, turret mounted machine gun, and fixed plasma gun. You also have a shield, how convenient! As you can see, I have implemented a very basic GUI but does it really needs more ? Hull/energy, the radar, that’s it.


Shield opacity goes down with energy.

To close this introductory post, a Michael Bay approved pirate freight ship destruction:


Multiple destructible parts with visual reminders, destructible turrets, and grand final firework.

This post will of course evolve, maybe get a better organisation in the future. Don't hesitate to throw criticism at me, as long as its constructive and polite, I can hear anything And don't take me to seriously. I know I don't.

Thanks for reading!

Skaz

[ScaryPotato]

I would enjoy playing this game immensely!

[skaz]

Thank you! Good news is I will soon require some testing

I mentioned the beam in the first post, but didn't show how it works. Here it is!


Cook 'em up.

The beam increase the heat of the ship, and the ship takes damages when the beam hits it, the amount of damages depend of the heat. Hotter, more damages. At max heat, it's a slaughter. Might change the mecanic a bit, don't limit the max amount of heat, and turn any overheat into a DOT. Even after you stoped shooting, if the target is overheating, it will take damages. Might require some test, this weapon is obviously easy to use, the beam is instant!

Something else I didn't mentioned, projectiles are affected by your own speed while shooting. It makes things a bit difficult. Hitting while moving and changing direction implies a huge amount of compensation and anticipation in your aim. Is it a bad thing? I think not.

[skaz]

So not much new lately, I'm polishing things, testing, and thinking of a way to make it an actual game. I've redone the main ship design and will probably redo some if not all of the enemies.

Old / New:


And how the thruster looks while moving:

[ScaryPotato]

I don't know why you haven't been getting a greater response to your project. I think it looks outstanding, and you've put lots of thought into how everything behaves/act/reacts so far!

If I had one critique, it would be that the visual appeal for the player's ship is kind of lacking right now. I know aerodynamics don't matter in space, but having a ship that strongly resembles a square tank in a space shmup-style game feels a little mismatched. Your ship could still have the top-mounted turrets and be a triangular shape, or maybe indicate some tapered angles to make it look a little bit streamlined, just to help it read more as a flying vessel of some sort Aside from that, I hope you're continuing to make progress with it, even if it does slow down now and then!

[skaz]

Thank you very much ScaryPotato !

I can totally understand why no more people comment, I'm making a pretty generic space shooter as it seems, the concept itself doesn't sells a lot. Only quality of execution can really mean something in this case. And so far nothing is proven in that regard. And a lot of interesting devlogs got few comments, even when really interesting. It's not always easy to comment on other people work, even more when it's a WIP.

I also understand that the "tank" aspect of the ship can be far from the usual "aerodynamic fighting jet" spaceships, but I think it's really a matter of tastes. I changed it a little, moved the turret to the central position, and add a missile launcher. To visually remind the player of the reload time of the missile, the missile is visibly loaded in the tube when ready to shoot. Little details that I really like to implement Not time savers obviously...


locking, missiles loading and shots, flashing hits, new muzzle flashes. courtesy of an always re spawning innocent victim.

Locking ability is also implemented, flying the aim over an enemy selects it. No other constrains. Ultimately, it will display the health percentage of the locked target. For now it's used to guide the missile. Did I mentioned it's a homing one? Pretty fun to use.

Also added a few visual feedbacks, classical white flash when you hit a target. Reworked the muzzle flash, now it's HUGE. You can't miss something firing, and it feel good :p Will work on other visual feedbacks when hitting enemies, and make destroying ships more satisfying with more explosions, debris and stuff.

Asteroids are in! I tried to teach my enemies not to constantly crash on, they look like they try to avoid them at least... Spaceship roster is also entirely redone, you'll see more on that subject soon.

Right now, the plan is to finish a playable prototype by the week end. It's going to be simple, pure scoring with ships chasing you, and sometimes asteroids coming. Score will be determined by the length of the game, number of enemies taken down, and the amount of scrap metal collected.

So brace yourself if you're a good pilot! The real test will start soon... :p

[skaz]

Making progress, here is a footage of enemies spaceships trying to learn how to dodge ateroids. Not a painless process...

Posting the link to the .gif, it's becoming quite a heavy thread...

click here for free space cruelty!

[PrimeVest]

wow, i like the particles flying about. it does really look fun to play.

Its good you already plan to release a prototype, thats 'kinda' of your first published game then already and you can build up onto that
I know how hard it is to make and publish the first game.

[skaz]

Thanks PrimeVest, I do hope you like particles because there's an obscene amount of them in this game :p

I will miss my window release, I must finish the spawning algorithm before calling it a prototype, but tomorrow will be a GO! So brace yourselves, asteroids are coming.

To give a little taste of what's to expect, here is the hangar, the file where I create the ships. You will have to shoot quite a lot of them (but maybe not the ugliest ones. They will never make it to the game).

[skaz]

First prototype is available!

  HERE!

Haven't had the time to play it a lot, but so far my high score is 530. I'm waiting for you.

Controls are classic, WASD to move (ZQSD enabled too) mouse buttons to shoot with primary and secondary weapon, left ctrl to shoot guided missiles, cursor over target to lock them, space to activate the shield.

Green bar is health, blue bar is energy.

Activating the shield consumes energy, as does absorbing damages with it. The plasma gun also consumes energy. Beware! The palsma gun is powerful, and missiles can take down enemies in just a little more than one hit (a few bullets will do the trick).

The thing is evading as much as possible, and shielding when going through bullets. No damages taken, minimal energy consumption. Turret is ok when shooting backward and sideways, but missiles and plasma are way more effective in the front.

collect metal scraps whe ndestroying enemies, it's worth a lot more than simply destroying ships to increase the score. Expect a few minutes session, 5 at most, it's really not made to be played more than that (difficulty increase over time, and it get ROUGH). Oh, and don't collide with asteroids. You really aren't hard enough. But missiles and palsma can help making a way through rocks.

Try not to die

I'm so tired right now. And happy at the same time. Happily tired I guess. Every criticism is welcome, it's a project meant to learn, I'm really open minded.

Thanks to anyone how will give it a shot!

[ScaryPotato]

I really like all the improvements you'd made to the game. All the attention to detail really pays off!

I tried downloading the game from GameJolt, but it keeps giving me a warning for a virus (weird, since I've got my old game on that site as well). Do you have another way we can try your game out? I'd really like to try it out

[skaz]

Well, maybe your anti virus is a bit zealous, I downloaded it myself and a few other persons of my knowledge without problems. Anyway, I'll provide an alternative link:
THERE!

Let me know what you think of the general feeling, or anything that comes to your mind, I'm really open at this point. I'll start a play testing topic when I'll have finished my main screen artwork, and made some little improvements, and decent screen shots.

To give an idea of the look of the welcome screen in the future:



The idea is to transition from the main screen to the game by making a transition from this to the actual playable sprite. So far, it's pretty convincing.

Next step is the game title sprite. Doesn't have a clue of what it will look like.

[ScaryPotato]

Yeah, I don't know what my computer's problem is, it's refusing to work or recognize the file for me unfortunately I'll try a couple things later on and see if I can finally have a try at it!

On a brighter note though, that welcome screen image looks FANTASTIC! It has a very dynamic perspective, and would be even more amazing once you have it transition from that into the in-game sprite!

[mzn528]

Love your pixel art man! And the use of particle system really makes it chaotic and cool!

One thing I can think of is probably your bullets, i think it is best to either use one single sprite, or make the bullet flows more fluid. You want to make it a bit more consistent.

Keep up the good work and keep us posted!

[skaz]

If you can't run the single .exe file scary potato I can provide an installer version.

Thanks you for the artwork, it the first piece of pixel art that BIG that I make, and I can tell you pixel art is not an economy of time when it comes to such stuff... vector style would have been MUCH quicker.

Thanks mzn528! Not sure to understand what you mean with the bullets though. Can you develop? I use an animated sprite for the plasma but bullets and missiles are a single one. Or maybe you talk about the fact that bullets travel a fixed space between each frame, which make it look like they are all the time at the same spot while firing continuously? I have considered a more abstract, motion blurred sprite for the bullets. Maybe make some tracer bullets too, like one out of five. I'll try a few things anyway.

I'll keep you in touch

[ScaryPotato]

That would be very kind of you, good sir! I played around with some settings yesterday, and only managed to get it to not recognize the file extension anymore. Weird.

I'm really glad you stayed with pixel art (and didn't do the large ship as a vector piece). You've got those tiny little in-game ships that you've done so well, and seeing something done just as well at a much larger scale keeps the overall vibe of the game really cohesive. Can't wait to see more!

[Caravaggi0]

Cool, I love me some pixel particle effects.

In motion have you had any problems with clarity?  Usually in bullet hell type things the projectiles are bright colors specifically so that you can see them easily.  The bullets in the first shot look like they'd be easy to confuse.  Unless I'm seeing it wrong and those are not both you and enemy shots?

[mzn528]

If you can't run the single .exe file scary potato I can provide an installer version.

Thanks you for the artwork, it the first piece of pixel art that BIG that I make, and I can tell you pixel art is not an economy of time when it comes to such stuff... vector style would have been MUCH quicker.

Thanks mzn528! Not sure to understand what you mean with the bullets though. Can you develop? I use an animated sprite for the plasma but bullets and missiles are a single one. Or maybe you talk about the fact that bullets travel a fixed space between each frame, which make it look like they are all the time at the same spot while firing continuously? I have considered a more abstract, motion blurred sprite for the bullets. Maybe make some tracer bullets too, like one out of five. I'll try a few things anyway.

I'll keep you in touch

Hey sorry about the confusion, I was talking about the one

Actually I see it now, I thought it did something inconsistent because of the lighting, now it looks perfect lol

Sorry for confusion and keep up the awesome work!

[skaz]

To respond to Caravaggi0, I don't see that much troubles with the bullets, give the game a try and tell me what you think

As you may notice, the ship pixel art on the top is redone a bit. Bigger turret, the central blue... thing, is gone. More of a space tank now.

I also added SCREENSHOTS! What a good way to introduce a game isn't it? :p

I will probably spend some time remaking those .gif, and rewriting the first post. I spent some time making my gamejolt page a better place.

And what about the ACTUAL GAME you might ask? Right now, the goal is still to make a welcome screen that's, you know, welcoming. The art is ok, still have to make the title itself. Still have no clue.

[EdFarage]

This is awesome.
Also, im surprised that Howard Day haven't posted here yet, someone send him a message.