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[UltraJMan]

What is Battles Against B.O.L.A.S:
Well, B.O.L.A.S is short for Bio-Organic Legions Against Society. In it you'll take command of a mech to battle against this menace, save the day, and maybe even the universe.

How will the game play:
Glad you asked that, the game will take place from the perspective of a cockpit viewing a 2D playing field with your mech on it. The gameplay of itself is that of a 2D platformer... with a twist, inside your mech is a command console that you will type in commands such as left, right, stop, etc. to command your mech. Yes, it's a text command based platformer... with a cockpit.

Any cool cockpit buttons:
The cockpit has plenty of flashing trinkets and speedometers to simulate the realism of crap that does absolutely nothing, just like the inside of a real mech! In all honesty though, there might be a few buttons that do unique features.

What other features are there:
There will be shooting, jumping, explosions, and weird enemies like a pogo turtle! Also expect some boss fights, granted we figure out how to make them interesting without hair tearing difficulty issues.

So with that, the general idea should be laid down. I also have a super Cockpit screenie (cockpit subject to look more detailed in final release):


In the lower left there will be a health display, depicted by various smiling faces. The middle will feature the text display box that you'll use to type commands to your mech, and the lower right is an enemy radar. The rest is mostly meaningless doodads and gadgets that may or may not do anything. Time will tell.

UPDATE: There is now an open beta, the entry is done but there may be some bugs we have overlooked or missed, for now though you can try the entry here - http://willhostforfood.com/?Action=download&fileid=60385
We sincerely hope you enjoy the game and will report any bugs you may come across!

UPDATE AGAIN: This project is done! It's been a long month and a half working on this, but it's been well worth it. I've enjoyed every minute of it and am incredibly satisfied with the finished product. We hope you enjoy it! http://willhostforfood.com/?Action=download&fileid=61068

WARNING: For medium/fast typers, it's theoretically possible to play if you're a bit a slower, but may be extremely difficult.

VERSIONS:
Beta V1 - http://willhostforfood.com/?Action=download&fileid=60385
Final Release - http://willhostforfood.com/?Action=download&fileid=61068

Credits:
Programming/Sound FX - Catharsis AKA Decarabia
Music - DJ Bacon
Concept/Graphics/Director Type Guy - UltraJMan

[nayon]

rom and jop?

[UltraJMan]

I cannot WAIT for this one.  I've had ideas of something like this clunking around the ol' brain for a while now and I just never got around to making it.  I'll be watching this one.

I'm pretty excited about it too, I'm lucky I know someone who'll be helping me put this together. We may have a stage done within the next week or so if things keep going as well as they have.

[Fuzz]

Is the acronym meant to mean anything? Like this or this?

[ElTipejoLoco]

It could also just be spanish for Balls.

[Inanimate]

Wait, JMan? From Youtube?

Awesome! Now I am even more interested in this!

[UltraJMan]

Is the acronym meant to mean anything? Like this or this?

No, but now that I know there are bolas spiders and bolas weapons maybe I could have a bolas spider wielding a bolas trying to kill you cause he's part of the B.O.L.A.S. You know what I mean?

PS. Yes. Yes I am that very same JMan.

[UltraJMan]

Well this project is not dead, but it will only be a one level entry as a sort of proof of concept. Me and the programmer will be working on it after the competition, but expect our submission in a day or two, I'm looking forward to seeing all your reactions. In the mean time here's a couple of sprites to whet your appetite.


Main character

Part of a cutscene

Enemy

[Catharsis]

Hello everyone.  You may remember me from my Commonplace Book Compo entry.

If that's the case, I'm sorry.

This game is done now, basically.  It's actually been done for a little bit, but then the extension came, so we took a little bit of time to tweak the difficulty and such.  In any case, it's still done before the deadline!  JMan wants to change up a couple of the sprites, but that can really be done at any point, and does not affect playability at all.

http://willhostforfood.com/?Action=download&fileid=60385

I'm really happy with how this turned out, and it was great fun to work on.  The original plan was to go for three stages and three bosses, and then everything got really crazy with me getting accepted to grad school, planning a move, doing all of the requisite stuff, etc etc.  So we ended up with the title screen-level-boss-credits arrangement you see here.  Still, the concept is there, and it's easily extensible with time.

Caveat:  Read the manual, because trying to play the game without knowing all of the commands will make it extremely difficult.

Thanks for playing, and I hope you enjoy this as much as we enjoyed making it.  I'll have JMan update the thread title with a [Finished], but consider this the entry for now.

[UltraJMan]

What he said up there, although I'm not quite ready to slap finished on this til all the bugs are ironed out, so consider it an open beta for the time being. Please report any bugs or issues you may have with the game so we can do our best to iron them all out over the course of the next week.

The OP has been updated with links to the game and credits and stuff, so you don't have to wear your poor mouseball out scrolling through the thread for the links heh.

Thanks to any of you who download and play!

[Catharsis]

Hey again everyone.

We got the last couple of bugs smashed, and replaced those obnoxious solid blue rectangle floors with sexy gray tiling!  I guess that makes this a done deal, and you can play said done deal here: http://willhostforfood.com/?Action=download&fileid=61068

Again, this was majorly fun to work on.  Thanks to everyone who downloads and plays.

[Noyb]

Pretty fun. The typing commands are implemented well for the most part. The jumping got a bit too finicky to want to play past the second part with turrets for now. Falling and having to repeat the first climbing part is horribly frustrating.

The right and bottom edges of the screen aren't covered by the cockpit.

Might be a little more consistent and less annoying if "jumpleft" has the function of "jumpleftstop" since the default jump stops your character and the "jumpleftstop" is used much too frequently for such a long command. Or maybe "leftjump" can stop after jumping but "jumpleft" makes you move again.

Is your "jumpshoot" based on something CPU-dependent and not a fixed pixel amount? I can't seem to use it to kill any of the turrets, either the first one to the right of the start, or the ones in a vertical configuration after the first climbing section.

[Cymon]

Awesome game. Typing of the dead has nothing on this. You've really got to have fast fingers to play this game tho. There's a reason Lucas Arts started having point-and-click commands.

[Catharsis]

Might be a little more consistent and less annoying if "jumpleft" has the function of "jumpleftstop" since the default jump stops your character and the "jumpleftstop" is used much too frequently for such a long command. Or maybe "leftjump" can stop after jumping but "jumpleft" makes you move again.

We talked about changing the "JLS" and "JRS" (the fact that they even have an acronym is somewhat indicative of their being too long); it's entirely possible to play the entire game without ever using anything BUT those two as far as jumps go, and it's certainly much "safer".  It's definitely something that might get tweaked, because right now, I've only seen one person ever use the jumpleft/jumpright commands.  They just aren't that useful as it stands, and I totally admit that.

Is your "jumpshoot" based on something CPU-dependent and not a fixed pixel amount? I can't seem to use it to kill any of the turrets, either the first one to the right of the start, or the ones in a vertical configuration after the first climbing section.

The jumpshot uses GMs timer, which is supposedly framerate independent.  The shot is timed to come out at the top of the jump; your inability to hit the turret at the right edge of the stage is intentional, as practice for the boss.  On the other hand, no one who tested the game said that the jumpshot wouldn't hit the turrets in the floating platform section, as those are right at head height.  Thanks for the heads up, I'll try to test the game on an older system when I can, or change the shot to be based on a flat pixel change than on anything possibly external.

Awesome game. Typing of the dead has nothing on this.

Do not operate the flamethrower without proper supervision.

[UltraJMan]

Awesome game. Typing of the dead has nothing on this. You've really got to have fast fingers to play this game tho. There's a reason Lucas Arts started having point-and-click commands.

Is it bad that when you said point and click commands, I instantly thought "Great, now we should collab a point and click platformer" heh.

Either way though, glad to know you're enjoying it, and I should probably put a warning in the OP that this game isn't intended for slow typers. You don't exactly have to be fast, but if you're just learning or never learned to type well you're basically screwed.

[Will Vale]

You had me at "pew" and "bamf", but I don't think I type fast enough for this as I fell down a hole pretty quickly. Maybe a training mode which prompts words to type would be a good thing?

[UltraJMan]

You had me at "pew" and "bamf", but I don't think I type fast enough for this as I fell down a hole pretty quickly. Maybe a training mode which prompts words to type would be a good thing?

We actually considered a training mode early on, but it never quite came to fruition. As the deadline neared our training level ended up becoming something more of a real level so we left it at that.

What I find helps is that when I'm playing I like to type commands before approaching things. Example is if I'm in the process of walking, I'll type "stop" in the bar so as I near an edge all I have to do is hit enter to stop. Same goes for shooting and such. Hope that helps!

PS There's also a readme that details all the controls, just in case I failed to mention this anywhere else. If I did remind me to add that to the OP heh.

[Catharsis]

You had me at "pew" and "bamf", but I don't think I type fast enough for this as I fell down a hole pretty quickly. Maybe a training mode which prompts words to type would be a good thing?

As JMan mentioned, pretyping commands is about the only way to do it.  The space between "there's a hole" > "realize that" > "type something in order not to die" is a bit thin if you don't already know that the hole is there.  It's certainly a very deliberately paced game, but hey, what text game isn't?

As for the sounds and comic stuff, no one manages to survive the boss' tentacle attack "squeeeeeerrk" sound effect.  The most stoic of audience members will laugh at that.