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[Connor]

Hey all! Welcome to Blitzkampfer!

What exactly IS blitzkampfer?

Blitzkampfer is an open world space shmup being built in gamemaker studio v1.4.

Basically, the entire goal of blitzkampfer is to fly around, keeping your relations with certain races from becoming strained, fighting bosses, doing huge dogfights, and taking on events,
all with the goal of stopping the galactic civil war currently taking place from tearing apart your homeland known simply as "The Rift".

So, this gif is pretty boring, lets see some action!

Heres the official Teaser for the game...




And heres a small amount of gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egjPYMWzekM&feature=youtu.be

 

Finally, heres a link to my itch.io page, where you can download and try out blitzkampfer in its current condition!

https://cjheighton.itch.io/blitzkampfer-beta

Alright! thats about it for me, hope you guys keep checking in on my progress with blitzkampfer! thanks for dropping in!

[Connor]

oh yeah, theres also a demo for all of you who want to mess around with it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cr8btf7vabcy7jb/BlitzKampfer.exe?dl=0

[Connor]

goddamn, that feature list. i was pretty wiped earlier, and it definitely showed there, haha.]]

edit: i tried using winebottler to make the exe into a .app. anyone able to try it and tell me if it works?

heres the link https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sk7wc6el39n83qb/AABsWudftpaYK1KtmekLYJlHa?dl=0

[Connor]

so, i decided ill try to get this out into the world a bit. i posted the link to a group i belong to. if all goes well, i should get some feedback that i can work with, and ill start updating this with stuff. as is, i dont know if i even have the right files to mess with this. if i do, ill probably be posting more stuff soon. new events, maybe.



oh yeah, thats another thing. does anyone here have experience with networked games in gamemaker studio using gml or drag + drop?
please, if you do, help me out. i was working on that without success for a few weeks, and im pretty sure at this point that unless i get help with it, ill end up scrapping it.

[Connor]

Wooo! My websites back up! The site i originally had was taken by squatters, who are now trying to get my to pay 700 dollars for ownership of the site. I basically said "screw you guys" and set up the website under firearrowgames.net, so yeah. Im stupidly happy that i got it back, since it served as a base of operations for most of my game stuff. Anyways, its www.firearrowgames.net now, so feel free to come visit! In other news, im back in school, so i got caught up in the devving of another game im working on with some classmates. Its pretty awesome, and im really hyped to see what all of you think, if we do post it here. No promises though! ^^

[Connor]

hey there guys, so im back to working on this now. ill be posting constant updates from here on out, so look forward to it.

in particular, i have finished a new boss and taken out and replaced some stuff, so stay tuned for a lot of in depth details on that stuff

[Connor]

to start off, i do have one small topic i can talk about without any excessive photos. that's the tutorial setup. the tutorial has been added since after the video is posted, and although small it goes into detail on all enemy types. The tutorial is currently working in place of a title screen, which isn't going to be added until much later on.

as of right now, the tutorial is a series of rooms that when entered
gives a small amount of lore/behavioral stuff on each enemy you will face(excluding bosses, which i don't want to spoil TOO much, haha :3)
after you get said info, you are placed in a room with each enemy type individually
and forced to kill it to proceed. this way you get a small amount of preparation
for what you are going to face. so far only enemy tutorials are currently implemented,
but in the future i will most likely prepare tutorials on each individual aspect of the game
such as the bullet whip and cannons.
in the very first room you spawn into, there is the option to quit the tutorial,
and skip right into the game, so you can easily skip without going through all the tediousness.

alright, that's all of this for now, ill post some photos or something next week, probably.

[Connor]

updated the original post.

[Connor]

hey all! recorded a somewhat rushed development video. (third try at posting this, pls work) feel free to check it out if your curious. it goes over most of the changes since the infotrailer i made. it IS rushed, so the content itself is rather informal and i do mess up a fair bit but it hopefully gets the point across

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfm6DlvLQw0&feature=youtu.be

[Connor]

This is a boss I'm currently working on for Blitzkampfer. I'm calling it the frigate. Right now It's just an image, but tomorrow I will do a livestream and add a movement pattern, stages, and an attack pattern. The plans I currently have for the frigate are hazy at best, but I'm thinking of making it shoot lasers, explosives, and other stuff. the typical frigate-y attack patterns. If anyone wants to add to it, feel free to reply with ideas, cause right now I've exhausted most of mine. ^^;

[Connor]

Oh yeah, suppose I should mention. I've graduated high school! This means that until I get a new job, I'm trapped at home with nothing to do. Suffice to say, I'll be working on blitzkampfer a lot until it's release.

[Connor]

hey all! to anyone who cares, im doing a livestream of me adding functionality to the new boss, the frigate, at www.twitch.tv/cjheighton . drop in if you want! ^^

EDIT: streams over! thanks to anyone who dropped in!

[Connor]

Oh shit, right. I forgot. Blitzkampfer is being made with community involvement as a huge influence, whether thats my twitch chat or regular comments! Basically if someone suggests an idea i work to try implementing it its a really fun way of working with the community!

[Connor]

hey all! doing a livestream at the moment, down at www.twitch.tv/cjheighton, right now im doing some bug fixing for blitzkampfer.

[Connor]

alright guys, i started a personal youtube channel for my development updates. as such, its a great place to regularly check for any news on this or any other game i do's progress. my channel for game development is https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaxK-6SooYNNGL8kIQ-8hFw .

my most recent video shows a pretty up to date look at my game right now, so if you can excuse my super fricking awkward attempts at trying to be professional about stuff, the links

. it shows off some button stuff that ive been working on.

since that video, i have fleshed out the menu more, adding some option stuff and fixing controller support a bit. i also did an absolute ton of bug fixing, which is always good.


Uh... lets see. What else can i talk about...? Uhhh... Ok! Got something!
Personally, after leaving school, I miss it. Don't get me wrong, the classes and monotony was not particularly fun, but it was more the socialization aspect of it that made me happy. In real life, outside of school I practically never really hung out with anyone because the friends I ended up having were all sort of speeding ahead in life. They were the alumnus basically, the ones who always made principals list and gold cord and all that fun stuff. In comparison, I was a super underachieving student. Still far above average, but far behind the enormous backs of my friends. They never had time for me anymore, so I ended up being kinda lonely. I bump into them from time to time, but other than that it ends up being.... I dunno, hard to really talk to them. Their worlds are so different from mine, It's become hard to really converse. Anyways, I ended up getting into LARP, a super crazy extracurricular thing which is basically beating people to death with foam swords for six hours. because of the group I became a part of, I have learned to stand on my own two feet a bit. I've made some great friends, and now i'm regularly doing D&D and all sorts of other stuff. life's become pretty fun, i guess! ...i dunno why i really wrote all this, i guess i just want to get everything out there a bit. It feels kinda fun to be able to share who you are, yaknow?

haha, anyways... uh, i think thats it for todays devlog. thanks for taking the time as always to read. see you all soon! -cj

[Connor]

big long livestream yesterday, did a ton of work to the satellite item you can obtain in the game. it now has a countdown timer that's depleted faster after being hit by bullets, and it also shoots cluster bombs, instakill weapons that spread bullets out in a radius. its a super good item to have now, but it costs about 2000 score (not quite sure on that, havent checked in a while) so its pretty hard to obtain. i've also scrapped the idea of multiple ship upgrades, and instead might end up using one ship that when you buy something for the ship it activates a variable which lets you use (insert weapon name here)


this is the aforementioned satellite.

[Connor]

Hey all, here's a gif in place of a video, since there's a fair bit to talk about here that will take very little time.

As you all can see, under the green health bar on the main map, there is now a small mini-map. I will most likely be putting this into many other levels from here on out, because quite honestly mini-maps are pretty much a necessity in a space shooter.

Next, I added the value of your health to the health bar, finally. I have absolutely no idea why I didn't add this earlier, I'm gonna be honest.

We also see the satellite in play here, creating the blue cluster-bombs you see. (note: the image for the cluster bomb is super temporary, I'll be reworking it soon.)

Finally, we have something kinda cool. After fiddling around with the values of enemies and the player, I made it so that all enemies in blitzkampfer now collide with each other and the player. Again, no idea why I didn't add this earlier, it really changes up the feel of the game. I'm still very torn between whether to have the player collide with the enemies, though, since it might make the game super tedious to work through.

[Connor]

alrighty, i suppose ill make todays post a question. should i have the player collide with enemies? will you all be bothered by it or will it be fun to attempt to break free of enemies that huddle around you? im sorta trying to figure out where the line for hellish difficulty is drawn. lol

[Connor]

bumpskidoodley

[Inky Cricket]

Taking damage on a collision is fine, though I highly doubt it'll be fun to get stuck against a foe.

Instead of hard collisions, you could add in a small subtle push away from each other if they collide with each other or the player. This would prevent foes from overlapping each other and would prevent sudden starts and stops in the foe's movement pattern like what can be seen in the gif.

If there will be lots of stuff to dodge, the dangers should be nice, clear, and distinct. The background has a very low resolution compared to the rest of the sprites and the bright white is highly distracting. If the background was a higher resolution, you can have stars with a soft edge that isn't as harsh, or even with the current resolution you could make it look softer by adding a tint of blue to the stars so they won't distract from the important stuff. The bullets are harder to see than the background is at the moment.

The foes don't have any momentum I notice. If they were capable of flying by and keeping their speed instead of stopping when they reach you, it would give a better feeling of actual space combat.

I personally think the tutorial should be as simple as it can be made to be. The controls, what the player can do and how, what they need to do, and that's it. Often the best tutorial is the one that doesn't exist or is so subtle that it doesn't feel like a tutorial. Some genres can't go that far, but minimizing the tutorial's size is usually for the best. The player can figure out what the foes are like and how they act for themselves without needing a tutorial.

You can add the player's speed to the bullets he shoots so they won't trail behind him as he moves fast.

Good luck on your project.