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[Chris Z]

Tentacle Uprising will be a spaceship combat game with a little bit of tower defense gameplay thrown in.  I'm a little late in throwing my hat in the ring but I think I should be able to put something enjoyable together in a couple of weeks since I have my almost complete little engine to work with.

Story thus far:
It's been 10 years since the Claw succeeded in the conquest of the Tentacle homeworld.  When a Claw virus infected the strong atmospheric defenses around the planet upon which the Tentacle were all too reliant on, the rest of the invasion was a breeze.  Since then you have been working on a Temporal Repair device in your quest to take back the Tentacle homeworld.  With the device secured in your ship, you are now ready to extract your vengeance by repairing the atmospheric defenses.  (In case it isn't obvious, were talking about crabs and squids here)

Gameplay:
Basic gameplay will be space combat sim-ish.  Throughout the level (located somewhere in the sky about this planet) there will be the remains of towers (with different functions) that you can collect with a tractor beam.  Once you pull in the debris, the temporal repair device will prepare it (this will take 20-30 secs) and you can place it on floating landmasses across the level.  All the while squads of enemy ships will be ambushing you with some story dialog thrown in some encounters.  Getting more towers operational will allow you to take those ships down easier.  At the end of the level there will be a capital ship that you have to take down by destroying it's turrets, shield generators, and the engines or bridge that will be exposed once the shields are down.

Art:
Somewhat cartoony, with the ships' looks inspired by their respective creatures.  The cockpit will have radar UI and UI for the current tower being repaired.  Tentacles will be present.  Levels will not be spacey, rather they will take place closer to the planet so don't expect stars and galaxies and what you'd seee in a mid-90s X-Wing/Wing Commander game.

Latest Version:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/meijm4enyq2/TentacleUprisingSetup_TIGS_v1.3.exe

Controls:
WASD/Left analog:  Throttle and strafe
Mouse/Right analog: Turning
Left click/Right trigger: Shoot
Space/Left Trigger: Tractor beam
Q key/A button: Fire missiles
Y key/Y button: Invert Y
P key/Start: Pause

You can build towers by capturing the debris with the tractor beam, waiting for it to repair, and using the tractor beam on the landmasses to place the towers.

Gameplay video:




Latest screenshots:

[fiber optic asparagus]

Question: will the plot also involve a disembodied purple tentacle and radioactive sludge?

[Chris Z]

Haha, the first thing that popped into my mind when I thought of what a tentacle tower might look like was this:



Also, the color of the pilot's tentacles defaulted to purple and I didn't realize why until later.

[Fuzz]

It may be hard differentiating you from !CE-9. :D
Cool game idea.

[Chris Z]

Quick update:

Still working with my usual prototype spheres for graphics so no screenshots just yet.  What's done:
* Player flying controls (throttle, yaw/pitch/roll)
* Main gun
* Heat seeking missles
* Fighters (common base code, no AI yet)
* Tower logic and one "laser tower" type
* Menus (main, options, pause)

[Chris Z]

Got some work done on enemy AI today along with some preliminary graphics.  The screenshot below shows a partial cockpit and some fighters, both untextured.  The color and shading comes from my cartoon shader.  No skybox yet either, that's just the clear color.

[Pishtaco]

That is amazing.

[Fuzz]

So is this basically a first person tower defense?

[Chris Z]

So is this basically a first person tower defense?

I haven't really decided how much emphasis to put on the towers and how to balance that with the flight combat.  I could go a few routes with it, and if I had more time I could make several levels with these elements.
1.  Few to moderate amount of strong enemies, weak towers:  Would require more space fighting and towers would just help.
2.  Large amount of strong enemies, stronger towers: Still would require more space combat than tower defense, but towers could play a bigger role.
3.  Large amount of weak enemies, strong towers:  I could see this being more of a pure tower defense with the only point of the flying being to grab tower remains and repair/plant them.

I've been focusing on option 2, but let me know what you guys think.  This part of the game is easy to tweak.

[Fuzz]

I'm thinking you should go with number 2. It seems the most interesting option.

[Chris Z]

Now with more tentacle...

I worked on the game a little today.  Still just fighters in the screenshot since most of the other art consists of spheres 

[Synnah]

I really like the look of that! The cel-shading is spot on, and the tentacle controlling the joystick is a really nice touch. Throw in Tower Defense gameplay, and I'm looking forward to this!

[Chris Z]

More screenshots!  Worked on art mostly today, with some bits of logic.  I also added detail levels for the cartoon effect (in order of increasing quality): shading with no edge detection, shading with edge detection, and (new!) shading in one pass and edge detection as a postprocess.  I'm really happy with how the postprocess edge detection ended up looking.

What you see below are floating landmasses that you can attach towers to. The dark green junk floating above is a destroyed version of a tower that you pick up with a tractor beam and repair before you can use them.  In game it rotates and bobs up and down so it's easier to notice.  The dark spheres are bullets and missles that have no art yet.

[Crackerblocks]

This is gorgeous. Can't wait to see it in motion.

[nihilocrat]

Your art style puts my art style to shame, looking awesome!

[Chris Z]

Nothing flashy to report tonight.  Spent the night fixing various bugs and glitchiness that I was putting off til now.  I also realized that the traditional yaw/pitch/roll controls are a pain in the ass (read: not fun) when you're trying to grab and place towers so I eliminated roll and replaced it with a "strafe throttle".  So now you have two throttles along both your forward and right vectors (WASD or left analog) along with turning with the mouse (or right analog).  The game is a lot more fun now with that change.  I hope to have something to download soon.  Right now it's just a test level with no real goals or story.  That and the title and option screens.  If you guys wanna mess around with that I can throw the installer together tomorrow.

[nihilocrat]

That and the title and option screens.

These things are the bane of my existence. I have never created them, unless the framework I was using gave me some very easy way to do so.

[Chris Z]

These things are the bane of my existence. I have never created them, unless the framework I was using gave me some very easy way to do so.

I'm using a UI system I wrote recently for my engine, so I'm glad I bit that bullet before the competition. 

[Chris Z]

Decided to work on music and add sound effects today rather than waiting til the last minute.  There's sound for almost everything now and I threw a little drum loop together in Reason that plays quietly in the background.  If I have time I'll write something more melodic.

[Chris Z]

Heading to Guitar Center after work to pick this up.  Sliding between my 88-key digital piano (using it as a MIDI controller) and my computer for simple composition got annoying real quick.