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[Griff]

I figured it was about time to announce my game and start getting it out there.  Plus it will help me stay motivated.  At least, that's the idea. 

**update April 20th**
Check my later posts for new screen shots from level two!

**update April 8th**
Here's a quick movie.  It didn't capture as good as I would have liked.  The game runs silky smooth, the video however has some stutters in it.  Watch it in High Quality!




And here's some screens!








Hmm.  It looks a lot cooler in motion!    Hopefully I can get a movie up soon!

The main idea is that you can steal any ship and use it.  Instead of power-ups, you steal ships and use whatever power that ship has.  Each ship handles differently, has different amounts of armor, and different weapons and special abilities. 

At any point you can abandoned your current ship and you become the pilot.  At this point you have a fuel meter that begins decreasing, you want to grab another ship as soon as possible before you run out or you will fall to your death!

So far I have level one done and I'm currently working on the second level.  I'm not 100% on the number of levels I will have in the end, but there will be at least three.

Also, you can check out and play my previous shoot 'em up game, Alien Intent, here at my blog:  http://worldofawesomer.blogspot.com/2007/08/alien-intent.html And you can download it here if you want:  http://www.andrewgriffin.net/Games/Alien_Intent.zip

Anyway, I'll keep updating this with progress as I go.  You can also check out my blog since I'll also update there too:  http://worldofawesomer.blogspot.com/

[Lynx]

Interesting, nice twist on the standard shmup.

[Farbs]

Sounds neat!

If you're not already familiar with Paradroid you should check it out for reference.

[medieval]

This reminds me of Obake. I'm sure it can be used in SHMUPs very well too.

[Griff]

Cool, thanks guys!  I'll have to check out both Obake and Paradroid when I get a chance, they both look interesting.

Well, I tried getting a movie together (for like 3 hours), but failed.  Fraps would capture great, but when I played it back it was stuffed into the upper left corner of the movie.  Camstudio recorded at the right size, but playback was horrid.  So... I'll have to figure out something else.

Level 2 is coming along nicely so far.  Although it has already presented a number of new challenges that I'll have to figure out.  Hopefully that won't slow me down too much.

[Griff]

I uploaded a movie to youtube!  It couldn't get it to record as smooth as I would have liked.  The game itself runs very smooth, so try to ignore the little hitches in there.  Make sure to watch it on High Quality!

Check it out here: 

[Lynx]

I like the looks of it, but switching from vehicle to vehicle left me a bit confused at times about 'which one is mine?'  Maybe it's clearer in the game.

[Iamthejuggler]

The only part where i got confused was when you died and instantly reappeared on the left. It looks like a really cool mechanic though.

[Shuger]

Nice idea and the parallax background looks really good

[oneup]

your soldiers is flawed:

[FishyBoy]

In the video I notice you died when you landed on the tanks. Does that mean you can't hijack them?



I'd understand not being able to hijack bosses, but it'd be neat if you could hijack most anything else. Maybe bosses are hijackable, but you'd have to hit a certain spot and they've got so many bullets and other things flying around that it's near impossible to do?

Otherwise, it looks pretty awesome.

[Griff]

Thanks guys!  Glad you like it! 

I like the looks of it, but switching from vehicle to vehicle left me a bit confused at times about 'which one is mine?'  Maybe it's clearer in the game.

Hmm.  I agree with you here a bit.  It's actually a lot easier when you are playing, since you are always moving the ship you control, but I can see where you can get confused especially when things get really chaotic.  I think I'll try adding a flash when you hijack a new ship.  So when you hijack a ship it will briefly flash letting you know where and what you just hijacked.  Hopefully that should help a bit.

The only part where i got confused was when you died and instantly reappeared on the left. It looks like a really cool mechanic though.

Yeah the respawn system is a bit flawed currently.    I've actually been working on it today trying to get it to be a bit better.  In the end I hope to have when you die the game will wait a second or two then your ship will fly back in to the action on your next life.

your soldiers is flawed:

Lol!  Yeah, my soldiers are quite... large.  But I made them that big so you could shoot them down!  I need to do another art pass on them though, because their animation sucks!

In the video I notice you died when you landed on the tanks. Does that mean you can't hijack them?



I'd understand not being able to hijack bosses, but it'd be neat if you could hijack most anything else. Maybe bosses are hijackable, but you'd have to hit a certain spot and they've got so many bullets and other things flying around that it's near impossible to do?

Otherwise, it looks pretty awesome.

Yup, you can't hijack the tanks.  Actually you can't hijack any of the ground vehicles.  I thought about this for a while and would like to do it, but I don't think I'd ever finish making the game if I made everything hijackable.  Maybe if I do a sequel!  You will, however, be able to hijack all the flying vehicles except the bosses.  Although defeating the bosses will possibly require hijacking... 

[Griff]

I'm almost finished with level two!  I just have the boss to work on as well as a few other little things.  After that it will be on to the third level! 

After having some friends test the game, I've found that the hijack mechanic needs to be a little bit easier to use.  So I'll need to really polish that.  I'm also going to create a tutorial level that will teach the player how to hijack other ships. 

I want to get a demo of level one out soon so everyone can try it out, but I really want to make sure everything works well and is nice and polished before I do so.

Anyway, check out some new screen shots from level two:

[Lynx]

Nice work!  Seeing the black outline around the vehicle suggests that if you put a glowy outline around it, it'll be more obvious you're controlling it.

[Griff]

Yeah!  That's a really simple but good idea.  Sometimes the simple solutions are the best.    I'll have to give it a shot and see how it looks.

[valkrin]

That looks awesome. I love the art for it. I downloaded, going to see if I can get it run on Linux.

[Griff]

Cool thanks!  I'm not sure what you downloaded... perhaps my previous game, Alien Intent?  I hope to have a demo of Hijacker up very soon!