next »

[Mizumon]

There are a ton of demos here that I wish I had the ability to finish, but, sadly, no go.  ^o^"  I simply don't have the artistic or programming ability to go through with them...

But, anyway, here's a sample of one of my favorite demos: 



It's a basic shoot-'em-up based on a fantasy setting; I have a basic prototype that's super-short.  ^o^"  The basic controls are:
Arrow Keys to move
Shift key to enter "Breath mode", which is a firing state, and again to cancel "Breath mode". 

Prototype is http://chibigames.googlepages.com/shmup.swf

[Montoli]

Ok, finally working up the bravado necessary to post some of my less glorious moments for public scrutiny...  Here's a prototype that never went anywhere.  I didn't really have a chance to spend more than a weekend on it, but you can get the general idea.  (It's in flash, so you should be able to just follow the link and play)


http://flammie.net/flash/dragon/dragongame.html
(Click the giant egg to start - I didn't spend much time on the UI, which kind of shows...)

Controls are:
arrow keys move.  (including up).  Spacebar creates blocks if there aren't any around.  Holding down space bar shoots dragon breath which breaks blocks.

There's only one screen to jump around on.  It's fairly pointless, and is mostly there to showcase how the physics work and how neat it looks with the whole tail flapping around.

The story here is that I heard we were making a game featuring dragons, and with solomon's key-like gameplay of creating and destroying blocks.  I went home that weekend thinking of all the cool things that could be done with that, and so on Monday, came in to try to pitch this demo to them.

"It'll be great!" I said.  "NES-level tech may have limited us to protagonists that are basically square-shaped, but we don't have to be!"

"Uh...  ok."  they said.  "But we really kind of want to make a solomon's key clone.  What you're doing here is kind of neat, but it's not solomon's key."

Feh, I said, and went home with my design to pout.  Someday I may dig it out of retirement and make a real game out of it, since I still think there is some meat on the idea of a protagonist that is amorphous and slinky.  (Heck, I KNOW there is, I've played Gish. :D)


(The coding session was rather funny - originally it was going to be a regular dragon, with a tail that flowed.  But it looked weird and awkward, and it quickly became obvious that the neatest part about it was the tail.  So after a few minutes of consideration, and the happy recollection that dragons happen to be a species that can accommodate members who are ALL tail, I just threw out the body, and ran with the fun tail physics.)

[1337-n00b]

Montoli, I like that dragon thing a lot.  Jumping around with the tail physics is so much fun by itself that I've got to imagine a full-fledged game with that would be a blast.

Mizumon, I can't get yours to work, FireFox just tries to download the .swf - I don't know a whole lot about flash...obviously.  Even still, I can tell you to keep at it.  If you've got the passion and keep working the skills will come in due time.

Benzido, I really love the atmosphere you've got going there, but I see what you mean about the gameplay.  It's actually very similar to something I attempted in Game Maker.

It was intended to be a sailing game, of sorts, but I ultimately came to a similar conclusion as you.  In the end I decided to make it a sort of tech demo, to see how far I could push Game Maker artistically.



I'm pretty happy with the results.

I get a steady 60 FPS on my machine but I honestly don't know how it runs for most people.  If anyone wanted to give me an average of their FPS (top left corner) I'd be much obliged etc.

http://www.blueisotope.com/waves_tech.zip

[Ryan]

Aaron G. I just wanted to quickly log in and tell you how amazing that looks. I can't believe it's even Game Maker. Insane. I am saving this.

Oh, and 60 fps here too.

Edit: Radnom, just for a tidbit of information, CRITICAL doesn't work on Vista.

[1337-n00b]

Aaron G. I just wanted to quickly log in and tell you how amazing that looks. I can't believe it's even Game Maker. Insane. I am saving this.

Oh, and 60 fps here too.

Thanks for the kind words and the FPS count.
Hopefully I'll be able to finish a real game some day instead of just demos.

[Terry]

It's quite cool

Unfortunately, I don't get that kinda FPS on my laptop (it's more like 17 for me).

[george]

I get a steady 60 FPS on my machine but I honestly don't know how it runs for most people.  If anyone wanted to give me an average of their FPS (top left corner) I'd be much obliged etc.

That is really cool. Also on a laptop here, 1.5 g and 512 mb, I averaged 40 fps.

[Farbs]

Petal Hero is a prototype I've had kicking around for ages. It started life as a 1942 ripoff with randomly generated enemy waves, and has evolved into this reasonably playable petal-vs-dragonfly micro-shump. I don't have any plans for it though, so I included it in the distribution of Pycap (http://www.farbs.org/pycap1.1.zip) as a sample game. Since it's a super hacky prototype I've been able to experiment with a bunch of cool little features, including:

Mouse Control
The petal constantly chases your mouse pointer using simple acceleration/drag physics. Thanks to momentum you can end up floating along in a lovely flowing motion. I find this incredibly satisfying, but others have found it quite frustrating. The trick I think is to keep moving, and to keep the pointer away from the petal. Anyhow, I'd really like to hear what people think of it.

Recharging Lives
Shmups often deal damage in one of two ways. You either die instantly, or you lose some analogue and impossible to read quantity of health. Instead I've gone with a coarser level of granularity, treating lives more like Zelda hearts. This way when you get hit by something you have a much better idea of exactly what that means, and how many more times you can be hit before you lose. I've also incorportated some Halo-like life regeneration, so if you survive for a while without being hit your lives start to return. I find it really takes the edge off losing a life early in a level.

Persistent Enemies
Each level spawns enemies for 60 seconds, and is won when the 60 seconds is up and all enemies have been destroyed. The enemies in this game don't just wander off the screen a few seconds after being spawned though, they hang around until you kill them. This means that if you don't continually attack them they grow in number, making subsequent attacks even more difficult. This makes the game a constant fight to control a positive feedback system. It really bugs me when shmups can be played just by dodging, so I like how this forces the player to engage with the game a bit more. Oh, and if you die it just restarts the current level so you can try it again.

Random Waves
The original point of this prototype was to explore random enemy waves. By moving all enemies along splines and modifying things like control point positions and timing I've found a decent amount of gameplay variation within the same enemy type. It's easier to see this in game than to read about it though... garn, give it a play

[Gazillion]

Around 3-4 years ago a friend and I decided to make a 3rd person action RPG ala Zelda. We were using DirectX7 and c. We were young, ambitious, and unexperienced... we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. The screenshot basically sums up what we had done (but you don't get to see our wonderful dialog boxes). All graphics had been done by me but were heavily influenced by games from the SNES era (I would study tiles from games like Secret of Mana and try to reproduce them on my own). The character in the screenshot was to be the hero and he had been nicknamed "Popo". Sometimes I wish we had completed the project because many hours were put in the pixel art.

edit: Oh craptastic I just noticed everyone posted links to the demo... ours was lost ages ago, feel free to delete my post if it goes against the idea of the thread

[Greater Beast]

@ can-o-spam:

Really like the last demo you linked to.  It reminded me of the great kind of gameplay atari 2600 was capable of.  It would be cool to do more puzzles, etc. and build on the theme of escape.  Also, once you had the other escapee following you around, I got a little Mario VS Donkey Kong vibe.  Great concept.

[Paolo Victor]

Among all this awesome stuff, I feel a little guilty for posting just a little crappy demo :<

Well then.

Save Tamy
http://rapidshare.com/files/91362027/SAVETAMY-MMF.exe.html

A blatant megaman clone I was making for a ex-girlfriend that got canned for various reasons (boredom, college, break up, etc). This demo has only one level, and freezes just after the first boss cutscene dialog.

It's very old stuff (circa 2002/2003 at least), so please bear with the ugly graphics. Also, it was my last MMF game attempt before starting programming like a real man <o> (no mention-worthy stuff has been done by me, since =])

You may configure what weapons will be available at the first screen, but almost all of them do not hurt the enemies anyway (it's unfinished, right?).

Controls

Ingame:

Arrows move, Shift jumps/double jumps, Control fires
' uses an "E" capsule
2-8 selects a weapon

First screen:

2-8 toggle the weapons
N, S, F, R, J choose the enhancement (I planned that the player could use only one at a time)
+ and - increase/decrease life bar
, and . increase/decrease "E" capsules

[deadeye]

Among all this awesome stuff, I feel a little guilty for posting just a little crappy demo :<

Don't.   Mine aren't any better.  In fact, yours puts mine to shame.

Okay then, here goes

I have to come to terms with the idea that these two games will probably never be finished.  Partly due to laziness, partly due to bad coding, but mostly because I don't have a legit copy of MMF2 and I don't really see shelling out the cash for one.  I might take the work I've done in MMF and translate it all to some other dev tool someday, but it's not likely.

Brimstone (Download .rar)


A platformer with a few weapons.  All three weapons are finished, but I only got one enemy implemented.  Features rather bland bg tiles, and temp graphics in some places (most notably the title screen and SPRING).  Also features really crappy temporary sound effects and some buggy collision when stomping on enemies.  Only one demo level.  I planned the game to be cutesy and cartoony, where a demon named Beezle goes around fighting an army of cuddly critters (hence the bunnies).

Monster Panic (Download .rar)


This was going to be a metroidvania style platformer where you gradually gain new powers and open new areas for exploration.  The main way of doing this would be by saving your kidnapped monster friends.  Each friend is a playable character with his own attributes, abilities, and control scheme.  Once rescued, you'd be able to swap out to another character at any time.  Drac is the beginning character, and most well-rounded as far as control goes.  Frank is slow but he can punch things and is waterproof (but can't swim).  Swampie can swim in any direction and has a projectile attack under water.  Furball is the fastest, and can jump the highest, and is able to climb walls.  Drac was originally going to have to find a lost amulet to restore his flying ability, but in the demo he can fly from the start.

The demo features really crappy temp graphics (if you can even call them that) for the backgrounds, crappy temp music and sound effects, but all the player controls are 100% done and there are a whole two kinds of enemies.  There are two small demo levels connected by doors and the enemies actually have a rather complex (for MMF) spawning system that I'm pretty proud of.

I recommend reading the readme's for both as there are a few details in each that cover all aspects of control and gameplay.

[superflat]

Like many of you I have a few unfinished projects.  Probably the one which I worked hardest on was Super Neko World (Crappy Working Title^TM). 

Download Link (PC+Intel Mac): Pre Alpha 0.21 of Super Neko World



I gave this about five months full-time work.  I eventually got discouraged because of the length of time it was taking to produce the assets.  It was in 1024x768 and I think that was my mistake.  I produced the graphics in Illustrator, and it was a time-consuming process.

Anyway, enjoy what I've done so far. It goes up to the fourth screen of the second world. See if you can make it!

Gameplay
======

A combination of Mario Bros and Bubble Bobble, to put it in simple terms.

It's a single-screen platformer where you use your ice gun to freeze the enemies, then jump on their heads.

Jump on multiple heads to get combos - this will earn you better bonuses.

There are many powerups available.  There's 184 different collectibles in total, many of which give you strange and interesting powers...   

Beat the level while the timer remains green to find secret chests and bonus rooms.

Default keys are re-definable or you can use gamepad:

Player 1
--------
Shoot - ','
Jump - '.'
Left - left arrow
Right - right arrow
Up (when flying) - up arrow
Down (when flying) - down arrow

Player 2
--------
Shoot - left control key
Jump - left shift key
Left - 'a'
Right - 'd'
Up (when flying) - 'w'
Down (when flying) - 's'

Other projects I'm working on include:

Amnesia, an anime-like point'n'click adventure.  The engine is written for this but, again, assets are the issue.  The backdrops I can do in 3ds Max, but animation is not my forte!  This is really the game I dream of making one day, as I've had the story in my head for many years.





Also I'd like to post a screenie of an on-going project which has been in development since 1992!  It's called Trip, and it's a head-to-head futuristic shooter.  I'll be posting more information about this soon.  I promise it looks much better in motion, and it's res-independent, so it works best on and HD tv or large monitor.



Anyway, that's what I've been up to, and I apologise for the large images.

[Chris Whitman]

I like your style and also dig your moves.

[DrDerekDoctors]

Gah! Can't believe Super Neko World is deaded! It was really shaping up nicely.

[Gainsworthy]

Sir Superflat, we'd like to see some of that Amnesia right there. Here's hoping you find an animator. Be sad to see it permanently relegated to the Unfinished Game Dump.

[superflat]

Well Graham I guess you could say it's on permanent hold.  As you've played it you'll know it's 99.9% programmed - I just need to find an artist willing to re-do all the graphics and provide about 6 more world's worth of tiles / enemies.  Don't know how I'd go about that though.

So artists...  If you're listening, there's a game three posts above that needs your help!

My Lord Gainsworthy, I am humbled by your praise.  Actually the bottom two games from my post are more W.I.P than D.E.A.D. (no idea what that's short for).  Maybe I should move them to another thread.  Amnesia is something I hope to do one day when I can assemble a full team of two or three artists, ideally when I come back to Japan (I'm leaving tomorrow).  I hope use some of my contacts here to use real hand-drawn animation.  I just need a track record first, and that's why I'm returning to England to seek employment.

[DrDerekDoctors]

Yeah, tbh, the only problem I had with Super Neko world was that the graphics made it look horribly insipid and ubercasual. Did you code it so that it was a bit resolution independant? Only if you did it might be worth scaling it back to 640x480 or less as you're far more likely to get someone for the gig that way.

[superflat]

Boo-hoo you hurt me once, don't rub it in!   

Seriously though, I tried my best but I'm no artist.  it's coded pretty much res-independent, so that would be no problem. 

@ pixelers

If you're a good artist looking for a project please take five mins to check it out and see what you think.  If you like the gameplay, and have the time, let's talk.

Thanks!

[Melly]

I'm interested in seeing that Amnesia thing done someday. Looks interesting and compeling.