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[BadgerManufactureInc]

I just revisited galaga on xbox live. Man, what a game.

I am working on some galaga type sequences for the later levels.

Some level ideas:

1) "Moon rock" - ufo style and alienesque cells

2) "Axinite" - with a nice magnesium color pallete like the larger snake on page 1 of this thread

3) "Human Cell Structure" - enemies will be blood cells etc

4) "Anatomy of a plant" - inside a plant with flower and plant cells

5) "Brids & the bees"

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Cool, I can confirm Flash Lite 2.0 compatability.

In fact the game runs smoother when compiled for Flash Lite.

That's nice.

 

[BadgerManufactureInc]

I've got 60 aliens on screen now.. quite nice.

But, I had to sacrifice no. of bullets and frags..

Hmm.  What do you think?

[BadgerManufactureInc]

[superflat]

I think you have to do more work to optimise... After all the mechanics you've described absolutely depend on there being enough onscreen at once to make it about choice of where to focus.  You can't do this without chaotic bullet / enemy hell!  Either that or consider a redesign...

I'd also consider making the screen size fit with something like Kongregate, as it could cause headaches if you wanna release it.

The demo I played last night had a number of issues / annoyances (this is only cos I want it to succeed):

- Waaay too long between spawns (although the wave patterns are really nice.)

- Bullets need to inherit your velocity, otherwise you can move up through them.

- You need to put death in there, as there's no way to balance and make fun until there's some risk!

- I'm not sold on the fonts / logo - think they should be as simple as the ships.

- A starfield / abstract patterns would be nice to give a sense of movement.

- Why not keyboard control?  I don't mind the mouse, but it's certainly not my control of choice for a glitch shooter.

Also I wouldn't put up public demos until all the mechanics are in there...  It'll make your game look worse than it is!  It's not bad at all as a starting point, but still has a long way to go...

Good luck, Bones!

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Thanks again for taking a minute or two to check it..
This engine will likely be ported to Open GL after this one is done,
I will save the bullet hell for boss fights, as the engine will have more power with the presence of just 1 enemy.


It seems Kongregate allow 700x700 max. screen size, as per the following thread:

http://www.kongregate.com/forums/4/topics/36900

I had an inkling this would be about right as the shooter I play on there, Frantic, is the exact same size as my stage (600x500).

[edit] You are absolutely right as I'm coming to expect in these matters.  Having re-read their thread:

"As soon as you surpass that 550/600 px height (i.e. too tall for 1024×768) you’re looking at an optimal viewing audience of only 58%. Suddenly by requiring an additional 20+ pixels you’ve lost 36% of your audience."

I can see what you mean now.  I will reduce to 550px hg, thanks for drawing it to my attention before potential frustrations there bro.  I guess frantic must be just 500px hg...

Death is on its way!!! I am working on it.. lol

The numbers I think I'm going to change to something you can read on a small screen/from far away.  I'll just keep redrafting them until good combinations of legibility and style comes into place.

Keyboard?  I'm doing that too, just forgot to re-enable the code; it's in there though.

Demo removed for now, and you're quite right, but I felt that certain people would appreciate it.

Now I'm even more determined than ever.... thanks for the good advice bro.  I'm looking forward to playing Soul Brother too.  Also I'm hearing you with what you said about Silent Hill 2 and how it's like a classic film (CK).   Totally agree with what you said there too.

 

[superflat]

Hehe well it was controversial, but then so is CK!

But honestly man, it is possible to have lots of stuff going on in Flash, I think you just need to work out how.  I know that Terry's engine just bypasses Flash's rendering and uses straight blitting (perhaps you could check out Adam Atomic's Flixel engine as this is doing the same thing, and open-source.)

There's definitely ways and means though.  Just need to find them!

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Well you made your point well, and stood your ground.

The engine is working well in principle.  Optimization is the name of the game for the next week or so.. I maaged it with Conquest Space, so I have got lots of ideas how to make the code more condense.

As for blitting, I'm looking into it.  Do you know why 'Self Destruct' is not featured on any online gaming sites?  I mean you'd expect it to get loads of plays if it was?

Flixel is perhaps too much at this time.  I really really want to get this optimized though so thanks for the tip about blitting, with reference to Terry's engine.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Thanks again for the advice.  All my sprites are now created at spawn time, and deleted at the end of their journey(s).  So only the bmps on screen take resources up.  I will carry on trying to find an even quicker way of drawing my spawned aliens.

It's looking like I'm going to be using a sprite sheet and finding the correct way to swap the bitmap as per a standard blit.  If not I will look into double buffering.

Thanks also to 8bitrocket who has some good ideas and shows how to use the bitmap commands in Flash on his blog.

Thanks Jabu Jabu.. I'm retracing stuff from the Amos days now.  I remember the game engines you let me create levels for. Most of my better my games were based on them.  Now we're getting somewhere.  You are a legend superflat.. 
   

[fullspectrum]

Hey I've made a tune for the game.

Can anyone suggest a good place to upload it so everyone can have a listen?

[easynam]

Get Dropbox :3 it's really good for file sharing.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Just to apologise for the quiet over the last day or two, and thanks for the kind tip easyname

Again, the examples shown with Flixel are truly amazing stuff, but since I've found some good source to work with from 8bitrocket I am pressing on developing in standalone Flash CS. I've had to gain ground with OO programming.

Thanks to Sonic (aka Superflat) with his advice we now have up to 6000+ objects on screen!!!

Most of these will be used by particle effects I imagine.

Here is a small taster of what is to come:

I have also opted for a smaller 500x500px screen to avoid any possible issues later on.  An opengl version can have full screen, but we'll get to that.

Exciting times ahead.

[fullspectrum]

Link for the Excavator tune below: not qute finished though, any suggestions welcome.

https://files.getdropbox.com/u/1523603/excavator%202%20.wav

Thanks for the Dropbox recommendation easyname.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

40% done now...

[BadgerManufactureInc]

I'm listening to the track now.. it's starting off nice and mellow, very much reminiscent of the Amiga MOD scene with layered arpeggios like you said, and smooth synths.  I assume you generated those yourself?

Man you should copy the link to the audio thread in here, and spread the love that is your tune!!!

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Great work fullspectrum!!  Things are really coming together now.

 

[EDIT] The track has been imported into the new game engine, but I'd urge anyone to download the tune to have a listen in the meantime.

Here's that link again:

Link for the Excavator tune below:
https://files.getdropbox.com/u/1523603/excavator%202%20.wav

[Loren Schmidt]

So are you using blitting now, instead of vectors?

[BadgerManufactureInc]

As you say I'm using blitting now.  There's been a fairly steep learning curve without wanting to get all techy, but again thanks for passing through.  I could do with feedback from a few more people tbh so anyone who wants to please do.. if you've seen 1 glitch shooter too many fair play, but I believe we have something innovative to offer here.

Here is another shot:

[ceneter]

[/center]

The old method was simply using Flash but in an imperative, dated way with flash 'movieclips' for sprites; although it appeared to be vectorial it was not drawn with geometry. 

The migration was necessary to avoid the bottlenecks with a meagre 10 or 20 sprites from using this first approach.  Obviously all syntax has had to change but I'm getting through it quicker than I would have guessed.

Vectors of course are still possible, as they can be drawn as blits with transparent bgrounds.

What this picture shows is that I've managed to get my head around it all, and have got near to recreating the code that I had with new blit enabled AS3 code. 

[edit] OO is the future!!  I am estimating that the all the functionality of my previous draft engine will be implemented in the new 'un before a day or two.

Rok n roll

[BadgerManufactureInc]

New spawning screenshot:

]/center]

So much more is possible now.  I'm looking into bullets and explosions right now.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Now I'm happy with spawning I'll work on bullets, backgrounds and explosions over the next few days.

Ok spawning is now robust enough for sure; here are 6 flash players running (on Windoze XP with single core 3gb processor).  There is no slowdown: