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[Jonathan]

I had trouble earlier too, but I was able to grab it.  It's lookin pretty cool so far, I'll leave you more feedback in a bit.

[Montoli]

I'm disturbed that people are having trouble getting it to run the first time.  I wonder if there is something messed up going on with my preloader or something?  That's all I can think of for why it might not work the first time.  If anyone else sees this, please mention it!

Thanks!

[X3N]

Holy damn this is cool.

[mokesmoe]

When I tried it on Internet explorer, it didn't work. I normally use Chrome though, and it worked first time on that.

[Montoli]

Still alive!

I've been really really bad about updating this dev log though.  What I have not been however, is idle in my labors!

I'll try to post a build early next week with a number of new things in it.  I have a number of tweaks, new weapons, new bosses, etc. that have gone in over the past month or so.  Right now though, my biggest concern is actually trying to make a UI for them, since it's getting cumbersome swapping through weapons and defense modules via debug keys.

Meanwhile, here's a screenshot, showing both a new attack for Chlorine, as well as the newly minted wind gun.

[Eclipse]

very cool, it has a solid gameplay i like it

two things that annoyed me:
- you can't see enemy projectiles while shooting, that fire effect covers them too much
- that paper texture is truly ugly and messy :\ why everyone needs to do games with paper stuff nowadays?

[Montoli]

I agree with most of what you say!

Re:  Fire, shots obscuring enemy bullets.  Yah, this is a real problem.  I've been trying to come up with a good solution for a while.  On one hand, I want there to be a flamethrower, but on the other hand, I ALSO want the player to be able to still dodge effectively while using it.  Most of the other guns I was able to move to a background layer and make dimmer, and it generally worked.  For fire though, I can only make it so dim before it stops looking like fire, and starts looking like...  not sure what.

I have a couple of alternate plans.  The worst of course, is just drastically changing the gun, but I'd prefer to avoid that if possible.  More minor changes include things like making the bullets originate somewhere further away from you (maybe make a floating "option" in front of the ship that gives them some distance?) or trying to tweak the color some more.  We'll see what happens, but I agree.  Something needs to be done on that gun.

Regarding the reason behind the paper texture, it's fairly simple:  It's there to hide the fact that my artistic abilities are more or less limited to simple shapes of solid colors.   And it looks MUCH worse without it, in my opinion.

[mokesmoe]

I don't find that the fire obscures enemy bullets at all. Enemy bullets go over top of you bullets. Even fighting the fire boss I can still tell where his bullets are just fine.

I like the paper effect, but you could probably have a better texture than the current one.

[Montoli]

Coming along nicely!  On schedule to have a playable build out tomorrow or so.  It has many things in it!  Several new weapons, several new bosses, and the all new "defensive magic", which is something you pick, similar to picking your weapon, except instead of killing things, it keeps you alive.  AND UI to pick between them.


Anyway, not quite ready yet, but tomorrow at least, should be some new toys to play with!


Meanwhile, here's a screenshot of one of the new boss attacks.



Also, while it's not apparent in this screenshot (since I only started tweaking it today) I've also toned down the paper effect a little, and (probably more importantly) toned down the bloom effects I was using.  This should make things look less blurry/gunky during bright attacks.  (AKA fire/crystal)

[Montoli]

Arg, blindsided by GDC and friends from out of town. new build soon.

[Montoli]

Arg, do you know what it is I am bad at?  Here is a hint, it is "posting builds when I promised".

Anyway, desperately trying to hold myself to a goal of 1 public build a week, but GDC, friends from out of town, and other life events seem to keep conspiring to keep me from my target.

oh well, better late than never I suppose.  Only... want, two and a half months since last build?  Anyway, finally making good on my promise.

New version!  Now with UI MENUS!!!  I hate writing the things, but sometimes they really are necessary.

Controls:
Move:  Arrow keys
Shoot:  Z
Focus:  Shift
Bomb:  X
Cheat and get lots of power ups:  D


Known Issues, noteworthy things:

• Still haven't gotten around to writing the earth weapon yet.  All the rest should work though.
• Weapon damage hasn't been normalized yet - it's very possible that some guns do way too much/little damage.
• Boss difficulty hasn't been normalized yet either.  Some (especially the earlier bosses) are a lot harder than some of the other (mostly later) bosses.
• Only one boss has a level attached to it.  (Mercury, 3rd from left on the top row)  The rest will get levels at some point, but that hasn't been my focus as much lately.
• Several bombs (Especially water and fire) do WAY too much damage if you manage to trigger them at point blank range.
• Mercury boss graphic effects are causing major slowdown - I need to look into this at some point.

Play it here:
http://flammie.net/flash/elements/

[mokesmoe]

I really like the rock boss, and air is definitely my favorite weapon. The defensive magic is cool too.

[Montoli]

Cool, glad you liked those!  (Air and Carbon seem to be the most popular guns from when I've watched people play.)

Now if I could just figure out what the earth gun is supposed to do.  Have been drawing a blank on that one for around a week now, and haven't liked any of my ideas so far.

[mokesmoe]

Rip off some of the bosses attacks.

A faster version of the entombing attack for the bomb maybe.

[Montoli]

Yeah, that's where I usually go for my ideas.  (It works both ways actually - several existing weapons were ripped off from bosses, and several boss attacks were written specifically to be a "boss version" of a player weapon...)  [and at least one boss attack is something that was GOING to be a player weapon, but didn't work out.]

Entombing could work for the bomb.  Actually, that could work great.  One of my plans for the bomb was to make the earth bomb unique, in that it would do low damage, but have a longer-than-normal safety field.  Was thinking of having it spawn a bunch of the barriers (as from the earth defense) that would stick around.  Entombing makes a great way to get them on screen, and makes sense thematically.  I like that idea!

Not sure what to do for the main shot though.  Going down my list of "interesting shot ideas I haven't used yet" the only one that jumps out at me is homing.  (I still don't have a basic homing bullet) but that doesn't seem very "earthy".

Trying to figure out if I could get away with reusing the seismograph bullets.  On one hand, I'd love to try something like "main gun shoots slow rocks, focus mode shoots seismograph waves that break slow rocks into pieces which fall" but repeated playtests have shown that any gun that involves bullets travelling TOWARD the player means that the player freaks out.  (The mercury gun has frequently caused problems for this, and is due for another tweaking.)

Hrm.

[mokesmoe]

You could have the seismograph aim at enemies, which would be an alternative to homing.
It should have some sort of strong but slow attack.

Also, rock defense says it takes 10, but it actually takes 25.
Uranium can lag a bit.

[Montoli]

Yeah, Uranium I went a little too crazy on the graphical effects, I think.  Too much transparency and gradients.  Oh well, I can tone that down a bit.  Shouldn't look too different.

Good catch on the help text btw!  I was experimenting with the cost for it, and forgot to update the text.  Fix'n that now.

[Montoli]

No new build this week - busy with [finally] launching Boss Rush!

That's ok, I haven't done anything new except try to optimize the draw-times for uranium explosions anyway.

-Montoli

[Montoli]

So I am totally failing my goal of "put up a new test build every week"...  I blame the boss rush release and friends getting married.  And really, I haven't done a whole lot of work on it this month either way.  A few tweaks to weapons...  some minor bugfixes here and there.  Not a whole lot.

Happily however, it turns out that taking public transit home from the airport while jetlagged is some kind of magical philosopher's stone for my creative spirit, since on the trip home, I got done a whopping 6 new boss patterns, and then banged out an extra two after arrival that I didn't have time to finish.  They're not actually tied to any particular boss or theme yet, so I stuck them in a conveniently labeled "experimental" level.  I'll probably reskin the bullets and distribute them between bosses that need it later, once I see which bosses need more attacks to round them out.  Or maybe I'll just save them for the final boss.  We'll see!

Anyway, here's a new build.

Controls:
Move:  Arrow keys
Shoot:  Z
Focus:  Shift
Bomb:  X
Cheat and get lots of power ups:  D


Known Issues, noteworthy things:  (Mostly copied over from last time...)

• I'm experimenting with turning off the bloom effect that I had going on before.  While it looks cool, I think it makes things too hard to track when bullets are dense, so I'm turning it off for a bit.  If this makes things better/worse in your opinion, let me know!
• Still haven't gotten around to writing the earth weapon yet.  All the rest should work though.
• Weapon damage still hasn't been normalized yet - it's very possible that some guns do way too much/little damage.
• Boss difficulty still hasn't been normalized yet either.  Some (especially the earlier bosses) are a lot harder than some of the other (mostly later) bosses.
• Only one boss has a level attached to it.  (Mercury, 3rd from left on the top row)  The rest will get levels at some point, but that hasn't been my focus as much lately.
• Several bombs (Especially water and fire) do WAY too much damage if you manage to trigger them at point blank range.
• Mercury boss graphic effects are causing major slowdown - I need to look into this at some point.

Play it here:
http://flammie.net/flash/elements/

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Hey I've been observing and admiring this devlog.

Just wanted to say that so far the game is shaping up very nicely.  The graphics and effects are looking lovely, and once again as with Boss Rush the sheer number of features and options are amazing for an indie game, and well presented in the various menus and options :]

Can't wait to play the full version.  Bring it on!!