BrineMonkeys - arena shots,.

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Fri May 29, 2009 12:33 am

Ok, I have to move my web site to a new service, and I expect some hoops to jump throught to get that done,. so I thought I would post the game I have been working on since my granddad passed,. so, a couple of weeks of time.

It is far from a release ver. but a demo of what I heve been trying so far,. I prefer to play with a controller, dual sticks,. (or stick 0-1 and button 0 to fire,.) button 1 to restart.
However you can try with the keys Arrows and Z, Enter to restart,. or Arrows and Mouse, with LMB to fire (turns on a sight). Space will pause and Z to un-pause.

Currently the white/blue crystals are what you need to eat to regain health,. and the green coins are just for points,. not sure what will become of what you see here,. but I do like some things,. the rendering/graphics/particle/effects,. and the behaviours for some of the bugs,. the sounds need work still and the generated music is a tad plain,. . I am considering the spawning,. if it should be some sort of balance randomness,. or a set of sequences? and if i want to do levels etc. so lots to still work out still,. but have a go, and let me know what you think, k!

diki · Post by **diki** » Sun May 31, 2009 12:54 pm

i like the colors, they are pleasantly fresh & bright and distinctive; especially the green/violet contrast between player and enemy. i sometimes get lost in the explosions/particle spray, because my mind can no longer distinguish the player in a cloud of fast random movement. totally dig the 'character design', especially the blinking :) makes the entire experience a lot more lively.
i usually don't enjoy these 'eating'-mechanics that much (probably because your games are mostly so damn hard, jph ;), but it works good here. the fact that the 'food' is dispensed automatically makes it easier than having to blow up enemies for it; also, hushing away the enemy feeders to get to the food is a lot of fun! i even had a bit of a 'grid wars' flashback, there is a similar kind of enemy evading your gunfire.
it feels like it could work really well in a survival-mode... it would be cool to have it go for all eternity with increasing difficultiy, which is of course more challenging to balance than having a fixed set; or you could opt for a pacman-esque massive setlist of >=255 encounters :)
i noticed that the slowdown when firing is only present when using the mouse, which makes the game a bit easier using keys - work in progress or intentional drawback for the advantage of precise aim?

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Sun May 31, 2009 1:19 pm

Thanks for the feedback diki! I am still working out the controles so just trying a bunch of stuff here,. the slowing is indeed currently only on the directional shooting (gamepad and mouse) as a sorta trade-off for the aiming. Not sure what is actualy an advanatage though,. slowing is safer/easier perhaps?

It was that movement setup of the purple fish running from your shots, while pushing the food off the screen that started this thing,. I was trying to do something like these little spring fishes that I had been watching in a stream near here,. and was happy to find the behaviour with just a bit of hacking. It is true now that you just can not make an Robotron style game with out the newer clones of that being evolked. Here are some more; http://www.numerometria.com/robotron.htm

Post by **VilleK** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:55 pm

Since Robotron is my favorite game I always welcome new arena shooters! You have managed to make very nice a glow effects on the sprites jph. I had a little bit of problems with the controls because my joystick is not xb360 compatible and I've never been successful with mouse-aim in 2d-games for some reason. In my opinion most arena shooters aim for too many different enemies and power ups that becomes quite an unbalanced mess compared to the pureness of Robotron which only have a couple of different (but superbly tuned) enemy types. Looking forward to trying this game more when you add a joystick-setup menu

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 2:58 pm

Although I am taking much insperation from Robotron this is not a remake,. so it will not play the same. I do agree Ville, that was a finely ballanced game, and perhaps even a 'perfect thing'. (these guys created two of the most unique and memorable games ever; Robotron and Defender/Stargate. and they still hold up as examples of advanced gamplay and presentation!! not may old arcade games hold up as well,..) This is the part I am striving to achieve here, that well balanced unity of excess, playability, and noise, that synthesis a unique experiance while playing. It is however a tought thing to achieve this type of balance,. we may as well aim high though, eh?

No luck playing with the keyboard or key/mouse arrangments?? I had a report that the mouse aiming was shooting randomly,. (yet it works great here?) any one else experiance this?? (perhaps it happens with no gamepad pluged? as there is no switch yet.)

y offs et · Post by **y offs et** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:12 pm

Doesn't run on my machine. Crashes after the resolution set. Never see a screen.

EDIT - I don't understand this 64 bit talk. I'm running win 32 bit.

EDIT - reading my own sig, I think I just learned something - changed my sig.

Post by **VilleK** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 3:34 pm

Cursor keys + Z works fine for me, I missed that option when I read the initial post the first time. About it not working on yoffsets machine... I think it is something strange with that GL-driver on a 64-bit cpu that are causing trouble. Are you using other OpenGL programs without problems? I do not have access to a 64-bit machine myself.

y offs et · Post by **y offs et** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 4:18 am

"Are you using other OpenGL programs without problems?"

If you're talking to me, all the time. Here is the only problem.

Post by **VilleK** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 1:45 pm

Ah yes, I forgot I already asked you about that yoffset, sorry.

Jph, do you use the BitmapConvolution component? Maybe the problem yoffset encounters is related to that component. I have seen that programs using that component sometimes exit when I try them from inside the editor. I can try to add code to catch invalid floating point operations to see if it helps.

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 3:24 pm

ok here; this adds a way to setup the dualstick controlers,. just edit the text file,. moveX,moveY,aimX,aimY (perhaps aimY,aimX?)

I removed some old bitmaps I was experimenting with for the backgrounds,. I had been doing some tests with Kattles bumpmaping script for shaders,. and there was the large array that was using,. I am not using that stuff currently, so I just cut them out. Try this one and test if it still crashes,. otherwise the bitnmaps are quite straitforward,. no convolutions. (some blur does that count?)

I had a couple of hours more time to spend with this,. so tweeked out the sounds a bit, and worked on some ballancing. I think I like it so far,. next thing I will try is some scripted waves,. . probably one or two more bug types needed. I think the green coins will be used to clear the waves,. collect n of them to do so,. sorta' everydayshooter-ish. but not definent just yet,. more testing to do...

Post by **Kjell** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 3:33 pm

There seems to be something wrong with the shooting / aiming threshold. The "player ship" only shoots when the Y-Axis has passed it's deadzone, when aiming close to the horizontal axis it doesn't*

I'm using settings "0132".

K

*Or is this part of the challenge / on purpose?

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 3:49 pm

No not indended, should be 360 degree shooting, my mistake. I just quckly hacked in the file reading,. and forgot to add the variables to the threshhold! worked with my settings, lol. fixed above. thanks Kj

Post by **VilleK** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 4:56 pm

Thanks for the settings-file, now I can play with dual sticks! I like the way the enemies are stealing the energy crystals. Lots of nostalgia here: The enemy design reminds me of Galaga-insects and the music also makes me think of old arcade games.

Coming from a Robotron perspective I'd prefer less inertia in the control to give more precision to the player ship. And it would be great if you design the levels (or waves) so that you can learn to master one enemy type at a time.

yoffset: Please try jph's updated version of the game to see if it's still not working.

y offs et · Post by **y offs et** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 4:05 pm

OK It's like the computer game of life, sort of. Nice colours and sound. Not sure what I'm doing but wasdEnter work. Space freezes most but not all graphics and then esc to end.

jph_wacheski · Post by **jph_wacheski** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 8:34 pm

y offs et -yup, that would be a big influance on me,. the game of life. glad it is somehow playable now,. . try the mouse aiming (LMB) and let me know if that is working too,. thnaks.

Ville -Galaga-insects oh yes! oh havent gotten to rethink the player controls yet,. but I will try a variable inertia perhaps,. .

Attached in the new mix of this, no music currently, just play an mp3/ogg while you play,. I like the a minimal techno/noise/dnb/deathmetal mix

but play what ever you like. I canned the wrap-around screen in favor of this variable zoom +scrolling test ,. . I think there is some interesting potential here,. I am still testing it,. but have a go and report your experance,.

also added a new badguy, and some more stuff,. you will have to just try,. .