The Electric Mushroom Tracers - build on that clownhorse scr

[jph_wacheski]

Ok,. here is my equinox 2009 game demo release,. .

Could you guys give this a try, and let me know if there are any major problems? I would like to post it proper on my site later tonight.

I realise many people will not "get it",. it is strange and cheesy,. but I do like strange cheese,. especially the real smelly and gooy stuff! and this is a lot of smelly goo,. .

Expect flashin' blurry visuals (!seizure aleart!) and equally blurry and noisy sound to go with that,. I have used a drum loop I made in BUZZ so the file is larger than should be,. I may do a beat in the synth engine but for now I do like the sample distortions as it is played at different speeds. . (Kj - is open studio still coming??)

Personaly i like the slow tence gameplay,. but do let me know your thoughts on this,. I have an idea what some of you are into,. so I can get an idea where this stands with various audiances.. thanks in advance for comenting,. peace, and happy winter!

oh,. the quote "The prone bargain nests next to an important subroutine." is from one of these random emails I seem to get periodicly,. anyone have any idea what these are about,. they seem to be machine generated random strings that often verge on poetry,. . this time coming from this email adress; samuel9mccall749@gmail.com
I almost like geting them but wonder if they could be dangerous?!? Perhaps the global distributed AI is begining to awaken?

[VilleK]

Working fine here! Audio and visuals are right up my ally and the game play works for me too. I like the simple controls and that you can choose to either use non-moving shots to make a defense-wall, or aim them in a direction as projectiles.

I don't get the same weird emails as you . I guess they could be experiments to see what combinations of words that passes spam-filters. Either that, or it is reality finally catching up with the fiction of William Gibson

[jph_wacheski]

I thought you would apretiate this. . , yeah I am considering ways to make that mine droping more usefull on the next levels,. thinking of at least 3 stages for this and some stuff to tie them together,. an incoherent style story perhaps.,

I went to a Gibson reading in Vancouver when I lived there, he is a tall and odd fellow., . I think I perhaps enjoyed his erlier work more, Neuromancer for sure and Virtual Light! I am reading Spook Country now,. but is it a tad too dense for me,. he has been shifing into much more poetic prose,. I really like it, it is just toughter for me to read as I need to have more mental energy when I read it, and I normaly read befor drifting off to sleepy time,. after a few pints o'strong ale.

[diki]

cool, i used to play with buzz too :)
some bug i noticed: when moving & pressing x to aim in that direction, the player sometimes teleports a small distance.

the variable firing rate feels a bit odd - when gameplay depends upon a gun, it's discerning if the gun is not in top condition ;)
i also found it a bit mean that enemies explode into tiny particles that can still kill me.
i think the graphics could be improved: i'm concerned about the static/noise overlay, it can be very distracting (it makes the small particles hard to see). some games use similar things to great atmospheric effect (silent hill etc.), but it strains the eyes and is a bad choice for a key visual imho. the way the traces dissolve/pixelate into black looks very rough/oldschool, but the alternative (smooth fading) might look too techno/90s ... how do you achieve that effect, by the way?

[jph_wacheski]

Hi Diki, the player jumping when aiming could just be the display of the fireing direction., the larger glowy diamond is offset in the direction the gun is 'aiming',. . the 'auto fire' is intentionally weak, you can fire as fast as you can press the trigger,. however just holding down the key is a weaker way to generate SOME shots.

The only things that can kill the player are quite large,. the purple ball things,. these do alternatly turn a lighter colour and swoop around a bit,. but none of the small 'particles' are dangerous.

The grity/messy drawing style is sorta the whole point to this, it is basicly an experiment in clearing the screen myself,. i.e. ClearScreenMode!=0 the thing is, without a FBO the only way I have found to do this sort of thing is globaly,. meaning everything has to leave a trail and needs to be cleared manually. That is what the grainness is, a random-ish noise pattern that is drawn darkly over the whole screen to fade out all the trails,. If we had a FBO we could apply this effect selectively, but this is what we have, so I am enjoying making use of it. I may tweek some stuff to make it slightly more clear,. however it is not really intended to be easy to see,. that is just the style I choose for this little game. I do realise many ppl will not enjoy this, but they can play other games, no harm right?

[diki]

the larger glowy diamond is offset in the direction the gun is 'aiming'

ah, i see - i did not realize that; i thought the other spot was supposed to be some sort of reflection :P

ClearScreenMode

a-hah! never noticed that one. thanks!

no harm right?

absolutely not :)

[Kjell]

Hmm,

I'd call such effect "echo" instead of "trails" ... in any case, you don't need manual screen clearing ( nor FBO's ) for either.

+ A problem with not clearing the screen buffer is that when you switch ( Alt+Tab ) applications you end up with ..



Anyway, personally I believe that effects should never obstruct / complicate feedback on mechanics to the end-user.

K

[jph_wacheski]

Diki -np, enjoy.

Kj - Actualy I called it Electric Mushroom Tracers Sure poly trailes are great too, or just particle ones,. you know I have made extensive use of each. Those just don't look quite the same as these Tracers,. Tracers are also very easy to work with, i.e. no extra work on each object like with trails. When creating poly/part trails each vertex/part needs to be rendered and keept track of, :. cpu hit + game building work.

Unfortunatly some strangeness can happen using this method, however for the most part it seem to work well. (I have no problem ALT/TABing here) Having a FBO would fix these problems as the tracers could be accumulated in a buffer and rendered at will, as well as further effected. (rendered to a distorteing Net, ect.)

As far a 'effects' obtructing player feedback, I consider this effect part of the game setting,. a grainy confusing space. (shroom trip) Like many real world settings, a foggy day, a dark night, a dog fight in clouds,. all these and endless more are actualy confusing obstructions to human sight/perception of events, and all and many more are used in games all the time,. As well, this is just one little game that is not trying to please everyone, those that like it will play with it, the rest will move on. No harm done. peace.

[Kjell]

Hi jph,

I was referring to your response to diki

.. everything has to leave a trail ..

What you're doing is referred to as echo in the Adobe products. Not that it matters much .. after all, what's in a name

Concerning the noise / fog .. the difference between a cloudy dog fight or a foggy dark night is that those concepts are generally used in 3d, and thus applied volumetric instead of constant. Ah well, everybody can do anything they want obviously. As you said, no harm done ~

K

[jph_wacheski]

indeed 'echo' is perhaps a more descriptive term,. . I can't afford to pay for adobe stuff,. so it was lost on me.

attached is a test for level two.., just visuals. the grain is gone and some almost Bokeh style fading is used,. .