CandyCorn UnderGrowth - a build-shooter,. ?

[jph_wacheski]

ok, here is my latest little test project,. It is actually an intense little game too.
I am happy with what I was able to do here., although it is still not near what I intend to do!

it is based of that little rotation thrust demo i posted a while ago,. so 2d sprite based,. thought it would be interesting to try 2d Ogl ,. and i leaned a bunch!

SPACE will pause it, and the R key will restart it,. of course ESC to exit.

it is set up for my screen so 1280x1024,. I will post a windowed smaller ver. as well when it is done. And that brings me to the question is it worth going to the trouble of adding a few levels? or is it just enouph with the one level?? I find it takes a bit of practice to finnish the one level and perhaps you will have had enouph at that point,. other wise, I can make a couple smaller levels ( only a few nodes to build ) and then perhaps one maga level after this one with more nodes than this one,.

I am interested in feedback,. Oh and currently I have not done the timeing stuff the right way,. ( app.timeDelta ) so if your machine is fast or slow it may not play as intended,. I will look into that next,. but it plays great here. or at least as intended. perhaps i should post a video to shot the speed,. hummm.

have fun. peace

[turshija]

liked the game, although the screen resolution doesn't fit nice on my 1440x900 resolution

but in my opinion, the game is pretty hard ...
you can add more levels, or one level that gets harder and harder every time you pass it (like VilleK's Triple-E or my Space Survivor) ...
and you can add scores ... for example in lvl 1 you get 5xCurrentLvL points for each normal kill, 10xCurrentLvL for that faster one, and 1xCurrentLvL for each "Corn" or however you call that small annoying things enemies spawn every few miliseconds )

[Kjell]

Hey jph.

Great game! I absolutely enjoyed it. Controls are spot on, and the atmospheric music and sound effects give the otherwise minimal game allot of flair

If i'd have to give some critique it would be that the green collectibles disappear after some time, while the orange death-mines don't. That seemed a little unfair .. although it becomes part of the challenge / strategy. Also I did not instantly know what I was supposed to do, which is perfectly fine as far as I'm concerned .. but others might be put off by that. Some more / shorter levels would be welcomed ~

Super!
Kjell

[VilleK]

I agree with Kjell and turshija, great work!

I did not understand what to do immediately, but when I read the instructions on my second try it became clear. Very fun concept. If you generate the layout of the nodes from code (using noise) then perhaps you can have more levels simply adding more nodes and slightly increasing the speed and spawn rate of the enemies. The first level should perhaps only have 4 nodes to make the player familiar to the concept.

About making the game framerate-independent it is really not that difficult, I try to explain it in "Tutorial 3", but if you google on the subject I'm sure there are better explanations.

Excellent audio work also.

This game is even better than Loose Pixels POW, which means it is the best ZGE game yet in my opinion! Lovely stuff.

[jph_wacheski]

turshija - 1440x900 eh,. well, guess I will release 800x600, 1024x768, and the 1280x1024,. even with three ver. it is still only 120k total!
I am not a big fan of 'points' in games,. more into dynamic fun play to win type stuff,. but I will consider if points would add to this,.

Kjell - I agree spartin instructions :. trial and error exploration,. makes games a bit more fun to learn, and mysterious, and perhaps interesting.
The thing about the 'orange death mines' is that they feed you when you shoot them,. and yeah they are meant to build up over time, it you don't keep your screen clean!

VilleK - Yes I am using an iterator (repeat) to build the layout,. so adding a few more levels will be easy-ish,. drat I'am lazy eh,. well actually I just want to use the suff I figured out building the basics of this to build a much more interesting game!
Yeah I think i undersand the concept of the timeing issues., im just not great with math so getting the code right to keep the same controls will be a challange,. both the move speed and the rotation speed increase the longer the keys are held,. this gives a bit more accuracy without being too slow. I will work on that next,. then the new levels,.


OK thanks guys,. I can see now that the overall effect of the game will be greater if I add a couple small learning levels and then a couple large epic stuggle ones,. five should do it. (8-16-48-64-32) It is only ment to be a small simple game,. the current big Z is 48,.

[jph_wacheski]

did some more work on this, now with;

- 5 progressively larger levels,.
- new sounds and graphic effects
- a 'build material' gage in place of the text,. ( nicer )
- fps is shown top left
- and more tweeks and hacks,.

this ver. is fullscreen 1280x1024,. more formats when its done.

I am not entirely sure I have the DeltaTime calculations correct yet, so perhaps there are some timeing issues,. or not. works great here.

[VilleK]

Works great here too jph! This game has a really good vibe to it.

I'm going to test it on my other slower computer later. I like all the improvements you've made.

[myraneal]

Wow, wow, and wow! Really great game. I do agree it's a bit tough but it's not so tough that you would go "**** this game, I'm not playing anymore", it's more like a "It's going to be so amazing when I beat this game." kinda tough.
One question I'd like to ask. When you aim your beam so that it hits two boxes at once, it fills them both with the same amount of material you'd use for one. Is this intended? I think it's cool either way.
Once again, great job and keep'em coming

-Yilmaz

[jph_wacheski]

Yilmaz - thanks yes I did notice that although I don't think you get too much of a bonus as the value is reduced when they hit,. not as you invoke them,. so if you can hit two nodes at once you only get a speed of building bonus,. also, the nodes are further apart in the current ver. making this harder,. (perhaps imposible?) there is an iteration 017 in another thread,. that limits you to build beam OR guns and that does make it a bit harder,. last thing I really wanted to do is have the build beam spawn out in front of the player not in the center,. just gota hack in some trig math for that and I'm done here,. check Gyro-phyter thread for my current project,. . peace.

[jph_wacheski]

ok, I am all done the first wave of updates,. now all four of my major ZGE games are up to date with the current ZGE build! and therefor have Res. selection and my bitmap font,. wooo,. that was a bit of fun. you where very right to maintain backwards compatability Ville! I thank you.

So this is the latest iteration of this one here,. Now I have to get my site back up,. and then update that! And next time I update any of these I will add nice icons too., just thought of it. bit too late to catch it for this round.

oh,. Ville is there any way to get rid of that poll at the top to this thread? it is useless now,. (I should have added a time eh.)

peace.