LD35 Entry with ZGE

[zondarg]

Hi everyone,

I managed to take part in the recent "Ludum Dare" game jam, where I submitted my game "Polarity Dragon" - made with the ZGame Editor!
Ludum Dare is a contest with two categories - the compo and the jam. The compo is slightly harder because you need to do everything solo, from scratch (some exceptions like fonts are allowed), and within a timeframe of 48hours. Also, you need to release the source code or project file.
The jam category is a bit more relaxed, you can work in a team, use any assets you want and have one day longer to complete the game.

My game is a retro style shooter with some Mod-File background music, you find it with the .zgeproj source here (I used ZGE 3.1beta):
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-3 ... &uid=92506

Since I startet a bit late the game is not quite finished (had only about 33hrs minus sleeping etc), its still missing the boss fight and more levels, but it is playable.

ld35screenshot2.jpg (64.08 KiB) Viewed 25061 times

Comments are welcome.

[VilleK]

Cool, thanks for sharing! It is always fun to see how ZGameEditor is used and it inspires me to keep developing more features for it.

I see you use the MikMod library by Rado1 and also the SpriteSheet component which was quite recently introduced in ZGameEditor.

About the game itself: Space Harrier meets Ikaruga? It works fine here. I wish there was more variation, even if you only have a single type of enemy there could be more randomness to their movement patterns maybe.

I can recommend you use the very latest ZGE4.0b because usually it is the most stable version and also it has the very nice updated .chm-help file by Rado1.

Let us know if you encounter any bugs in ZGE or have feature/improvments suggestions. And please help spread the word about ZGameEditor

[Kjell]

Hi zondarg,

Comments are welcome.

It's a bit bare-bones, but you're definitely off to a great start! It does help that Space Harrier is one of my favorite games of all-time Some remarks ..

- All your imported images seem to use only 100% or 0% opacity ( no semi-transparency ). Usually this is something you'd use in combination with "nearest neighbor" image filtering ( while you're using Linear ). Is this deliberate?
- It looks like all sprites in your spritesheets are the same size & evenly distributed. In that case it's easier / better / faster to use a TileSet instead of a SpriteSheet component.

K

[zondarg]

I see you use the MikMod library by Rado1 and also the SpriteSheet component which was quite recently introduced in ZGameEditor.

Yes, I used this library in a small game I made for my daughter as well, so.. I had some experience with it. Sprite Sheet is great too

About the game itself: Space Harrier meets Ikaruga? It works fine here. I wish there was more variation, even if you only have a single type of enemy there could be more randomness to their movement patterns maybe.

Yes, definitly. There will be more randomness, and more different enemies too, I am working on a post-competition version but had not much free time to do it.
And yes: Space Harrier and Ikaruga are certainly the inspiration for this game

I can recommend you use the very latest ZGE4.0b because usually it is the most stable version and also it has the very nice updated .chm-help file by Rado1.
Let us know if you encounter any bugs in ZGE or have feature/improvments suggestions. And please help spread the word about ZGameEditor

For future projects I will do that.

For bugs: There is one strange bug(?) when exporting to Android. As you can see the Transparency and everything on Windows are just working as expected. When on Android, there is no real transparency, all sprites are drawn as a rectangular block with every supposedly transparent pixel shown in the background color. What can that be?? (tried on my no-Name tablet and on Ouya, both the same)

[zondarg]

Hi zondarg,

Comments are welcome.

It's a bit bare-bones, but you're definitely off to a great start! It does help that Space Harrier is one of my favorite games of all-time Some remarks ..

- All your imported images seem to use only 100% or 0% opacity ( no semi-transparency ). Usually this is something you'd use in combination with "nearest neighbor" image filtering ( while you're using Linear ). Is this deliberate?
- It looks like all sprites in your spritesheets are the same size & evenly distributed. In that case it's easier / better / faster to use a TileSet instead of a SpriteSheet component.

K

Hi Kjell,
bare bones.. yes. When I have time I will extend it a bit so that there is at least a boss fight, some more enemies with better variation in the flying patterns, and maybe a bonus round (most vintage arcade games had one..).

The opacity: True, I tried nearest neighbour, but it looked too retro-blocky so I used the linear interpolation (still pixelish but not quite as).

Thanks for the tip with the TileSet component, I didnt know that.

Z.

[Kjell]

Hi zondarg,

I tried nearest neighbour, but it looked too retro-blocky so I used the linear interpolation (still pixelish but not quite as).

Alright, that's a entirely valid artistic choice However, a bug related to importing PNG only got fixed recently ( color channels got pre-multiplied accidentally ) .. so unless the dark outlines around your sprites are intentional, you might want to upgrade to 4.0 and re-import your PNGs*

*In which case you do need to make sure your images are created properly as described in this HOWTO from the Unity documentation ( it's the exact same for ZGE ).

K

[zondarg]

Hi zondarg,
.. so unless the dark outlines around your sprites are intentional, you might want to upgrade to 4.0 and re-import your PNGs*

Good point. I wondered why there are these darkish borders on the sprites.. they look nice and cartoonish, but.. I did not draw them