彩虹子弹 (Rainbow Bullets)

[rrTea]

Here's something I'm working on.

Levels 2 and 4

0_3.png (234.51 KiB) Viewed 31756 times

Project links:
(page)
(direct link to the file)

[VilleK]

Works fine and smooth here. Nice difficulty curve. I like vertical scrolling shoot'em ups

[rrTea]

Thanks for trying it! I added some more enemies etc meanwhile, will post the new build next weekend (hopefully).

[rrTea]

I managed to put together the first 5 out of 7 levels (updated the first post with the newest build^). The last two levels are still completely empty.

Right now I'm at 62 kb (out of 64) so I think I should manage to fit everything in despite making quite primitive / wasteful choices when it comes to how the project is set up. Regardless, it should at least run mostly smooth. On my computer the game stutters for a split second under certain circumstances but I still didn't find out why.

Anyway as always all comments are welcome.

Edit: removed broken links

[Ats]

Nice !
You should definitely try to push it to Android since you already have the screen ratio. I worked hard to produce the Android 9 (API28) template and I would be pleased to help you, if needed

[rrTea]

Hmm, I don't really use such devices… I'm sure it's technically possible. The template sounds great!

I'm very interested in any mac/Linux exports!

[rrTea]

Edit: removed broken links

[rrTea]

Quite a few things in this update, the most important is probably a simple option to select the start of a level: on the selection screen moving left/right sets the start point - the number indicates at which percentage the level starts (or 0 for playing a level from start to finish). Very useful for practicing the final enemy since he's quite tough (or any other part of the level that is a bit trickier than the rest). It looks like this:

Left/Right to select start point.

004SelectBegin.gif (304.19 KiB) Viewed 32092 times

Update: newer builds have indicator arrows attached to cursor.

By now this phase of the project is practically finished / fully playable (except for a few minor things / assuming nothing major will pop up). The first post has been updated with a new build! All the levels are unlocked from the beginning.

[rrTea]

Edit: removed broken links

[Ats]

Hi rrTea, Chrome won't let me download your game. I already had that problem. You should try to compile it without the Upx compressed (just press F9). And share it within a zip file

[rrTea]

Hi Ats. Thank you for reporting. Added the build to the first post. (Edit: removed the old build)

[rrTea]

New build, v 1.13. Lots of new things! Now that my whole "64k" project fell into the water I added a title screen and scoring system. (This would not be possible if I were adhering to the 64k limit.) The scoring system still doesn't save / load etc but it works and is quite fun!

Known issue: the sound sometimes breaks and the "alarm" sound sometimes gets triggered twice in the same frame. It doesn't happen very often.

Edit: removed broken links

[rrTea]

Everything planned is implemented! There are still a few things to polish etc but that's always the case

Video:
https://streamable.com/21bpz

Links in the first post! Jump ^
Edit: Removed broken links.

[rrTea]

And here it is! I implemented some more things and improvements so I finally present… version 1.00!

For this occasion I was planning to make an official page for it on my site, but that is written in html and I don't know how to handle that (I guess it can't be that hard but I can't poke that now).

So had to find some other place where to upload it. After trying out many many sites where I should be able to upload various projects (itchio, indienova, gamejolt, tumblr, syakerake, various blog platforms whatever)… some I liked more than others but in the end each one of them had something that was a deal breaker for me. After deciding to ignore my prejudices about Patreon, I tried that too and it actually suits my needs best! It's like a blog really, and maintaining it is really easy. Right now the page is not even set up the way the owners of the site want me to set it (haven't set up any donations, everything is completely open etc), I'm just using it as a page where I'm planning to post various things like art etc. And downloads are accessible to anyone by default anyway.

About this build:

• In order to ease the distribution, the executable is no longer compressed. It's still way, way smaller than anything else other engines would produce for a project of this size – there's a whole story behind this but best to let Ville talk about it if he has time (the reasons are quite technical). There should be no significant downsides to this unless somebody wants to download the project using a 56k modem.
• I have also included the source code for anybody curious. It's not very good but it all works reasonably well. There are a few things I set up really stupidly (for example the way the enemies are spawned), this has been extensively discussed in #ZGameEditor. I'll try to do it differently for the next project.
• Additional information is in the txt file included with the build, including the "Thank you" list!

Known problems:

• When a particular enemy appears for the first time the game stutters for a frame or two. I have no idea why. But after that it all works normally.
• When the music switches, again there is a barely noticeable frame skip. In most cases this can't be noticed because the music is usually changed during frame transitions, but when you delete the Area Guardian the music switches and there is a stutter before the skull starts twitching.

Links in the first post! Jump ^
I'd be super happy to hear if anybody has any comments / ideas / crash reports.

[rrTea]

New in this build:
A few graphical improvements (gentle parallax scrolling for example, the explosions are dynamically adjusted so they don't get in the way when there are too many of them and so on)…

…and a new mode that makes it easier to play! On "Level Select" screen press "Start" (Space) to toggle between "Practice" and "Bullet" modes. So now the level selection screen looks like this:

Switching between modes (the transition is cut out, in game it doesn't look this abrupt)

021.gif (3.58 MiB) Viewed 24164 times

In "Practice" mode the enemies are not firing, so it's easier to get familiar with the level structure. In the previous versions, some parts of various levels would get so hard that the player could get killed but without any meaningful feedback, along the lines of "something killed me but I never even had a chance to learn what exactly because I had to look elsewhere". That could be quite frustrating so hopefully this helps a bit.

…
From this build on I won't be including the source code anymore, just to make it easier for me to maintain it.

Links in the first post! Jump ^
I'd be super happy to hear if anybody has any comments / ideas / crash reports.