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Hey guys, sorry I've been out of the loop for so long.  Just finished up school, got a baby on the way, and work has been hectic.  But I squeezed in enough time to write up a quick game just to get back into the swing of things, and it came out surprisingly well!

Here it is!

Project: Asteroid Blast (1.40 megs)

Alrighty, so what is it?  It's a 2D platform asteroid-shooting game written in Direct3D and C++ under DirectX 9.0c, using quad primitives to render two-dimensional sprites, blah blah blah.  I could rattle off tech stuff, or I could tell you that it's a surprisingly fun retro action arcade game that plays silky smooth on most DirectX 9-compatible computer systems.



If you've ever played 'Asteroids' by Atari, then you already know how to play this game.  Fly around and shoot the asteroids, and when you clear the screen you advance to the next level.  The twist here is the ability to teleport out of harm's way, you can grab powerups that enhance your firepower, and you can go for accuracy bonuses by trying to raise your Score Multiplier as high as possible with each five consecutive hits on asteroids.  There's also fun bonus levels before every fifth level!  And if you don't like the way one ship flies, try the other ship - there's two to choose from, each with its own flying characteristics.



This is a demo version, with five levels which also includes one bonus level.  The full version features up to 99 levels, with six unique bonus levels ranging from 'destroy the giant asteroid in xxx minutes' to 'escort the flying saucer' missions.



The artwork is simple and minimalistic, and all of the sounds are by me.  Actually, all of the sounds are really by me, as in, I spoke sounds into a microphone, doctored them up a little in a sound processing program, and added them into the game.  And the artwork is really simple, friendly, and inviting.  So it doesn't matter what kind of gamer you are, this just begs for you to jump in and shoot some stuff!



By default, the game plays in a window, you'll use the arrow keys to move, and you'll use the '0' and '.' keys on the numeric keypad to fire your weapon and teleport around on the screen.  Want to play fullscreen?  Go for it.  Want to use your gamepad instead of the keyboard?  I'd definitely recommend it!  Did you crash the game because you were jacking around with the configuration file?  No problem, simply run the game's external configuration utility (Configure Asteroid Blast.exe) and click the 'Fail Safe!' button.

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I've never released this game outside of my small betatesting group.  If you run into any bugs, please post and let me know about them!  Or if you like or hate the game, I'd like to know that too! 

I hope you have fun playing Project: Asteroid Blast, because I sure had fun writing this game!  Don't let the minimalistic graphics throw you off, because it's actually a pretty fun game.  Extremely fluid animations, and the asteroids slowly rotate in any direction.  The game plays at over 500 fps on my dev computer, which is an old P4-1.8GHz processor with an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro vid card.

Have fun, and let me know what you think!

[Pixel_Outlaw]

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I must say it was having a hyperactive 4 year old child sitting on my computer dest. I had a lot of good laughs. It's great to see people throw some comidy into games. It felt solid butI'm not a huge Asteroids fan. Thanks for the mention of Shmup-Dev in the credits.

[jony]

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That was alot of fun.  My wife was laughing at the sound effects from across the room!  Very well done and far more fun then I expected out of an astroids style game.

[Pixel_Outlaw]

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AHA!! That's what they remind me of! White blood cells!!!

[Dookie]

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I'm glad you liked Project: Asteroid Blast!  It's hard to believe that it started as a gag, and wasn't really intended to become a full-fledged game.  Here's how it started... (cue fog and 'here comes a flashback' music)

One day I was bored, so I scribbled something in Paint Shop Pro, and it looked like a grey asteroid.  So I thought, 'Hey, an asteroid!  What if I put this in a game?'  Using the Atomic Engine, I started writing up some simple code that moved and rotated the asteroid across the screen.  It looked pretty boring, being grey and all, so I colorized it within the game.  Now I had colored asteroids floating all over the place!

To make it a game, I drew a simple spaceship to fly, a bullet to shoot, and a flying saucer enemy just for homage to the original 'Asteroids' game by Atari, and coded them into the game.  I was now shooting asteroids, and they were breaking into more asteroids.  A flying saucer flew in every now and then, shooting in all directions until I blasted it with my own pea shooter.  The game was still silent, so I scoured the Internet for sound effects that I could use in my budding game, but found none that were appropriate or sampled well.  Until I found some sound effects, I recorded some cheesy placeholder sounds with Sound Recorder in Windows by blowing into a microphone or speaking out different sound effects.  Kaplow!  Booom!  Weeoo-weeoo-weeoo!  Bwew-bwew-bwew-bwew!  Crrrash!

My wife came into the room while I was testing a new bonus item, and she laughed hard when she heard my voice being used for all of the sound effects!  She begged me to play the game, so I let her play for a while and she really enjoyed it.  I told her about how I was looking for prettier textures and synthesized sound effects, and she said "No way!  Keep it the way it is, it's hilarious!  But I hate this ship, how about making it fly like the original 'Asteroids' spaceship?"

The ideas really started flowing through my brain, and, well, one thing led to another.  I resampled/filtered/processed the sounds, added some fun bonus items, added a second spaceship to pilot (my wife likes the 'classic' ship, and I like the 'new' one), added unique bonus rounds, and pretty soon I had a full-fledged game.

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It's pretty weird, how some games get started.  So go blow into a microphone or scribble something in your favorite paint program, and you might get the inspiration you need to write your next game too! 

Thanks again for trying out Project: Asteroid Blast!

[jony]

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Thats awesome its some times nice to have an organic game like that.  Its more entertaining to program in my opinion, even if it is a bit longer to get up its fun to just let your ideas go!

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[very]

Heh, sometimes you can have a LOT of asteroids on the screen at once...  Here's a pic with a ton of asteroids, while the 'Shield' powerup jewel is active.



The 'Shield' powerup is awesome!  You can just plough right into the asteroids and break 'em up!  But you need to be careful because a big asteroids can be broken up into a LOT of little asteroids, and it's possible to have over 120 asteroids onscreen at once.  And the shield powerup only lasts for fifteen seconds, so...  Just make sure you clear out someplace you won't crash when the shield expires!  That purple crystal that's to the left of my ship is a 'Sniper' jewel, and when you shoot it, it fires bullets directly at nearby asteroids.

This game is really coming along.  There's now five powerup jewels that you can use in the game, including the two that are in the demo (Rapid Fire, Big Shot, Bomb Jewel, Sniper Jewel, and Shield).  You already know what Rapid Fire and Big Shot do from the demo, but Bomb Jewel fires bullets all over the place for a short while, Sniper Jewel fires bullets at asteroids and saucers for a short while, and Shield completely protects you from everything for ten to fifteen seconds (depends on whether you shoot the jewel or pick it up with your ship).  I've also made it so jewels spawn more often (they're a little too rare in the demo), one-up items are a little more plentiful, the powerup system is a little more intelligent (if you have all the Warp Cores you can carry, you won't win 'Warp Core' in the bonus rounds or see any pink 'Warp Core' bonus flying saucers in the game), and the speed of the asteroids don't speed up as quickly as the asteroids get larger (a big asteroid can be broken up into very many little asteroids).

I'll keep you updated as the game progresses. 

[Shoot-em-upper]

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What a great game!  Like Pixel_Outlaw, I'm not a fan of Asteroids clones(yours pushes the boundary on that, though), but I could not help liking this game!  Any plans for a sequel?

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Thanks for the reply, Shoot-em-upper!  Sorry I didn't reply sooner, since I'm still hard at work on the game and haven't visited the forums lately.

I'm still working on this same game, since so many people are giving me such great ideas...



... like backgrounds, for instance.  I originally wanted to retain a very simplistic look and feel to the game and had always thought that backgrounds would overly complicate the game and take away from the game's simple objects, but I managed to find an artform that works.  In the title screen, the background looks relatively detailed but is actually very simple.  Hand-drawn continents scribbled on a solid blue circle are all that make up that planet in the foreground, and the shadow is a simple alpha-blended effect.  The background is static in the title screen, while the asteroids scroll and rotate all over the place like they did before.



In-game though, the background is very dynamic.  The moon is slowly scrolling across the sky, the planet is rotating behind the shadow (which looks very cool), and the tiny asteroids in the far background are rotating and moving along within the confines of an asteroid belt...  It definitely gives the game a much 'bigger' feel, like you're playing a role in a much bigger asteroid-cleanup job.   That white crystal is a 'Vaporizer' jewel, which is a powerup that will let you take out large asteroids in a single shot!



There's a lot of new cool things going on in my latest build, which I'll release soon...  The powerups are 'stackable', which means that you can get a Big Shot and a Rapid Fire powerup, and you'll shoot rapid-fire big bullets.  The shield lasts as long as the level you're playing, and is displayed as a shield meter instead of a timed powerup.  Don't worry, the shield is worth 64 health points so you can still fly into a bunch of asteroids before the shield expires.  This is the Nebula background, with a color-changing dynamic nebulae moving in the background, with an asteroid belt in front of it.

I'm probably forgetting what all I've done since the first release, but here's some other things you'll see in the next build...  I redrew the sprites, so the ships don't have wavy hand-drawn lines anymore (but it's still simple line art).  I also added a 'mirror' texture effect, which allows me to have the little alien in the flying saucer look in the direction it's traveling.  I added a new powerup item (Vaporizer Jewel).  I also added the ability to choose a skill level that you'd like to play (from 'easy' all the way up to 'insane').  Tons of bug fixes and game tweaks.  Wrote an installer script for easy installation of the game, which includes an uninstaller that completely removes the game and all related files and registry entries.  I think that's about it, but I'm sure I'm forgetting something.

I'm still weeding out the bugs and drawing up more backgrounds, but I'm extremely close to getting a demo game complete.  So stay tuned, because this new version is really cool!

[Shoot-em-upper]

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That's great!  I can't wait!