[HunchedWarrior]

HunchedWarrior

HunchedWarrior

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My entry in this compo.

The options are ship parts which when charged up combine with the player ship shield it and provide (temporary) awesome firepower. The level of firepower increases as you collect more. You can collect a wing silhouette, nose silhouette and tail silhouette.

Silhouettes provide protection by absorbing enemy fire. They're also critical for a high score. Each bullet they absorb increases a multiplier by one. When you score (by killing an enemy for example) it's multiplied by the multiplier. If you're not using the silhouettes to absorb bullets for a while the multiplier decreases back to one. During mega absorbing a bullet will add the value of the multiplier to your score.

I'm doing it using HGE and C/C++. All artwork is by me. Sound effects from trolling free sound websites.

Controls
Arrow keys to move

Z --- Tap for normal fire, hold to get MEGASHOT
X --- Autofire
F11 - Screengrab
F12 - Force quit
ESC - Exit

Collect different coloured P icons to change weapons
Collect matching coloured P icons to power up
Look out for ships carrying red containers and red boxes. These hold goodies for you!

[JollyFish]

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I can't wait to play this, along with all the other entries.

[Shoot-em-upper]

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Any enemies?

[Adigun A. Polack]

Adigun A. Polack

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[• Mark’s Pixel Art Tutorial]

HunchedWarrior, that is a pretty promising start on your new contest entry!!    All you need to adjust here are the graphics so far, and I got three pixel-art tutorials to help you improve them big-time:


             • Mark’s Pixel Art Tutorial
                  http://www.natomic.com/hosted/marks/mpat/

             • Derek Yu’s Pixel Tutorial
                  http://www.derekyu.com/extras/pixel01.html

             • So You Want To Be A Pixel Artist?
                  petesqbsite.com/sections/tutorials/tuts/tsugumo/


Please, study them step-by-step and learn something.  Perhaps they will help you get one step closer towards greatness, and do an extraordinary job on your whole game itself, too!!!  d==b

And welcome to the competition, by the way!!!  !

[HunchedWarrior]

HunchedWarrior

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Thanks for the graphics tuts. I've been spending more time doing code than art
I spent all of 5 seconds per sprite there (with the exception of the gauge on the bottom) and it definately shows. 

I have yet to decide what sort of style to go for... I might colour some hand drawn art in GIMP or I might model and render everything. I'll probibly go for the scanning since I used rendering for my other projects.

I'm working on enemies at the moment I'm almost ready to move on to doing the event system.
I'll post more screenies once the event system up and running.
Todo:
    event system (creating enemies and hopefully some cool surprises later on)
    special effect system
    tile map
    etc...

Plus the usual unexpected issues . Lots left to get done 

[HunchedWarrior]

HunchedWarrior

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I've now got most of the foundation stuff done e.g. bullet system, events, and such. Still lots left for code.

Updated todo list:
Create reasonably fair collision detection system (current one works but not well)
Create gameplay test stage
Implement particle/effect system (likely a modified version of the bullet pattern system)
Create the tile based map system
Create the first stage of the game

I updated the screenshots with some of the new artwork. No finished art for the enemies yet though there's plenty in my sketchbook. Code is still taking most of my time and code doesn't make for the most exciting screenshots

[christofski]

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Sure is looking good.  Bring it over to my house so I can beta test 

[HunchedWarrior]

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LOL will do but only if I can watch your Bobobo DVD while I'm there.

[christofski]

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lol sounds good

[Adigun A. Polack]

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[=b !]

On your updated screenshots so far, HunchedWarrior, it seems to me that you have improved the artwork of the player’s ship, which is a very good start here in terms of the graphics.  As for the rest of the development of this game, I wish you the best of excellent success with it, ok now?  =b !

[HunchedWarrior]

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Scoring concept which I was hoping for some criticism on...

The scoring currently works like this:
A base score is awarded from how tough an enemy is plus five points, for instance an enemy that takes 5 hits is worth 10 points (5 base + 5 hits.) This is then multiplied by the bonus multiplier. To increase the multiplier you absorb bullets with the silhouettes. If you're not absorbing bullets the multiplier steadily decreases back to 1. The longer you take to absorb another bullet the faster the multiplier decreases.

In addition when you charge up and use the mega shot ability any bullets that hit in this state give you points equal to the value of the multiplier. If you time it right you can get lots and lots of points.

I might also have an end-of-stage bonus for the number of bullets successfully absorbed in a strech (i.e. since you were last killed.)

I'm trying to encourage the player to keep enemies alive and shooting if they want to maximize their score but at the same time they won't lose their bonus entirely if they play conservatively in a hard section. Also I'm trying to encourage the player to take risks by engaging bullet patterns close up if they want a high score.

[motorherp]

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Sounds like a good plan, you've definately got the elements of risk verses reward in there.  Like with all things, how it works in the end comes down to balancing but this is definately a good start.  It's really good to see people putting the extra effort into scoring mechanics, in my opinion these can really be the cherry on the cakes for a lot of shmups.

[HunchedWarrior]

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I've got a decent little test stage... though the game doesn't end on stage completion (coding that in now.) It's a mix of fighters and larger ships spewing shots in your general direction and smaller "kamikazi" drones that can very quickly clog up the screen.

Unfortunately it's highlighted a minor issue with my bullet/particle system in that with the number of guns and effects I'm hoping to have onscreen the game quickly consumes the maximum number of bullet/particle systems that can be active at one time causing the game to error out.

On a happier note the multiplier system is proving to be at least moderatly fun.


Relatively early in the stage these fighters show up and loop around the screen firing quick bursts of 3 bullets. Good placement of the wing silhouette is required to protect against the gunship that appears later.


Later in the stage this large swarm of drones tries to kill you through sheer weight of numbers. You can use the mega here but you sacrifice the points to be collected from the gunships that appear after this swarm which fire dense clumps of bullets that can give massive points during mega mode.

All of the enemy artwork will recieve the same treatment as the player, they're currently just scans from my sketchbook.

[Shoot-em-upper]

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This game is coming along great.  Are the drones arachnoid?

[HunchedWarrior]

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I was actually thinking more shredder-esque with metal spikes. A friend of mine mentioned them looking like a bunch of spiders yesterday

Working on the bullet system today and adding limited lives and the underlying crap for powering up. I'm adapting the bullet pattern system to also double as the particle system (so I can do cooler effects than the ones I can do with HGE's system.) Particles will simply be bullets that can't do damage. Also bullets will be able to do a lot more like change colours and scale as they move to support some of the effects I hope to do.

After seeing some of the competition I want to be sure to have adaquite eye candy. Hopefully I can finish a demo by the end of this week. I can't guarentee the eye-candy level it will have though.

[HunchedWarrior]

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(sorry for the double post)

My new job has been getting in the way of me working on the game (didn't get anything done on Sunday due to a family trip, then nothing on Monday due to work and school related crap.) So I'll post a screenshot showing the particle system, (just stub particle images) and the blue gun in use. I still have artwork for a couple enemies to do and hopefully the animation system before releasing the first demo.



I'll post whatever is done this weekend. The next big goal is to get some pretty backgrounds in there (first stage will be a huge fight in a military base kinda like the start of Gundam SEED-Destiny. (there's a little bit of other influences from it in the game as well )

[alillm]

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Starting to come together now . With some nice backgrounds, this could look pretty nice. I'm looking forward to the demo.

Ali

[HunchedWarrior]

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I decided to change the way the silhouettes behave a little to make things more interesting. When you first collect them they'll orbit your fighter. If you press their "sentry" button then they'll keep orbiting in place instead of following you so you can have a convenient shield between you and some bullet spewing group of enemies. Pressing "sentry" again will call the silhouette back. Each one can be individually controlled.

Also I decided to can having bombs since the dynamic of sentrying/unsentrying/combining with the silhouettes is IMO far more interesting then simple panic bombing.

[Shoot-em-upper]

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You've really made progress with the graphics!  BTW, I agree with you about the bomb issue.

[christofski]

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I like the idea of having control of the silhouettes.  That can make the game far more interesting

[HunchedWarrior]

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The first demo is out now! It's attached to the first post. Hope you guys like it.

Controls:
   Arrow keys to move
   Z tapped to fire. Z held to combine & get the mega shot (you must have silhouettes to do this)
   A to call or sentry the nose silhouette (you get this 1st)
   S to call or sentry the tail silhouette (you get this 2nd)
   D to call or sentry the wing silhouette (not in the demo)

Collect different coloured "P" icons to change weapons. Collect one of the same colour to power up.

[Shoot-em-upper]

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I like the demo, but could you please put autofire in the game?  I can't stand it when I don't have autofire.  Remember, I am a judge...

[Kairos]

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• I shoot things

Well, then you'd have to have it fire without pressing anything, because the same button is used for the mega shot.

Anyway, looks nice. The logo and menu seem very familiar... Xwars maybe?

[Shoot-em-upper]

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Mega Shot?  Then he should have a second button, maybe X, for it.  But that's just my personal opinion.  I should have bothered to read the instructions.

[pixelizr]

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Having multiple functionalities mapped to a single button is one way to add variation and challenge to a game, since you have to be focused while thinking about when to tap and when to hold. The arcade version of Mars Matrix had only a single button, with 3 functionalities mapped to it. Other popular examples include GigaWing and Border Down.

[Shoot-em-upper]

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I know that, I just don't like having to mash the same button repeatedly to get a barrage going.  It's very annoying to me.

[ReleX]

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I know that, I just don't like having to mash the same button repeatedly to get a barrage going.  It's very annoying to me.

I second that!

-ReleX

[motorherp]

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I like the demo, but could you please put autofire in the game?  I can't stand it when I don't have autofire.  Remember, I am a judge...

Ermm.  I'm sorry Shoot-em-upper but I think there's been a mis-understanding here.  You were never made a judge.  Even if you were you shouldn't be using that as leverage to try and get people to conform with your opinions.  I'll pm you.

Also on the subject on multi-functioning buttons and auto-fire its possible to create a half way solution as seen in many commercial games such as mushi and gigawing.  The way this works is that tapping the button once will give you a short burst of auto-fire thus reducing strain from button tapping since you dont have to tap as frequently.  As long as you tap again before the burst finishes then you can keep a continuous stream going.  Holding the same button however will activate the second feature.  Gigawing and Mar Matrix even took this one step further by giving you different auto-fire rates or fire modes depending on how fast you tapped.  Personally I tend to prefer multi-functioning buttons to having seperate buttons for eveything but that's just my opinion.  I find its just more intuitive and prevents those "oh arse I just died cause I got the buttons mixed up" moments.

[HunchedWarrior]

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@Shoot-em-upper
What I could do is handle it like DoDonPachi which has an optional autofire button. The tap to fire/hold to charge would function the same, but the extra button would provide only autofire. Adding an extra control is not a big deal at all

@motorherp
I am drawing at least some inspiration from GigaWing. The charge/fire behavior is drawn from GigaWing's fire/reflect. I REALLY want to have one of those huge Capcom laser beams with the spirals in my game .

@Kairos
The S/Ch logo by silhouette charge bar?
The menu font is one that came with the HGE menu tutorial. I'm planning on replacing all of the fonts with Blambot ones (if that's acceptable, I'll double check their non-commercial licence again before doing so.)

@all
Any suggestions/criticism for the scoring of the game & control of the silhouettes?
The first stage of the game will be similar to this demo though probably longer. It will also probibly only have one silhouette in it.

One other question. Which do you guys prefer, having powerups of each colour appearing one after another (how it is currently) or having the powerup cycle through its colours continuously until collected (like in 19XX?) In either case you need to collect a powerup of the same colour as your weapon to power it up.

[christofski]

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I like the gameplay.

A suggestion: maybe make it so that as soon as you kill an enemy that drops a silhouette, you have to get the silhouette before it starts shooting (It currently instantly works when the enemy drops it).

Regarding your last question, how many power up types are there?  I know of red and blue, is that all there is?

[HunchedWarrior]

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chris...
1st question: Can give that a try, won't be for a while though

2nd question: Three; red, green and blue. The test stage was a bit too short to justify having all three. Red scatters shots, blue fires more predictable (and larger) spreads and green fires penetrating blasts, like in Kill the Things.

Edit: Blue fires penetrating lasers, green fires regular spreads

[christofski]

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I figured as much.  Typical of you to have 3 different weapon types.

I like how it currently is for powerups, but thats my preference.

[HunchedWarrior]

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Building a nice little stage editor for the game at the moment. I'm mainly spending the time on this because of the fact that a lot of the stuff I want to do is rather awkward without some sort of visual preview. (thus the bizarre movement of the enemy fighters for example.) Lots of coding, not much in the way of exciting screenshots. It's progressing well however. I've already got it so I can set up particles, enemies and paths with it. I should have bullet patterns and events done some time this week and hopefully backgrounds this weekend.

[Shoot-em-upper]

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Looks like I'm not a judge.  Oh, well, I like your control setup idea.

[HunchedWarrior]

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I (finally) have backgrounds working! I ended up spending a bunch of time making an editor so I could build maps relatively easily, that's all done now Work's been seriously getting in the way of my development time. I did change the weapons a bit so auto-fire will provide a consistent stream of bullets.

I'll post a screenshot after I have some decent artwork.

[Shoot-em-upper]

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I did change the weapons a bit so auto-fire will provide a consistent stream of bullets.

Thank you.

[HunchedWarrior]

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Okay, I completely forgot to post screenshots, sorry about that 
Updating the first post.

The final version (for the compttition) is up, hopefully you all like it. It was definately an interesting weekend getting this all done.

It's been fun. If I have time maybe I'll enter in another one. If school doesn't get too much in the way I'll do a postmortem this week. School is a bear with RTOS and other fun but tough courses.