[brog]

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New version, see post below: http://www.shmup-dev.com/forum/index.php?topic=1209.msg15671#msg15671


Okay, here is the (possibly) final version of my game.  I'll be out tonight (WAR OF THE WORLDS, then a party), not sure when I'll get home tomorrow.  If I'm back before the deadline and there's anything more I find to fix up I'll put another version.  If you see any bugs or problems, post them here and hopefully I'll have time to fix them.

Ignore the tearing on the competition banners.  It doesn't happen in the game and I can't be bothered fixing it.

Missing from this are level 4 and audio.  I'll make a final version in a month or so with all of this added.  I'll probably touch up some of the sprites as well (some of them are a little rough), maybe add a couple more enemies.

My high score is 22941.

By the way, don't judge this game based on the screenshots.  You have to see it in motion and try out the game mechanics.

original post:

Hi, I'm new here, I read the news and play the games every so often, just happened to check it today and saw there was a competition.  So.. I thought I might register and enter, and use up some of those game ideas I have sitting around.

Here are a couple of screenshots of previous games of mine.  The first is Glutton Quest, a shmup, which is not currently available anywhere online because I haven't gotten around to getting a proper website to upload it to (also there are some bugs I haven't gotten around to eradicating yet).  The second is Vertex Dispensor, a strategy game which is still under development. (the game is finished apart from sound, but there's a nasty bug in the network code which I haven't tracked down yet.  also, balancing.)

I haven't decided exactly which of my thousand ideas I'll use, I'm waiting to see the theme.  I'm not sure whether or not I'll be able to finish in time - real life may intervene.  We'll see how it goes.

[failrate]

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Nice screenies!

[motorherp]

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Awesome.  Welcome to the site brog.  I hope you enjoy the competition.

[Adigun A. Polack]

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[d=]

I really hope that you do well in this competiton with your new project called Smestorpod Infestation, brog.  And by the way, that is a pretty cool name on the title of your game here!! 

DO YOUR BEST!!!  d==b

[Shoot-em-upper]

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Where are the screenshots?

[the2bears]

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"Here" in the original post is a link to the screenshots.

Bill

[Shoot-em-upper]

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Well, if there is, it's not showing up in my browser.

[the2bears]

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Well, if there is, it's not showing up in my browser.

You mean you don't see the link in the original post?  It's not underlined or highlighted in my browser, but it does open up a new window with the screenshots.  Maybe you have a pop-up blocker?

edit:  Added an image, highlighting the "Here" I quoted above, where the link resides.  It appears underlined because the cursor was over it.



Bill

[brog]

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Such a lot of fuss about my screenshots.. I'll have to be more careful where I hide my links.

I've started on my entry.  The 'Options' theme fits really well with some ideas I had.  Gameplay will be quite experimental.

Title: Smestorpod Infestation
Technology: C++, SDL
Platform: Windows


It's hard to see what's going on at this point since I'm using the same model for everything.

[Five Damned Dollarz]

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That screenshot looks very interesting indeed
I'm sure everyone will be confuzzled

[Shoot-em-upper]

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I'm "confuzzled".  I like your style.  Is that a brain in the lower left quarter of the Glutton Quest screenshot, or is it just a glob of lard?

[Adigun A. Polack]

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[=b]

I fully agree with Five Damned Dollarz, brog... the screenshot for your entry so far looks AWESOME, I’d say!!!  =b

[brog]

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Is that a brain in the lower left quarter of the Glutton Quest screenshot, or is it just a glob of lard?

Glob of lard.  There is actually a recognisable organ later in the game though..
Apparently we can upload games to these forums, so I have: http://www.shmup-dev.com/forum/index.php?topic=1224.0

This game is nothing like that one.  I will be reusing at least one of the enemy ideas though.

[Shoot-em-upper]

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Is the organ a deflated spleen?

[brog]

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Here's a demo of what I've been up to.  It demonstrates the options, but there's not much in the way of enemies yet.  (The enemies that are there are far from being final.)

controls are arrow keys, Z to fire, X to connect to buildings.
pressing C will create another kind of enemy i was working on, but it's not very interesting yet and has issues (including but not limited to a memory leak)

Please report any issues that you have with the demo.

The Hangar uses the same sprite as one of the turrets.  This will change.  Also, some (most) of the sprites suck anyway.  This will also change.

[the2bears]

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That's quite an interesting mechanic with connecting the buildings.  Unless I've missed something, it doesn't do anything yet?  Looking forward to seeing what it eventually does

Your collision dection seems a little suspect, the hitbox is kind of big for my liking.  Also, it would all feel a bit better if things moved a bit faster.  Great start, though!

Bill

[Five Damned Dollarz]

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Connecting the buildings can give you option spawn points, static turrets, etc. if you connect them right, on several occasions I accidentally connected the wrong building and that stuffed me up completely

[brog]

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You have to connect the buildings to power to activate them.  Sorry, I should have said this.  For some reason I always assume that my weird mechanics will be perfectly self explanatory.
So you have the power plant, which is glowing.  Any building connected by a path of connected buildings will start to glow, and will activate if it has a special function (turret, aircraft hangar, more will come.)  There will be more powerplants available later in the levels in case people mess up (particularly just before bosses.)

Agreement about the hitbox; right now for sprite/sprite collision it's just using the borders of the sprites, bad bad bad.  I haven't decided yet whether to make it pixel perfect or to define smaller hitboxes.

[Shoot-em-upper]

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That's a really original game.  I loved the demo.  You'll need to have more than one generator in the compo version, otherwise you're up a creek when the last terminal scrolls away.

[brog]

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quick screenshot.. just took this during testing the first boss and thought it looked cool.  my ship's kind of dead at this point.

[Adigun A. Polack]

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Well I can say that on this project, the graphics are sure looking a lot cooler than your last attempt here... you are improving so far, brog!!  Keep it up!!!  !

[brog]

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Real life has been getting pretty busy lately, and I haven't had much time to burn writing games (also, motivation has been reasonably low).  I'm not sure how finished I'm going to be able to get this, I do not think I will be able to implement everything that I had planned.

So here is the current build.  Some of the art is unfinished or missing, levels 2 and 4 do not have bosses yet (so you will get to the end of the level and then have to press escape because nothing else is going to happen).  You also have unlimited lives at the moment.
If anyone has suggestions or comments on feel or difficulty or fun-value or anything else that would be good.

As before, keys are arrows to move, Z to fire, X to connect buildings.

edit: added missing dll to the rar
edit: attachments gone

[Five Damned Dollarz]

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I get an OpenAL error on startup and then it closes

[brog]

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Is it a dll missing error?

If so add this to the mix.  Sorry about that.

edit: attachments gone

[brog]

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Real life has intervened.  I have to get a paper ready for submission by mid-September, and have a huge stack of marking to do.  I haven't been finding much time to work on this lately, but now I'm not going to have any at all for the next two weeks.
I'll still try to enter the competition, but it will probably end up having no audio (or some other similarly huge omission).  I won't have time to make it anywhere near perfect.

[brog]

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Possibly final version posted!  See first post.
Looking forward to trying everyone else's games.

[battlegorge]

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I like your game idea 
My highscore is 18963.
I would make the player shot twice as big because its hard to hit the smaller enemies!

[brog]

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> The game has a rather innovative concept of support weapons although the competition theme could possibly be
> misinterpreted here.

There are options that orbit around your ship!  You just have to connect the right buildings up.

> Also connecting the wires so you can have the turrets etc. working for you starts to take over your concentration level,
> and you end up loosing sight of the other part of the game (the shooting). The ships guns are fairly underpowered,
> almost so much that they are useless, and there are definitely too many enemies  appearing too soon on screen, and
> yet even though it doesn't stand up too well as a shooter, there is something strangely compelling about activating all
> the turrets by connecting them up.

I found that if it wasn't necessary to connect the buildings up, nobody would bother doing it, which would be a waste.
Try letting it take over your concentration, allow yourself to lose sight of the shooting.  When I play I only bother shooting when there's nothing else to do.
So maybe it's not a shoot-em-up anymore.

> 2) there are just too many enemies that are too powerful in number to be shot down using just your single pea-shooter
> alone (especially in the later chapters!), as there should have been some on-board power-ups to enhance and
> strengthen your main guns, at least

That's what the turrets on the ground are for.  As I said above, I tried to make it necessary to use the buildings, so yes, they are too much to shoot down with just the on board gun.  The option powerup from the crate building provides extra automatic aimed shots, so you should definitely pick up a few of these.

> 3) the game can play rough and unfair at times, like on the first boss where you are attacked by suddenly-appearing
> lasers *without* any fair warning to the player that they’re coming, which is what I TRULY hate about this game;

There is a half second or so before they do damage (shown by them flaring brighter).  Maybe this should be longer though.
The second boss has sweeping lasers that appear with no warning, but they never start pointed at the player.

> 4) much of the darkness in the third chapter tends to cloud your vision

This is what it's there for.  If you connect up lots of buildings then there isn't much darkness left at all.

[brog]

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I had some time to kill, so if anyone's interested, here's a new version.
http://smestorp.googlepages.com/smestorpod.zip

changes:
- player shots bigger (thanks battlegorge for the suggestion)
- boss lasers slower
- options easier to get
- a pause at the start of level one to get used to the system
- a fourth, fiendishly difficult, level added
- briefings before levels made less comprehensible
- problems with some monitors fixed

This should hopefully make the game a bit more accessible.
Still haven't added sound, maybe I will one day, but I think now I'm going to write a roguelike or a text adventure or something.  Goodbye advanced technology!