Attack of the Alien Space Beetles Update
Community Forums/Showcase/Attack of the Alien Space Beetles Update
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| Just thought I'd post this update, since I won't have time to work on the game for 2-3 weeks. I don't rememeber what I changed between this version and the last. I may have added the powerups. I added a sound for the shoe one. The powerups now move back and forth as they fall and glow which makes them interesting even though they don't animate otherwise. Most of my time since the last update that I had time to work on this was spent going through thousands of sound effects to find the right ones for the game. I still need to go through the couple hundred or so I selected and make final choices, but that will be an ongoing process as I add stuff to the game. I think I have picked out sounds which will work for just about all the powerups and enemies now though. Wasn't able to find just the right "money in cloth bag fall thump and clink" sound for picking up the moneybag powerup though. Guess I'll have to make do with what I have. http://www.seamlesstexturegenerator.com/asb/asb.zip |
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| I dont really know what to say without sounding too harsh. I know its still early days, and there is a lot of rationalisation to be done, but how is it going to come together with such an odd array of powerups?? I recall you said you had to use the graphics you had available, and thats sort of how it comes across. Its not bizzare or humerous enough for them to "make sense" as yet. Hopefully it will become more so. I do like the glowing power up effect. I still dont like the ability to move at mouse speeds all over the screen and effectively outrun your own shots etc.. though I will concede that it did let me escape death on a number of occasions. lol If it was me I'd be tempted to add a foreground/boarder type thing, in the stye of a retro arcade machine, complete with animated hands waggling a joystick and button bashing. ;-) |
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| Haven't tried it yet. But I take took the same approach as you for Xmas Bonus sounds effects: trawl though massive list, make shortlist, test, possible change pitch, possible add echos, remove noise etc. In the end the sounds realy fitted the game and weren't to in your face or too weak. So what ya doing for 2-3 weeks, anything exciting? |
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| I know its still early days, and there is a lot of rationalisation to be done, but how is it going to come together with such an odd array of powerups?? I recall you said you had to use the graphics you had available, and thats sort of how it comes across. It's supposed to be wacky, and the powerups make sense: Shoe = Speedup. Hourglass = Slowdown or stop time. Heart = Extra life or fill energy. Food - Turkey leg, watermelon, waterm, etc = Fill energy or just points Gems, Key, Moneybag = Lots of points Umbrella = Shield Bullet = Weapon Upgrade Grenade = One additional right click grenade to blow up all small enemies on screen. (Not bosses) Its not bizzare or humerous enough for them to "make sense" as yet. Hopefully it will become more so. I'm not really concerned with it making sense. I'm concerned with it being fun and getting it done. Lots of popular games in the past have made no sense while not being particularly funny, just odd. I still dont like the ability to move at mouse speeds all over the screen and effectively outrun your own shots etc.. though I will concede that it did let me escape death on a number of occasions. The reason mouse control is in there is because this game is aimed at casual gamers with crappy PCs. Those sorts of gamers love uisng the mouse to play games and hate using the keyboard. So to appeal to them, the game has mouse control. Now, I could slow down the mouse, but if I did that then because I have no way of making sure all mice have the same sensitivity, the mouse might move a lot slower on their system than on mine, and the game would be unplayable. My mouse sensitivity is set really high, (75-80%) but I know that I turned it up, and I don't know what the default is, because MS in their infinite wisdom decided not to put a button to reset it to the default on that screen, or any indicator to show what the default is. If I knew what the default was, then I could base the speed of the ship on that and that would be right for 90% of the casual gamers that would play this. Also, keep in mind that I have every intention of adding the ability to play using the keyboard. So if you want the game to feel more like a traditional shooter, that option will be there for you. Grey: Someone is making a game with guns and I am coding systems for handling guns, as well as blood sprays when hit, sparks on walls when bullets hit, and a decal system. They want particles that collide with floors and leave blood spatters and stuff. It's pretty fun to code. Right now the guns are working great. You can fire six shots and you'll see muzzle flash, hear the gun fire, and hear it click when empty. Then when you reload it knows how many bullets each gun should have per clip. Also each "bullet" can be more than one projectile, as in a shotgun. And the system supports "spread" using polar coordinates for the calculations so that you get a cluster of bullets in the center of the region aimed at and a few stray ones around the outside, which is what a shotgun blast actually looks like. In addition I've almost got a laser sight done which stops when it hits something. And bulletholes appear on walls when they are hit. And the system calculates the amount of damage done to whatever was hit based on range. I'll have that done by the end of the week most likely. After that I've gotta do a recursive algorithm to solve some kind of game. So that'll be kind of like writing a chess solver. Of course if anyone wants to hire me to write anything else after that I'm available. I do generally retain the right to use all code I write though, because I'm big on writing reusuable code that is segmented into generalized functions. |
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| sounds cool, hope you're getting paid OK. What you writing it in Blitz or C++ or something? |
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| i love these type of games umm the mouse control was not for my liking but the option for keyboard control sounds good, it would also be nice to have joypad option as if a game is worth playing for a while its worth dragging out that old joypad i think it needs walls of some sort like an alien bug ship with alien nests something to dodge or blow up before the bugs come out, but the speedy mouse control would make this major hard to fly through |
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| Scribbla: You think the fast mouse control makes it HARDER to dodge stuff? Hm... Grey: In Blitz. The pay's not great, but it's enough to buy me another month. |
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| yeh mouse is major fast all over the place for me, but like you said different mouse speeds on different machines |
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| just to be 100% sure, have you tried other mouse controlled games, then adjusted your windows mouse speed and tried again to see if they play different? Perhaps some of the good ones implement some sort of limit? |
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| dont play a lot of mouse controlled games... a keyboard /joypad option will sort it out for me |
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