shooter (Ranger x) working title
Community Forums/Showcase/shooter (Ranger x) working title
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This is just an engine for now, the game will be more fun i hope... I'm proud to announce my first blitzmax project. It's still in Work In Progress stages, but I'm excited about showing a small demo. This is a bullet hell/danmaku shooter. This means that it requires a large amount of skill and nerve to play due to large amounts of shots on screen at once. You controll a small ship with the arrow keys, using space to fire. THe collision box for the ship is the small dot in the center, the collision box for the shots are marked in blue. YOu may use scraping to gain points and shoot more shots. By scraping i mean flying close to a shot without touching it. The scraping circle is drawn outsice the ship. Bosses have the same number of cells as the level you are playing and are randomly generated. Cells will have more pretty shot patterns later this is just a demo. This demo is only level 5. It will be realesed freeware whe finished. LINK http://s5.exoload.com/uploads/606/1150595414.zip |
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| Nice. I like the scrolling background. Definitely needs sound to help you keep track of what's going on. This gives me an idea for a game where you start waves to try and tip over boats... thanks! |
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| Hey Warpy good idea. This is more of a raw engine for right now. When finished the hp bars will only be displayed brifly when the cells are hit. Also there will be uniqie bullet patterns for each cell. Anyone else? thoughts/concerns? |
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| OK I've just finished the main portion of the game, now you can get a better feel for how the bosses change from level to level. link here: http://s5.exoload.com/uploads/606/1150595414.zip I really am looking forward to your thoughts. If you download it please tell me what you think of the general diredtion. Thanks! |
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| Its really good, I love it. Although, I have problems focusing on the game with that background. |
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| Yeah this is hot, keep up the good work. Sounds and graphics will make this even better of course. |
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| Thanks. I will do. This is just the "bare bones" engine so far. I was worried that nobody would play a 2d game that only uses inbuilt drawing commands. It will be fairly good when done. I hope I gather a small fan base! |
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| A Minor update: cells now grow from a small point. screen shakes when hit. horribly uguly game over screen shot button is now z button |
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| I think I found a bug. There was a hexagon (or maybe pentagon) but it has more than 4 sides, that was the main "part" of the boss. Then on one of its sides it had a square and a triangle, on the same side! I don't thats intentional. |
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| Yes it has to be that way unfortunately. this is the reason 1 shapes cannot be outside the screen 2 if you have more shapes then room the generating algorithem will loop forever. otherwise I would make sure that they never generated inside each other |
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| Why did you use the Z key? I did btw because Shift and maybe Ctrl held down or pressed repeatedly bring up those windows XP/2000 stickykeys crap which is really annoying... |
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| Well the z key is sort of the unwritten controll rule for indie shmup freeware. Kenta Cho of Aba Games might have started the idea, but most (if not all) freeware shmup games I have use it. It might be a Japanese thing too I really don't know. I set it to still use the spacebar in the next version. |
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| New game version can be found here http://www.upshack.com/./uploaded-files/200606/GunRagerX.zip you can change the game clors by useing the 1,2,3 keys hold them to cycle through the colors. Z is not the fire button you should find the bullet patterns are more pleasing. PLEASE tell me how far you get, i'm trying to tweak the difficulty. |
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| Glad to see my GEOM code came in handy :) Nice work :) |
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| ok, so I got 347825 without using the fire button. Maybe the scraping should only work when you're actually holding down the fire button? But in fact, is there ever a time when the player would not want to be shooting? why not have the fire button down constantly? Because of the way the shot patterns go, there is often a spot in front of the enemies where you can sit for a long time without having to move too much. It looks like you're rotating the shot patterns randomly so every now and then so it isn't infallible, but the gaps are big enough you can go quite a while sitting still. I can think of a few different ways of getting rid of this - you could rotate the patterns so that at least one shot is aimed at the player's position, or you could make the patterns more predictable but thicker, making a sort of rhythm game where the challenge is mainly of timing skills. OR You could make the player's ship turn so it always points at the closest enemy, so allowing them to use the whole playing field usefully, and have something to discourage them from staying in one place too long, like homing shots. A philosophical note: the levels get easier towards the end, because you're destroying the things that are shooting at you. This seems wrong to me. Maybe you could change it into a Blockbuster-esque bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you game, where your shots feed the enemies, causing them to sprout new growths on their sides, with the aim being to make a line of enemies from one end of the screen to the other. An aesthetic remark: the shooting is periodic. I think it'd be cool to portray the enemies as the ends of a clockwork machine, with gears ticking round, and when a certain notch is reached, the enemies fire. The tick-tocking noises of all the gears and clockwork would sound really cool and would help our lizard brains understand the patterns. You could call the game "The Blind Watchmaker's Apprentice" and play the music from Fantasia in the background. I assure you that this game will sell millions if you do this. Oh, couldn't get the colour change to work, or maybe I could and it's all shades of red, which my colourblind eyes can't see. |
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| I work 8 hours a day 7 days a week this week which leaves little time for developement. NEW version: some sounds(need help looping music) new scores screen now when you get to one cell it goes crazy and tries to kill you. scraping now makes homing shots to avoid boss milkijng. http://s5.exoload.com/uploads/606/1151212005.zip |
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| WOW, that is LOADS better! I like everything :D |
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| I really like this. I got to level 7 but I was at the top of the screen and the boss spawned on top of me :( You don't get much breathing time between levels, but I suppose it's all the better for it. |
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| Pretty neat. Much better now the scraping shots are homing. Are the vector graphics staying or are they just placeholders? BTW, having to play a high tempo shooter like this with arrow keys is insane! :) |
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| @ Warpy thanks iI hope I fixed the boss milking problem. @ Jimbob level seven is HARD to get to most of the time. I will fix the boss spawning issue.....somehow... @ big10p I want to only use inbuilt commands so the graphics may change slightly but will remain drawing command based. I think the collision might be a bit wide too I'll have to check into this. Thanks. |
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| @ big10p I want to only use inbuilt commands so the graphics may change slightly but will remain drawing command based. Ah, OK. I just think this game would really benefit from some snazzy bitmaps and particles. :) |
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| I don't like using rotated bitmaps because they get blurred a bit. Pkus if you use any lightsource you loose the realism when the thing spins and the light spot is facing the wrong angle. |
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| http://s5.exoload.com/uploads/606/1151343226.zip *new version* my highscore is now...1570475 (level 11) Does anybody know why this might not play on win98? A friend was having trouble, i don't know the system specs... |
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| The first two versions worked fine on my win98 machine. I haven't tried the new one yet. |
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| I have added a highscore table, changed bullet layout, and fixed some bugs. I would be interested to see how well you play. If you could record your playing that woud be great. I'm just trying to get a feel for how people might play differently. The bullet removal bomb(x button) should work 100% now. New Screen:  New Link: http://s3.exoload.com/uploads/806/1154499720.zip Please try, I think it is refreshingly original. |
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| Okay now it might just be me, but all I get is the title screen & music. No matter what keys I press no game seems to start. I even looked for a readme ;-) Any clues?? EDIT: Okay having read all the above I find its Z that also starts the game. How about changing the Title to "Gun Ranger Z" ;-) |
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| I got to level 9 on my first go. Is it a little easier now? I'm not sure about the whole bullet clearing thing. It seems that I don't use it, but if I do I immediately die afterwards, rather like if I lose a life normally (which seems to happen through falling bodies rather than bullets). There should be some delay before you can die again. As once my first death comes, it is not long before it is all over. Very good game though, there should be some indication to the level you got to as well as the score (with a name). But apart from that, brilliant. Also, could you make an option for automatic fire? It seems there is no reason to stop holding the fire button down so why bother with it? Just a few thoughts, it's a great game, hopefully you can sort it out! :P |
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| Thanks for the ideas and humor guys. I'll continue to develope on this game until I'm done. I'll look into a way to make the bullet clearing last a bit longer. The score recording is still a WIP. I have some tuts that I need to cowboy up and learn. I stil don't know if I'll add an option for continuous fire, it might dumb down the level of interaction, but who knows? |
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| sorry about this, but it doesnt let me play it. I hit every button on my keyboard and my mouse and even my joystick. Nothing. No going off the titlescreen. Maybe im missing something here? |
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| math You're missing the same thing I did 3 posts up ;-) ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz..... |
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| Nice, stylish. |
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| Geehawk No i saw that post, just saying if it didnt work on 2 computers itd be worse |
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| math you were not able to start the game then? I make a "push z to start" prompt. |
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| So this is in just the 2 dimensions then? |
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| Since this gae feels more like an art project, do you think I should allow the player to controll the color palette via R,G,B or simply allow for hue shifting? Pros for RGB -player can get diffirent saturation levels for different tastes -wider range of overall colors - some say my game needs more saturated colors - no longer use the HSV model for color making, faster speed because of no conversion Cons for RGB -players can use the same color for everything making the game unplayable -slightly complex for color n00bs What type of controll would you prefer? |
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| OK, I have felt that my game is complete enough to release it outside this forum. Please DL it from the showcase and rate it. I'm looking for someone that wouldn't mind compiling it on a Mac so it may be used by Mac users. If you agree to compile it for me please delete resource files from your computer afterward. This was my first blitzmax game and I wanted it purely line based (no raster). It's not the most pretty but it does have some style to it I think. (It's called GRX_public_release) Around 3 megs zipped. http://www.shmup-dev.com/index.php?categoryid=9 |
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