Sphere War

Community Forums/Showcase/Sphere War

Drak(Posted 2008) [#1]
A simple game I created. The Spheres invaded the world of the cubes... pretty simple, just kill the spheres! 3 levels is all that's incorporated into this file, so the game is very short.

Camera Look with mouse
Left mouse button shoots
Right mouse button zooms gunsight

WASD keys move player

Walk into glowing green portal to advance to next level

5 levels of enemies:
Red: No gun, melee only
Yellow: Rifleman
Black: Veteran Rifleman
Orange: Grenadier
Purple: Machine Gunner

Don't get too close to purple spheres!

Edited Again: Removed zip file and replaced it down further in another post.

Edit: Forgot the screenshot



therevills(Posted 2008) [#2]
This is pretty cool. Its got a good making for a good fps.

BTW I didnt get the textures for the walls.


Drak(Posted 2008) [#3]
ok good to know about the textures. I'll see whats up and try and fix that.


chwaga(Posted 2008) [#4]
Neat game, I'm getting the same problem with the wall texture though. Also when you push the camera into the upper/lower limits, it changes the roll of the camera, which messes up all the controls. Just set the camera roll to 0 every frame, and that should fix it up. Also, generally the idea of recoil is that it re-recoils, in other words, it bumps the camera up, but after that it moves back to the original angle, also, try making the recoil bi-directional (stronger up recoil, but a slight random left/right recoil). Also, I'm rather confused what the purpose of the blue sphere and single bullet represent on the HUD.


mtnhome3d(Posted 2008) [#5]
is there by any chance a resemblance between level 2 and the chiron(the one with lots of warps) map from the original halo?? there are at least 2 rooms that are exactly the same as chiron.


mtnhome3d(Posted 2008) [#6]
just finished it, nice fps engine. its actually a lot of fun but there needs to be less "mazy" levels and more enemies. i could wander around for minutes and not find anyone. also maby lessen the recoil


Grisu(Posted 2008) [#7]
No textures here.

Why do you have 2 exe files included in the zip?
Why do you use bmp images?

- I would prefer a more transparent / tiny GUI
- less recoll is welcome too
- mini map?


Drak(Posted 2008) [#8]
This zip should hopefully fix the missing wall textures:

Edit: Removed file, get the newest down further or from my worlkog.

Made a few tweaks, the camera roll at extreme angles should be fixed, as I couldn't get it to reproduce the effect again. added some more enemies quickly to the 2nd level. Deleted the 2nd exe file in the media folder.

@mtnhome: Nope, these are just some levels I whipped up quick, purely coincidence if they resembe another game.

@chwaga: There has always been slight left\right recoil. Stand back and aim at a wall 50 feet away or so, hold the left mouse and let the barrel climb, you'll see the left\right variations easier then, as it isn't much. The blue sphere is deflector shields, it blocks the 1st shot from an enemy or also melee attacks. You can carry only 1 of these. The single bullet is the player' ammo power, which can be either 1, 2, or 4. Upon taking damage, the ammo power is reverted back to 1. Note: A deflector shield will allow you to take 1 hit and still keep your 2x or 4x damage modifier.


chwaga(Posted 2008) [#9]
textures are fixed, I noticed the left/right recoil, I think I only noticed it because there's a tiled wall in front of the camera to compare things to. I still think there should be re-recoil, though.


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#10]
Why do people moan about using .bmp files? I've noticed that a few times. It doesn't take up any more or less memory, only a few insignificant MB's of HD space.


nawi(Posted 2008) [#11]
It wastes space, and is significant because games are usually transfered through internet.


Drak(Posted 2008) [#12]
The download is 1.91 megabytes....


Xzider(Posted 2008) [#13]
Took 5 seconds to download..So I don't care.

Cool FPS start you got going, keep it up!


Ginger Tea(Posted 2008) [#14]
Why do people moan about using .bmp files? I've noticed that a few times. It doesn't take up any more or less memory, only a few insignificant MB's of HD space.


i agree
on disk its always going to be larger than a jpg or png, more so the larger the image, but as its a game texture were never really going to see a 1024*1024 texture file, least not in a blitz game
but in vram it would be the same size if it was pure black or white or as many unique colours to each pixel
so whats the fuss

The download is 1.91 megabytes....


christ ive got jpg's bigger than that

Took 5 seconds to download..So I don't care.


aye its a small file by todays standards so its not like hes asking us to dl a dvd's worth of data


Ginger Tea(Posted 2008) [#15]
i dont know if i died and it quit back or crashed
but i was getting shot at by a purple sphere next thing i know im lmb ing the desktop ... never a good idea

whats with the level-bla.bmp's?
are they some form of height map or something just as odd

speaking of which
heightmaps were where bmp's eccelled at untill png were more dominant
jpg compression could really bork your level if you wernt too careful
i had a 2 colour black and red logo i was working on and jpg decided to anti alaise it or just bork it to kingdom come and generated 16ish unique shades


chwaga(Posted 2008) [#16]
off track, sorry:
Ginger Tea, you know your sig is a sentence fragment, it's got no verb :O


Chalky(Posted 2008) [#17]
i dont know if i died and it quit back or crashed
but i was getting shot at by a purple sphere next thing i know im lmb ing the desktop ... never a good idea

Me too...


_33(Posted 2008) [#18]
The blue spheres are pretty much harder than the red ones.


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#19]
try zipping a .bmp and at the compression you get. it,s round about the same as a compressed jpg.


Grisu(Posted 2008) [#20]
It's the attitude that counts.

Waste HDD space, waste download time.... Well done... *sarcasm*

Windows Vista here we come...

try zipping a .bmp and at the compression you get. it,s round about the same as a compressed jpg.


No it is not.


P.S.: The game still crashes at the purple orb.


chwaga(Posted 2008) [#21]
I think it's crashing because you're dead. When I die the app closes, there should be a death message displayed for a few seconds, then it closes.


SSS(Posted 2008) [#22]
By that logic we definitely shouldn't be writing anything in the Blitz languages. As far as efficiency goes C is much better both in terms of disk space and speed. We might as well not stop there either and just write everything in assembly. The point is that the marginal gain should be significant enough to warrant the change. If a download only takes 5 seconds there is absolutely no point in working to reduce download size.


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#23]
Yep, and you should be UPX-ing your .exe, and reducing the color bit of your textures. In fact, you should be using procedural textures, cause there much smaller... *sarcasm*


nawi(Posted 2008) [#24]
The point is that it takes about 5 seconds to convert a bmp into a png, and saving 90% of space. For a small game like this it doesn't matter, for larger games it is essential.


Ross C(Posted 2008) [#25]
Alot of games use .tga textures, and they are HUGE textures, disc space wise.

I just did a test:

Bmp uncompressed = 500 KB
Png uncompressed (i know it's a compressed format) = 52 KB

Big saving there, for transfering over a network.

Bmp compressed = 43 KB
Png compressed = 52 KB

The Bitmap inside a zipped folder is smaller than the png in a zipped folder. How's that for saving bandwidth :o)

I can however understand from the point of view regarding large games and disc space.

Sorry for derailing your thread as well :o)


Drak(Posted 2008) [#26]
Ok, fixed some things that I went into detail on in my worklog. In the compiled version, I did have the endgame function commented out, so now it should be working. Also got the zip a little smaller, 1.52mb.

download it here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?35e42h4cwml

End of 3rd level:



KillerX(Posted 2008) [#27]
I didn't see any grenadiers.


Drak(Posted 2008) [#28]
Correct, there are no grenadiers in the first three levels.


YellBellzDotCom(Posted 2008) [#29]
Trully beautiful. Great job. Keep up the great work, it looks like you can really turn this into something.

I second the minimap.

Thanks for the glimpse.


chwaga(Posted 2008) [#30]
better, but I still think you should make the re-recoil stronger, the idea of recoil is that is throws off your aim when you shoot for an extended time, but not when doing single shots. Also, I think it should show the bullets that the enemies shoot (which, I think, would be simple to implement), so that you could even dodge their bullets (if you were a ninja)


WMSteadman(Posted 2008) [#31]
This is everything I expect from a typical blitz game. Simple, garish sfx, rudementary gfx, simple and slightly addictive. single texture levels really can bore me, but the variety of the level designs, even though they were also simple, kept me exploring to see what kind of sphere was round the next corner.

I like this one.

One suggestion I do have, is perhaps the ability to jump, so you could use ledges in some levels, where a bit of inventive jumping from platform to platform, allows the player to take shortcuts through some of the levels, not to finish quicker, but to increase exploration time. Just IMO.

I also agree with chwaga's suggestion to show enemy bullets, giving opportunities to dodge them. I used to love that about games like Doom and HalfLife, some enemies fired weapons that can be dodged... Most satisfying.

keep it up


Drak(Posted 2008) [#32]
Thank you for the input. The grenadier, the one enemy that does not appear on the demo, does shoot a visible projectile. I want to get up to 12 levels in this game, although only 3 are included in this zip. I used maplet to design the levels, so even though I CAN change textures througout the level I for the most part chose not to. However, some of the levels do have different floor\ceiling textures and also some beams and such architechtural features with different textures. In most large levels I try to add some architechtural feature to each large room so the player can tell if he is backtracking or going the right way. Some levels also incorporate water and\or other liquid. There is also a deathmatch level at level 5 which I think is quite fun. I do apoligize that there should be MORE enemies in levels 2 and 3 in this demo.


Axel Wheeler(Posted 2008) [#33]
Excellent!

I love the bullets and the recoil. The spheres are great; I love the way they get nudged when the get hit. Was it the Avengers that had the classic episode with the giant sphere?

The purples killed me before I could even see what it was doing. At least I should get an "Oomph" and a "You were hit" or something.

The textures are indeed repetitive. The spheres could use a little variation. Give them a random size dimension which could indicate their age and agressiveness. The really little ones can run away ("Meep! Meep!") Also they could pulsate (either in size or shade) to indicate things like damage.

Nice job Drak!