Speedboat Forever

Community Forums/Showcase/Speedboat Forever

Grey Alien(Posted 2010) [#1]
Here's a minigame that I made in 23 hours (including sleep, meals and distractions) at the recent OrcaJam in Victoria. I made it using a mini-framework that I started coding in the week running up to the OrcaJam and extended more there.



The OrcaJam was awesome, loads of great Indies there to meet and some fantastic minigames came out of it. If you get a chance to do a gamejam, do it, it'll teach you a lot!

My personal goal was to make a complete game with:

- a title screen
- basic playable game
- win and lose states/screens
- music and sounds (I reused music that I made for my other framework games, except for one Holiday Bonus tune. But all the sound effects are new.)
- a basic level of presentation

Yes the graphics are bad programmer art and the gameplay is very basic, but it is a complete game, and it feels good to be able to make one quickly. Now that my mini-framework is more complete, I could do it again in a few hours.

Instructions
============

- Use the arrow keys to avoid the rocks (grey squares).
- Pickup a certain number of yellow squares to complete the level.
- The bigger the yellow square the more points you get, but watch out, your speedboat will also grow larger!
- Each level requires you to collect more pickups, and you move faster, plus there are more rocks.
- Have fun! See if you can survive at top speed!

Download it out here:

Windows: http://www.greyaliengames.com/minigames/SpeedboatForeverV01.zip (2.36MB)
Mac OS: http://www.greyaliengames.com/minigames/SpeedboatForeverV01.dmg (2.58Mb)


MikeHart(Posted 2010) [#2]
Cool. Did you use your own algo for the proportional bitmap fonts?


Grey Alien(Posted 2010) [#3]
I'm just using LoadImageFont into my own TLabel class that handles all the scaling etc. No bitmap fonts. My "proper" framework has bitmap fonts, but the mini-framework I used for this game doesn't support them yet.


GaryV(Posted 2010) [#4]
This is a fun little diversion. Good Job!


Grisu(Posted 2010) [#5]
Well done!

Reminds me somewhat of this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWJbRM3xeW0


Grey Alien(Posted 2010) [#6]
Thanks! Ah yes Spy Hunter, I remember that. My minigames always turn out pretty retro.


Blitzplotter(Posted 2010) [#7]
Grey, cool!


Chroma(Posted 2010) [#8]
I thought this was Fat Frog Forever?


Grey Alien(Posted 2010) [#9]
That's a different game. I'll post a demo soon.


Chugs40(Posted 2010) [#10]
I was anxious to try your mini game and got a windows vioilation_exception_error no matter what I tried to get it to run.

Are you working on a mini game framework? Are you going do more mini games like this? Not sure why it didn't work on my system, but am looking forward to trying it. :)


Grey Alien(Posted 2010) [#11]
Wow, sorry it didn't load. Can't think why as it's vanilla Bmax 1.41 without any fancy crap. Do you have a 64-bit system?

As for the mini game framework, yeah I'm making one just for me to use on more arcade-style mini-games. Recently I've just felt like making a load of mini-games for some reason.


Chugs40(Posted 2010) [#12]
Do you have a 64-bit system?


I currently have a 32 bit system - a mini net book w/win xp. That explains it.

I think it's great your getting into the arcade-style mini games thing, they are quick and easy to make. Not to mention more fun than a big project. I've been making them for quite sometime.


Grey Alien(Posted 2010) [#13]
The game doesn't need a 64-bit system, it runs fine on my 32-bit XP system. I just thought maybe it had trouble on a 64-bit system. However, maybe the issue is the resolution the game is running at? I think it's 1024x768.

Yeah I've seen your mini games, they are really great!


Chugs40(Posted 2010) [#14]
maybe the issue is the resolution the game is running at? I think it's 1024x768.

That's definately the problem, it's the resolution. My mini netbook resolution maximum is 1024x600.
I'm going to go give your game a whirl on another macine in the house - one that supports higher resolutions!


Chugs40(Posted 2010) [#15]
Just played it on my larger notebook - works fine. Great little game you got there! Had me hooked for a few minutes. Are you going to make more mini games? Are you working on sellable framework for small action games? Or just for fun.

Make's me want to go knock another little mini game for H+Soft Arcade this weekend - I have tons of 'em planned!


Grey Alien(Posted 2010) [#16]
Cool, glad you got it working and it's good to know the cause of the problem. If it kept you hooked for a few minutes then it fulfilled its purpose :-) After all you can't expect hours of gameplay from a gamejam game, right?

Yep I definitely want to make more mini games. As for the framework, just for fun, I'm not allowed to sell anything whilst I work at BFG.

Go on, make a mini-game this weekend!


Steve Elliott(Posted 2010) [#17]
Good job! :)