Alpha Gameplay.

Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Projects/Alpha Gameplay.

Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#1]


All about the feedback, tell me your thoughts..

Oh the alien placement's in this first level are just flung in to give me something to shoot, the final level is not done yet, need to write a path editor.


Samah(Posted 2012) [#2]
I'm curious as to how you've done your alien scripting. Is it just an update method per enemy with a massive Select statement? After messing around with Danmakufu (microthreads) and danmakutime (Lua) I was hoping to use coroutines for mine, but I think it'll be too hard.

So far I have Cirno interping to the player and doing some funky bullet patterns, but I can see it becoming messy quickly.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#3]
I have a class called path, this contains nodes, and each node has info , my aliens get assigned a path and they then just fly it until killed , terminated or a node on the path tells them to die.

Nodes also have bullet pattern , speed , delay data so I can build up a pretty complex flight path and the assign it to any alien.

It's probably not the best option and it uses lists so when it comes time to port it to summit like xna I might have to convert it to arrays but right now it's running fast with no issues so...

What I really need to do now is write a path editor cos at the moment I'm making those paths by hand which is slow hence the craapy level in the above video.


muddy_shoes(Posted 2012) [#4]
Looking pretty good. You're much more visibly productive than I am, that's for sure.

I noticed some wobbling as you went through the achievments icons. You might want to make sure the common elements are all aligned the same.


ziggy(Posted 2012) [#5]
Looks awesome!
EDIT: I can see the touch of FontMachine in it :)


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#6]
@Muddy, my frequent posts are just a mechanism to keep me focused and on track, and I have to say it's working.

I'm normally that guy who works on 100 different things at once, and maybe only finishes 3 of them, this time round I am working on 1, this game, so I though up a few little techniques to keep me on track, like the dev diaries, regular forum updates, and of course Facebook and twitter updates, oh I started live streaming my art creation as well, and its all just a mechanism to keep me on track.

So if anyone else out there is like me and struggle to stay on one project, try the above it's been helping me A LOT!!..

About the Achievement Icons, that's the part of code I am working on at the moment, it's functional now, just needs a little fine tuning to make the icons slide into the slot for display.


c.k.(Posted 2012) [#7]
Paul, looks really nice and professional. GOOD JOB!

Are you going to implement leaderboards (online) or social networking or ads?


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#8]
About a month or so ago, I had planned a score board, but when I moved away from that type of 3 lives game play to a more social play a level to improve and gain more stars type of casual play, I took out all the score stuff out.

Scores will still be displayed per wave and I might do something with them, but at the moment it's the star's earned per wave that unlocks further waves and stages.

I am trying to avoid putting Add's in, but if I need to, I will, as for social networking I am about 90% sure there will be a facebook post thing in there some where, "You just got 3 Stars on Wave 10, Tell your friends Yes / No!" type of thing.

you know what they say tho, never say never until the fat lady has sung and your game is done. :)


Skn3(Posted 2012) [#9]
It is looking very nice indeed! The game style seems very straight forward which is good! My only criticism is that everything seemed very rigid and had linear/sharp movements. For example when you pan left and right the camera might look better to follow the ship a bit smoother and independently from the ship. Another example is that all the waves and enemies seem to move in very straight lines and quite robotic-ally.

That aside it is definitely shaping up well :D


Neuro(Posted 2012) [#10]
I like the menus and icons, really polished. May have to do some work with you in the near future Taiphoz :).


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#11]
@Skn3 , Yeah the game has 10 paths at the moment, all hard coded in a method some where, and at most each path has maybe 3 nodes, a node being a target location they fly to along their path, so the fewer nodes the crappier it looks, also the less complex their path is.

This is all just because I need to actually take time away from the game, to write a path editor, and I HATE , absolutely loath writing crap like that, so I have these 10 basic crappy paths in just so I can have stuff moving that I can shoot to test.

Once I have EVERYTHING else done, I should be left with one job, write the path and node editor, and create the waves and their paths for each level, this data will be moved out of being hard coded and will be finally loaded in from a saved data file. xml or plain txt not sure yet.

@ Neuro, no problems.


Skn3(Posted 2012) [#12]
Taiphoz (how do you pronounce that btw? .. TAY-FOZ? ... TIE-FOZ? ... TIE-FOSE?),

Haha yeah that makes sense! Damn now if only there was some kind of path editor in objecty! ... :D (its on the todo list, but don't hold your breath haha)


ErikT(Posted 2012) [#13]
Looks real fun. I like the retro sound effects and the gfx is nice and polished.

All that saturated red is gonna be a strain to look at in no time... Red is a color the brain associates with blood and violence, so using it all over the place will stress people out. Maybe consider using a more relaxed color like purple or blue instead? Oh, and less saturation for the bg elements. You don't want the background to compete with game objects for attention.


Uncle(Posted 2012) [#14]
Looking good :)

I know what you mean about making level / path editors. They can take almost as long as writing the game and certainly aren't as much fun to do. I started a similar game to this when monkey first came out and made a wave / level editor. I actually got quite far but never really finished it. Here's my level editor and game... perhaps something there might give you some ideas when it comes to your editor




Skn3(Posted 2012) [#15]
Ooo i like the editor :D


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#16]
Yeah I had considered taking the spline approach but decided against it, I wanted something I had a lot more control over.

What my ships are doing is actually turning, and flying to a waypoint/node in their current path, a node can pass on data like speed and turn rate to a ship, so if a ship passes node 1, node 1 might tell it, hay ship your handling sucks you can only turn at .2 now so it turns slower while trying to get to its next waypoint.

Sounds crazy but it means I can throw dynamic crap at them as they fly across the screen and they wont be ironed onto their path they could if I wanted them to, avoid other ships, or be pushed off their path by an explosion forcing them to turn back or change course to their next waypoint.

Not even sure I will use all of those mechanics but, the option is there.