So it’s been quite a while since I posted anything on the Shooter; nevertheless I’ve been working on it pretty much non-stop and it’s about time I gave you an update.
So without further ado: Pre-Alpha Battle Demo
I am also currently looking for an artist. Mainly for UI/Menu stuff, but also potentially for in-game assets like ships and backgrounds. So if you are, or you know anyone who might be interested in working on a top-down space shooter, send an email with some links to previous work to crunchyleafgames -at- gmail -dot- com.
Besides working on my main project I have spent some time with the GameJam team preparing a “final” DodoVsDarwin version. We worked on adding a little background with some story screens and fixed all the little things that were still bothering us. Oh, and you can actually finish the game now! : )
You can reach each of the team members’ homepages through the links below the game. The full source is available at GitHub here.
Went to the Game Jam.
Had a blast.
Made a game.
Check it out here: DodoVsDarwin
We were a team of 4 guys and had 48h to make a complete game from scratch. The theme of this year’s Game Jam was “extinction” which quickly led to the awesome Dodo bird. A creature so completely defenseless und evolutionary unprepared for the ouside world that it was quickly made extinct when humans discoved the island they lived on.
You play as the Dodo bird and must stay alive as long as possible while the island keeps getting harder to survive on. Chase the pigs away from your fruit! Bait the rats into a trap! Poop a tree! Attract your Dodo mate and try to survive!
The game is now closing in on Alpha. All the basic engine stuff is done, except for sound which I will be getting to very soon.
Here’s a short demo of the particle engine I implemented yesterday: Particle Engine Demo
I used the outline presented in this article, adding classes and functionality as needed and then used blitting to render the particles. Even without optimization the performance is satisfactory, but depending on how many particles the game will need I might have to go over the code again and add a little magic dust here and there.
Prototype 0.4 is up.
The balance should be better, it’s actually possible to beat wave 7 now! There are some small graphical improvements, but this version is not using CopyPixel yet.
You can try the new version here.
I also set up a super-short survey (less than 10 seconds if you’re quick), if you would like to give some feedback.
So I’ve been working on the rendering code the last couple of days and I’m now considering switching over to blitting for everything.
The main problem with the flash vector renderer is that it has performance issues when displaying a large number of objects at the same time, a problem that simply doesn’t exist when using blitting (see this awesome example). Another problem is that it has trouble with the 2d free-scrolling background, making it move in jumps at times which gives the impression that the game isn’t running smoothly. Perhaps I will be able to fix this with blitting by applying a slight motion blur effect to the background.
Update wise, I will be upping a new version soon with better balance and couple other smaller changes. I think most people haven’t even seen all the enemy types yet, because waves 5 and 6 are way too hard. I will also set up a survey so people can give me their take on the prototype and make suggestions.
Until then you can still play the original prototype here.
Just uploaded Prototype 0.3:
High scores now work the first time you launch the game and I made the pointers scale proportionally to the distance to it’s target.
Link is the same as before: play!
