dredds 2019-04-05 06:56 (Edited)
A shoot ‘em up inspired by 80s classics like Xevious and Uridium.
Don’t stay still, don’t linger near the edge of the screen and don’t let too many enemies get on screen at once. And unless you’re trying for a high score, hold down the fire button and don’t let go!
Spoiler warning! Don’t read any further if you want to discover the game for yourself.
Spinning discs: Fly straight down the screen at you. Shoot them or avoid them. Not very dangerous.
Diagonal crosses: fly across the screen shooting diagonally. They don’t shoot at you directly but if you let too many of them stay onscreen you’ll become boxed in by their shots.
Thin cigar-shaped nasties: Fly straight down the screen swerving left and right to avoid your shots. When out of sight, they turn around and come back at high speed to try and hit you from behind. Shoot them before they go offscreen, or keep moving so they miss you on the way back.
Square flippers: move straight down the screen. Your blasters merely knock them back, but if you manage to knock one off the top of the screen it won’t return.
Small diamonds: home in on you, but quite slowly. If they come close behind you, fly up and around them into a position where you can take them out with your blasters.
Rings: move horizontally in front of you, firing at your current position. Keep moving and don’t allow too many on screen at once or you’ll get boxed in by their shots.
Fat hemispheres with a flashing light: cross the screen laying small mines. Hitting a mine will kill you. Some time after being laid, a mine will explode, shooting fireballs in random directions. Destroy mines with your blasters. But beware: their small size means they’re hard to hit.
Robot leader: we have no intelligence about the robot leader. You’ll have to improvise tactics when you get there.
Scoring: you are rewarded for accuracy so if trying for a high score, don’t spray fire willy-nilly.
Timo 2019-04-05 07:11
Wow :)
was8bit 2019-04-05 12:09
Terrific graphics, gameplay, etc. :)
BlockHead 2019-04-05 12:33
Approved
desbyc 2019-04-05 12:58
Very cool👍. But as always, to hard for me. 🙃
dredds 2019-04-05 14:17
If I get time, I’ll pull out some of the code into little example apps and upload them.
I wrote some cunning tricks to do things the emulated hardware doesn’t do naturally. Eg the semi-transparent shadow under the ship, or using raster interrupts to center the text in the instruction pages.
Tinycloud778 2019-04-05 19:33
Wow, really nice and fun
dredds 2019-04-05 19:42
I’ve extracted some of the graphics tricks and uploaded them as example programs.
dredds 2019-04-06 16:20
A new version with a better start-of-life/end-of-life animations when the player ship is destroyed. Also some tweaks to enemy behaviour: seekers leave the playing area when the player is hit so they do not kill the player as soon as they respawn; shooters do not fire when the player is shielded, starting or exploding; wavies shoot back to the top of the screen at the player’s x position if they reach the bottom.
Timo 2019-04-06 17:04
For my taste I would make the scrolling speed a bit lower, I get a bit distracted. But maybe it's just me...
dredds 2019-04-06 21:46
I’ll have a play with different scroll speeds.
It looks weird if the plane appears to fly backwards, but the plane needs to move quickly to avoid & shoot enemies. Maybe giving the ground tiles a more subtle palette would help.
Toddl 2019-04-07 17:30
Excellent!!!
dredds 2019-04-09 08:59 (Edited)
Now there’s a gradual ramp up of difficulty.
Also more enemy types, bigger explosions when the player dies and translucent clouds.
Timo 2019-04-09 10:23 (Edited)
Starts to be really playable :) One thing: You cannot move down diagonally, is it a bug?
dredds 2019-04-09 10:34
Definitely! 😱
dredds 2019-04-09 16:15
I can move diagonally in all directions.
I am using the iPhone app. Maybe there is a limit to the number of concurrent key presses on other platforms that prevents you moving diagonally and holding down a gamepad button?
Timo 2019-04-09 16:51
Oh, true, it happens to all games :/
dredds 2019-04-10 06:15
It might be a limitation of the keyboard itself
desbyc 2019-04-13 17:53
I made a little music for the game. If you like it, i will make a song of it.
#15:MAIN SOUND
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Timo 2019-04-13 18:45
I like the music for sure!!
dredds 2019-04-13 20:45
I love it. Very ominous. Just the right atmosphere for the title music.
desbyc 2019-04-14 10:44
Intro music:
#15:MAIN SOUND
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dredds 2019-04-14 11:14 (Edited)
Many thanks. I’ll integrate that into the app and upload a new version
dredds 2019-04-14 11:15 (Edited)
Strategy guide
Don’t stay still, don’t linger near the edge of the screen and don’t let too many enemies get on screen at once. And unless you’re trying for an accuracy high score, hold down the fire button and don’t let go!
Spoiler warning! Don’t read any further if you want to discover the game for yourself.
Spinning discs: Fly straight down the screen at you. Shoot them or avoid them. Not very dangerous.
Diagonal crosses: fly across the screen shooting diagonally. They don’t shoot at you directly but if you let too many of them stay onscreen you’ll become boxed in by their shots.
Thin cigar-shaped nasties: Fly straight down the screen swerving left and right to avoid your shots. When out of sight, they turn around and come back at high speed to try and hit you from behind. Shoot them before they go offscreen, or keep moving so they miss you on the way back.
Square flippers: move straight down the screen. Your blasters merely knock them back, but if you manage to knock one off the top of the screen it won’t return.
Small diamonds: home in on you, but quite slowly. If they come close behind you, fly up and around them into a position where you can take them out with your blasters.
Rings: move horizontally in front of you, firing at your current position. Keep moving and don’t allow too many on screen at once or you’ll get boxed in by their shots.
Fat hemispheres with a flashing light: cross the screen laying small mines. Hitting a mine will kill you. Some time after being laid, a mine will explode, shooting fireballs in random directions. Destroy mines with your blasters. But beware: their small size means they’re hard to hit.
dredds 2019-04-14 14:33
Music added to the title screen. Thanks @desbyc. It’s fantastic.
Timo 2019-04-16 09:52 (Edited)
Another thing: I think it's better to use a gameplay screenshot here. The title screen doesn't tell a lot. (Maybe I will write this somewhere as a guideline for all programs.)
dredds 2019-04-18 08:55 (Edited)
Will do when I upload the next update
dredds 2019-04-18 14:32
Wow. It’s hard to take a good screenshot while playing the game :-) Anyway, there’s an action screenshot now, which is the best I could manage while not getting killed.
desbyc 2019-04-19 06:32
Again, much to hard for me. Nice slomo-effect after last live.
Timo 2019-04-19 07:06
Making screenshots is an art ;) actually I edit them sometimes to add more action.
dredds 2019-04-19 08:31 (Edited)
Re difficulty. It’s definitely not a game you’ll be able to play through on the first go or even after a few tries. I’ve gone for ‘80s style difficulty :-) I’ve made an effort to ensure that although tough, it is fair. It is possible to get to the end without losing a single life.
You’ll have to learn the way different enemies behave to work out how to avoid or defeat them. (Or read the strategy guide above).
The waves are generated by a predictable algorithm so you can learn what will come next with enough practice.
The main strategy is: don’t stay still, don’t linger near the edge of the screen and don’t let too many enemies get on screen at once. And unless you’re trying for an accuracy high score, hold down the fire button and don’t let go!
Timo 2019-04-22 19:35
Just tried the end boss, it looks cool!
was8bit 2019-04-28 09:19
End boss is SUPER COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
dredds 2019-04-28 09:35
Thanks :-)
dredds 2019-04-29 08:36
Update:
- multiple smart bombs
- bug fix: smart bombs do not kill the final boss
was8bit 2019-04-29 10:37
I die!!! But it’s still fun :D
(Needs a cheat mode ;) ...)
dredds 2019-04-29 13:49
Three smart bombs not enough! :-)
I have ideas for a difficult mode and ludicrously difficult mode, but not any easier modes.
The enemy waves are completely predictable so you can eventually learn how to beat them.
was8bit 2019-04-29 14:53
That’s cool :) I have, like, no gaming skills, so I usually depend on cheat modes.. which, BTW, is still not a guarantee I’ll win ;)
Timo 2019-04-30 19:46
Dredds, do you have Twitter and want to post your game there (I would retweet it)? Otherwise I could tweet it directly.
dredds 2019-04-30 22:56
Please tweet it.
I do have an account (@natpryce) but it is mostly professional software engineering stuff
dredds 2019-07-24 21:22
Update: scoring and persistent high score
DJMoffinz 2019-10-27 08:48
How did you make the ship transparent when it respawned, cause I’m making an underwater game and thought it’d look more realistic if there was a transparent blue layer in front of everything else. Thanks!
dredds 2019-10-29 08:38
I drew the ship every other frame. At 60fps, that tricks your eye into seeing it as translucent.
I tried it with bigger sprites, like the clouds, but the flicker became more visible the larger the sprite until it was quite uncomfortable.
DJMoffinz 2019-10-29 08:44
Oh so that’s how. But you’re saying it might not work for bigger objects, like putting a layer over the whole screen for my underwater game?
Timo 2019-10-29 12:02
Water could be simulated with a blue-ish color palette probably.
DJMoffinz 2019-10-29 22:14
@Timo
I know but i think it’d be a little more realistic if there was a layer over all of it.
dredds 2019-11-02 18:00
Instead of drawing a translucent layer, I agree that using a blue tinted palette would be faster and eaiser. You could draw some white bubbles or highlights over the action to give a watery feel, or use a raster interrupt to & the sin function to offset all raster lines in a wavy effect
DJMoffinz 2019-11-03 05:38
Wow, that’s awesome! I forgot about bg tint. And it would be cool to have a wavy effect.
Timo 2019-11-03 10:27
Almost forgot: check this for water effects: https://lowresnx.inutilis.com/topic.php?id=11
DJMoffinz 2019-11-04 08:05
Will have a look.
