Genus Prime - 8bit compo WIP

[Derron]

Is it required to be a 32bit windows exe? 64bit now running ;-)

bye
Ron

[Qube]

Is it required to be a 32bit windows exe? 64bit now running ;-)

Any is fine

[Derron]

Uploaded and posted in the competition thread. Will edit in details later - still trying to make the win32 build work (as I know... ahh Virtual Box plays the game with vanilla now ;-)).


bye
Ron

[Derron]

(Copy of the competition-thread post)


Genus Prime v1.0

Conquer the galaxy ...  by sending ships from your planet to others. Easy peasy isn't it?
Use your mouse to select planets and target enemy planets to set your ships free. Once the population counter of a planet goes below 0 - it will change ownership.
Owned planets generate Research Points (RP) which you can use to upgrade your tech tree on the knowledge hub.
Ah and you might want to buy some missiles as planetary defense of each planet.

There is a campaign mode (with some more events/elements) and a random (quick start) or skirmish (custom game) mode.

There is NO profile yet, so what campaigns you won is stored in your savegame - use that as progress.


Campaigns are written in plain XML - so you might want to add your own (especially with the ... Solar Support and Rebel features).


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Controls: Mouse driven, use right click (or Escape key) to abort/exit a menu/screen. If the pixel flickering of some elements annoys you then hit "c" once to disable color alternation (I used it rarely but still... who knows). It flickers more the less Hz your screen has).

Use F5 to quicksave and F8 to quickload.

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Download: https://www.gamezworld.de/files/GenusPrime_v1.0.zip [Linux 64bit, Windows 32bit + 64bit]
(ignore "Build time" in app title - I am +1 to Qube's BST ;-))
(The 32bit Windows build was done afterwards with vanilla BlitzMax and is untested except for "executes and plays music").


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Media: SFX by me, graphics by me, fonts as stated in the fonts directory, music as stated in the music/licences.txt




bye
Ron

[Qube]

Glad you managed to finish - Now you can admit you had fun coding a retro style game?

[Steve Elliott]

Now you can admit you had fun coding a retro style game?

Buy the man a Beer Stein before he answers.   

[Derron]

Some stuff needed more time than if I just could whip it up in Photoshop or Blender. Also my framework needed a bit changes here and there for proper pixel fonts.


Arranging your hud/texts on low res is also ...hmm ... time consuming.


I had fun doing the game itself - which of course would work in high res too (with a different visual appeal).

But I can assume that I would have experienced some visual feature creep (more animations, overlays...) In a high res game instead of finishing.

So...half half I liked the limitation and hated it the same time. It allows for stuff but also forbids it. Which is ...think a custom palette allows for more (as in the xmas compo).

Bye
Ron

[Steve Elliott]

Some stuff needed more time than if I just could whip it up in Photoshop or Blender.

Exactly, pixel art is a skill.  So you improved that skill (which is a good thing).

[Qube]

So...half half I liked the limitation and hated it the same time.

That's the challenge - Hell I picked the Speccy and stupidly spent 3 hours figuring out the fastest way to do colour clash just for the fun of it

Some stuff needed more time than if I just could whip it up in Photoshop or Blender.

Exactly, pixel art is a skill.  So you improved that skill (which is a good thing).

Yup, now you can take those skills to higher res graphics to make it even more visually polished

[Derron]

Have to confess that I did not learn new stuff graphics wise this time. ... except on how to render with Blender and to add some kind of palette filter via its node setup approach - which at the end turned out into a simple "dither" thing which I did not like. But at least I got a basic scene of the title screen set up in Blender - which helps for proportions, object alignment etc.

I pixeled much stuff more than a decade ago (most non-hud-GFX of TVTower was pixeled + some help of blended textures).

So I would not say improved but rather "trained" ("get used to it again"). Enjoyed to pixel stuff "tricking the eyes" (shadows, darker areas).


Biggest question for me is: what does it do for my future. Does knowledge XY help me later on. While "retro style" is currently en vogue, the limited palette and real low res (not just "big pixels") isn't. Modern retro-look-games use pixelated graphics but transparencies, alpha channels, true color, ...
In the other projects I tried to learn new stuff for Blender or audio. This time ... I am not sure what I learned, maybe not to optimize code too early (which works for prototypes but not if you want to achieve uber-modable and extendable games).
Regardless of this: seems I finished a game this time rather loosing interest too early (or to get distracted by real life too much - albeit wife already blamed the last days "you sit on it each evening").


bye
Ron

[Derron]

For bug reports and feedback to the game please use the new thread:
https://www.syntaxbomb.com/index.php/topic,5420.msg24700


PS: uploaded sources to github and linked to that in the new thread.

bye
Ron