Reboot Comp Entry: Validius

[Xerra]

As I posted previously, I canned the original game idea I was working on and decided to reboot from the very start and do my take on Asteroids. I'm not making it easy on myself, however.

Going all out on the options this time round.

Gamepad or mouse/keyboard, difficulty levels, Two different game types, border scenarios, Autofiring etc etc etc.

Here's the menu as it looks at the moment. I'd drop a video of it but there's still tinkering going on.

Basic game shell is mostly done now, apart from power-ups and enemies and stuff like putting in a decent HUD etc. As I want to use a few different weapon types, such as smart bombs etc, so there's a lot of work still to do. I'm aiming to have the game play two different ways where you play like the traditional asteroids, or boost it up and go with twin controls on a gamepad and play like Infinity Wars. There's going to be a lot of balancing needed to accomodate both.

[Steve Elliott]

Cool.  And that reminded me to add game controller support.

[MrmediamanX]

nice, is the title a 3d mesh?

[Xerra]

nice, is the title a 3d mesh?

The title was created with Logoist 4. A new version came out recently so I bought the upgrade and wanted to test it out. I've used this before for stuff like this - even if it's really not what it's for - but just cause i'm reasonably comfortable with the software.

The original one I was using prior to doing this is shown in the image. That's still on my WIP YouTube video as it's a few weeks old now. Glad I replaced it as it doesn't work as well as this one.

I'm now mostly finished with the gamepad support for both the menu's and the Infinity mode now. Still need to work out how it's going to work well with the Asteroids game mode, where keys work much better. Definitely works with both an Xbox and a PS4 game controller now. Just need to find out about other gamepads but I'm cautiously optimistic. I've never put gamepad controls in a game prior to today so it was a shed-load of tinkering.

[Xerra]

I was dreading having to come up with some kind of splash screen for game loading because I'm rubbish at that kind of stuff. Then I had a brain wave and just put together all the logos and sprites into a game room to do something usable and then just screengrab the game while displaying it. Then i just snipped out the title bar of the game window and adjusted the size slightly.

About an hours worth of work to tick off another milestone.

If I'd tried to create something with a graphics program it would have probably taken me a whole day.

You can see the end result below and obviously the title bar no longer exists in the game image.

[iWasAdam]

Then I had a brain wave and just put together all the logos and sprites into a game room to do something usable and then just screengrab

You've got it well and truly nailed - brilliant stuff

[Xerra]

Build 9 of my game in action on this video. Next one should be finished game, I hope. This looks slow because I use Snagit to record it as video, which is not the ideal solution. Game plays a fair bit quicker but you can still see there are some bugs to fix with the aliens and their weaponry.

Not all  the power-ups work yet either so the HUD is a bit spartan of any real meaningful information. You can shoot bad guys and aliens now, though. That's always good, right?

This is playing the game in Infinity mode, where you can just pick up a compatible gamepad (xbox or ps4) and use the dual sticks to play the game as shown. Once I fix Asteroids mode properly then you can switch to use that and play as an asteroids remake instead. You can still use keys and a mouse for Infinity mode but it won't play half as good, I think. I suspect i won't even bother having gamepad controls for the Asteroid mode at all.

[iWasAdam]

Very nice. I've got a Blasteroids feeling

[Steve Elliott]

Cool.  Some nice particle effects there.

[Xerra]

Cool.  Some nice particle effects there.

Little secret. They're not particle effects. Well, they are. But they're not. Erm, basically there's 2 different ones currently for both the player and asteroid impacts. The asteroid impact is 10 white sprite dots created at a random 0-359 circumference of where the shot impacts. These are given various alpha fades for different grey tints and also given different speeds before they fade out after around a second. I did the same thing with the player one but with various shades of red, orange and yellow in there for a more visual explosion rather than dust impact.

Technically that's really how particle effects are actually done in the background and I'm reinventing the wheel but they were just a quick work-in until I came back to zarjaz things up a bit. I can do that with just adding a few more sprites and maybe letting them run further and faster to bump it up just by editing a few numbers. I'll probably do something like that with the aliens blowing up or maybe teleporting in, as I don't like how they just appear right now, even though I've set a range around the player that they can't just appear in for an insta-kill. I always hated that about other asteroid games.

[Steve Elliott]

That's a definition of a particle, that's how I'm doing mine. 

[Xerra]

6 essential tasks to go now. 9 optional, if I have time.

Itch page set up and just ready to upload finished download.

Me still panicking that I'm not gonna get this game done in time /whimper

:-)

[Xerra]

Tidied up a lot of stuff and actually put in a better HUD. Old one looked terrible as it was just three drawn rectangles. The big rectangle in the centre of the new screen is specifically for the time limited power ups. This gives a visual representation of how long you've got left using them. Most power ups are just instant effect though, and affect stuff like shot damage, ship speed, shot speed, bonus score and the obligatory smart bomb.

If you can find the power-ups then you also have 2-way, 4-way firing and a solid-shot - which absolutely decimates anything it touches and doesn't die until it leaves the screen.

It's also quite tough and i'm going to leave it that way . More fun.

[3DzForMe]

Hi Xerra, we tried playing your game 2 different ways - just on the laptop and via a HDMI port to a big telly.

It 'seemeed' slower on the big telly - it could just be a Father Ted moment (sorry if that's lost on you)….

Could you have 'speed' settings in the options for the spaceship - slow, medium, fast?  I only ask coz the spaceship seemd to go more than fast enuf on the laptop. Yeah I know, just play it on the laptop  

Could you release a 'debug' version with a FPS counter showing - this would confirm if my laptop is sweating when trying to run your game on the telly.

Me and my daughter have had a blast (literally...) playing your game, haven't beat wave 3 yet though.

[Xerra]

Hi Xerra, we tried playing your game 2 different ways - just on the laptop and via a HDMI port to a big telly.

It 'seemeed' slower on the big telly - it could just be a Father Ted moment (sorry if that's lost on you)….

Could you have 'speed' settings in the options for the spaceship - slow, medium, fast?  I only ask coz the spaceship seemd to go more than fast enuf on the laptop. Yeah I know, just play it on the laptop  

Could you release a 'debug' version with a FPS counter showing - this would confirm if my laptop is sweating when trying to run your game on the telly.

Me and my daughter have had a blast (literally...) playing your game, haven't beat wave 3 yet though.

Yeah, it's easy enough to do both requests. I'm not sure as to if me increasing the max speed of the ship and also putting an fps counter into the game would be allowed as bug fixes, though. I'll generate one anyway as V1.01 because I think i can host it as well as the competition version so people know which version should be used.