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FORCE MAJEURE - new shoot'em up
Onewing
Member #6,152
August 2005
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Or it takes more than one hit to die. I personally prefer this, because now you give weapons a damage factor, so later levels can have heavier weapons, expanding the possibilities/difficulties.

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Albin Engström
Member #8,110
December 2006
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actually, that's one of the things i like :). death should come with punishment!, not: "buho, i feel so sorry for you that instead of actually losing something you'll get something called "invulnerability""... and it should be all of the medals, not half of em.. at least that's what i think.. i guess this part will be hard to satisfy people on.. and it would seem rather stupid to add an option in the options menu > "get better highscore = on"... the highscore should not be so easily beaten :).

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
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That's not the point. The point is the punishment is too severe, and too swingy. Your chance to get a highscore literally depends on playing a perfect game. There's no sliding scale from "bad score, decent score, good score, better score, high score"; it's either "bad score, high score" with no in-betweens, because dying even once ruins forever your chances of scoring high as you lose both multipliers and valuable potential points.

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Since 2008-Jun-18, democracy in Sweden is dead. | 悪霊退散!悪霊退散!怨霊、物の怪、困った時は ドーマン!セーマン!ドーマン!セーマン! 直ぐに呼びましょう陰陽師レッツゴー!

Albin Engström
Member #8,110
December 2006
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i realize that i fell off the point somewhat yes... but i still think you get a decent highscore anyway.. i mean, have anyone got more than two full medals? i think it works pretty good. but i guess it would give a more linear score without removing all the medals upon death.. but that's just not fun - -.

fsDoom
Member #7,690
August 2006
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i DO agree that you may be a little too punished for dying.. however most newer shoot'em ups work this way. However I'll have this little discussion in mind when we (monokey) are discussing the final touches of the 1.3 demo (which will then sort of reflect how the full game will be like..)

Thank you so much for all your input!

Ultio
Member #1,336
April 2001

Very well done, I like it a lot. Most of the stuff I want to say will just be reiterations of what others have said, since I'm so late to notice this post. I will, however, say that getting used to the speed is a bit hard. It seems like it's just a slight bit too slow (even when you let go of the attack button). I believe this is something players can get used to as they play the game more and more.

The difficulty level is up there, but I think this is a good thing. It's fun to try and master your skills at a game and get better each time you play. That said, I think because of the way the animations work for the ship, it's slightly difficult to learn what you're doing wrong when you die. What I mean to say is, in a nutshell, it's hard to tell where the bitbox is at all times (especially when the ship is tilting -- does it move?) I think that either one of two things needs to be done to make this easier to understand: either modify the sprites so that it's more obvious than it is now where the hitbox is, and generally how big it is; or possibly make it more obvious where it is when the player is hit. As it stands now, when I die it's hard to tell exactly which bullet it was that hit the ship, therefore making it hard to learn from my mistakes.

Overall, it's pretty awesome. I like the idea of the scoring bit, which is really cool. I think there should be some way to regain your multiplier after dying, or at least some kind of a limited "oh crap" button you can press if you know you're going to die. Additionally, you might make it so that instead of instantly dying, getting hit by a few bullets will drain the multiplier a slight bit (2-5%?), thus giving you a second chance to retain most of your multiplier. I think this kind of style could potentially work, seeing as how it's rare that only a single bullet hits you when you die (you're usually in a barrage of a whole slew of bullets).

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Albin Engström
Member #8,110
December 2006
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I long for the next demo... btw, will there be a replay feature in the full version?

Matt Weir
Member #7,476
July 2006
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I love this game! I've played the demo so much now! Personally I think the one hit you die is good, punishment for slipping up. It took a bit of practise to not end up cornering myself in a barrage of bullets (especially from those helicopters!) but I think the differculty is pretty good. A nice challenge. Keep up the good work!!

fsDoom
Member #7,690
August 2006
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Ultio: Thank you! And you're right! Most of the stuff you're concerned about are fixed in the 1.3 demo (which WILL be released very soon... I promise :)). (marked out hitbox in the beginning of the stage, slightly faster ships, etc.)

Albin: Yes absolutely. Didn't have time to implement it in the first demo though :/.
I cannot promise if it'll be in 1.3 but it will definately be in the full game.

Onewing
Member #6,152
August 2005
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Quote:

which WILL be released very soon... I promise

Whatever you do, don't rush it. I'm curious to see how this game works when you add more levels. Right now it's cool with this one level, but I'm having a hard time imagining what the second level could look like.

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fsDoom
Member #7,690
August 2006
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No that's why it'll take some time, cause we don't wanna rush it .. the very first demo was rushed (cause of the compo deadline) and the 0.2 demo was just a few fixes here and there ... demo 3 will somewhat feature everything (except for the levels) that the full game will. That is, the full game will play just as the third demo.

Albin Engström
Member #8,110
December 2006
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fsDoom: "Yes absolutely" Woho! can't wait :).

fsDoom
Member #7,690
August 2006
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The .mbmp format also was sort of a quick hack ... I've enhanced it further now by implementing RLE-encoding and different palettes ... The old tank boss spritesheet takes up 1252kb with the old mbmp-format .. with the new one it only takes up ~388kb .. :)

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
avatar

Considered compressing it further? zlib is very easy to use and would probably knock off even more bytes; probably more than RLE encoding.

--
Since 2008-Jun-18, democracy in Sweden is dead. | 悪霊退散!悪霊退散!怨霊、物の怪、困った時は ドーマン!セーマン!ドーマン!セーマン! 直ぐに呼びましょう陰陽師レッツゴー!

fsDoom
Member #7,690
August 2006
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Got any reading material on the subject?

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
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http://www.zlib.net/manual.html

Check the section on "utility functions", right at the top.

--
Since 2008-Jun-18, democracy in Sweden is dead. | 悪霊退散!悪霊退散!怨霊、物の怪、困った時は ドーマン!セーマン!ドーマン!セーマン! 直ぐに呼びましょう陰陽師レッツゴー!

fsDoom
Member #7,690
August 2006
avatar

Thanks a bunch :)
I will take a look right now ...

Johan Peitz
Member #9
April 2000
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There's also an allegro wrapper for it on the allegro wiki which I managed to get running really easy. I'm afraid I don't have any idea of the adress to it though. ???

--
johan peitz :: things I made

X-G
Member #856
December 2000
avatar

Well, it really doesn't have to be any more complicated than...

1void gzputshort(gzFile fp, unsigned short s) {
2 gzputc(fp, s & 0xff);
3 gzputc(fp, (s >> 8) & 0xff);
4}
5 
6void writeBitmap(BITMAP *bmp, gzFile fp) {
7 // Write width and height
8 gzputshort(fp, bmp->w);
9 gzputshort(fp, bmp->h);
10
11 // Dump pixel data
12 for (int y = 0; y < bmp->h; ++y) {
13 for (int x = 0; x < bmp->w; ++x) {
14 int p = getpixel(bmp, x, y);
15 gzputc(fp, getr(p));
16 gzputc(fp, getg(p));
17 gzputc(fp, getb(p));
18 }
19 }
20}

... and analogous for loading. The little utility I made for it reduces a 320x240 bitmap from 220 kilobytes down to 3 with zlib.

--
Since 2008-Jun-18, democracy in Sweden is dead. | 悪霊退散!悪霊退散!怨霊、物の怪、困った時は ドーマン!セーマン!ドーマン!セーマン! 直ぐに呼びましょう陰陽師レッツゴー!

Thomas Fjellstrom
Member #476
June 2000
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fsDoom
Member #7,690
August 2006
avatar

Wow! Thank you so much! I'll try to see what I can come up with from this :)

23yrold3yrold
Member #1,134
March 2001
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Very cool; at first the slowness was really annoying, but then I saw in the thread that you had to release the fire button. Not really conventional, but I got used to it. Interesting gameplay mechanic. Awfully difficult level with enemies that take many shots to die and who litter the screen with bullets; I hope this isn't a Level 1. :)

I'd play more with it after figuring out how ship speed worked, but the game randomly crashes my system; I only got the the final boss a couple of times. :( Poo.

--
Software Development == Church Development
Step 1. Build it.
Step 2. Pray.

Albin Engström
Member #8,110
December 2006
avatar

I think you could post some clues on why it's crashing, because if you don't.. i'll have to wait even more for the next demo - -. isn't that right fsDoom? :'(

23yrold3yrold
Member #1,134
March 2001
avatar

It's a random effect, what do you want me to say? :)

--
Software Development == Church Development
Step 1. Build it.
Step 2. Pray.

fsDoom
Member #7,690
August 2006
avatar

Does it crash just randomly in-game ?
Does the LOG file have anything to say about it?

I haven't heard of any other with this particular problem :/

"Not really conventional" ? Most all new arcade shooters work this way :). So I'd say it's pretty conventional. However we HAVE raised the ship's speed a bit for the new version.

Thanks for trying it :)

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