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Credits go to Eric Johnson, Frank Drebin, and Michael Weiss for helping out!
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Skyline Missile Defense WIP release 2d
Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
avatar

Hello all!

I've been working on my missile defense game Skyline for the last few weeks since resurrection hack inspired me to hack it back to life.

You can download a 7-zip of the game's source and a static win32 binary along with data here :

Skyline2d.7z

Some screenshots :

V2b added lasers
{"name":"611450","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/b\/1b2a9590a46e3501edef8ab0655cedf6.png","w":802,"h":633,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/1\/b\/1b2a9590a46e3501edef8ab0655cedf6"}611450

V2c added shields
{"name":"611451","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/5\/75d65318a9813654b6abea3aa1d4ac55.png","w":802,"h":633,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/5\/75d65318a9813654b6abea3aa1d4ac55"}611451

V2d added spread missiles and a fully reworked config system
{"name":"611452","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/a\/7a6a8b9d48a3130df69041c456ae74d5.png","w":1024,"h":768,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/7\/a\/7a6a8b9d48a3130df69041c456ae74d5"}611452

If you want to play on Linux, you'll need to build Eagle first and then Skyline. Game requires Allegro 5 and OpenGL for now.

Clone from git and give it a whirl if you're feeling lucky! Or just browse the source if you like.

https://github.com/EdgarReynaldo/EagleGUI

https://github.com/EdgarReynaldo/Skyline2

Any and all feedback is appreciated!!!111

I know the difficulties are kind of screwed up right now, so Easy is too easy, Medium is too hard, and Hard is too medium.

LMB fires missiles. RMB fires lasers. T key turns on timing information if you're having difficulties with frame rates.

Advice on where to go from here? I plan to add Music and Sound Effects, and I need more backgrounds and skyline images to populate the game with. Eventually I want to have a Survival mode where you play for high score and to survive as long as you can.

Hope you enjoy!!!
Edgar

Eric Johnson
Member #14,841
January 2013
avatar

It's a neat game with potential, but as is, there's no incentive to play for more than a moment or two. Racking up points and displaying a score would make for a nice incentive. Especially if coupled with fun sound effects and a scoreboard/leaderboard. :)

I hope that doesn't sound harsh. I don't mean for it to be. You have a good foundation so far. I like the laser idea, but I think there should be a cool-down time between uses. I can currently spam the button and not worry about the missiles. :o

I like what you have so far and am interested in seeing how it grows from here. Good luck!

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
avatar

Like I said, it's still very much a WIP.

Thank you for the feedback. ;)

I plan to implement a scoring system, as well as music and sfx.

How was the overall gameplay? Obviously it needs balancing, like with what you mention about the lasers not having a cool down period. Did you try all three difficulties? RGB lasers have the smallest hit zone, which is even smaller when the laser blend mode is BLEND.

Something I should note is that there is an optional Config.txt file in the Data directory that when present overrides the in built default settings. Look at ExampleConfig.txt to see an example of the config file settings you can change. The only playable difficulties right now are easy, medium, and hard so changing the other values won't change anything.

What do you think of the weapons? Missiles are useful on easy and medium but they can cause problems too when they blow up your own city. Lasers will blow up any missiles anywhere the three laser components come together into white.

The shield isn't very helpful yet, again I need to balance somewhat.

Are there any special effects you want to see?

What do you like the most? Are the visuals good? Which laser mode is best? The laser widths and duration can be easily changed with the config file.

Missiles are almost useless at slower speeds. I thought spread missiles would help but if it takes forever to get there then it doesn't matter.

I'm thinking that the Survival mode will be played in waves, and between waves you can purchase upgrades with your points, or keep them for a high score. That would be cool I think.

Again, thanks Eric! I appreciate the feedback.

Edgar 8-)

EDIT

Added simple trails to the missiles (not quite what I wanted) :

{"name":"611456","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/d\/8dd0f01cda9223c39a6abad382e54442.png","w":1026,"h":801,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/d\/8dd0f01cda9223c39a6abad382e54442"}611456

Eric Johnson
Member #14,841
January 2013
avatar

Did you try all three difficulties?

I tried easy, but it felt too easy, so then I moved on to hard.

Quote:

What do you think of the weapons?

I like them. You should focus on adding a score before changing the weapons, I think.

Quote:

What do you like the most? Are the visuals good? Which laser mode is best?

I didn't realize there were multiple laser modes. How do I change them? As for the visuals, they look a bit dated. I personally prefer stylized visuals over realistic ones (so cartoony = me like). But visuals ultimately come second over gameplay. ;)

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
avatar

Medium is a good difficulty, and the lasers are harder to use in that one because they're in BLEND mode, which blends the edges of the lasers, effectively making them weaker.

Everything you can change is modifiable via the config file. Look at Data/ExampleConfig.txt to see an example of the config lines you can include.

Create a file called Config.txt, place it in the Data directory and then edit it :
(in your case you want different lasers, look at lines 87-99 here ) :
https://github.com/EdgarReynaldo/Skyline2/blob/master/cbbuild/bin/Data/ExampleConfig.txt#L87-L99

Change the laser color to RGB or CMY and change the blend mode between BLEND and SOLID. Personally I like RGB and SOLID. You can change the width of the laser blasts, and their duration as well, here :
https://github.com/EdgarReynaldo/Skyline2/blob/master/cbbuild/bin/Data/ExampleConfig.txt#L101-L113

Michael Weiss
Member #223
April 2000

I played your game and I like it.

The mechanics of game play seem solid, just needs some tweaks to balance game play like you said.

I would really like to see some on screen information like:
number of enemy missiles left
number of player missiles left
percent of city left
etc..

I was frustrated by how slow the players missiles are, but I guess that's just the way the game goes. If they are too fast, its less challenging.

I changed the players missile speed to 1000 in the config file and I liked, that but it also makes it too easy. The challenge is timing it right with slow missiles.

With the lasers, are you supposed to be able to click and drag to make an arc?

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
avatar

Hi Michael, thanks for playing.

I'm in the middle of adding a HUD with missiles, city remaining, and points, as well as laser charge.

Yes, you can hold the mouse buttons. Hold RMB and drag and it will create an arc of laser blasts. When BLEND mode is on, they're not as powerful. WWW is the strongest laser, followed by CMY, and then RGB, given that their hit areas are different. Wherever a laser paints white, is where the missiles will blow up.

Yeah, slow missiles suck. You really have to plan ahead if you can. I try to carpet bomb the sky with missiles and then use the lasers to clean up after myself. But that can often lead to blowing up your own missiles (and your own city!) with your lasers.

EDIT
Okay, I totally redid the collision detection for everything. No more downloading from the GPU. I went from 20-25 updates per second to several hundred. I can now run full screen at full speed. I added a config option to change the start up graphics mode. If config.txt is present, and there is a [Graphics] section with optional entries for fullscreen, screenw, and screenh, then they will be used as the default resolution of the game. Set them to whatever you want, and it will work. Valid value for fullscreen is true or false. You can play any resolution you want.

I also worked on balance and difficulties. I made everything generally harder. Try the game again now, I dare you. :) xD

I added a minimalist HUD and Timing displays. There are 3 keys. T for timing. H for HUD. M for mask. M toggles the display of the city mask. It's for debugging purposes, and it slows things down. Try not to cheat too much.

One last thing, I adjusted the shield position so it isn't so high on the screen.

Many bugs were fixed and I added an Insane difficulty level with a new city. Try the latest version ;)

Skyline2e.7z (win32 binary + src + data)

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{"name":"611466","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/7\/87e3a5fd340f4cb55bdc2d12cd86fb80.png","w":1202,"h":933,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/7\/87e3a5fd340f4cb55bdc2d12cd86fb80"}611466

Eric Johnson
Member #14,841
January 2013
avatar

Oh sweet, a HUD! :D I'll check it out later this evening.

Edit
Okay, I played the latest version.

I noticed that my missiles would explode if they made contact with my already-exploding missiles. I thought that was a nice touch. What determines how far the missiles travel before exploding? I like the HUD! What does LPS and UPS stand for though? Also, the lasers don't appear to do anything in easy mode. I wasn't being accurate with them is all. :-X I won while playing insane mode by using the lasers. You should add a cool-down for the lasers, or else they become overpowered. ;)

Nice improvements. I had fun! :D

Oh, also it'd be cool if you could add support for numpads for selecting the modes.

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
avatar

Oh sweet, a HUD! :D I'll check it out later this evening.

Edit
Okay, I played the latest version.

I noticed that my missiles would explode if they made contact with my already-exploding missiles. I thought that was a nice touch. What determines how far the missiles travel before exploding? I like the HUD! What does LPS and UPS stand for though? Also, the lasers don't appear to do anything in easy mode. I wasn't being accurate with them is all. :-X I won while playing insane mode by using the lasers. You should add a cool-down for the lasers, or else they become overpowered. ;)

Nice improvements. I had fun! :D

Oh, also it'd be cool if you could add support for numpads for selecting the modes.

The HUD's not all that much - just the number of enemy missiles in the upper right, player missiles on bottom left, shield status in top middle, and actual fps in bottom right.

The timing stuff on the top left is how many Frames / Logics / Updates per second it could do at the current speed. The reciprocal is how many seconds each frame / logic / collision update takes.

It's the White lasers that are just too powerful, because they destroy any missile they come in contact with, not just where the lasers cross.

I haven't decided how I want to handle the lasers yet.

Please feel free to adjust everything using the config files.

Oh, one last thing, if you take a paint program and trim down the top transparent area of Data/Images/Chicago2.png it will fit better on the screen and maybe your shield will last a second or two longer. ;) :P xD

EDIT
Eric, the player missiles explode when they reach the spot you clicked on when you launched them, or when they hit an explosion. You can blow up a lot of your own city that way.

Frank Drebin
Member #2,987
December 2002
avatar

Tested on Win10: The FPS and LPS are sometimes missing some characters but besides this it works like a charm.

{"name":"611469","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/9\/c98b943188e313996691a8866f871bcf.png","w":1034,"h":804,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/9\/c98b943188e313996691a8866f871bcf"}611469

I agree that some sound effects would be nice. Also it would be nice to have an antialiased image of the cities with smooth edges.

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
avatar

The missing characters are a known bug. It's an allegro issue, or else I'm doing something really wrong. It keeps reoccurring randomly. Doesn't always do it.

Sound effects are going to be included in the next release.

As for anti-aliasing the cities, I had to cut them out of images I found off the internet. The edges are as best as I can manage to trace. ;) I use the magic wand select, but it doesn't always work the best.

Thanks for playing! A visit from Frank Drebin indeed! :)

Eric Johnson
Member #14,841
January 2013
avatar

As for anti-aliasing the cities, I had to cut them out of images I found off the internet. The edges are as best as I can manage to trace. ;) I use the magic wand select, but it doesn't always work the best.

I could play my hand at improving the edges, if you'd like. Here's what a quick edit of ChicagoSkyline.bmp looks like:

{"name":"611470","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/9\/3\/93af1f14d33eeb9b1840d7b695b2aafb.png","w":1026,"h":795,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/9\/3\/93af1f14d33eeb9b1840d7b695b2aafb"}611470

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