Hey people. I'm making another XOP game. OMG and all that. I put it up on the Depot but it's not approved yet. I have yet to put up a public demo, I will do so once I have more of it completed. Probabally once I have level 2 done.

I am re-using all of the old XOP code, so things are going much faster than if I had just made it from scratch. Also, I had the designs for XOP Black drawn up by Tim McFarland years ago but never felt like making it until now. Things are going very well right now.

So here we go again. This one is going to be hard. Really hard. If you remember playing the original and getting your ass handed to you on skill Normal, this one is going to push you back to Easiest and leave you begging for mercy. Since I am not selling this one (it's free!) .. I can make it as balls-hard as I want. That's right .. I was actually holding back on the difficulty in the original XOP.

Prepare to be prosecutedt to the full extent of the jam.

http://rydia.net/udder/prog/xopblack/

Awesome! I loved the original and still play it. I never beat it on the hardest difficulty, though. I usually just play normal. I hope this one is as good as the first.

Nice, XOP was pretty cool. Will it be open source?

Still not planning to open source it. If you were hoping to get your hands on it and develop your own shooter, there are plenty of "Shooter maker" programs out there that are more than likely more user friendly and designer friendly than my mess of 6-year old code and plaintext data files

Don't worry, I wrote one a few years ago.

Its just nice to be able to play games in my native linux environment.

I have a similar comment, but replace Linux with Mac OS X. My quick port of 'Garden of Coloured Lights' seems to have gone down quite well...

I know someone who has expressed interest in porting it to Linux and OS X, so hopefully I can get that done.

I got a blank page, using Firefox 2.0. I can see the source in View Page Source, though.

Yea sourceforge's filesystem has been sucking lately. If you keep refreshing eventually it shows up.

Yes it's BACK!
Back in BLACK!

Sorry, someone needed to use the AC/DC reference...

I guess the relation to Black POX is not unintended.

I checked out XOP. It's really cool (and hard). I'm looking forward to the next one.

I never thought about that. Although the game is pretty much death on Very Hard.

I put up some screenshots at http://rydia.net/udder/prog/xopblack/

The actual download link won't work until it's finished

Ah, you're Udderdude? heh.

Your thread convinced me to download the original XOP and I've played it now and it's pretty fun. It's the kind of game that's going to make my fingers sore from playing for hours at a time. Pretty cool game , thanks.

Glad you liked it.

XOP Black is finished and you can get it at http://rydia.net/udder/prog/xopblack/

Yay! Downloading it now. I didn't beat XOP (it's hard) but I still want to check this one out. How much harder can it get?

Nice , I played through XOP Black on easy and managed to beat wave 1 and finish it without continuuing. Now it's time to see if I can make it through on normal and beat wave 2 as well.

I like it that the DAL coins now move towards the ship when you get close enough to them. I also like the tv static fade in and out effect too. Cool stuff man.

Pretty cool!
I managed to complete it on easy quite easily, but it is the easy difficulty
It kind of made me want to finish Tyrian again

EDIT: Well, I reached the 2nd wave in normal difficulty :S

Me want Linux version!

I'll compile it for you and send you back a linux binary if you want.
send me a message on here if you're interested

Very nice! You're right, it is much harder! On very hard I can only get the about halfway through the second wave. With the game mode set to Massacre (two difficulty settings? ) I can barely get past the first boss...

Looks like I'll be busy with this game for a while.

Massacre isn't really a difficulty setting, it's an extra mode. It may be slightly more difficult than original mode if you don't play it right ..

It's better than the first one, I'll say that. I cleared easy mode... easily. Pretty fun.

I think the 'xopblack.txt' read me file for XOP Black needs a little updating. There are no weapons to choose between anymore and as far as I can tell there's no speed up for the 'fire 4' key ( the v key ? ). Oh , the v key now fires a wide angle attack and the z key is the straight angle attack fire key. It would be cool to have a few more levels. Anyway , it's still a fun game. Thanks.

It's very impressive, even after playing the first one. Well done!
(In normal, without continues, I reach "wave 2", 3994970 points)

There is a small bug when loading / saving a demo: while waiting for a file name, the music system is not polled, so the music is stuck in a half-second loop.

Also, I don't know how I did it (probably by dying at the wrong moment) but a boss in the desert level didn't arrive, and the level "script" was stuck, with no enemy coming my way. I had to quit the level.

I have one suggestion regarding demos : Record by default, in memory. Then the menu would allow save the game that just finished : For exemple, after a high score, or if something strange (bug?) happened in this game.

Uh oh. Did the boss music start at least?

I don't remember. The background was desert with no landmarks, and the wave of flying attackers was going away, so I assumed it was boss time.

Unfortunately I've never ran into this bug, and I can't seem to reproduce it. I can't really tell if it happened at the boss or miniboss, either.

Awesome. I loved the original XOP. Can't wait to give this a shot later.

I really have lots of fun playing that game.

On a first though it feels hard, but after one hour of playing (and wave 2 defeated in normal mode) It feels kind of kewl to play with !

I've released a new version of XOP Black, revision 3. It has a new level and some other improvements, plus some bug/crash fixes.

Also if you liked the original XOP, I've went back and ported all the new features from XOP Black (Controller config, multiple highscores, new scoring system, etc.) into XOP. So just download it again if you feel like it.

The scoring system makes it feel pretty different .. if you like playing for score, that is. If you don't care about score then it's not a huge difference.