I’ve updated the main file with the following modifications:
-I’ve added a HDR image to replace the default sky in the world (this improves light and ship reflections by a lot);
-I’ve made a mask (for now just gray, later can use better graphics) to the health bar, that I’ve labeled it temporarily to Shields Energy, but you can change it to whatever you prefer.
-I’ve added the life ship One can loose a life every time the Jet health reaches 0 and explodes and can gain a life by shooting a specific hard to get object or collecting enough “coins” (or other object).
Again I’m overwhelmed how nice and professionally you do this coding Simonrazer! Awesome job!
I’ve downloaded it and seen it happening
It’s only missing the “Score” count and we may call it a game.
I’ve already planed the entire level It will have a mountain with a cave and ends in the bad guys base were the Boss will be. I’ll make it a bit by bit during this week.
Considering how small the screen is relative to all objects enemies should move far slower. Or everything needs to to be on a lower plane. It’s pure chaos now.
I know balancing isn’t there right now, just saying to get the feel right.
Thanks Sidar! It’s still very hard yes
As soon we can play it for a continued period of time, without constant crashing, it will be easier to adjust things to make it challenging but possible to beat.
On the old days the ships and shots had always a fixed path that we could memorize by re-playing the game. These ships are random, so this alone makes it very challenging, but still I think it’s better than just animate a fixed path for them.
Eventually it will need to have something to collect (like coins) and also the scenery may have places to crash in to, so it’s not all the time shooting ships
…For now the main goal is having a solid game play without crashes.
After that we can see how far this new game play let us go.
You don’t have to predefine enemy layout, but enemies should have some significance to them ( i.e. bullet patterns, speed, health ) to give the player some form of skill based growth.
The problem with randomness is balancing. You might want to consider dispatching enemies in certain groups/waves but not necessarily predefining the same enemy as you would in a traditional shmup.
More importantly, don’t let your sense of challenge be the rule. Eventually play testing should come into play, let people play it who suck at video games. For improvement sake, not so much that it should be dumbed down for casual players =P
This is great. Thanks for the video.
Are there any videos of users going through a logical node construct from begin to end, even with simpler stuff ?
Would be a great resource for accelerated learning.
I was a digital fusion user so this node editing type of stuff is just great to watch.
I’ve just updated my version with a bit more of scenery progress.
I didn’t updated the main file because it seems that there been some changes on it by “Fyreman Studios”.
I can’t figure out what was changed, do… What was changed?
Bug:
Seems that lasers are down in the most recent armory version.
Fun fact for Simonrazer:
I’ve recently been by an old arcade machine shooter and noted that it’s infact the TV that is rotated 90º, so, from the maker point of view, the entire game is actually playing in Landscape view XD
I guess that would be an option to solve the cursor problems… but now it’s too hard to rotate everything 90º
Sorry for not doing anything for some time! It seems like the current Armory version has nuked your exploding objects, the game refuses to start even with no logic applied to them. Will try to figure out a way to get around.
Your new terrain looks awesome!
So how are we going to spawn enemies? Spawn-patterns could be realized by using Animation markers for the 5 spawner empties, I hope. Generally I would scale the Player down a bit, to allow more freedom with other ships size and amount. As for enemy attacks, burst firing is doable, and actually I do not know any other types of shooting.
Updated main Version, as said explosions are gone for now.
Hey Simonrazer,
The rules say “no pressures” this is to be a fun experience for the times we really feel the need to make a bit more and make experimentations. Having that said I too am a little too much absent, sorry! December was a tough month here.
Thanks!
Regarding your questions:
We need waves
Enemies should come in “waves”, let’s say 3 waves of action close together and 1 wave of pause for resting.
A game easily gets very tiresome if we need to be focus and active all the time.
Between each wave we can have some coins to catch and/or some obstacles.
Our hero ship can rotate 90º easily for each side, so we can make some really tight areas for it to navigate that requires to use that rotation feature ( I can even think in a spiral zone that it needs to rotate full 360º to pass trough it :). Coins can be placed to guide the player.
If it touches the obstacle the ship looses shields energy until eventually explode.
You can stage it with cubes, spheres, circles, cylinders etc that I’ll improve the objects later.
It doesn’t need to be realistic in any way, Super Mario platforms just float in the air by pure magic and that’s how it should be
Obstacles stay at the same level than the ships and we can keep improving them and background scenery separately.
Close of the end of the level we can have a bit of enemies and obstacles at the same time.
You are correct, player and enemies should be smaller.
Burst fire can be used as an obstacle. For example a slower enemy ship could fire a burst of parallel lasers kind of drawing a road.
I’ll verify your version right after pressing the reply button
Best regards.
Edit:
Updated the main file with a scenery correction.
I’ve noted that one of the bridges were in the way of the ships, so I’ve adjusted it:
Wait, are you totaly unable to shoot? That would be superstrange, scince it is working correctly on my Labtop and main PC. I also do not experience random crashes anymore.
Updated main Version with a Zylinder whose scale equals the spawnrate of the enemies, if he is smaller than 1 no enemies will spawn. So now we can easily animate waves, and the same approach will work for obstacles/credits.
edit: changed shooting button to “h” scince space doesn’t work in “play in Viewport”
Yes, I’m totally unable to shoot… but, in that case I think It’s about time to do a fresh install or Armory
I’ll try it and will let you know if the problem persists.
Well I now fixed a ton of problems by replacing this setup
With that one
which does the same thing without spiting out errors all over the place. There realy needs to be more documentation, found this fix by accident again.
Updated main version, now there should nolonger be any console errors, but there still are some invicible guys, when someone spots a pattern with them please tell me.
One can loose a life every time the Jet health reaches 0 and explodes and can gain a life by shooting a specific hard to get object or collecting enough “coins” (or other object).
It will have a mountain with a cave and ends in the bad guys base were the Boss will be. I’ll make it a bit by bit during this week.
but now it’s too hard to rotate everything 90º
this is to be a fun experience for the times we really feel the need to make a bit more and make experimentations. Having that said I too am a little too much absent, sorry! December was a tough month here.
