Windows CEREBLADE [Top Down 2d Super Hero Shooter] (playable demo UPDATED 19 July)

HighlandCoo

Member



SCREENSHOTS




DOWNLOAD DEMO

Introducing - CEREBLADE

"You wake in a dark room, the floor is cold. There are noises coming from outside the room. Rolling over, you notice you are clothed in papery thin overalls. You begin to search for the door, as you move, you hear more noises from outside. You recognise the noise as distant screaming, endless and high-pitched. You stumble around the darkened room, suddenly your hands find a door handle, you pull it and bright light streams into the room, blinding you momentarily.
"Stop! Dont move!" a voice cries,
You cannot see the owner of the voice, but you begin to turn in their direction,
"Stop! or we will shoot!"
Shoot? What is going on? Confused, you reach out with your hands.
"Quickly! Take him out befo.."
Your hands begin to tingle and shake violently, shocked, you open your eyes against the glare and see long streamers of electricity, leaving your fingers and joining a uniformed man who has begun to writhe and smoke.
*ATTENTION. BREAK OUT IN PROGRESS. LOCK DOWN IN EFFECT. ALL GUARDS REPORT TO STATIONS* calls a loud electronic voice.
The noise surprises you, your hands stop shaking and the electricity dissappears. The man slumps to the floor in a heap. In the distance you see another person, similarly dressed in papery overalls. "hey!" you cry out
"Hey! HEY! What the fu.." the person turns and runs away. With a glance at the fallen man, a guard? You begin to run after them but an alarm begins to blare,
*SUBJECT LOCATED ON LEVEL ORANGE. ALL GUARDS ON ALERT*
You turn, but the strange person has already gone, you hear the noise of boots running towards you. You turn and start to run..."


Your objective is to escape from the evil labratory that has imprisoned you.

The demo contains 2 levels, the objective is to kill all enemies in the levels.

You have 3 powers: teleport, shield, and telekinesis. Your weapon is an electric spear.


I hope you all enjoy playing! If you really like it let me know, I might expand it into a full game.

Cheers!
 
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HighlandCoo

Member
Updated!

So many changes, I basically pulled it all apart and started again.

- Movement code has been totally rewritten (thank you to poinl for making me see that "good enough" is just not good enough :p)
- lighting and shadow effects have been upgraded
- particles have been added
- new enemies have been added
- some balancing changes, damage, movement, line of sight etc
- exploding scenery has been added :)

Im happy with how the combat is shaping up, teleporting around, blocking shots with shields, stunning enemies or throwing crates with telekinesis, before going for the kill with the Mind Spear...
but Im still trying to decide what kind of game this is to be.. it is your objective to move from A to B? To clear the level of enemies? To kill a particular NPC? To gather X of Item Y? And that being so, why are you doing it? Im so bad at this stuff :)

I hope you enjoy playing! Please let me know your thoughts, your very harshest feedback is welcomed.
 

HighlandCoo

Member
UPDATED!

Various balancing changes
Various bugfixes

heres the fiction I have in mind - you are a cyborg escaping from the evil corporate lab that created you. You have been enhanced with nano technology that gives you incredible abilities.

I think I need to work out an upgrade path, something for weapons, something for abilities, then general stuff like movement. Not sure how to gate the upgrades yet, im thinking a collectable that is dropped from enemies/collected from rooms etc that can be used to craft stuff.

Levels will be linear, with some choice. Think like FTL, you get a couple of choices where you go next.

Levels will contain random events where you can make choices that will help or hinder you.

Please let me know what you think!
 

HighlandCoo

Member
UPDATED!

The first stage of the upgrade system is in! Currently the NPCs drop 3 types of resources, with a small chance to drop a health pack. You can pick up the resources and spend them at the upgrade station. Currently there are only the most basic upgrades (+1 HP etc) but I'm going to expand that to other things soon.

I also updated the title post with a little bit of supporting fiction.. just a bit of fun. :)

* Added player HP system
* Added player shield system
* Added resource drops from enemies
* Added upgrade stations into the level
* Added upgrade UI to apply upgrades to player
* Various bugfixes

Please let me know what you think!
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Working on cool effects for fire.. I think Im going to add a "fire" ability to the player, but this will do for now :)

Note the little enemy soldier who wanders into the flames and dies. ha!

 

Gamerev147

Member
Not too long after player, this error appeared:

___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object obj_ex_camera:

Unable to find any instance for object index '100918' name '<undefined>'
at gml_Object_obj_ex_camera_Step_0
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Object_obj_ex_camera_Step_0 (line -1)
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Not too long after player, this error appeared:

___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object obj_ex_camera:

Unable to find any instance for object index '100918' name '<undefined>'
at gml_Object_obj_ex_camera_Step_0
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Object_obj_ex_camera_Step_0 (line -1)
Thanks for letting me know Gamerev147! I'm not sure how that could happen.. the camera is not destroyed by any code in the game. The camera object does refer to the player object, but similarly there is no code to change or destroy the player obj. Do you think you could recreate the issue, or describe what you were doing when it happened???
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Not too long after player, this error appeared:

___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object obj_ex_camera:

Unable to find any instance for object index '100918' name '<undefined>'
at gml_Object_obj_ex_camera_Step_0
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Object_obj_ex_camera_Step_0 (line -1)

ok I resolved 2 issues which could cause a crash
- Weapon object looking for an object which was already destroyed
- Explosion object trying to apply damage to a non-existing object
.. also added a few other bits and bobs :)

New build is available now.

Hopefully that will resolve it, if not, I'll probably need to know how to replicate the error before I can fix it.

Cheers!

R.
 

Gamerev147

Member
Thanks for letting me know Gamerev147! I'm not sure how that could happen.. the camera is not destroyed by any code in the game. The camera object does refer to the player object, but similarly there is no code to change or destroy the player obj. Do you think you could recreate the issue, or describe what you were doing when it happened???
I killed an enemy, then died, then this error occurred.
This error can happen when the camera object is looking for the player, but the player was destroyed.
 

HighlandCoo

Member
I killed an enemy, then died, then this error occurred.
This error can happen when the camera object is looking for the player, but the player was destroyed.
Ha! I found it, turns out there was some code in a parent obj which would destroy the player. So weird.. Ive died about 1000 times in testing and never had this issue. But fingers crossed that is it! Thank you for getting back to me with this info.

New build available now.
 

HighlandCoo

Member
UPDATED!

Added new enemy - Mobile Turrent, if it sees you it deploys and invincible shield and fires stun rounds to slow you down. Take it down without being seen!
Added Hazard - Lazer Beam, stay out of the beam!

Various Bug Fixes and Enhancements

Please get in touch with your thoughts or suggestions! Thank you!
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Playing around with impaling my enemies.. you know.. as you do.


Also in this video, new destructable scenery and some additional lighting and decorations.

In the next build Im going to add a new weapon type for the player, it will be a throwable like the spear, but will behave like a grenade. Im considering mixing it up with the fire effect, or with the new impaling effect above... we will see!

Demo is available to download in the top post! Please let me know what you think!
 
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W

warbo

Guest
Can you maybe try to upload somewhere else? i get this
"
Sorry, this file is infected with a virus

Only the owner is allowed to download infected files."

and i am unable to download.
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Can you maybe try to upload somewhere else? i get this
"Sorry, this file is infected with a virus
Only the owner is allowed to download infected files."
and i am unable to download.
Hi Warbo, sorry about that, that sounds very annoying. It sounds like whomever is the admin on your machine has prevented you from downloading .EXE files. Which is fair enough as .EXE can often be a virus.

I've zipped the file and created a new download for you here

I hope that works ok, in the meantime I'll be adding the game to itch.io soon, and you should be able to download from there. I hope your download works and you enjoy the game, please dont forget to leave any comments for me, your suggestions would be very welcome!


GAH! Forget all that, I was wrong. I just tried the link from another machine and got the same message.

I've created an itch.io page so that you can all download from there now, and I've also updated the links in the OP. Sorry!
 
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W

warbo

Guest
Tried it for a few min and it seems pretty cool, i think it might play better if it was a little more zoomed out. I like how the enemies get killed if they walk into the lazers lol
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Tried it for a few min and it seems pretty cool, i think it might play better if it was a little more zoomed out. I like how the enemies get killed if they walk into the lazers lol
Thanks Warbo!

I've updated the demo now with various little changes, mostly quality of life and extra effects. But I've also zoomed out the camera by about 20%, I'd be keen to know what you think?

The main reason for zero big changes this week is because I am trying to come up with alternative weapons for the player.. I love the spear, but I wanted players to have a choice. I'm working on a grenade-type weapon, which I think looks really cool, but I'm struggling because it seems to be:
- A bit overpowered compared to the spear
- Difficult to justify with the fiction.. so how does my character create the grenade? A spear could be like a magic bolt or nanites or something, but how would a grenade work?
.. I'm going to play with it some more and see what I come up with.

If anyone has any weapon ideas I'd be grateful, and will immediately steal them and claim them as my own :)

See below my current grenade implementation:

 
Last edited:

HighlandCoo

Member
Added a new weapon today, the grapple!


I think thats enough weapons for now, so far I've got the spear, the grenade and the grapple all working ok. This week Im going to add the UI to the upgrade screen which will let players choose what weapon they want, then put it out there so you guys can break.. erm I mean "test" it. :)

The next stage is to add a bit more structure to the game, right now I only have 1 mission type and 2 levels. I want to add at least 2 other missions types
- Rescue
- Defense
.. and a way to choose what level you want to goto next.

Plus all the usual polishing and bug fixes as-I-go..

Thanks for reading!
 

HighlandCoo

Member
UPDATED!

Added
- 2 new weapons, the grapple and the grenade. You can access them by going to the upgrade station.
- 1 new mission type. Rescue. Find and return captives to the rescue station.

Various bug fixes, cosmetic changes and performance improvements.

For a bit of fun, see below a wee recording off all of my destruction effects firing at once.. glass shatters, paper flys, walls crumble! I'm really getting into the destruction effects... Im considering having fully destructable walls. Hmm.

 

NetZvezda

Member
Interesting concept. Art is pretty interesting too, a bit simple, but it works for the atmosphere. Are you planning on making it only desktop version or will you also make it for mobile devices?
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Interesting concept. Art is pretty interesting too, a bit simple, but it works for the atmosphere. Are you planning on making it only desktop version or will you also make it for mobile devices?
Thanks for playing NetZvezda!

Thanks for noticing the art - all my own work :) Alot of the art is a placeholder. Particularly the Player, NPC and Weapon Sprites. But Im very happy with how the theme is coming together. I don't plan to do a mobile release, and I think the control scheme and UI would need some drastic changes to make it playable. However I do plan to add gamepad support as soon as I can. Which isnt the same thing.. but I still think its important for a desktop release.

Glad you enjoyed it, if you have any more comments or suggestions I would be glad to hear them.

Cheers!
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Behold! I suppose to you this is going to be the dullest GIF you see this week? But to me, this represents 2 days work..it is now possible to select your next mission! Hurrah!

 

HighlandCoo

Member
UPDATED!

- added new mission type STEAL. Find the artifact and return it to the extraction point. Whilst you carry it, the artifact will disable your weapons.
- added end of level summary screen
- added end of level "next level select" screen
- various performance fixes, bug fixes and quality of life fixes

I've decided Im unhappy with how dark the game looks.. and the name. I'm going to make a big push this week to settle on an overall style and name for the game. And only do bug fixing and polishing until that is in place.

I'd love to hear what you all think so far? Enjoy!
 
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