Hello Folks! This is my first post. I've been developing (but not finishing) on and off games since 2004 on my spare time, albeit always having a lot of fun coding them! I tried about everything you can imagine, GameMaker (Earlier versions), text based PHP, javascript, Unity and Scirra Constructor. Just this year I participated in my first game jam and actually published a game so that game the renewed my energies to try to finish an old concept, hence Space Flyer was born. This is a solo project, so I'm doing all (From coding to art and sounds). Since I'm doing it on my spare time, I have no great ambitions but maybe if I find the right partner, I could team up with someone to improve it. Game Idea You are in charge of getting a rocketship out of earth while earth is under attack, without getting destroyed, out of path or run out of fuel. Since it is a mobile/browser game, controls are pretty simple. If you touch the left side of the screen (Or left arrow key), you turn the left booster on (right arrow key). Likewise, if you touch the right side of the screen, you turn the right booster on. Whenever a booster is on it consumes fuel, which can be gained by gathering satelites as you go up. The ship is affected by gravity, inertia and drag. You control the boosters but you have to take into account that your actions do not result in immediate reactions of the ship. I intend on adding some reward system, such as getting "coins" in other games. This way the player can buy special equipment to help the next run. Also there will be achievement goals, such as getting over certain height or running for some amount of time. This would serve as an incentive to fulfill all available goals. Coding All coding is being done on GameMaker v1.4 (I know version 2 is out but I cannot afford it). Breaking the coding down into segments, this is what I have: Menu System - About 20% done. I have the state machine working but have not spent a lot time creating the different menus. Game - About 40% done. I have a working version of the game with the physics engine working. The ship has a thrust acceleration and torque drag, so if I start one thruster before the other it will rotate until both of them have the same acceleration (Takes a few milliseconds but you can feel it). Reward system - 0% done. I have not though this through yet. Shopping system - 10% done. I can "shop" for different ships, which will have different abilities such as life, thrust power, fuel consumption and drag characteristics. As of now the only thing that changes is the sprite, but I"ll be adding this differences in a future test. Art All art is being done in a pixel-art style. I'm not a very good artist, but I like trying to do it. Most likely all art will be changed at one point or another. Sprites Main ship: Asteroid: Fuel tank: GUI The GUI is the part I'm most proud of. It needs a lot of polishing yet, but I got a lot of things working already. The idea is to add a few more background animations to get it to feel "alive". Other info Audio effects - 20% done. I have basic sounds produced using Bfrx, such as hitting something, running out of and gathering fuel. Some polishing needs to be performed. Intro Just for the fun of it I started to work on the initial game sequence, with the rocket ship actually being launched from a platform and player can only play after 3 seconds (To give you a head start from the ground, since if you crash you now die). I still have to do a proper "screen countdown". Latest preview This is a preview as of 20 of June of 2018, recorded from my mobile while playing the game. All criticism and suggestions are welcome! I would love to hear your feedback!
New update! (It takes me awhile between updates since I have about 1/2 hour a day of coding) Shopping system Now ships have different status such as life, acceleration, fuel consumption and "tightness" of controls. All of them working well! Art I've added a background set, consisting of parallax building and landscape and a sky that changes colors and transparency as you go up (It takes about 1.500m to go completely transparent). I'm still missing a few clouds and a moon to help show movement while we can't see the stars Enemies I've added a state machine that picks the asteroid based on your height. It works with a few types such as small asteroid, large asteroid, small asteroid cluster, large asteroid cluster and in the future I'll have missiles and UFO's. Other info I've been thinking of changing the art style to a more modern flat design style. I've seen some amazing work on this front, such as: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/d8Kfan1WYaQ/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f7/24/91/...5b57b469--flat-icons-digital-illustration.jpg Latest video preview:
The cityscape going into the atmosphere is pretty cool. The black emptiness of space was getting to me in the first video. The radar is great to have in a game like this, because I know similar games that don't have it. You may want to have 1 time use power ups like slow for X seconds even if at the current moment the game seems manageable enough without power ups. Something to detonate all asteroids on screen one at a time would look cool. You need more explosions especially when the player collides.
New update! I've pretty much changes everything in the game to a point that now i feel good enough that I'm compiling an alpha release for you guy to try it out. Check ou the latest video: Below I've listed all the changes that I can remember of: - Removed in-game GUI and replaced with icons only (Much cleaner now) - Added a life indicator - Added a coin indicator - Re-did the fuel gauge indicator - Changed how the sky fades out - Added clouds to the game to give a sense of movement - Re-did the menus - Shop menu now has a carrousel of ships (I still have only 2 showing for the moment) - Gameover screen now shows you altitude (Score) and the coins you earned
Alpha testing is here!!!!! Ok, compiling was easy (hehe) but the dificult part was trying to get it to install on my android directly from my googledrive account. To overcome this I've stored in 2 different places, as per the links below. If you have problems installing it, try to check if your phone is allowing apk from unknown sources and if it allows apk installation from your browser (Both options are under Settings->Security). Mirror 1 - Ge.tt Mirror 2 - Google Drive Please let me know your tooughts on th game so I can improve it! On my to-do list for the next releases is: - Add more ships - Add special abilities for the ships (Such as magnets to attract coins, bullets firings, etc...) - Add a settings menu (Sounds options will be there and also I'll allow inversion of commands) - Work on new enemys - Work on coins to have a bundle, instead of only one, showing up when you get higher (To make people wan't to go higher) - Get the google highscore to work - Get the google achievements to work Rgds, TinyGamesLab
