Windows Joon: scifi TDS - test demo!

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FROGANUS

Guest
Ahoy!

Here's a project I've been tinkering with. It started as a jet-flying prototype and has slowly transformed into a top down shooter game where you play on foot after your jet is shot down on a jungle planet. Inspired by teleglitch..




The pending name is now Joon. The story involves confronting these hostile forces, learning of their unwarranted occupation and resource-extraction which is sending the planet towards cataclysmic danger. Banding with local characters to resist this human force, player will eventually discover the deeper essence of this ancient alien energy. Yeah, think dune, on a jungle planet..

DEMO v0.05 8-2-18
This is created entirely in GM1.4 on my 32bit WinXP laptop.
**Warning download only if you have good antivirus**
This file checks out as clean via Norton, but..
VirusTotal.com lists 3 not very descriptive detections (out of 66):
-"HEUR/QVM06.1.EAF1.Malware.Gen" (from Qihoo-360)
-"static engine - malicious" (from SentinelOne (Static ML))
-"Backdoor/W32.BlackHole.2834432" (TACHYON)
The last one sounds gnarly.. any idea if this is threatening/fixable?
(I will look into this and try to produce a 'clean' version soon)

Controls are shown at main menu, also hit ESCAPE in-game to view controls (sorry no customizability yet).
**Cheat keys: if you have trouble surviving, try N or M keys to get cheat medkits.

Demo is basically 2.5 rooms, conveying some thick jungle ambiance, and light combat scene for now (the 0.5 room is a dead-end boss testing area ;) ). Upcoming levels will be underground caves, resistance hideout, mining areas w/ deeper caves (showcasing aforementioned 'cataclysmic' effects).


CHEERZ
 
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F

FROGANUS

Guest
-v0.02 : new vid
-added troopers with track-and-shoot AI, which functions somewhat crudely, but they will shoot u..
-added a friendly character who shows off a nice instance of obj_chat..
-added some sound fx..
-coded some death, which is always fun..

Plans are to experiment deeper with the AI of these 4 basic characters:
Player, Enemies, Allies, and Neutrals.
I want them to do things independently and have a range of states, but I def. need to research a little deeper into parents and states and clipping and work on better organization with the project.

other to-do list items: ammo/reload, inventory, store boxes, melee..

tiles and levels to-do: hideouts, underground caves, deeper jungle, outpost (tradingpost/bar), mining colony, research colony.. I made a few zoom in portraits but I'll post them when I do more later..

story will be like.. rebels and imperials.. robots and teddy bears.. bounty hunters and morbidly obese giant slugs..ya know, sci fi stuff.. more ideas to come for real tho..
 

RangerX

Member
That's cool. I like the old schoolness of it.
And what ever happened to your other game? You had finished it? (that platformer I think)
 
F

FROGANUS

Guest
Hey Ranger! yeah, I had a platformer engine going, but didn't have much vision to turn it into a full thing (also lost a bit of progress in a machine failure..) so it's collecting dust while I move on to more top-down stuff, which is my preferred format and goal for learning gm anyway.
Saw you put out a new ruby build too- def plan to check it out. ;)
 
M

Mike_

Guest
Looks cool, the movement and shooting looks slick, like the idea of top down shooter with a good story. Good luck with it!
 
F

FROGANUS

Guest
Ninja- yeah the 'tinyness' is a sort of starting point, I'm using 8x8 tiles and started with a wide view, which is nice for now for testing, but yeah, straining on the eyes..

On my to-do list (now higher up) is to implement dynamic cam zoom, so while standing still its zoomed in, while running it zooms out.

Thanks for looking, guise! BBL with updates..
 
Any update on this?
This game has a great feel to it.
The style is really classic.
I would suggest making the foliage (vines or treetops?) transparent so it's easier to see when underneath them.
 
F

FROGANUS

Guest
yeah i added some stuff, not super significant (been jumping between some projects and studies lately)..

good idea on the foliage, its covering the edges of the tiles, but i guess i could clean that up.
i was also considering doing that thing where obscured characters show up as a shadow so you can see them.

new stuff:
-dynamic camera zoom (helps a lot visually, current view is furthest, zooms in while you're not moving)
-screen shake (better damage indication)
-played a bit with the flying ship (dynamic volume/pitch, surprisingly nice doppler effect, also shakes when it goes right by you)

i wanted to make a demo, (2-3 linked rooms and something objective to accomplish) maybe i'll put up another vid up meantime..

i've been pondering/researching the random gen approach to level design, but don't think i'm slick enough to encorporate it the way i want.. i'll probably just stick to my guns and build some more levels manually.
 
F

FROGANUS

Guest
UPDATES v0.03:
-new vid:
-added another fairly detailed jungley room (starting area)
-added some plants and enemy 'flower' (a plant that shoots 'wasps')

BUGS/FIXLIST:
-crosshair has various issues
-resolution scaling/screen tearing, requires some research and maybe overhaul..

NEXT UP TO DO:
-ai needs some 'help', trying to organize all these STATES...
-warps will soon have proper fades with a pause.
-ambient sounds needed also original bgm at some point (not just ripping off boards of canada)
-also i want to do a rigid, but transparent shadow casting from the treetops down to the ground.. any pointers?
-oh geeze also footsteps.. needs footsteps..

i think this is about enough gamespace to focus on for the demo. should be a playable one soon.
i'm using the GM1.4 room editor for now, which is [string-of-expletives] tedious so..
GM2 upgrade is in the works so i can find my stride and bang out the actual levels hopefully soon..

thoughts?
 

HayManMarc

Member
Looks pretty cool.
Looking forward to seeing better enemy AI (movement). I know it's not easy, so good luck. :)
Have you thought about slowing down movement (only slightly) when moving through dense overgrowth? Might add some gameplay and world-building possibilities.
 
F

FROGANUS

Guest
yeah- ai (states)/collisions/parenting all seem tricky to wrap together.. been finding better ways to organize which seems to be key.

good idea- something like a 'snaggable' vine object would be easy to do.
i'm definitely thinking of different player-vs-environment type obstacles, so that there's a lot of buildup between gunfights, for sake of tension.
 
T

Thunder Lion

Guest
Ahoy!

Here's a project I've been tinkering with. It started as a jet-flying prototype, added player as a guy on foot, now player spawns in some jungle, runs around, exchanges blaster fire with dudes..

VIDEO UPDATED:
v0.03 2-1-18

The control and shooting is inspired by Teleglitch, which has cool control dynamic where you right-click to slow to a 'creep' and focus your aim (always felt like nice control to me). atmosphere is looking much brighter.. enemies a bit jerkier.. but anyways, I aim to turn it into a top down sci-fi shooter that's more adventure and story-driven. its very early on, let's see where it goes..

CHEERZ
You should give the players the ability to see the distance they are from home if that matters, maybe even a coordinate
 
D

Deleted member 16767

Guest
Some ideas:

  • Reload ammo to make the combat more challenging
  • Fog of war if you want it even more challenging
 
F

FROGANUS

Guest
reloading and proper ammo/item management is on the list, possibly with additional weapons/tools..
Lion, i dunno what you mean distance to home, perhaps some map or guidance tool that points to objectives?
could easily be one of the pickups and could activate a map, or at least arrows or something, on gui.. i like that idea..

i've also def got fog in my mind ;-) in reference to teleglitch, their angular 'raycast' style of fog is a key element which i love since it creates a simple, yet realistic form of strategic tension. i've tested some scripts which so far have decimated my performance and plopped weird grey chunks of angular cheese on top of my character, lol. sadly, i might put off any heavy graphics effects till a much later version..

thanks for peeping!
 
D

Deleted member 16767

Guest
reloading and proper ammo/item management is on the list, possibly with additional weapons/tools..
Lion, i dunno what you mean distance to home, perhaps some map or guidance tool that points to objectives?
could easily be one of the pickups and could activate a map, or at least arrows or something, on gui.. i like that idea..

i've also def got fog in my mind ;-) in reference to teleglitch, their angular 'raycast' style of fog is a key element which i love since it creates a simple, yet realistic form of strategic tension. i've tested some scripts which so far have decimated my performance and plopped weird grey chunks of angular cheese on top of my character, lol. sadly, i might put off any heavy graphics effects till a much later version..

thanks for peeping!
I haven't programmed fog of war myself. All I can think of is squared black image layers which you change from alpha 1 to 0 when collided with. You should make an instance group just for them and be above every other id groups. So that you can turn it visible and not visible when you want to.
 
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F

FROGANUS

Guest
right, there's got to be a number of simple ways to do it, like you said essentially a field of black tiles that reveal could be an easy lo-fi solution.

fyi here's the cool 'raycast' style they use:
 
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Deleted member 16767

Guest
right, there's got to be a number of simple ways to do it, like you said essentially a field of black tiles that reveal could be an easy lo-fi solution.

fyi here's the cool 'raycast' style they use:
I think they used some kind of particle for this. Maybe you can even make it HSV? I know what HSV does, I'm not entirely sure if it works as a "--;" for alpha images.
 
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Deleted member 16767

Guest
Hey. I thought of this a short time and I think this guy might be using Draw GUI for this.
 
D

Deleted member 16767

Guest
Sorry for the triple post. Just curious why you dont want to use black squared or circled fog. This is what I meant by fog of war. You can crop them live inside the editor. To me, this seems much easier than trying to make a flashlight with lots of numerical values, lots of multiplication and lots of testing the game on every tile in sight.
 
F

FROGANUS

Guest
well, that screenshot is not from gamemaker-
tg: "C++ using some open source libraries: SDL for cross-platform windows and image loading, OpenGL for graphics, Ogg & Vorbis for compressed sound, Box2D for physics, OpenAL soft for sound and Lua for scripting"
..and i'm not set on reproducing that, verbatim or anything, but i found some GM resources that seem very relevant to that stylistic approach:
http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=572561
the thing is tho, now that i think of it, graphical stuff is a little lower on my list to do since it's not as practical now as inventory, npc work, and ai, i'll probably dig into this stuff deeper once i upgrade to another machine which i'm doing soon hopefully.
do you have any example of what you mean exactly though, not sure when you say 'black squared' 'circle fog'?
i am open to easy meantime suggestions..
 
F

FROGANUS

Guest
oh yeah, well wc is the specific example i imagined at first. tho it works differently than I have in mind (since player in wc can pan around freely, i have fixed camera) i could def use something similar for an area just around the player (or where they're looking)..

also note, this footage doesn't have the 'grey' area, (explored, but not updated, maybe not implemented till wc2?).

this style could indeed be used with low resources too, so maybe i'll throw something together and see if it works.

thanks for the ideas!
 
F

FROGANUS

Guest
So I put together a test demo (nothing fog-related added yet, sorry).

Maybe uh.. lemme know if anyone gives it a try and likes it and wants to fix all the code i've been having trouble with, lol.
 
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