Windows OctorSpace [shooter & level editor] : Modified Larger Explosions

STEAM STORE PAGE IS UP (game won't be for sale until its done)

The Steam store page was approved late yesterday:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/705000/OctorSpace/



Somehow I am lucky when it comes to the app id number being a nice round 705000. Unless that's how they're listing games now like 123000.

I will need to make a new trailer, but here is the current trailer:


LAYING GROUNDWORK FOR LEADERBOARDS


Leaderboard GUI is always a pain, even if this will be my third time making them. So to prepare I laid the groundwork. For starters, OctorSpace now keeps track of your stage scores and high scores. It always kept track of your high score, and now in its current form it keeps track of every time you've played. That was step one. Step two was for the game to generate Steam Leaderboards keep track of your highest scores and highest stage scores as well. That was easier done and Steam has the easiest leaderboard system I've worked with.

So it writes the leaderboard data, it just has no way to read or display the data until the next session.
 
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LEADERBOARD GUI: What do you think between these 3?

Last night's programming session was making the look of the leaderboard. Here's where it gets tricky... I need feedback on which one looks the best. They're all similar, but with a different placement. (menu on top with 20, menu on bottom with 20, menu on bottom with 10). The leaderboards don't pull in Steam data yet, so I added some fake data to get the look.

Here are the choices:







* edit * I suppose lack of feedback I'll go with #3.

The next session should wrap up the leaderboard with making them work, pull in data and integrate them in a few places.
 
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NEW STAGE SELECT SYSTEM

In yesterday's session, I remade the stage select system since the new stage system goes by file name rather than a number count. There are secret levels, people can make their own campaign where level A goes to C or D and D goes to B or F or even loops to D again. With this new system comes the need to have played in the level before you can stage select your way back there. I might modify the game so there is a separate arcade mode that removes the stage select and a different mode that allows it rather than allowing the stage select at any time of a campaign.

ENEMY TWEAKS

Other than that I started tweaking the enemies. I made the first boss far easier so you can fit between projectiles rather than having to run around them. That was time consuming when testing and it lost its fun. The other tweak is I started wondering about the fodder enemies.... they aren't shooting, just moving. They're not much of a threat and that was the original reason to have them was because they were no threat since they're the first enemy. They have been modified to fire one bullet amongst them every X amount of seconds. So you know a projectile is coming, just not who will shoot it. The amount of time they shoot depends on the difficulty and the projectile itself is fired at the player rather than forward. This should make even the most mundane enemy more of a threat.

Here is the 1 at a time bullets being fired from randomly selected octopi.

 
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With nothing new to show I went back to the old well of make a new enemy to have something to show. I also made an enemy status to bypass their AI and keep moving as if they would when the player cannot shoot.

I CALL IT TRIBEN

It has some basic AI and even this was a bit time consuming.



To test the enemy I set them up in terrible placements:



Chances are it will change.
 

Ladi_Pix3l

Member
It looks great. Although from the gameplay gif, it makes the enemy animation look a little stiff due to the screen shake. Probably just me though
 
It looks great. Although from the gameplay gif, it makes the enemy animation look a little stiff due to the screen shake. Probably just me though
Thanks as always for your feedback.

The animation was going far too slow for the amount of bullets it was shooting. So I increased the speed by six, made new projectiles and adjusted the enemy to work different, to be more fair and still every bit as dangerous.

When the player gets close to Triben, it will move toward the player's X axis. Other enemies such as the eyeballs and mugsies do this as well, but they're not firing a wall of bullets. Projectiles fire faster and their speed is faster. I like the projectile and its speed, so I made 2 new weapons out of them. I could make more, but I'll stop it there.

Here's a video of the new enemy along with a demonstration of a super powers that should compliment Triben:


Apparently the big versions of enemies need to have their bullet shooters adjusted. Also, the bullets should be continuous and for whatever reason it skips firing a set of bullets. The code is too simple to have a problem.

Here is an animation for those unwilling to watch the video:

 
Well its been fun not working on leaderboards!

VISUAL FIXES AND BETTER EXPLOSIONS

Anyway, today's programming session (yesterday's as I write these before sleep then post them tomorrow) was about fixing visual issues and making the game feel even better. First up was making the double sized Triben's actually shoot from their gun rather than where the default size would shoot. Next was finally digging into the muzzle flash to revel it was off by 3 pixels. The flash has always been an issue and just looked strange because the flash was a bit off while the bullets were being fired from their correct place.

After that it was explosions!

Larger explosions tend to slow the game down, so I figured out why. Other than that, big explosions have had an issue for a while, because at some point I disabled some code and forgot where it was disabled. So I enabled the code for smoke trails, made the first and second tier explosions into 3 and 4s so the game looks better. The boss's explosions were worked on as well to make it grander. To top it all off, I made a little death sign animation to pop up when the enemies disappear. Enemies at quarter health now flash red too!

Here we go with animations!

New typical explosions



Tribens exploding!



What's that??? Moresplozion? (you can see the death animation better)



Giant Tribens



Boss explosion!

 
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I kept working on the leaderboard system and its just about done. The Steam leaderboards for global and friends work. I am 90% of the way through making the local leaderboards.

MODIFIED (LARGER) EXPLOSIONS

After some feedback on Twitter and from friends I adjusted the boss explosion and the mega bomb explosion. You can now move when the bomb goes off.

The mega bomb


Between the final version of the mega bomb, I modified it to be the skull bomb for the laughs:


The boss death scene is less over the top
 
LOCAL LEADERBOARDS DONE

Yesterday's session made the leaderboards work with Steam's global, friends and now local scores. Next 10 and previous 10 will show. The only thing that remains is to make a mechanism to flip through the levels in a game that lets you make and download levels. Perhaps it would be best to limit the level flipping to the official campaigns and let you view leaderboards of custom levels when you're on those custom levels.

PLAYED THE GAME

To test the leaderboards, I dumped a lot of scores in. I also spent the time to play the third "challenging campaign." Its the latest campaign, so its the freshest and I had forgotten everything about it. The campaign was a joy to play with all its diversity. The only problem is I managed to find all 5 secret levels which resulted in a campaign of 11 levels back to back and it felt like a bit much when it turns out to be 45+ minutes.

FIXING ISSUES ON OTHER COMPUTERS

I started to get the game ready to be played on other computers by playing it on my other computers. It crashed in a few places that didn't crash on my primary PC, so I took the time to smooth out those issues. One of my friends is pushing me to get him a copy of the game after he told me he only wanted to play it when it was done.

LESSER EXPLOSIONS

Explosions of smaller enemies have been made smaller. That is all.
 
Got bored of making enemies for one game. Revisited OctorSpace to sprite an enemy for it:



It might be a while before its added into the game. I have an idea for them to swim in pairs.
 
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