C64 :: Some progress at last!

Things have been a little quiet of late because, despite my "best" efforts, i've been utterly unable to get a fourth level for Co-Axis 2189 started; finally that deadlock was broken today and i seem to have the beginnings of a tile set for it although if i'm honest i've deviated a little from what i originally intended - but that's fine because the various attempts at what i had in mind to begin with were stalling the bloody project! So now i've got that going there will hopefully be some screenshots of the new level to look at in the (relatively) near future [Crosses fingers and looks hopeful!

PC :: Wire Fighter released

Although the Bullet Mechanics website hasn't been updated to reflect it yet (that'll happen on Wednesday) yesterday saw the release of the now christened Wire Fighter over on the ShmupDev forums.

The game itself is quite simple to get into, the player has two energy bars for the ship itself and the "laser wire" grappling system (above and below the score respectively); along with the ship, there is also the laser wire's cursor, when the system is charged, it will lock onto attackers (the usually red cursor will turn green if there is power for it or orange if not) and a swift right click will take control of the enemy and see it tethered to the ship as a support weapon. It is possible to play the game without using the laser wire but it's difficult and the best scores will be achieved by constantly grappling new support craft.

PC :: Grappling with spaceships

The new rapid prototype has been receiving a little care and attention yesterday and as far as the code is concerned it's pretty much complete now; i want to spend some time getting the graphics and sound up to spec, there need to be attack waves created and probably couple more nasty types and at this point i haven't actually settled on a [i]name[/i] but the progress is good and i'm happy with the way it feels to play so hopefully it'll be well received on the ShmupDev forum when i'm done.

PC :: More rapid prototyping

i haven't actually given the thing a name yet and it didn't end up using the OpenGL rendering code i was talking about previously... but after a day and a bit of slaving away i've got something together for the fourth ShmupDev competition! The idea is quite simple, the player has the option to lock onto attackers and take over their ships, slaving the craft itself and the weapons for their own use. There are some restrictions placed on the use of course (otherwise it'd be way too easy) such as the enslaved craft not moving as fast as they would otherwise and the bullets taking between two and eight hits to destroy attackers depending on the weapon grabbed, but generally it works pretty well.

All it really needs to "complete" it for the competition is some movement code for the nasties, a bigger selection of attackers with their own weapons that can be taken control of, a proper attack wave initialisation system (it's currently just slinging nasties in at random once every sixty or so refreshes) and then some pretties like a title page, a few more sprite designs, sound effects and so forth.

PC :: Shiny, happy spaceships

i've had a weekend of getting my head around the basics behind OpenGL; my programming language of choice, the rather spiffy Blitz Max, is essentially a 2D language (which was one of the main reasons i leant towards it in the first place, having previously used Blitz BASIC 2D to the point i was trying to simulate some of the more rudimentary lighting effects that Max can handle by rendering objects manually) but there is support included for rendering with OpenGL and, theoretically at least, that means i could build a 2.5D shooter of some kind. So far i've managed to position, plot, scale and rotate some vertexes and then some low poly shapes, although i suspect that a lot of my code so far is somewhat fudged...

As to what i'll actually do with this test code i haven't decided yet, but the idea of stylised, untextured shoot 'em up is rather appealing right now and, assuming the theme doesn't preclude it in some way, might be my "look" for the next ShmupDev rapid prototyping session since i really enjoyed the last one and the next one starts on Monday. Certainly one of my thrown together test objects will look quite good tumbling onto screen, disgorging some bullets and then spinning away again (or being blown to smithereens - that does raise a question of how to blow up a 3D object but i've just had a thought as i was writing this so i'll have to give that a little more consideration) and with a bit of modification will make the basis for a nice player ship as well. Strapping the Alien Release Scheduling Engine into this environment should prove quite... interesting though, the co-ordinates are based on 0,0 (thinking in two dimensions and ignoring Z) being the centre of the play area!

PC :: Boom bang a bang!

Yay! i didn't really get around to documenting any more of the process, but Vinculum has been released in it's "competition form" and i'm in the process of setting up a website for a new "venture"; to paraphrase the old bank advert where the businessman asks people at work, friends and everyone else apart from his wife before making a life-changing decision, i'm "going it alone" or more accurately i'm going to have a go at setting m'self up as an indie developer with this project in a greatly expanded form as a first product if all goes to plan. Anyway, my new website isn't actually there as such but the domain is working and theres a temporary page on it already for Vinculum with the instructions and a download link so off you go for a likkle look. And here's a screen of that latest revision:

PC :: i'm in the middle of a...

As usual, my sidetrack has become sidetracked... there's been a series of rapid prototyping sessions on the ShmupDev forums, each lasting a couple of weeks and with a theme set by the previous winner and i've been putting something together over the last day or so for the third of these sessions which has a theme based around chain reactions. The game in question is called Vinculum for a couple of reasons; partly because it's nice and spacey-sounding and that's a Good Thing for a shoot 'em up... but mostly its because "vinculum" means "that which unites or binds", like a chain and that's what the game is about.

The objective is simple, the player is assigned three standard issue spaceships with forward-firing lasers and nothing else, then sent into battle; blazing away works quite happily but is absolutely guaranteed to result in appalling scores. The secret to racking up the points lies in using the parting shots fired by the enemies against them, when a nasty is shot it explodes rather prettily and disgorges a ring of bullets and, whilst fatal to the player, they'll also blow up any other nasty they rip into. Since that's how chains are created, the true skill is to fire as little as possible and figure out the best ways to create chain reactions that do the rest of the work for you. Every shot the player fires decreases the chain multiplier, every nasty destroyed by a chain reaction adds to it and losing a life with reset the thing entirely. Here's how it looks, running in windowed mode:



Yeah... it's a little hectic, what has happened is a row of seven nasties all stacked up across the screen and i've shot the one on the left; that's blown up, peppered the nasty to it's right and so on until the second to last has just detonated and is about to blow the remaining nasty to kingdom come, all whilst i dodge like a lunatic between the bullets. Even at this stage of development with just five attack waves installed, Vinculum has been proving pretty good fun to play and i've been enjoying the testing, in part because i've been placing the waves in ways that i hope will require a little thought. All it really needs to be complete is a soundtrack (which i'm pretty sure i can sort out, i've been listening to the second level tune from Patriot Dark whilst testing things out) a little more presentation work and then i have to arrange lots of fairly intricate attack wave data... perhaps i need to think about an XML processor for the Alien Release Scheduling Engine's attack waves?

C64 :: Then there were three

There are now three levels all populated and playable; the "plan" involves attempting to get a fourth installed before Fusion and sending along a "Competition Edition" version of the game, then addding a stage or two more and releasing the final version.

C64 :: Two levels up!

Once more things are happening and i've now got two completely populated levels up and running (although they'll probably need a little more tuning for difficulty) and i've made a bit of a start on the third... but after spending most of the day naffing around with just shy of 600 lines of attack wave data (the combined length of all source files has passed the 5,200 line mark) it was pretty difficult to continue working on it without feeling the need to bounce my head off the monitor, so i took a "break" and wrote the end of level bonus screen instead and that third level will be started in earnest tomorrow. Here's all of the first level and the beginning of the second as a little bit of a teaser:



Now that there's a reasonable amount of level data in the game to test things properly, i'm quite surprised that nothing has turned out to be seriously broken! In fact, the only issue found is with the scoring system because, as it stands at least, there's absolutely no way it'll ever need an eight digit score! So i'm going to trim it down to six digits (which are just about being used if i turn off the collisions and try to trash everything within the existing levels) and that'll mean redesigning the status bar a little to make the boxes a bit smaller... so whilst i'm there, i might as well add a few other little cosmetic tweaks i wanted to do in the process...

C64 :: Making new worlds

Things are moving onwards... the first level of Co-Axis 2189 is now populated; i need to draw more nasties and change which objects are doing what, but the actual movements are all in and the shield strengths at least roughly tested to make sure the player has a reasonable chance of hitting about eighty or ninety percent of what's passing through with a bit of practice. i've started working on the second level and have some of the background graphics and tiles drawn - it still needs a lot more work and a fair bit of detail adding as well but i'm hoping to have something close to ready tomorrow and possibly even get a start on the attack patterns as well.

My plan is to have three levels done by the weekend and i'll put aside a copy of that version for release in case everything goes pear shaped and i run out of time; i'd like to try for five or six in total if there's enough time but the release date is a week on Saturday which means i need to be done and dusted around a week from Wednesday i reckon... [gulp]

C64 :: Presentation... its what you need

The last couple of days have seen a lot of small details that, whilst not blog-worthy in themselves have finally become something worth talking about; i've just finished integrating the titles and end screens into the game's source code - hat means it's starting to actually feel like a game now and, fingers crossed, there aren't any bugs in there that'll crop up as I begin to build and then populate the levels.

There are quite a few cosmetic details installed such as the status box on the score bar flashing up messages and having the name entry for the top score on the title page all in and working (although i'll be honest and admit the code driving that part of things is somewhat spaghetti-like in nature) and the fantastic music that was done for the iteration before last of this project by Matt Simmonds (nearly ten years ago now, the original Co-Axis 2189 was started eleven years after the original!) has been bolted into place along with volume fades as the code transitions from titles to game to completion and back.

In fact, if the entire thing is really working as well as it currently seems to be, that's the bulk of the code written so tomorrow should see the introduction of a few new tiles and characters for the first level and a start made on the look for the second which I already have a couple of ideas for. At the time of writing, the source code (including white space and comments) is just a fraction shy of 3,800 lines...

C64 :: Breaking down the walls

Well, it's been a week and although quite a few cosmetic jobs have been done including the bolting in of the new status bar, sprites and some level data, there wasn't really a "milestone" to report until today when i got some proper time in front of the assembler; Co-Axis 2189 has a nearly complete game framework running, can initialise levels (although there's no data for anything past the first map and block of aliens) and run through them, detects death events and reacts accordingly, can spot when the lives are all out (but can't act on it just yet since there's no title page to return to) and knows when the end of a level has been reached and if it should move to the next or get ready for the completion sequence.



The next job is getting some of the cosmetics sorted so that the titles page can hand control to the game, then the game back to the titles or the completion screen; that really needs to be sorted now so that i can test it thoroughly before the levels start going in and getting through the entire game takes a lot longer!

The level name "Babylon And On" is a reference to the stone blocks as well as an album by Squeeze - most of the level names in the original Co-Axis were musically inspired and i want to continue that for this "re-imagining" as much as possible - the second level (which is partially planned graphically) is going to be called "Blue Monday".

Spectrum :: Steel Force released

A little development sidetrack this time; Steel Force was developed with Jonathan Cauldwell's Shoot 'Em Up Designer whilst i was writing a review of it for Retro Gamer issue 52; it's a single level, horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up and i've tarted it up with a surround and a simple (in other words, BASIC) title page. It's on my personal site for download and here are a couple of screenshots for good measure; hopefully someone'll enjoy the thing even if it's pretty simple... =-)