Martian Madness (RELEASED in another thread)

[DeltaLeeds]

Oh is it? Okay then. Whenever.
Btw, if you are running on a big trouble, I can solve it / help you to solve it so you wouldn't loose time.

As for the hmb, I suggest you to make it vertical.
Horizontal hmbs are meant for stage games.

Alright! It's a bit too late for changing it to vertical, but I endured my mom's nagging about sleep to finish the health bar and even made a pause system! I updated my planned features too! Please give me feedback Bat! I wanted to finish this update ASAP just for the feedback!
ALRIGHTY! TO BED I GO! I'll keep checking my phone for the feedback! I'll sleep after I read it, because that's the type of person I am.

[bat78]

Allrighty Jon, night night.

[bat78]

Okay several bugs, several ideas and a downside.

Let's start with the downside.
When the screen gets real messy it is truly hard to determine where is my ship! It overwhelmingly resembles these bats.
This is only annoying and has no positive influence on the gp, so I suggest you to make something to differ it, maybe add more colors to it, size.

Idea #1
Speaking for quality, professional games doesn't just

Background stars falling from the background. (To make it seem like you are going forward.)

You will need more than that to make a completed game.
My dearest suggestion is to use (hence create) a looping astral background. By looping I mean make it large enough on vertical (example (view.height * 3) for diversity) and (view.width) pixels for horizontal and make it so they connect and fit their top and bottom part so you can make them y infinite and just add a simple yvelocity in order to have a regally attractive background.
Example of design (it isn't meant to be looped)

Idea #2
Power-ups ;D
x1 Photon beam or something.. that gives you power to devastate everything on-screen, causing a screen flickery effect:
Add one canvas on top of your screen so it covers it and use the draw_from function to draw every graphic.
Then all you have to do is ..shake the canvas ;D
Another more performance-wise solution is to create a react player (a simple graphicless player to flicker outside the view on the photon blast)
Then inherit his events from all the actors.

Bug #1
If I continue navigating in some direction even though I reach the end of the screen, moving out backwards will cost me much longer key pressing.
So it seems you didn't set off the acceleration when main ship reaches the screen's bondage.

Bug #2
Not sure what happened, but my ship disappeared at some point ..and I wasn't dead yet.
I was like I WANT MY SHIP BACK WHO TOOK IT SHOULD CONFESS

[Zivouhr]

Sounds like an interesting game Jonathang. Cool to hear you created the sound and graphics and best of luck in college.

[Wertyboy]

The game was like easy at first all you have to do is move around and shoot those things
Then the first boss came out of nowhere and.... I can't even dodge it's attacks!

Btw, good job Jon

[DeltaLeeds]

Sounds like an interesting game Jonathang. Cool to hear you created the sound and graphics and best of luck in college.

Thanks Zivouhr!
I can't make awesome art like you yet though.

The game was like easy at first all you have to do is move around and shoot those things
Then the first boss came out of nowhere and.... I can't even dodge it's attacks!

Btw, good job Jon

The first boss needs skills my friend.
And thanks for the feedback!

Let's start with the downside.
When the screen gets real messy it is truly hard to determine where is my ship! It overwhelmingly resembles these bats.

I don't really have that problem because the ship has orange in it, but I'll try to make it stand out more. I don't think I should change the size, it'll make it harder, if not impossible to dodge the projectiles, but I'll figure this out.

My dearest suggestion is to use (hence create) a looping astral background. By looping I mean make it large enough on vertical (example (view.height * 3) for diversity) and (view.width) pixels for horizontal and make it so they connect and fit their top and bottom part so you can make them y infinite and just add a simple yvelocity in order to have a regally attractive background.

This will be hard for me to make, but I'll try my best doing this, and yes I suspected just putting stars won't improve the gameplay experience.

Power-ups ;D
x1 Photon beam or something.. that gives you power to devastate everything on-screen, causing a screen flickery effect:
Add one canvas on top of your screen so it covers it and use the draw_from function to draw every graphic.
Then all you have to do is ..shake the canvas ;D

Hm, seems like a good idea! I'll add this to my planned features list.

Bug #1
If I continue navigating in some direction even though I reach the end of the screen, moving out backwards will cost me much longer key pressing.
So it seems you didn't set off the acceleration when main ship reaches the screen's bondage.

Fixed, and no sticky situation as well. (Previously I just lazily did directional_velocity=0; <- Sticking on borders. )
Now I fixed it with xvelocity=0; and yvelocity=0; depending on the position.

Bug #2
Not sure what happened, but my ship disappeared at some point ..and I wasn't dead yet.
I was like I WANT MY SHIP BACK WHO TOOK IT SHOULD CONFESS

When did it disappear? What did you do to make it disappear? A screenshot maybe? I never encountered this problem.

[bat78]

When did it disappear? What did you do to make it disappear? A screenshot maybe? I never encountered this problem.

I didn't remember what I did, but this bug may occur if some velocity isn't limited to a fixed number and can grow unexpectedly.

This will be hard for me to make, but I'll try my best doing this, and yes I suspected just putting stars won't improve the gameplay experience.

Drawing infinite astral background isn't hard if you know how to.
You can use the trick with the vertical flip.
It is best if you achieve the skybox illusion. In fact, I will create one for you.
And here you go:

Can't say it is perfect.. but nothing is perfect anyway (and I didn't throw much efforts nor time on it)
Here is a demo of how it looks when looped y infinite (endlong ding lang lang)

vortex.zip

(1.36 MiB) Downloaded 167 times

I don't really have that problem because the ship has orange in it, but I'll try to make it stand out more. I don't think I should change the size, it'll make it harder, if not impossible to dodge the projectiles, but I'll figure this out.

Maybe because you are the designer of the game. You are supposed to be much familiar with it. And I am just a player who tried your game for first time.
So I think your problems are slightly different than mine

Again to remind you, try Omega Wars 2009 I've sent you link to, because it is very likely that it will charge you with idea(s).
They are kinda similar in conception and it is a loved arcade game.

Also, I think your hmb responses incorrectly. I was practically dead whereas it was showing that I have some... yellow quantity left.

[DeltaLeeds]

Drawing infinite astral background isn't hard if you know how to.
You can use the trick with the vertical flip.
It is best if you achieve the skybox illusion. In fact, I will create one for you.
And here you go:
-snip-
Can't say it is perfect.. but nothing is perfect anyway (and I didn't throw much efforts nor time on it)
Here is a demo of how it looks when looped y infinite (endlong ding lang lang)

Alright! I'll try yours out, but it is too detailed for a retro 8-bit game.
Still, I'll try it out, thanks for making one.

Again to remind you, try Omega Wars 2009 I've sent you link to, because it is very likely that it will charge you with idea(s).
They are kinda similar in conception and it is a loved arcade game.

I'll try right now!

Also, I think your hmb responses incorrectly. I was practically dead whereas it was showing that I have some... yellow quantity left.

Fixed because of a silly mistake, my bad! I was in such a hurry to sleep last night so I may have screwed up the health meter bar. Admittedly, I used DarkParadox's bar.

[bat78]

I know it is too advanced for a retro game.
But this isn't actually a real retro game.
Only the graphics are "retro" but the engine is clearly not 8 bit.

That means you are free to combine any artwork as long as you can draw it. And Jon, the end user wouldn't mind.
Besides, I wold even love it as it gives this feeling of...

The new-fashioned kitty in space. That's kitty in space man

AND OF COURSE.. there are both games with retro foreground but modern background and games with modern foreground but retro background

[Zivouhr]

Bat78, cool outer space art!

Jonathang, looking forward to you progress on this game.

[DeltaLeeds]

Bat78, cool outer space art!

Jonathang, looking forward to you progress on this game.

Thanks for your support Ziv, and yeah Bat's space art is amazing!
I'll update the first post on my progress, the game is almost complete, only the huge power up and background music and theme is left for the game!

[bat78]

Bat78, cool outer space art!

Jonathang, looking forward to you progress on this game.

Thanks for your support Ziv, and yeah Bat's space art is amazing!

meh. I blame myself for not being more serious on my first space art art, despite it being made for demonstrative purposes.
..And it isn't even something complicated.

It consists of 3 layers - background, foreground and gfx
the background is black
the foreground has starts, most of them created by a generated noise-based Slur, randomized, 1/1 and then de-saturated. It gives 3D stars effect
the gfx uses custom gradient performed in the color mode of a giant transparent drawing using the chalk brush
Their top and bottom part is designed to be connectible.


I am happy to see that you are truly progressing it!
One of the reasons I check forums more often lately.

[DeltaLeeds]

meh. I blame myself for not being more serious on my first space art art, despite it being made for demonstrative purposes.
..And it isn't even something complicated.

Ahhh, man I never play with noise! And you taught me another lesson on making space parallax, adjusting noise and editing the black and white levels!

I am happy to see that you are truly progressing it!
One of the reasons I check forums more often lately.

I'm flattered.
I'll make sure to have this game done as soon as possible so this won't be a disappointment like my other games.

And your photon powerup is now a thing Bat! It devastates enemies, I'll put it up as a gif to have a demonstration in the first post soon, or perhaps tomorrow!

[bat78]

Lovely!

How about developer cheats?
In all my games, including non-game projects I have implemented at least key passwords, if not admin console

I mean any game has cheats.. literally.. any.
There is no other way for devs to test features.
Some professional game developers like Hiari, 343 Industries and Capcom removes them on the public version.. but this is not true

[DeltaLeeds]

Lovely!

How about developer cheats?
In all my games, including non-game projects I have implemented at least key passwords, if not admin console

I mean any game has cheats.. literally.. any.
There is no other way for devs to test features.
Some professional game developers like Hiari, 343 Industries and Capcom removes them on the public version.. but this is not true

I always do that in my games Bat.
But I'll erase it when I release it of course! In the current version, the cheat is "cheat=bad".
It brings you to the final boss or something, I keep changing the function of the cheat so I forgot what the cheat does in the current uploaded version.

P.S: The GIF of the photon blast (AKA: FLASHBANG) is now in the first post! It was supposed to be done an hour ago, but I kept going to the service unavailable page of gE after uploading the image.