Portraits

Not quite finished with these; but they're getting there.

Lords of Shadow rant..

No updates this time, I've been keeping those mostly to my thread at shmups.

Anyways, my brother was awesome and got me the new Castlevania for Christmas, knowing how big a fan I am of the series. I like it; but being a fan, I have to admit it leaves me feeling pretty conflicted. Here's my take:

I haven't stuck with it long enough to see where it 'gets better' (hopefully it will start to actually resemble a Castlevania game at that point); but my conclusion is that this is basically the Star Fox Adventures of the series.

1: Started out as a different game
2: Given to an outside developer (I'm aware the series has moved many times between different teams; but those were typically divisions of Konami.)
3: As a result of 1 & 2, the game contains characters, environments, enemies, story elements and music that are *totally* out of place, making the entire experience almost wholly alien to fans.

I'd also say it's kind of the Metroid Prime of the series as well, in the way that it tries to build on the mythology of the previous games in... admittedly bizarre (and sometimes unwelcome) ways. Why are there Central American looking ruins in Europe, guys? Oh, an ancient civilization no one knew existed, ok....wait, what? Do we *really* have to muck around with the history of a part of the world that is already pretty mysterious and cool as it is this much to get buff guys in leather whipping skeletons and vampires? Just...come on.

That said, I'm enjoying this one a lot... while I can manage to suppress my inner Castlevania fanboy at least. He rages at almost every plot point (even some of the enemy descriptions want to make me beat my head into a wall) ; but it's still a fun game and very pretty to look at.

The only thing I can't excuse at all is the music. If there's anything that could oust a game from the series despite it saying 'Castlevania' on the packaging, it's a generic and dull orchestral soundtrack like this one. Combined with some of the admittedly out-there architecture that's going on, I feel like I'm playing Lord of the Rings rather than a horror game. :|

XYX Update

Started tinkering with XYX some again.... trying to get back on schedule (and that end of the year deadline...ugh.) These are some neato emblems I made to go along with the pilot portraits. The Yellow Jacket one isn't quite finished (it was supposed to be on a heart); but the bug is, so screw it for now. :D

Happy Halloween!

These are the first images for a horror/adventure game I want to make with a few of my friends (who I collaborate with on small writing projects off and on.) Basically, these would be like those startling and memorable 'YOU HAVE DIED' screens from games like Shadowgate or the Uninvited, where you get a horrific description of your own death coupled with a closeup of the nasty that just did you in.

I love those games for that fact it utilizes your imagination more than any actual visual depictions of gory deaths and is no less effective in creating a horrifying and threatening atmosphere for it.

The actual part of the game you interact with I imagine being much simpler visually.. again, to force you to use your imagination more than you would normally playing a game. That said, I have yet to put down any code on this yet, so there's no telling what it'll actually look like. Here's hoping I can get some good stuff written and this thing doesn't fall off for a few more months (or longer.)

A MANIACAL LAUGH ECHOES
IN THE INFINITE DARKNESS
THAT SURROUNDS YOU .
YOU REALIZE YOU ARE DEAD!

ZPF - new footage

Just showing off some of the new enemies and backgrounds.



Apologies for the absolute shit quality, though. The eternal battle with screen recorders goes on.

More

New, more futuristic HUD for the appropriate ships.

Anyone who's played my old Blast Works stuff may recognize this guy. :)

ZPF things

I'm back to working on ZPF.

As you can see, I've decided to go a slightly different route with the theme. The original idea was for it to be a sort of techno-fantasy cross all the way through; but fiddling with the game recently has given me a few alternate ideas.

Basically, now it's going to jump back and forth between different settings, this way I can cover more familiar bases (ie. bio horror ala R-Type) as well go back to some older ideas I'd like to re-use. Every one will have a playable ship to match it, too. :)

New demo

Took long enough -_-

New music, 3 levels, 3 bosses. Not finalized by any stretch of the imagination'; but enough new stuff that I think it's worth showing.

(swiped from my post on shmups)
Performance notes:

For lower spec systems (ie netbook), set fx to no blur or minimum, set debris off, music off. Medal mode might also cause a hit from the higher instance count. None of these have a *huge* impact on performance; but it's enough to help.

'No blur' gives the game a slightly sharper look, too. I think I prefer it slightly.

Random stuff/glitches/ little crap I forgot to fix:
- small medals are occasionally counted twice at the end of a stage
- if you change weapons while a powerup is moving towards you, it will keep moving
- snake segments sometimes won't die with the head section
- train sections sometimes take longer to self-destruct than they should
- Talons sometimes target enemies that can't be hit

Almost.....there....

Sound Test

I just finished a creepy little song for the Game Over/ Continue countdown screen, too.

New boss!

One to go (for Level 2) and the demo's a wrap I think...

Working on ZPF again, new Flying V demo soon..

Maybe it was just burnout from working on the same thing for so long (Flying V); but i started tinkering with ZPF again.



- Updated enemy bullet patterns. No more messiness, patterns screwing up once the enemy starts/stops moving.

- New sound effects (mostly from Kyutwo.com and Shockwave Sound.) The ones I had made in SFXR were generally fine until they all played at the same time..ugh.

- Options (into which the Enemy Test mode is embedded)

- Enemy Test is more configurable and up to date with FV's now. You can select variations on the current enemy's behavior/ movement patterns, how many times to loop, and number of steps between loops. (1 step = 1/60th a second)

- New Maximum Fire mode which replaces each weapon's previous level 3 setting. When the meter is visible (the flaming sword in the HUD), hold X to a fire a more powerful shot.
- You can now use all three ship variants I've made so far.

---------------------------

New FV demo coming soon, too.

I had to cut down some of the content of level 1, leaving stuff that could be added in other places. Basically, the demo will have 3 levels instead of 2 now, although they will probably be on the short side. I think I just need a few more enemy types to fill in the gaps that are there.

New music and Yoyogames.com troubles

Prepping to put in some new music (finally), Flying V now has tsg1zzn's Super Sound System installed. (I used the handy .gex extension version by Melcastro.)

I even cranked out a few cheapie test tracks in Garageband...hahaha. The one I made for the first boss actually came out kinda good, though, so it's probably staying. <_< Anyways, I know I don't get much traffic here; but I think it's worth mentioning anyways: YYG is apparently having some virus trouble, so be wary of clicking on any game links here for the time being.

Progress?

*Finally* making some progress on level 2.

New snakes - they're more like the standard snakes you see in most shmups, where you can break off any body segment and see the 'skeleton' underneath.
New enemy - kill the little nasties and the ship flies off! :)

Other stuff :
- Green snakes are more interesting and fun now (ie they don't suck/aren't completely FUBAR)
- Enemy test mode added. You can adjust the time interval between enemy spawns and how many times the pattern loops.

Holy crap, key config!

Big deal, I know; but it is my first.

FV : Some things

-Redid Fire Eagle's sprites
-Redid orange tank sprites

-Snazzy new big number font and other random new graphics
-New Medal Mode (ok, I just swiped what I had in ZpUltra; but it's new for this game at least)
-End stage display/medal total countdown
-Arrangement is now strictly per-moment time based (like XYX) rather than loop based
-New enemy patterns (made possible due to simplifying a lot of what I already had)

The next step is pretty much just rebuilding stage 1. Now that I don't have messy loops to deal with, I think I can make the timing much, much smoother than before.

Flying V (V2) - Newest version footage

Sorry about the watermark, the ugly low res and the lack of sound... it's the absolute best I could get with my crappy pc. >_>

Also, Dxtory is officially the winner out of all the screen recording software I've tried.

XYX Pilot Portraits

Yellow Jacket

Helltiger

Green Knight

New video

A friend from deviantart posted this no checkpoint run of XYX's first level. Thanks, man!

Flying V updated

Flying V: New version

No big additions or anything, just lots of tweaks. Options menu (from XYX), new effects, improved bullet visibility etc.

New stuff

New project (collaboration), NEON


XYX: Level 3, first shots!

Demo up, music links

Get the new XYX demo here!

From the readme:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: Outside of selecting them, I can take absolutely no credit for these songs whatsoever. 110% Respect to the original artists who made them! You are legends!


ALSO, DO NOT DISTRIBUTE THIS GAME WITH ANY MUSIC FILES. If you decide to host this ZIP file somewhere else, that's fine, just don't repack it with music. It doesn't belong to me, nor does it to you.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
song 1 (title) BASTILLE by Reverb

song 2 (level 1) SHOOTEMUP by Dr. Awesome

song 3 (level 2) Acronyme by Baroque

song 4 (unused)

song 5 (unused)

song 6 (unused)

song 7 (unused)

song 8 (boss) COOL CITY by Purple Motion

song 9 (stage clear) Soothsayer by Fleshbrain

song 10 (continue) Feedback by Necros/PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

XYX Bosses - one down, one close

Most of my GM time this weekend was spent re-coding background stuff (what I had before didn't really allow for on-the-fly changes... who knew a simple looping background image could be such a pain in the ass?); but I made some headway on the bosses -


Torus - This image was actually done way back in Dec., I had a much more complex multi-sectioned boss in mind when I first drew it... you destroyed some part to reveal a gigantic beating heart! It's still fun to blow up in this simplified form, though.

Big Tiger - His third appearance (well, technically at least.) First in Blast Works (YXIII), in a much nastier form... and later as a mess of unfinished tiles in Dezaemon 2. The turret and part of the treads are inherited from D2; but only a few days old in Game Maker, he's already far more functional than he ever was it that...

Jeez...just when I think I think I'm catching up, I realize I've left out some basic feature.
Only recently added:

-Continues
-Extends
-Stage Clear evaluation/bonuses

I'm sure there's other stuff I've forgotten, so it's good to get the very, very basic stuff done with I guess. <_<

(XYX is progressing pretty good other than that.)

Several updates..

XYX now uses GM Bassmod (pretty kickass little extension), so in the next demo, you'll be able to use whatever classic module/tracker songs you so desire via the ini file. This is mainly because I'm too lazy to try to get permission for any of the ones I'd actually like to use. I tend to gravitate towards those prestigious PC/Amiga demoscene ones, you see.

Also checkpoints... because I know how much people loooove those >_>

New video

Just showing off some stuff I've been working on. This is actually *just* short of the length I want for this level. The problem is about half of the enemies don't really fit (the ones I imported the gfx for, naturally) and belong in their own level, so you're basically seeing two halves of what will be separate levels... just crammed together.

Not shown are the new options menu (my first decent one...yay) and enemy test mode. I even tossed in a music option; but GM is as finicky as ever about playing anything that isn't say, raw wave format, so it does absolutely squat at the moment. I have one unused song from fellow shmupster null1024 (who kindly made the song that's in Flying V for me); but I'm always looking for more. :3

YXIV stuff

Got all my sprites back from my previous Dezaemon 2 (Sega Saturn) project, YXIV:


Note, however, there are problems doing this the way I did it (PrtScr directly from Sega Saturn Frontier.) Several vertical lines of pixels would always end up missing and need 'repairing.'

I figure there's no point letting several months worth of decent spriting go to waste, so I'm going to incorporate what I can into XYX. :3

Back to the grind...

Got back to work on XYX. Nothing major yet; but it has snazzy new intro type stuff and lots of little fixes and tweaks.

I forgot how much I hate stage arrangement, though....ugh -_-

Flying V is up to it's current (pre-Eeepocalpyse) version now, too.

New Demo!

ZP-F

Formerly known as Knight, which doesn't work,since the knight 'ship' isn't usable anymore. He looked cool and all; but it was hard to gauge where his hitbox was.

Anyways, this is just a short 1-level demo. It doesn't have a boss yet or changing backgrounds or anything and some of the enemy placement is iffy (especially the brand new lion-headed ones); but there ya go. It has a nifty (well, for me at least) 'test' mode for trying out/testing enemies and a short demo explaining the controls. Hooray. :3

Probably not too impressive for yall; but for me it means (roughly) getting back to where I was before the EEEpocalypse. Give it a spin.

I did some more stuff for Infinity Squadron, too.. lookie:

These were made for the cool little shmup Infinity Squadron by fellow GMer monkeyman (who was very helpful when I was getting my feet wet with GML)

No idea if they'll be used; but I had fun making them at least. :3

Knight Demo

My newest untitled shooter thingie. Not sure how far I'm going to go with this one; but it's fairly promising so far.

ZpULTRA procedes

I've been putting off updating this one for the longest time (since it was 99% drag and drop and very, very messy); but not having the others to work on and having an old backup of it on my work PC, I figured 'why not'?

So, for the majority of the week (and to the detriment of work, sleep and sanity), I've been getting Zp back up to speed. The version was missing a lot of things (the third ship, all of level 2 etc.); but thankfully, I found a copy of the latest Illustrator 'sprite sheet' buried in my mailbox, so replacing that stuff isn't a really issue... especially with the speedier workflow that comes to the table with my experience in GML.

Anyways, I'm hoping to have a new demo up soon.

... or perhaps something new based on the work I've been doing (ala XYX)

Newest shot... now just XYX, taken not half an hour before my laptop crapped out on me.



XYX: DEAD demo version @ Yoyogames
Not the version from the screenie above, unfortunately... it's the last one I had saved somewhere other than n my (now dead) laptop. :P



FLYING V demo version @ Yoyogames

The demo is newer version than the video, it's resolution was changed to a (more) proper 3:4 screen ratio and there are a number of other improvements. Again, not the newest version; but there's not much I can do about that right now.



ZpULTRA demo version @ Yoyogames.

My first Game Maker project, which I stopped working on not long after I started to come to grips with GML. This one's got a lot of problems....so, you've been warned.