Lots O Stuff

Didn't realize it had been this long since I updated here. >_>

The main thing to report is that I'm getting a bunch of my stuff ready for publishing on OUYA. Yay!

Here's a list of the ones I'm planning on bring over:
-Megatank (v2)
-Laser Carrot Attack (v2)
-Fire Arrow
-Flying V (remix/V5/OUYA Edition/whatever)
- (unnamed Space Harrier type game)
- (unnamed dragon game)

The other thing is that I started experimenting with a little paper doll animation thing that could in theory be used to build a fighting game (or something more interesting, hopefully.)

As you can see, even only using an incomplete graphics set (no side or back views yet), it can yield some interesting results. I've even made it to export all the pertinent data for each animation frame. The issue is, though, that the amount of data that needed exporting took me aback somewhat. Somehow, an 8-frame kick animation managed to take up 900+ lines! Granted, that's with every variable hogging the whole line for itself; but still.

Basically, I'm going to have to figure out some clever loading/data crunching scheme if I ever plan to use any of this stuff.. which I would really like to.

Fire Arrow

Beta

This one started as a fun little side project trying to teach my friend GML; but soon got out of hand and became it's own game. It's a short, timed survival/caravan shmup that can be played in 3 or 5 minute modes. In 3 minute mode, you get roughly half the stage and 1 boss, while in 5 you have 2 bosses to fight.

The music isn't original to this game, I was lazy and just used some favorites from my tracker/module collection. As I haven't requested explicit permission to use any of these (I thought it might be ok since there's no pretense of selling this), I'll remove any or all of them upon request if necessary.

Tracks:

Cool City by Purple Motion
The Tiara by Solaris
1234 ROCK! by Yannis Brown
Marucombat by Maruku Buranu (Marc Brown)
Hyperdyne by Static
Acronyme by Baroque


The game will also look for songs (.mod/.s3m/.it etc.) in the music folder on startup, so feel free to use your own favorites instead. :)

Megatank Beta up for play!

 (Thanks goes to SSK for the video, as always.)

Here it is!

Feel free to leave any comments or bug reports here, on my thread at shmups, or on the game's thread at the GMC. Enjoy! :)

This is still the beta; but you can still purchase the EXE version directly from me for $2 if you like. The current version has some cool music by Raigon, which I couldn't include in the web version due to sound issues.

FV update

New videos courtesy of SSK. :)



This is the new mode (it's called "Arcade Extra" on the menu now), where enemy bullets change to medals if you clear the entire formation/wave - some of which only consist of a single enemy. There are some more differences from the standard game, too, such as a simple rank system that replaces the difficulty settings (the ones in the options menu do not apply in AE mode.) Basically, reaching a target number of completed waves - ie. 25/50/75 - will cause a subtle spike in difficulty; but being as the medal values increase alongside this, you'll ultimately have to tough it out with faster bullets and more aggressive enemies if you want the best score.

Speaking of score, AE mode has a much, much higher scoring potential than the other modes, I've made it just under 80 million on recent test runs. This also means the extend requirements are similarly higher - by at least 3x.

Also new (for all modes) is that the Dual weapon is now different for every ship. Hurray for variety!

Fire Eagle - Wide back/forwards spread, similar to the kind seen in Star Soldier games.
Gold Hawk - Focused, narrowing forward shot for concentrating all firepower on a single target.
Jade - Targeting shot similar to the Talon; but focuses on a single target.
Sapphire - Bits independently target enemies, same as the old default one.


Also also new is a bonus for destroying an enemy before they can fire. Right now you get 15x that enemy's value; but that may change.


ALSO ALSO ALSO... I just went back and added tags to all my previous posts here (not there was really that many), so it's easier to pinpoint info on specific games, videos, demo links and whatnot now. :)

Map Builder, Medals, New Video

I've just made a rudimentary 'fake' scrolling tile system for XYX as well as a handy little map builder that lets me arrange them and export the arrays to a text file. Fake as in not using any of GM's predefined tile functions.

This just shows some plain colored tiles; but I'll substitute these as soon as I have some real ones made.

It remains to be seen, though, how efficient it will be to work with within the current system I have or even how well it'll run on my legacy PC. It might have to wait for another game... or a sequel.

I also introduced some post-game 'medals' on the suggestion of a friend over at Shmups.

New default Hiscore table, showing perfect clear medals counting down from 4.

Right now, they're only given for subsequent perfect clears and, unlike the character/ship unlocks, you lose them if you continue, so keeping them is an achievement in itself.

New video courtesy of SSK, showing off some new stuff on level 4:

more

Another one courtesy SSK:


Here you can see what little I have of level 5 so far and some new explosion fx I worked on this weekend.

Other new stuff:

-Got some awesome new FM-style music tracks for XYX from Raigon. I think they solidify the arcade feel flawlessly.
-XYX now uses score_under's DLLCrypt extension for saving scores, etc. I've noticed a slight speed drop using it on my netbook, though, so I'll probably leave it as an option.

THINGS

Some new footage of ZPF courtesy of my buddy SSK:





The biggest news, though, is that XYX now supports 2 players! It took almost a solid day of GM'ing to hammer out the basic stuff (still working on the rest....slowly.) I doubt it will actually ever be played by two people at the same time; but it's fun to map the controls to the sticks on a USB gamepad and play dual style. :D

(I even put in a handy autofire function if you don't have a gamepad for your PC.)

Yay!

STUFF AND THINGS

New video showing more of level 3 and the beginning of level 4. Thanks again to SSK for helping me with these.

... and here's a dragon enemy for level 5. The background here is only temporary; but the theme will most likely be of the classic hell/fire level variety. Chances are the boss might just be the friendly looking fella from the title screen. :D
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I'm also getting art and page layouts ready for the game's manual... which I intend to have printed for a premium disc-based version of the game. More on that later.

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.

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.

New video

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

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

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.

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.