Starfire Lords: Genesis

[josefnpat]

Starfire Lords: Genesis
Screenshots



Gameplay
SL:G is a top-down 2d space shooter with semi-cooperative play. Each level has a small handful of objectives, a lot of enemies to kill, and one double-agent on the players' team. This spy could be one of your friends, or it could be an AI, and his job is to sabotage the player's goal without getting killed.

Development History
I've been working on this game for the last couple of years, off and on. Last year I brought another dev named Wes Paugh on to help with AI and some other stuff. Resolved to finally finish the damn thing, he and I are making a big push to get a playable game to a shippable state!
The game is written in Löve 0.9.1 , which we've been upgrading from 0.8.0 to make it easier to port to Android (Ouya!). So in the past week, I've been able to get the game from scratch to a solid first level. The Spy idea is a recent pivot for the GDD; previously, the game featured either a co-op mode against waves of enemies and a deathmatch mode that was a free-for-all. Unfortunately, both of these modes had some design problems that would have required a lot of new art to get around, but the "Spy" idea provides a promising alternative solution.

Next Steps
We're doing weekly user testing with players. So far it's just been our friends, but we're interested in distributing to bored webtrollers in the coming weeks and will be taking the game to the Too Many Games con in Philadelphia next week to find more interested testers. Please PM me or leave a response here if you're interested!
Our first goal is to make sure the semi-coop actually works and is fun. Part of that is going to mean fleshing out the AI. We've got a basic state machine with 'wandering' behaviour, which can now be extended into seek/pursue/flee/retreat/etc. We've got a basic 'kill all' objective, and plan to add timers, boss ships, and possibly convoys to destroy or motherships to protect as additional mission objectives.
It's also going to be important to continue making the game as pretty as possible. We've got parallaxing working, and can add planets and other spacey stuff into our backgrounds fairly easily, and made some performance improvements that will allow us to add more shinies and pretties.

For anyone interested in testing, please join our mailing list! http://eepurl.com/XyBr5

[Jeeper]

Looks cool and has an interesting concept.

A video would be cool to see!

[Germanunkol]

Neato!

I love cooperative games. Nice
Would love to see a video some day soon.

If you want the planets to move, I'd love to contribute: http://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php? ... et#p159890
Let me know if you want the code for that stuff. Needs shader support though, and would increase your startup-time a bit (since the planets are generated on the fly). Might not be what you need.

Keep it up!

[SiENcE]

Nice game, would like to test! PM me when you have something playable!

Some feelings:
- The screenshots are very darkish...you might rise the gamma or contrast.
- The background looks not deep enough for space, also a bit boring and too colorless. My add different levels of depth like planets, meteroids and stars. Take a look at other space games...like eve aso.
- The style of the spacce ships looks cool. But also here...use different colors for different space ships...otherwise you can't easily distinguish them.

I'm looking forward to test.

cheers^

[josefnpat]

A video would be cool to see!

Will do! It should be out pretty damn soon!

If you want the planets to move, I'd love to contribute: http://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php? ... et#p159890
Let me know if you want the code for that stuff. Needs shader support though, and would increase your startup-time a bit (since the planets are generated on the fly). Might not be what you need.

I have not implemented planets yet, and they are on the list! I would love to get a copy of this library! Tell me how to contact or, or PM/IRC me :)

Nice game, would like to test! PM me when you have something playable!

Some feelings:
- The screenshots are very darkish...you might rise the gamma or contrast.
- The background looks not deep enough for space, also a bit boring and too colorless. My add different levels of depth like planets, meteroids and stars. Take a look at other space games...like eve aso.
- The style of the space ships looks cool. But also here...use different colors for different space ships...otherwise you can't easily distinguish them.

I'm looking forward to test.

cheers^

Thank you for the kind words!

I've been working on it this afternoon, and our designer helped me out with the coloration! Also, the parralaxing doesn't come across in screenshots, so here's an animated gif:




As for the colors of the ships, they are just in place so I know which ones are good guys and which ones are badguys! This should be fixed very soon :)

I would be honored if you folks would sign up for the SL:G newsletter. Early on I am hoping to use it for testing!

For anyone interested in testing, please join our mailing list! http://eepurl.com/XyBr5

[SiENcE]

I send it too you also on Twitter...but i think it's helpful for others too.

Space and Planet Photoshop Tutorials To Create Amazing Space Scenes
http://www.designshard.com/video-tutori ... ce-scenes/

[josefnpat]

I send it too you also on Twitter...but i think it's helpful for others too.

Space and Planet Photoshop Tutorials To Create Amazing Space Scenes
http://www.designshard.com/video-tutori ... ce-scenes/

These are very nice, and if I had more time, I'd do all of them!

Germanunkol shared his 3d library, and it looks pretty damn cool; WIP:

[Germanunkol]

Hey, you got it working!
Awesome

It looks a little weird that the planet has a dark side but the ships don't... maybe you could deactivate the shadow i the shader. (If I remember correctly, setting the sun's position right about the planet should do.)

Or you could create normalmaps and shade the ships, of course, but I doubt that'll be worth the effort...

[josefnpat]

Hey, you got it working!
Awesome :)

It looks a little weird that the planet has a dark side but the ships don't... maybe you could deactivate the shadow i the shader. (If I remember correctly, setting the sun's position right about the planet should do.)

Or you could create normalmaps and shade the ships, of course, but I doubt that'll be worth the effort...

NORMAL MAPS YOU SAY?

It's a TODO item :) Might be able to reuse the shadow from the planet!

https://twitter.com/josefnpat/status/47 ... 32/photo/1

[jasper.davis]

something I noticed was when your ships is zooming around the stars seem to move way quicker than anything around the ship when it should usually be the opposite, as in the objects around the ship move more than the background. that might be something to look into.