SpaceHorde

[scirath]

I got a bit frustrated with some code I was working on, so decided it was time to take a break (by programming something else, of course ). It was thrown together over the course of a few evenings, so the code's pretty messy. Other than a title graphic and some more audio, it's mostly "finished." Now I wait to hear from the guinea pigs....erm, I mean...playtesters (friends I've "recruited").

Anywho, it's a basic space shooter, simplistic, but hopefully a teensy bit fun.

Instructions are on the title page ... well, where the title would be if there were a graphic for it. :-D

SpaceHorde.png (56.03 KiB) Viewed 6741 times

http://sourceforge.net/projects/spacehorde/

SpaceHorde.love

(4.22 MiB) Downloaded 734 times

(In case the sourceforge page dies again.)

[coffee]

Sourceforge is working fine.

About your game;
Not the typical shoot-em-up. Ships are too small so we need to really focus and hit'them for some time. Not really "hordes of ships" type with fire and forget.

Good Things: Engine work well. no slowdows, no problems. Nice menus, fits with music.

The Less Good: Very repetitive for now. Same ships, same weapon, same everything.

Sugestions: Also can use mouse in menu choices. More variety in gameplay. Need pause button.

[scirath]

Sourceforge is working fine.

And so it is. It'd gone out when I made that post.

About your game;
Not the typical shoot-em-up. Ships are too small so we need to really focus and hit'them for some time. Not really "hordes of ships" type with fire and forget.

The three hits to kill was intentional. It's just an idea I wanted to try out, since I tend to get bored out of my skull with the one hit, one kill approach. Oh, LOL, the "hordes" part of the title came about when I had the 'add an enemy' mechanics tweaked a bit too high...

but i have a gun.png (96.85 KiB) Viewed 6718 times

Good Things: Engine work well. no slowdows, no problems. Nice menus, fits with music.

Heh, thanks. I've been looking for something to use the music with for awhile. I get some slowdowns at times, but that's probably just my laptop.

The Less Good: Very repetitive for now. Same ships, same weapon, same everything.

Well, yeah ... hence "simplistic." (I also made a point of using graphics, etc., on-hand, which meant fewer choices.)

Sugestions: Also can use mouse in menu choices. More variety in gameplay. Need pause button.

Mm-hmm. I definitely hear you on the pause button ... I got interrupted by someone banging on the window == boom.

As for the more variety, I'd really only intended this to be a quick vent for my frustration. ... But I had fun getting it this far, so I'm thinking I'll keep working on it in my spare time.

[scirath]

Ships are too small so we need to really focus and hit'them for some time.

Oh, hey ... I found a bug that was affecting the collision detection on player beams. ... Got that fixed now (dunno if it'll solve your difficulties hitting a smaller target though ).

Other changes:
• Added an alert sound for when the difficulty changes
• Increased the rate of appearance & horde size growth (difficulty adjusted to fit this) ... maybe too much
• Added a power up to increase weapon speed; it's cumulative, so MUHAHAHAHA (remember, this is just an alpha)

At this point, I think I need to restructure my code to make it easier (in the long run) to work with, before adding in more weapons & threats. Stay tuned?

SpaceHorde0.2b.love

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[coffee]

The problem scirath is that the game is still a bit unbalanced. Look, we are bigger and have more work to evade enemy bullets. We have to hit them 3 times that couldn't be so bad if we didn't also to evade his bullets in middle of our attack. Happens that in a wave of 4 enemies probably I only got time to shoot 2 or if things gone well 3 enemies. In other hand they are very small so we need to shoot in the right place. In massive waves I spent more to avoid them than shoot them. Please at least make it double-shot only. It could help a lot.

At least we have now the new power-up but they are also small and sometimes take a while to get to other side to catch it, so as with health I let escape a lot of them. That's because our ship isn't so fast. It takes about 4-5 seconds to cross horizontally the screen. Also very big problem at least for me in a 1920x1080 resolution the health and weapon power up look almost exactly the same. The small rotative icon is badly seen. Also would be fair (and less demanding) that power-ups don't be random placed but as debris of destroyed ships. You should motivate people to risk a bit more and kill them with some reward. Can't you give instead distinct colors to power-ups?

[scirath]

LOL, it's an idea development, dude, chill out. Screen res, I can't do anything about, unless you want me to default 800x600 fullscreen & maybe have blurry graphics (these are on-hand graphics, remember: I'm merely altering things from free libs as a way of saving time ... if I weren't, we wouldn't be having this discussion for at least another month from now).

With the balance, I'm still tinkering with things. I'll try to get it a bit more ironed out by the time I've got code restructured enough to add more stuff (I'm thinking three different types of enemy ships, rocks, and at least another weapon). With the ships, I'll have different hit-to-kill amounts; I'll also look at staging a bit closer. Still, it'll be just another shooter, so I don't have any grand plans for it ... it's there to pass time/relieve frustration/generate ideas for other games.

I really don't find it difficult to get up to at least 2 one-ups (though not much further), myself, but I grew up with games like this ... or worse (heh, the one that inspired this thing didn't even give you the ability to take more than one hit, didn't change pace, had only one weapon, and no one-ups).

Hmm, I dunno. Maybe it'd help to think of this as "Nightmare Mode"? *Evil grin.* (In before "Troll Mode".)

But yeah ... I'll keep working on it.

Also, bug fix: I messed up & had it writing to one save directory, and trying to read from another.

SpaceHorde0.2.1b.love

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P.S., Different colored power-ups should be easy enough. Leaving them as debris, I'll need to think about (mostly how I'd place that in the new code structure I'm formulating in my head) ... the motivation for shooting the enemy as it stands is to increase the number of power-ups & how often they generate (it's tied into the number of enemies on-screen at any one time).

[coffee]

LOL, I'm "chilled", I was just saying my opinion about general playability, not really demanding, just suggesting some things to improve it if you want.
Ah, I'm not saying really that the game is hard. I was more saying that the rate of enemy non destroyed ships is too high because turns impossible to get them all (slow ship to cover all the sides). Even in earlier stage of game one or two always escape. And hey I don't play it so bad either.

Hmmm, I too think as you warned the speed power-up can be abused and really needs to be limited. Have one speed increase is already an enough fire performance from having nothing. But with two and letting the finger in space it almost gives an "continous" laser beam.

Resolution is fine (and I don't full screen). Just saying the readibility of power shots were bad. Alpha painting would be enough to know the difference without effort.

I think the game is improving, just need some tunning. But yes, take it easy. Do it slow, no one is pushing you.

[MarekkPie]

I think the "Look" in your other statement, coffee, is what conveyed aggression. I imagine a husband and wife nagging at each other, with one ending with "Look, I'm not going to visit your mother for the fourth time this month. That's final!"

[scirath]

I think the "Look" in your other statement, coffee, is what conveyed aggression. I imagine a husband and wife nagging at each other, with one ending with "Look, I'm not going to visit your mother for the fourth time this month. That's final!"

Hehe. My lady-friend just rolls her eyes (I think she's figured out it aggravates me the most).

But nah, I hadn't really taken coffee's statement as one of aggression. My "chill out" comment was more of the thought that my game had argh'd him out a bit. (TBH, I'm usually the grumpy one around that particular time of day. ) Coffee's just trying to help out, though, and I generally take it as such; I assume the language oddities are simply indicators that he's a non-native speaker. I'm guessing Eastern European? LOL, now I'm curious. Coffee'll hafta let us know (if he wants to, that is).

[MarekkPie]

Just giving him some of the nuances of English.