Carlosvision - Illustrafers

[diordna]

Decided a week late that I should enter Carlosvision. I leave for Boston in a week, and I'll be gone for the rest of the contest, so I only have this week to do this. Hope I do okay.

July 1 - High scores, fixes, other stuff. Now with Intel and Windows builds up to date.

June 25 - Intel build added. Hope this fixes everything, I leave tomorrow morning until Friday evening, about 9pmEST. Plans for my return include an end game tally screen with shot accuracy, maybe a powerup or two, and some boss tweaking. Oh, and I might enter a second game, a Centipede clone, but I'll only have a day or so to make it.

June 24 - Tweaked stuff. Fixed bugs. Drew boss graphics. Made new levels. More stuff I forgot. Added LCD-optimized (read: darkned gfx) version.

June 23 - Reworked level format. Made gameplay changes which I forgot. Added boss functionality and one boss level. Removed kemalyun's Galaxian-clone level because it's not in the new format and I haven't converted it yet. Added pause feature (press P) and shields (press Down). Put instructions on the title screen.

June 22 - Changed name. Added sounds. Fixed bugs. What is going on with this ship fading thing? Made 2 enemies dive differently - yellow ship homes in on you, and red bug does weird wavy thing that you have to shoot just right to stop.

June 21 - Each enemy now has its own explosion. Added a new enemy type. Changed the loading screen. Put in a prefs dialog. Added fullscreen mode. Added title screen and little lives-left indicator. You can lose now. So now it plays like an actual game.

June 20 - Fixed Cmd-Q. Stupid Blitz. Added some rudimentary enemy diving. And explosions. And the ability to advance in level when everyone's dead. And changed how the shots look, by popular request.

June 19 later - Moved all enemy placement into level file format, added options for orbiting, made enemies able to shoot. When you get hit, you just move back to the middle. Just so you know you got hit.

June 19 - Here's what I've got today: 4 enemies that can move around and be shot. You can move your ship. Most of what I did today was the graphics, and those still aren't done, but from this build you can see what the game is going to be. Suggestions welcome (including ones for a better name). Please unload all your ideas on me.

Priorities, in order of importance:
-Put accuracy bonuses in the end-game screen
-Rapid-fire bonuses for every 5,000 points (maybe)
-Suggestions from the masses are welcome

http://diordna.spymac.com/Artack.zip
http://diordna.spymac.com/Artack_LCD.zip

[igame3d]

To Do:
Allow the program to quit.

Neat genre, the whole sketch stuff.

[JustinFic]

Allow the program to quit.

I second a command-Q request.

Aside from that:

- The enemy bullets are hard to see, and the player bullets are near impossible. Make them bigger or give them more contrast against the white paper background.
- Maybe you can use those big pink pencil erasers as the bunkers.
- Have the enemies make some sort of gradual advance against the player. An alternative to having that back and forth march from Space Invaders would be to have them dive bomb the player with increasing frequency over time.

Movement types:
- Guarding/escorting
- Swarming around an object (have the enemy constantly accelerate towards an object, whether it be a stronger enemy, a mothership, or a hive.) It will constantly overshoot the object and then compensate, giving it the appearance of buzzing around it. Get 10-15 enemies doing this and it will look sweet. Destroying the main object could disperse them and they'd go crazy, so as the player you'd have to pick them off one by one without destroying the main object.
- More formation stuff. Looks like there's some in there already, with the invaders moving relative to a center point that moves around. That's cool so expand on it. Be able to scale and rotate the formation. So you can have an echelon of badguys spin around and all dive at you at once.

Enemy types:
- Strong enemies that take a few hits to kill and have an escort of weaker enemies
- Bonus enemies that the player is not required to kill but yield good points (UFO)
- Something similar to the flea from Centipede- just dives from the top straight down. Is out of play once it goes off the bottom.
- Some sort of boss/mothership/hive, with some sort of shield like the boss from Gorf. Make the shield rotate for additional awesomeness.

[unknown]

when you get hit: BOOM
Also thats so cool, great idea!

[diordna]

Fixed Cmd-Q. Apparently I'm not allowed to just poll the keys directly, I have to check for the badly-documented "AppTerminate()."

Thanks Justinfic! I actually didn't think of doing group diving, except like in the original Galaga, with the one big ship and the 2 bug thingies.

The way it's set up now is that first you define a "group," and some points it moves between (the green dots on the screen; those will go away after testing). Then you add some enemies, and assign them a group, and define how they move around that group - they could stay put (relative to the group), or pulse in and out like the current ones do, or orbit around it. Is that what you mean by "rotating and scaling"? Maybe I should allow certain enemies to be free-moving, not attached to a group.

I implement diving today. I'll be sure to allow for divers to gather "followers."

With the shield boss thing, I could just draw a shield piece and add about 12, all rotating around the group, and have the guy in the middle, without having to add extra code. Good idea.

I can see the shots fine, on my screen they're about 1/4cm across. Bad ones are red and good ones are blue. I wonder why other people can't see them.

[JustinFic]

Is that what you mean by "rotating and scaling"?

Not quite. Think of how when you move the group's main center point, all enemies in that group move with it. Now think about giving that point a rotation, which rotates all enemies in the group around that center point. So you can have the enemies stay in a echelon formation, and just rotate the whole formation.

Maybe I should allow certain enemies to be free-moving, not attached to a group.

Definitely- or allow them to detach and reattach to their group. So you can have a dive bomber that leaves formation to attack, then returns to it.

I can see the shots fine, on my screen they're about 1/4cm across. Bad ones are red and good ones are blue. I wonder why other people can't see them.

On my screen the bad shots are a light pink, and the good shots are a very faint blue. That plus the motion makes them impossible to see and follow. Definitely make them have huge contrast, black if possible. Maybe have like a vertical pencil mark as a bullet?

[diordna]

Just added some simple diving. Hit D to make them all dive at once. This build is just to have the functionality in there. I did make it a little bit interesting, watch how the yellow bee thing dives.
--------------
It actually plays like a game now. You can die as many times as you want, but stuff explodes now. And you can advance levels. Even though they're all the same level. So once you kill all the guys, more appear, instead of stuff just stopping. Oh, and I changed all the shots so they stand out more.
--------------
Added new enemy type, "spinner," changed the loading bit. And now each enemy has a different explosion. Also added a prefs dialog that is shown on startup.

I haven't made a title screen yet because I still don't have a decent name. How about "Wide-Ruled Invaders"?
--------------
Title screen made, as well as little ship indicators for lives. So, you can now lose, and play again. Yay me.

Considering changing the name to "Artack." Any objections?

[hams_]

if possible you might hide the dock in windowed mode? when it first started up i didn't seem my own ship which happened to be hidden under the dock.

when i move left and right the ship graphic seems to fade out and when i stop it appears again in full. not sure if that's intentional or not.

[diordna]

I have no control over dock hiding. That's your problem. Either use the smaller windowed mode (800x600), or go fullscreen, or hit Cmd-Option-D whenever you start up the game.

The ship graphic fading is probably just your monitor, because that doesn't happen to anyone else (at least, no one else has told me). And it doesn't happen to me.

Side note: switching resolutions from the prefs dialog is buggy unless you set it and then restart the game. Fixing now.

[igame3d]

The ship graphic fading is probably just your monitor, because that doesn't happen to anyone else (at least, no one else has told me). And it doesn't happen to me.

Happens here, didn't mentioned it because it seemed so obvious.

[diordna]

No matter how I try, I cannot reproduce this bug. Try the latest and see if I've inadvertently fixed it.

What systems are you guys running? I'm on Panther. I'll test it on my mom's Tiger machine when she's done playing Myst III.

[OneSadCookie]

I assume you're using OpenGL (possibly indirectly) -- do hams_ and igame3d share a video card?

[diordna]

I am definitely using OpenGL.

[hams_]

Macbook - 2GHz - 2GB - 10.4.6

i tried to capture what it looks like by taking a series of screenshots. funny thing happened. in some of the capures, the ship looks correct, however in some of the captures the ship is completely missing.

[diordna]

This looks like a problem with the swap buffers. I have no idea how to fix it. I just draw all graphics and then call blitzmax's "flip." Maybe it's flipping in sync with your monitor or something. I'll ask my blitz buddies.

[OneSadCookie]

Sounds to me like you're only drawing the ship every other frame or something, diordna... either that or you've got a single-buffered context, and it's being drawn to the screen mid-frame.

[diordna]

No, I'm definitely drawing the ship every frame. It's almost the last the last thing I draw, next to shots. Do shots flicker too?

This is especially strange because everyone I've talked to except for you two hasn't had this problem. So, that's about 5 to 2. What graphics card do you have?

Changed the way 2 guys dive. It's harder. Yeah. (If you wanna cheat, hold D for shields. Next version might have a shield meter on it, maybe not. For now it's infinite.)

[hams_]

it doesn't seem like the bullets flicker, but they move much faster so it's hard to say. i also noticed a bug where if you're at the extreme edge of either side of the board, the ship can get stuck.

the macbook has the intel integrated graphics.

[igame3d]

The imac coreduo doesn't have integrated graphics but the issue is occuring on intel machines, guess blitz doesn't build a universal binary yet and there is a drawing issue somewhere. Its more of a fade than a blink, but it reminds of the blink effect I got with the blitter on my old Amiga.

Also quit still doesn't work, neither command q or menu quit.
Hmm wait quit just worked...Weird, didn't work after a round of playing
but now it works from a fresh start in menu and game modes.

Looking good, remove the "Mead", unless they are paying you for the game, no sense advertising for those guys.

Artack?
hmm that name sounds like a game I've played once or twice...what was it?

[diordna]

I can't make an Intel version until I can get my hands on an Intel. So if that's the problem, then I can't fix it.

I'll get around to removing "Mead" eventually. The name is original, hope it isn't taken...

Working on bosses now.

[igame3d]

The name is original, hope it isn't taken...

Let me be less subtle and crafty, Artack is one letter away from Antack, which would actually be kind of cool to remake with sketches.
Thought that would be really obvious, but maybe you aren't sleeping much.
I know I haven't, so can't come up with more plays on "attack" at the moment.
...damnit now my brain itches, where's my trusty rusty coat hanger.

[diordna]

Or maybe I just haven't played Antack since the uDG it was released :-P (At least, I think it was a uDG entry at some point...)

Anyway, new build with new-and-improved level format which you don't care about, as well as spiffy new boss level, pause feature (press P) and shields (down arrow).

Question for the masses - should I go ahead and leave in the boss shooting triple shots and spawning divers, or should I go back to the 80's and make it so that the boss is just a guy you kill to beat the level and is surrounded by walls and cronies? I was thinking of making what is now level 2 into the last boss of the game, because it's so hard. I myself can't beat level 6 in this version.

Edit: Added a couple of new levels for you to play with.

[EvolPenguin]

I can make an intel build for ya Stephen, just hit me up on AIM.

Alex

[diordna]

Fixed a bunch of stuff, changed some stuff. I don't remember most of it, but I do know it's a better game now. Better levels. Tweaked enemies. It's worth getting, because it's super awesome. Worked on it all afternoon.

Edit: fixed no-shooting-after-pause bug that no one but me and my buddy William knew about

[diordna]

I think I finally figured out what the ship fading problem was: you're on LCD's, and I'm on a CRT. So I made a version with graphics darkened 20%.

http://diordna.spymac.com/Artack_LCD.zip

[OneSadCookie]

We may be on LCDs, but that doesn't change the fact that there's an actual bug at work here :p

[diordna]

Well, people with LCDs reported very similar symptoms. I have one across the room and I almost agree. And the Intel Macs all have them.

Whether it's one or the other, it'll probably go away once I get an Intel build.

[EvolPenguin]

Stephen, I already offered to build you one. Contact me on AIM sometime.

Alex

[diordna]

So far I haven't found you online and available yet.

I leave tomorrow morning, so if I can't reach you, the source is here:
http://diordna.spymac.com/Artack_Source.zip

[diordna]

Now includes Intel version. Does that fix the famous "flickering" bug? (Still not sure if I believe in it)

[hams_]

I downloaded the regular Artack.zip package and ran the Intel version. The graphics are identical to the previous versions. Actually it almost seems worse on this version. On a side note, the game is lighting fast. I'm not usually good at these but it's really tough now.

I also downloaded the LCD optimized version and it suffers from the same problem, but it's much much easier to play. even if any of the objects fade, they are still easily visible.

i'll try to dig up a mirror and see if i can record video of the game play using the isight.

otherwise this is a great game.

kevin

[diordna]

First build back from Boston - fixed a lot of bugs, put in Kemal's levels. Still have to add a few things, but it's nearly done.

What do you guys think about using Galaga-style shooting, where you can only have 2 shots onscreen at once, instead of using the current time-spaced shooting scheme?

[JustinFic]

Just played the new LCD version- well done. The title screen is cool- does a good job at establishing the style.

Some more feedback:

- Reset the shields when the player dies.
- The first time I played and got a game over, it went back to the resolution switching screen. Hasn't done it again since, but still weird.
- Have some invulnerability for the player when they respawn.
- Bonuses and powerups :)
- Consider making the LCD/non-LCD versions into one? (Or just use the LCD version for everything, unless it looks ass on CRTs?) Also, can you combine the Intel and PPC versions into a Universal Binary?

What do you guys think about using Galaga-style shooting, where you can only have 2 shots onscreen at once, instead of using the current time-spaced shooting scheme?

Yes, definitely. Right now, it's unclear to me when I can fire my next shot, which is a pain when I have a dude flying at me and I need to shoot. Seeing a bullet hit an enemy or go off the screen is a visible event + cue that I can use to know I'll be ready, much more so than x seconds.

[diordna]

- Reset the shields when the player dies.
No. However, I will upload a build soon that gives you an extra 20% shield increase.
- The first time I played and got a game over, it went back to the resolution switching screen. Hasn't done it again since, but still weird.
I know what the problem is, will fix if I remember. Remind me if it's still there in the next build.
- Have some invulnerability for the player when they respawn.
I thought that no enemies shooting or diving in the first 2-3 seconds would be enough...
- Bonuses and powerups :)
Impractical due to time constrains + Real Life. Maybe later.
- Consider making the LCD/non-LCD versions into one? (Or just use the LCD version for everything, unless it looks ass on CRTs?) Also, can you combine the Intel and PPC versions into a Universal Binary?
LCD version looks like ass on CRTs. Combining them would double the file size, which is below the limit, but still sucks. BlitzMax can't compile Universal, and I haven't had any luck yet with lipo (can't find the right parameters).

Thanks for the feedback. Kinda rushing now, and I work tomorrow. The build I have on my HD now should be contest-worthy, but keep the feedback coming tomorrow. I'll upload my build now.

Yes, definitely. Right now, it's unclear to me when I can fire my next shot, which is a pain when I have a dude flying at me and I need to shoot. Seeing a bullet hit an enemy or go off the screen is a visible event + cue that I can use to know I'll be ready, much more so than x seconds.[/QUOTE]

[diordna]

Now with Windows good(bad?)ness!