First Project: LRSS

[flash]

LRSS - The Little Red Space Ship Game

http://infidel.kicks-ass.net/~flash/LRSS/index.html

Boasting not-so cutting edge graphics and playability I present my first remotely complete game project since the days of STOS and the Atari ST...

Basically it's me messing about with GLUT because I have to make a 3D engine for my MSc project and needed to learn stuff quick. Hence, there's no sound and very little variation in gameplay, but it's been working on the various PPC Macs I have access to. I'd build an Intel version, but Xcode won't link the Intel stuff complaining about a huge list of undefined symbols - any ideas?

I hope anyone who downloads it doesn't find it too painful - if you can score 100,000 I'd like to hear about it.

Flash!

[edit: updated location]

[imikedaman]

Heh, I just finished with 19,000. I was expecting better. Oh well, that's what I get for just sitting in the corner and holding down the space bar for 10 minutes.

[igame3d]

Pretty nifty. No problem here on a CoreDuo iMac.
Keep up the good work, don't worry about UB version until you have a more serious game.

[imikedaman]

You need to explain how the scoring system works here. I tried again, this time getting up a lot of horizontal speed then shooting directly upwards as my ship bounced left and right across the screen. I lost a LOT more little dudes than the first time, but I ended up getting 34,000 points. Is it related to the number of bubbles I shoot?

[flash]

Thank you for having a look and the feedback.

The scoring is related to the number of Pathons that are alive and dead (it's a percentage - alive vs total) at the end of the last wave. To keep them all alive you pretty much have to shoot all the bubbles. I find sitting about a third up the screen and more or less stationary most effective. My top score was 70 something but that might be before I changed the rate at which the bubbles appear.

I imagine that any Mac with an Intel proc is more than capable of running this in emulation - it just concerned me for future projects. As I say, I'm supposed to make a 3D engine so I'm considering making LRSS 3D...

[flash]

I just played through and it's definitely got harder since I started testing - I only scored 62,000. If people think it's too hard it's very easy to make softer. I'm usually awful at games so I was mostly worried about making it too easy.

[imikedaman]

The scoring is related to the number of Pathons that are alive and dead (it's a percentage - alive vs total) at the end of the last wave.
The first time I played I had like 55 alive and 50 dead, for the lower score. The second time I had like 60 alive and 160 (!) dead, but I got a much higher score. Towards the last few rounds I had the entire bottom screen full of walking little dudes, but a single bubble takes out like 20 of them since they're so compacted together along the bottom by then.

Anyway, the scoring doesn't seem relative to the ratio of alive to total.

[flash]

Anyway, the scoring doesn't seem relative to the ratio of alive to total.

I may have screwed up, but this is what calculates the score:

(livepeople*100)/(deadpeople+livepeople) << ",000"

I know it's not the best system ever.

If you screw up on the last level many more guys are killed, like you say. I figured having the stakes get higher as the game went on was better. The next game I produce will probably have a bit more forethought (as in some at all).

[imikedaman]

What causes more dudes than usual to show up on the bottom for each wave? It's weird how I had so many more things skittering around the floor the second time I played.

[flash]

They're released at random - I thought it would balance out over the length of a game. Looking at the code it's a bit stupid so I changed the offending line so that the random component is less significant and have posted a new version at the same place as before.