S’troidz!: Week 1 Update
Jun/0913
Welcome to the week of aliens. Well, one alien actually. I’ve already written the movement for four of them but a nasty (unrelated) bug with one of my components and a half-baked integration plan made the beginning of this week’s development a bit muddy. The good news is that I came away with a better understanding of how things should be structured and when that magical day of refactoring comes around (probably next week), I’ll be ready. Without further ado, here’s the change log for S’troidz! r1:
- Created dev artwork for first alien (Slider) and projectiles.
- Wrote Slider controller PBE component.
- Wrote Slider missle controller PBE component
- Wired up all collision detection for Slider/Ship and Slider missle/Ship interaction.
- Increased the ship rotation speed (slightly).
- Fixed a bug inside my random number from range utility function.
- Cleaned up some unused spatial properties.
- Implemented a ’safe period’ that occurs when a ship spawns (there’s no visual cue yet and you’re still fair game after a new wave).
- Tweaked the game balancing a bit. Things get gnarly pretty quickly.
OK, here we go…
S'troidz! Controls
Please share with me any bugs you find or thoughts about gameplay. Even in this raw form, that sort of feedback forces me to shift my perspective and ultimately has a positive affect on development. Have something you’d like to see in a future build? Let me know! I have a pretty clear design in place but if your request is on the list I have no problems bumping up the priority.
One last bit… releasing on Fridays doesn’t make a lot of sense for a number of reasons. Going forward, all new revisions will be deployed on Tuesdays instead. The next one will add another alien craft (fun!), some refactoring and if time permits, start work on designing a PBE “Loot Table” component that will allow for power-ups to drop from s’troidz. I’m also thinking it’s about time I add some dev art for explosions as well.
So much to do! Thanks for visiting and above all else, thanks for playing!
10:17 am on June 26th, 2009
Dude! Nice work! I am really excited to see how this evolves!
10:22 am on June 26th, 2009
Good work. After clicking “start” you have to click the stage again, I think you could set the focus to the stage in code. Any plans for rapid fire?
This is great though. How plug and play are the components? (or will be when it’s done)
10:55 am on June 26th, 2009
Awesome! Congrats on getting a PBE game out… me next, me next
10:57 am on June 26th, 2009
@Ben Garney Thanks!
@Jeremy Yeah, I’ve applied virtually no polish at this point. My primary focus has been on getting the large pieces in place first. As far as the components are concerned, some are s’troidz-centric but others will certainly be sharable/reusable. All components are PBE-friendly.
Thanks for stopping by, man!
10:59 am on June 26th, 2009
Kinda nice, I actually like it! As Jeremy said, it’s kinda odd that you have to click the stage again after clicking ’start’. Also, allot of asteroids suddenly spawned next to my ship, and I couldn’t actually avoid them. But it looks great!
1:40 pm on June 26th, 2009
great work any body tell me how to make flash games. using push button.
3:12 pm on June 26th, 2009
You say you’ve added a “safe period” after the ship spawns, but I was killed instantly upon spawning.
Also, I went around and killed all the asteroids and aliens, and no second wave has spawned. My ship is just floating around in empty space.
And bullets don’t world-wrap, which is kind of strange, considering ships and asteroids do.
3:51 pm on June 26th, 2009
@Deozaan The safe period is brief (2 seconds) but I’ll run some tests and confirm it’s working correctly. The second issue you mention regarding the wave not showing has been logged and is in my queue to get fixed when I have time. As far as bullets not wrapping, this was a design decision. It would be trivial to have them wrap and time-out but need to think about it for a while.
Great feedback! It’s very much appreciated.
8:07 pm on June 26th, 2009
My fingers seem to really hate your choice of controls…. I continue to struggle to connect “K” to “shoot” even though it’s right under my finger. I crave the space bar to fire–it’s huge and easy to reach, and it’s often used in other similar games for firing. I also have a hard time with both the thrust and clockwise rotation–E feels more comfortable for thrust (more natural for the middle finger, which is stronger than the ring finger, to reach) and F feels better for the rotation. Or if you’re interested in trying two-handed controls, using the arrows on the right hand to fly and spacebar on the left hand to fire would also feel like an improvement.
Keep up the good work!
8:08 pm on June 26th, 2009
S-D-F also seems like a good scheme for flight control too, which leaves A free for the eventual obligatory hyperspace or smart bomb.
8:51 pm on June 26th, 2009
Hey Mike! Thanks for stopping by. Here’s one of the items in my bitbucket issue tracker you might like:
#28 Create a custom keybinding component
Reported by pperon, created 22 days ago, last edited 22 days ago.
This would allow players to use whatever keys they’d like to play the game.
Everyone likes choices and this is something I feel _all_ games should have.
Stay tuned!
1:07 pm on July 2nd, 2009
hey good job man, looks like it’s coming together nicely, i’m keeping an eye on it