GIFamania Running Wild: Shuffle Breaker Dev Blog

So I know I haven’t been updating the blog recently, that’s mostly cause I’ve been kinda busy. But while being busy with life stuff I’ve also been working (slowly) on an idea that a friend tossed my way. That idea, is a combination of Breakout and Air Hockey that I like to call “Shuffle Breaker”.  (Warning, animated GIFs ahead)

Using AI? You better believe that’s a paddlin’

Shuffle Breaker (created in Unity) combines the goal-scoring nature of Air Hockey with the block breaking of Breakout or Arkanoid. While the scoring isn’t in just yet the plan is for players to be able to score points not only by breaking blocks, but also by scoring on their opponent’s goal. Of course, to do that we need more than one puck now don’t we?

Double the Pucks, Double the Fun

When the scoring does get implemented, each puck will be color-coded to a player (one for red, one for blue). In order to score points from breaking blocks the player must break blocks with their own specifically-colored puck. Right now I just have a 1-player vs. AI going on but the ultimate plan will be for 1-player and 2-player gaming, both via hotseat and also a network/Internet. I’m really excited about this endeavour, and so are the pucks apparently!

Whoops!

Sudden Subject Change: IOTS Dev Blog #3 and MBD Dev Blog #1

So I’m really bad at staying on topic. Namely because I’ve put Invaders of the Stratosphere on hold when it’s probably like 90% feature-complete. This was a decision brought on by Ludum Dare 26, of which I’m participating in the Jam portion of it. The theme was minimalism, I’d always wanted to try tower defense, and well, things snowballed from there.

Anyway here’s a shot of Invaders as it is now:

At least I got the shielded enemies working.

And now here’s a shot of MBD, “Minimalist Base Defense”. The large empty green space is reserved for the interface.

Choosy devs choose GIF: Invaders of the Stratosphere dev blog #2

No screenshots at this point in time mostly due to other life stuff and writing code. But I do have a few animated gifs. First is the second basic enemy UFO:

And here’s the Level 1 boss who is pretty much a Big Core from Gradius:

Hopefully I’ll have more stuff up later in the week.

I am bad at postmortems: Invaders of the Stratosphere Dev Blog #1

So this month has been quite rough, game-dev wise. Initially I had plans of making a parody of Mega Man wherin you played a tax-collecting robot called Tax Man (yes you see what I did there) but it wasn’t really clicking. Apart from the “lol Libertarians” aspect I didn’t really have a lot going for the idea so I scrapped it; maybe I’ll go back to it next year. I initially thought about going back to Suburban Assault Riders but I wasn’t quite feeling like returning to it either, so instead I decided to just do a horizontal shooter, based on an idea I had back in 2007 or thereabouts. Incidentially this is what I’ve really liked about One Game a Month, in that it allows me to revist ideas that I had in college but didn’t have the time or know-how to work on.

Invaders of the Stratosphere is a horizontal shooter based on 1950s b-movies about alien invasions (and also War of the Worlds). The player controls an F-86 Sabre fighter jet as they fight invading enemy forces across the planet. Most enemies will look like stereotypical UFOs but there will also be enemies resembling more famous alien vehicles such as the “manta ray”-shaped alien craft from the 1950s War of the Worlds movie. Right now I only have the following screenshot but expect to see more as I progress.

Flying over the city

Small Miracles: Ablation Dev Blog #6

Despite Internet issues this weekend, I finally managed to finish the Beta of Ablation and submit it to One Game a Month, where it now sits on my profile page here. You can download it either from that link or the direct dropbox link here. I’m hoping later this year to come back to it and finish it up. I’ll have a postmortem post up within the next couple days as well as possibly some more video footage, but for now enjoy the 3 level beta and these images a friend made up for the Gold Jackal and Blue Bobcat on the ship select screen:

Gold Jackal

Blue Bobcat

The Way Forward: Ablation Dev Blog #5

I finally have a video up of the first level being played through…by me. And not very well I might add. But it’s a video all the same. There are still a few technical issues like the maneuvering I added to a few ships not quite working out so well, and that upgrade canister getting stuck in the top part of the screen partway through. But it’s coming along quite nicely (which is good given that I only have 6 days left). This also marks the first in-game appearance of the second player ship, Blue Bobcat.

You can see the video here. Music isn’t for the game itself as I mention in the description; I just decided to throw “The Way Forward” by Richie Kotzen up as a backing track.

Halfway Point: Ablation Dev Blog #4

Level 1 is all but completed now, as well as the score and other HUD elements:

Fully-powered

Granted I’m still working on some elements (for example, no upgrade level indicator nor is there a lives indicator) but the rest of the essentials are there. This next week I plan to spend on the next level as well as cleaning up some stuff in the back end.

Racking up Points: Ablation Dev Blog #3

So today I finally slapped some more enemies into the mix as well as added health and score systems. You can check out the results of that here on YouTube.

Granted there are some problems. The score and high score aren’t aligned vertically, it’s still a bit too easy to die, and the level boss shows up after 10 seconds (although that was a test of the timer). I’m feeling really good about where I am at this point of the month though, with 1/3 of it down I have almost all the framework in place to just bulldoze on ahead and make my game.

Saturday Midnight’s All Right for Updates : Ablation Dev Blog #2

I’m going to be mostly away from my main work station this weekend since I’m visiting my parents, but I have gotten quite a bit done this week. The level now scrolls, I have enemies in place (right now they respawn if they leave the bottom of the screen without dying, I may change that), and the player can shoot them and collect upgrades. I don’t have all the upgrades fully finished yet, but I’m working towards it. Screenshots and Videos after the jump:

A new month: Ablation Design Blog #1

Back in 2010 I created a Geometry-Wars-esque game I called “Ablative Starfighter”. In it your upgrades affected your speed, but you could eject them as a bomb weapon. For March in One Game a Month, I am revisiting that concept as I originally envisioned it: a Vertical Shooter. Right now I’m calling it “Ablation” instead of Ablative Starfighter since I like the conciseness a bit better.

So far I’m mostly just working on the assets (although I did have a couple assets made back when I was really getting into pixel art), and thus I don’t have much to show except for this potential boss enemy:

Ablation Level 1 Boss

I’m hoping 384×384 is big enough, considering my player sprites are going to be about 64×64. Guess we’ll have to see what the rest of the month brings.