I finished level five, and I'm about to begin programming of the final level of my game. I'm so excited! After I finish the last level, I have an extra stage to work on, then touching up EVERYTHING graphically! It's been an amazing journey, and I've built up a small following, but I cherish everyone whose bothered to keep up a little on my development. I'm hoping in the near future, that I can start making more desktop games + mobile apps; entirely for fun of course. Money is nice, but enjoyment is priority.
I also got my college degree today! :) It's the first step toward having my Masters in Japanese Literature and Language and in Computer Programming, but hey... I did it. Step one is out of the way, and no one can stop me now!
Ah-ha, it's finally happened! I finally enjoy the play and feel of my game, and (at least to me) it feels like a true bullet-hell. It's finally difficult enough that it makes me want more, and it's playing smooth enough that I'm content with it.And with that, I've wrapped up level five! I'm going to be working on the fifth level boss all day today, then I'll work the final level + extra stage. Then I suppose, it'll be ready for the last few touch ups, then I'll finally release the game!
Since my last update, I've added a lot of new things.
- Health and Energy bars are now textured.
- High scores now properly work + save between instances.
- New bullet textures. I'm still likely to change these up, however.
- More particle effects.
- More and more enemies.
- Obviously the fourth and fifth levels are now complete!
- Lasers now shoot properly!
- Bombing now works properly, too!
- Inverted color effects. (I may have overused them throughout the game, but that's a-okay because they look kick-ass.)
Well, hello world! This will be the first game release I've done since starting my blog! Super Space Surge is still in development, but I took a break to participate in Flappy Jam for a little while... and what an experience it was! A simple program I made in one hour turned into a couple days of experimenting and fun to balance everything, add extra elements, and make it feel "just right."Granted, there's a lot more I'd love to touch up on, but for a quick 4 day side-project, I really like how everything turned out! :)
It's fairly straightforward to play:
- Click to fly.
- Space to start the game.
- F - Fullscreen.
- M - Mute the sound.
- Escape - Exit the program.
I took a hiatus from everything recently. Though, picking everything back up, I decided to do a small project for Flappy Jam, considering everything that's happened with the creator. I could make my own separate blog post about that; however, I'll spare the details and simply say that if anyone really feels the need to bash on someone for a stroke of luck, you really have no sense of honor for anyone. Be joyful for another's luck; not a dick.
Either way, moving on, so I've been working on a game called "Ghost Walk." It started out as a simply Flappy Bird clone, but I decided to add a few more things (namely floating ghosts to avoid as well as obstacles). A repetitive and annoying sound track, and some royalty free sprites for the game. I've only spent about a day working on it --and that's not being consistent. I had a pretty bad car wreck two days ago (engine belt snapping while driving down an interstate. Not a good experience.) And with Valentine's Day always being a horrible day for me. (Nothing love related; it's all family related and events that's happened in the past.)
Though, with all do respect, I am going to be releasing the game, and having it hosted on Itch.io. That site has, more or less, appeared out of no where for me, and it seems pretty awesome! A way for indie game devs to get their games out there, a system for taking in donations or selling games that's just a simple buffer between transactions so it doesn't cause a lot of fuss. Plus seeing plenty of good reviews makes me feel more secure about using it. I might end up hosting all of my future games on the site. Also, since it has such a good integration for anything from Unity webplayers, to HTML5, to your own executables uploaded from whatever engine or libraries you've compiled them from!
Alright, now now now, I shall get on to what I've been meaning to state: here's a few current screen shots, and I'll make a post a little later on showcasing the actual game with links to it.
Either way, moving on, so I've been working on a game called "Ghost Walk." It started out as a simply Flappy Bird clone, but I decided to add a few more things (namely floating ghosts to avoid as well as obstacles). A repetitive and annoying sound track, and some royalty free sprites for the game. I've only spent about a day working on it --and that's not being consistent. I had a pretty bad car wreck two days ago (engine belt snapping while driving down an interstate. Not a good experience.) And with Valentine's Day always being a horrible day for me. (Nothing love related; it's all family related and events that's happened in the past.)
Though, with all do respect, I am going to be releasing the game, and having it hosted on Itch.io. That site has, more or less, appeared out of no where for me, and it seems pretty awesome! A way for indie game devs to get their games out there, a system for taking in donations or selling games that's just a simple buffer between transactions so it doesn't cause a lot of fuss. Plus seeing plenty of good reviews makes me feel more secure about using it. I might end up hosting all of my future games on the site. Also, since it has such a good integration for anything from Unity webplayers, to HTML5, to your own executables uploaded from whatever engine or libraries you've compiled them from!
Alright, now now now, I shall get on to what I've been meaning to state: here's a few current screen shots, and I'll make a post a little later on showcasing the actual game with links to it.
Okay, after getting some constructive feedback from Tigsource and Unity, I've been working on updating everything and making my game feel exactly how I want to feel --all the while, making it feel natural, unique, and fun to outside players as well.
I feel like my biggest hurdle will be trying to make Super Space Surge appeal to player who are not fans of bullet hell games. Although, people who enjoy such games have reviewed me and said they liked it, the fellows who are not so keen on this style of game quickly gave harsher reviews. (Though they were the most helpful, because it really shown where the game's biggest flaws currently were.) I'm sure by the time I release the second demo (whenever that'll be. Probably toward the end of February. One demo per month? Sounds good. Hopefully I'll be done by March!)
Now, on to new features I've added so far:
I feel like my biggest hurdle will be trying to make Super Space Surge appeal to player who are not fans of bullet hell games. Although, people who enjoy such games have reviewed me and said they liked it, the fellows who are not so keen on this style of game quickly gave harsher reviews. (Though they were the most helpful, because it really shown where the game's biggest flaws currently were.) I'm sure by the time I release the second demo (whenever that'll be. Probably toward the end of February. One demo per month? Sounds good. Hopefully I'll be done by March!)
- Inverted color effects. I'm really just playing with this too much. You die, the screen does an inverted color ripple out from the player.
- Same with the boss, when it dies, except a lot more dramatic.
- I've added screen shaking when you're hit, when you die, and when a boss dies; each with strengthening force depending on what kind of hit it was.
- Made the first level a lot easier. (A whole lot easier, since the biggest complaint was: "I can't get past the first level.")
- I've added more graphics, more interface ideas, and such that I'm still playing with. Primarily, I'm going to have instructions for how to play appear when the game first starts, and fade out toward the beginning.
- I've also labeled certain GUI elements, so there's no ambiguity.
- I'm also playing around with the actual controls. Everything I try to think of though, just doesn't feel right.
- Z - Shoot; X - Bomb; Shift - Focused; Arrow Keys - Move.
- That one feels the most natural to me.
- A - Shoot; S - Bomb; Shift - Focused; Arrow Keys - Move.
- Took a little getting used to, but works just the same!
- LClick - Shoot; RClick - Bomb; Shift - Focused; WASD - Movement.
- It could work, my own hand-eye-coordination is too weak in my left hand for that to work effectively.
- I want to mess with the background and have a dual-layer background. For example, the main background is a giant skybox which I can rotate around; switch the movement at random; change and fade textures; etc. While the overlay background is a transparent "star" sheet that moves at a different speed. Therefore giving the effect of "moving faster than you really are."
- I also want to add a plethora of visual effects for EVERYTHING.
- Though, I'd rather not have everyone click "start game" and having 50lbs of glitter attack their screen. I'll still figure stuff out.
- I'd love to add weird effects like gravity pools, or something. (I'm not sure!) Maybe I'll have a level where you have to maneuver through an asteroid field, but they're large enough they have a slight pull on gravity.
Well, after about a month of work, I am ready to release a simple demo of my game, Super Space Surge! What an exciting month this has been. On top of balancing financial issues, starting my next semester of college, and wondering how in the hell I can balance everything, I have diligently worked on this project, and I am ready to release a demo!
This is about halfway done. Music is extremely subject to change as I'm getting used to new programs and every time I make a new composition, I figure out another "ohh, I can do that; this sounds neat," so all music heard is subject to change. Same with sound effects, too. Graphics will probably keep this style. If I really feel so inclined, I'll remake the bullets to be more... I don't know. Less "cartoony-flat-looking" and have a different style --I'm not entirely sure just yet. Bear with me, folks! It's my first publicly released game! :)
Now, onto about the actual game itself:
This is about halfway done. Music is extremely subject to change as I'm getting used to new programs and every time I make a new composition, I figure out another "ohh, I can do that; this sounds neat," so all music heard is subject to change. Same with sound effects, too. Graphics will probably keep this style. If I really feel so inclined, I'll remake the bullets to be more... I don't know. Less "cartoony-flat-looking" and have a different style --I'm not entirely sure just yet. Bear with me, folks! It's my first publicly released game! :)Now, onto about the actual game itself:
- It is a 2d, space-themed, manic shoot 'em up (also known as bullet hell or danmaku).
- There will be 6 levels + extra levels (maybe). In this demo, there are the first 3 completed.
- It's entirely created by me or with public domain, royalty-free graphics and sound effects.
- My inspiration mainly came from the Touhou series. It's my favorite Japanese indie game series, and I enjoyed them so much, the least I can do is have some fun making my own style of danmaku while also giving the community a chance to have fun (and hopefully take a crack at my games to come!)
- Movement - Arrow Keys.
- Shooting - Z
- Bombing/Shielding - X
- Focused (slowed) Movement - Left Shift
- Spacebar - Most GUI control (i.e. to go to the next stage after completing the current one, hit space.)
- Escape - Pauses the game.
Good luck, everyone.
Now, a link to the game online:
