Gaming and Other Nonsense

A blog about my failed games, and other nonsense

[lewis226]

Tree's, Rocks, Sky Boxes, Lens flare! And Textures

[lewis226]

Big Boy Toys! Unity 3!

I've always being a little scared of venturing into the realms of 3D.. I don't know why, its only one more dimension. But today I took the first step, fired up Unity, which I've had installed for a while now, and delved into map creation!

I went from this; (A fairly random map created using noise and the TerrainToolKit.)

To this in about 20 minutes;

And even a movable camera that acts like a player, with lighting!

Obviously this is only very basic stuff (And actually incredibly easy, being using 3DBuzz.com as a tutorial, a VERY handy sight)

Note, this is by no means a new project/game.. it's just something to play about in at the moment, and hopefully improve my C# skills ( You can use it for scripting). Although I may start with a small 2D game in Unity, if I can figure out how :)

[lewis226]

Space_Game is on hold. But a new game is coming!

As the title suggests, Space_Game is currently on hold whilst I think of a way to properly structure it, re-write some of the features, and improve my general skill in GameMaker.

But fear not!

A new game is in the works!! Say hello to "Shoot_Game!". It's not far into development at the moment, but unlike Space_Game, it's been properly planned (Kind of) which will hopefully stop any feature creeping (Which was the main issue in Space_Game). It's a shooter, although not really a wave style shooter like Space_Game.

The player will have to work though a building, destroying all the enemies to progress to the next level, whilst managing shield, health and ammo. 

I'm still brainstorming some idea's (Such as is the zoom level too much?) and this one's going a little slower than the last project :)

I'm not going to release a playable version right now, as its still too early to give a good view of the game, but I'll post updates on here whenever anything major is added/changed.

Lewis. 

[lewis226]

Little wallpaper I made in paint.Net using the new animations for boosting ships!

[lewis226]

We knew ye well faire shop!

I've decided to scrap the shop in favour of my new levelling idea. This means that both survival and the main game will use this new system as the shop system was too messy and complicated to be used only for survival. Good bye Ye Olde Shop. We knew ye well!

In other news! Sneak peak!!       (Hint, you get to blow it up!!)

Im also thinking doing a large space station that spawn enemy.. but rather than a straight forward explosion when it blows up.. I'm thinking of making it so that when you deplete its health.. part of it detaches and floats free. This is repeated until the ship is entirely destroyed, but the parts will be left floating freely in space for a while :) 

[lewis226]

Opening Screen and New Idea's!

I've made a opening screen for Space_Game and had some new idea's on where to take the development!

On the new opening screen you'll notice New Game and Survival. Survival takes you too the normal game play, whilst New Game currently takes you nowhere, as its still under development (Development hasn't actually started on it yet..., but it will do soon!). The New Game will take you to hopefully a much larger game, possibly with a small story, although nothing major. The map itself will be huge with enemies randomly being generated and possibly a experience system where your statistics will be increased by a set amount each level (Kind of like how pokemon level up?). 

If I get time, I'd also like to add planets into the main game, making it so that you can travel to the planets and may only leave once you've destroyed all the enemies. The main aim of the game would be to go to each of the planets and kill progressively harder enemies and numerous enemies on each planet, whilst still battling your way though hordes of enemies in the "Galactic Map". Hopefully this sounds good :) And will probably be more time consuming than difficult to implement. With exams coming up, progress will be slow, but I'll hopefully get it done :)

Also currently added to the game that I forgot to mention, is the statistic screen when you die. Whilst its only simple at the moment, hopefully I can make it look better. It currently displays a few statistics, and then updates your main score onto the highscores.

The game with the new Opening Screen can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bd04t7prfxqak4/Space%20Game.exe

Enjoy!

[lewis226]

Thank the world for books!

The Game Maker's Companion arrived in the post today, and it couldn't have come at a better time. I'd read the first one, The Game Maker's Apprentice, and it helped get me into Game Maker, but it was starting to become a little simplex, and offered no help in the more technical things that I wanted to make. So I bought the second one, and instantly noticed a reference to two things.

Homing Missiles;

The Towers in Space_Game now use a different system to fire the homing lasers. The effect looks generally better, and it doesn't constantly spin around a target if it misses the first time.

Engine and Explosion Effects;

Whilst I had originally used a mass of confusing and untidy code to make the particle emitters and generators for the particles created by the Player Ship and Enemies, it had never worked properly for the Boss ships and had to be removed. Within seconds and without any actual code, only events, I've got it so that Boss ships have both engine effects, and explosions! Thank the world for books!!

I've yet to have a good look through the book, but hopefully it will offer some more techniques that could improve the game and future games.

Game Link; https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bd04t7prfxqak4/Space%20Game.exe

[lewis226]

Space_Game shop system

I've finished with the engine part of the new shop system and it works fairly well. There's still a few bugs to work out with the changing of instances, but that shouldn't be too difficult. I'm thinking its going to be harder to implement the new weapon system, so that may take a little longer. 

Here's a screenshot of the shop!;

Also, one of the bosses (They both have the same sprite at the moment, but the one where the health appears in the top left) has double the health, therefore once the shield bar drains once, it restarts and must be drained again to destroy the instance.

As usual the game can be found at ;

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bd04t7prfxqak4/Space%20Game.exe

Enjoy!

[lewis226]

Bug fixing

^^ A quick screenshot of the Boss Spawner

So, instead of working on the shop system like I'd planned, I spent most of my time today fixing bugs in Space_Game. I ended up completely re-writing the system that spawns the enemies and deals with the waves. Followed by spending about an hour trying to get the boss system to actually work like it supposed to, to finally ending up reverting to a much simpler method that didn't occur to me at first. 

Hopefully soon I'll re-add the particle bursts for the Boss Ship destruction, and possibly new Boss Ship sprites coming from Josh, as they had to be removed before due to a bug. 

I'm going to start making the sprites needed for the shop, and I've got it all planned out on how to make it work so hopefully that shouldn't take too long. 

I've also decided I'm going to add some statistics to the Game_Over page, before displaying the HiScores. Currently I'm thinking; 

Time Played

Bullets Fired

Total points gained

Ships destroyed

Power ups collected

Furthest Wave

An updated version of the game can be found here, and refer to the previous post for the controls;

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bd04t7prfxqak4/Space%20Game.exe

Enjoy! 

[lewis226]

Space_Game

So, the current project I'm working on. Space_Game. Its a relatively simple game similar to the classic Asteroids, but with enemies instead of giant rocks. The graphics are simple and the music, created by Josh Sherlock, reverts back to the days of 8-bit games with a modern twist.

What's in the game so far?

Engine/Destruction particles

Progressively harder waves

Power-ups including ammo, shield restores and enemy destruction.

A score system

Boss's 

Good player movement (Including friction)

A portable tower that fires homing bullets

Randomly generated star background

What's left to do?

Finish up the upgrade shop

More enemy types

More weapons

Better "Animation" for the Boss's

Display to show which weapon your using

An opening screen and game-over screen

Want to play this game? Download it here! (There may/probably will be bugs and glitches)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bd04t7prfxqak4/Space%20Game.exe 

No installation required, just double click and run!

Controls:

Arrows keys = movement

Space Bar = Fire

Shift = Place Turret

Control = Go to shop (Doesn't do anything yet)

Delete = Developers short cut to increase wave number

Let me know what you think!

[lewis226]

Screen shots for Space_Game!

[lewis226]

About me.

Hi! I'm Lewis. 17 year old game creating failure. 

What's this blog about?

Well as the name suggests, this blog is about games I've created, news on games I'm currently working on, and any future ideas I have about games I want to create. So, mostly games. If you like ponies, and can't stand games, then I suggest turning around now.

How are you making these games!?

At the moment I'm using Game Maker V8.0, created by YOYO games. Its a wonderful piece of software that allows you to create complex games without having to learn C, or other programming languages (Java, etc...). It uses its own style of code and event system that makes it easy to create games! The GMC (Game Maker Code) is fairly complex, but easy to get the hang of, and more and more of my games are turning from event based, to code base as I get the hang of it.

Game Maker's for noobs! Why don't you use C# and Xna, or some other software!

I'd love to use C# and Xna (Or even Java/C++) and I'm learning to do it at the moment. However, C is a difficult, time consuming language and whilst I know the basics of it, to create a half decent game in it would be impossible at the moment. Hopefully by September I'll be at university where I'm doing Games Software Development/Games Computing (Depending on my A-Level results) and then I can start making "Proper" games. But at the moment, Game Maker suits me just fine and is a nice introduction to game creation, specifically the design.

Oh, that makes sense I guess. But where can I play the games you make?

As I make or improve games new versions will be posted onto here via a DropBox public folder link, your free to download them and play them as you wish. Hopefully you'll like them and tell people about them. The downloads will be simple exe. files, no installation requires (Because Game Maker is awesome like that!) so no need to worry about that!