Sirius Rising Devblog

This blog is dedicated to the development of the indie game ”Sirius Rising“, run by mazeon. In August 2015 the game programmer Andrew Nixon joined the project.

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Female Character, Tweak As I mentioned in a posting before, I’m not good in designing characters. For this reason, I asked an illustrator buddy for feedback concerning my recent design. He was friendly enough to reply promptly and gave me some tips to improve the work. Based on his feedback, I revised “Luna” and this is the result. I’ll probably do more tweaks for the final version, but I already like the current version.  Tweaks I did: – corrected the shadow – added some highlights (to make it look less flat) – changed the structure of the hair and revised the forehead area – added a second light source (orange) Big thanks to Marcel of Team Nory! :) https://norys-escape.de/

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Revamp : Female Character, Transmission Animation I'm currently revising the mission briefing room. Part of this room was "Sofja (Sonja)", who is giving the player the instructions and status messages during the game. I never was happy with the character design, therefore I revamped her completely. In comparison to the old design, she is more colourful. Due to the higher resolution, she is also much more detailed now. The old resolution was 64x64 px, the new 144x144 px. For in-game text messages, I will create additionally a thumbnail of this character in 64x64 px. I consider to rename her from “Sofja” to “Luna Gamowa” … but that’s only a minor matter! ;)

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WIP : Level 4 / Current Development State Hello all! 

I thought it was time for a status quo, therefore I did a rough recording of the current development state again. Instead of creating new assets, I spent some time with coding (GML) in the recent weeks. That’s the reason why you haven’t seen any new artwork recently. 

Since we want to add a shop system later, I started to prepare the first essential things for it – e.g. loot/money drops. In the current version of level 4, for most destructible objects, there is a 50/50 loot chance integrated. This value will change later. In the final version, the player is able to purchase a "force luck" upgrade, which will raise the chance to get more loot.

By the way I did again a tiny HUD revision: the current cash (KB) is now shown next to the score (SC) with subtle effects whilst the displayed numbers are changing. Additionally, you can watch the “Destruction Status” (WRECK %) of the level in the center of the HUD. The player gets a bonus when 100% is reached. The HUD needs still a lot of improvement, but that's something for later – at the moment the HUD serves its purpose.

Also newly added is an “Enemy Detector”. The detector detects all flying enemies nearby, shows their y position and approximate distance (size of warning sign will increase, the closer the enemy comes). The colour turns into flashing red if the enemy attacks to the direction of the player. If the enemy moves away from the player, it turns into a neutral colour. A very useful addition – otherwise the game play might become pretty unfair in some situations. 

Andrew is working on an advanced shadow routine for multiple parallax layers. That means: the farther away the layer, the smaller the shadow. This will surely add a great feeling of visual depth to our game. I’ll probably do some art again in the upcoming days. As soon as there is something to show, I’ll post it here.

Have a nice weekend all!

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WIP : Parallax In-Game Test It took me a while to set things up for the new level. Here is a super short recording of the first parallax test. It’s just a start, but I think it’s moving in the right direction.

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WIP : 3rd Test Flight Again a quick recording. After ages, we finally have integrated a score system. Additionally you can see the destruction status of the dreadnought in the HUD now. Also the level design is taking more and more shape. Not included yet: attacking air drones (at least the silo animation is already implemented! ;)), dreadnought platform details (at the moment it looks still a bit dull) and the final part in the east of the dreadnought. I plan to put a navigation bridge building (maybe with engines) at the end of it, but I haven’t an idea how it should look like yet. Unfortunately, the recently designed building does not look satisfying. This building is one of my next tasks.

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Air Defense Silo Animation Before I’ll start with the design for the next level, I want to finish some missing animations – like this shown silo animation for air drones. This silo can launch diverse groups of enemy types. In this case, I used the triangle drones for a first test.

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WIP : New Game Resolution, 2nd Test Flight This is just a quick recording to show you the new game resolution. As you may have noticed, the view port is bigger now. The game play benefits from this change a lot, since the area is much more predictable now.  The level isn’t finished yet – some enemy types are missing as well as decorations (e.g. background, platform details etc.). But in the shown recording, you can already see a tiny tweak: we finally added hit points to destructible elements. ;)

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Starman Is Having Fun Shown at 400 percent.

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I couldn’t resist to create another “real life” object for Sirius Rising. Besides the Voyager 2, you can collect Tesla’s cherry red Roadster somewhere in the campaign mode. Just pick it up to gain extra points! ;)

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WIP : Moving Laser Barrier This is just a quick status quo. Showing here an animation test for the moving laser barriers, which will appear in some sections of the upcoming level. These lasers will force the player to move fast. As soon as the previous level is accurately ported to the new game resolution, I’ll start to design the new “laser barrier” level.  Andrew is working on a new shadow routine for the player ship and enemies, which will allow us to bring more visual depth to the game. 

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WIP : Industrial Parallax Background For another upcoming level, I plan to add a industrial parallax background. Since the planned level is a “race” level with just a few enemies, this background should intensify the feeling of a speedy flight. Showing here the first test layout. I generally do not like distracting backgrounds at shmups – focus should always be on the enemies and obstacles. Therefore the background layers are coloured in a discreet way. At the moment there are three moving background layers. I’ll probably add one or two more in the final version and do some tweaks anyway. Another story: Yesterday, Andrew has finished all code adjustments for the new resolution. The game play works like a charm at 1138x640 px. As soon as the all level maps are completely adjusted, I’ll do a screen recording. 

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Level Select Screen Revision / Alternative Draft Due to our changed screen resolution, every single existing screen must be adjusted. I take this opportunity to tweak the exiting screens and add – if needed – new functionality to each screen. As happened with the “Level Select Screen”. In the old version, we were visually limited to a specific number of levels, which wasn’t optimal. In addition, I was never satisfied with the gradient light effect. An overview with information (e.g. completed main/secondary objectives) about the current level  wasn’t implemented as well.  I’m showing here two alternative drafts, which gives us more flexibility. Each one with it pros and cons, but in my opinion, at least an improvement to its predecessor. My favorite is still the “Cyber Grid” version shown on top, because its technical, straight forward look. But the “Octagon Grid” version has more flexibility in regard to the level structure – it looks more like a tactical “battle map”. Let’s sleep some nights about this and decide later which one fits best. 

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Double Barrel Turret I worked on new assets and enemies for the upcoming stages. Showing here the “Double Barrel Turret”. This turret will be activated as soon as the player is nearby the silo. It will constantly aim at the player (eight direction movement) and shoot chains of double lasers. Its shooting patterns are very fast, however the turret is not very resistant. When the player is leaving the trigger area, the turret will be deactivated and disappears to the underground again. 

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Lifted Parked Fighters / New Tiles

As long as not all parked fighters are destroyed, flying versions of these will attack the player. The versions in the air will attack in no formation and act individually. Mostly straight ahead with double lasers. They won’t flip to the opposite direction within the viewport. It was a bit tricky to make the lifted version look slightly bigger than the versions on ground, without using much more pixels at height and width. To make the movement look a bit more dynamically, I added a tilt up-and down frame to the animation. I think the current version is good for first in-game tests. More Tile Sheets Instead of using big sprite objects, I’ll create tile sheets for bigger environment art works in future. Just to be on the safe side in regard to performance and flexibility. Recently, I have started a 2048x2048 sheet for buildings and machines – mainly for decorative purposes. 

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WIP : New Level, 1st Test Flight Today I did a quick recording of the current state of the new level. It’s still a quite rough state; not much details – just the basic structure of the level. We will add step by step flying enemies, more destructible elements and details to the level. Also the new screen resolution isn’t implemented yet. However, things progressing well so far and I hope to show an updated, more detailed version, very soon.

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New Game Resolution and Level Design in Game Maker Studio 2 Since I had always little space for content (e.g. upgrade screen) and the general level design was a bit “too” restricted by the low resolution, we decided to change our game resolution from 1024x576 px to 1138x640 at least. Just a few more pixels, but due to this change, we have more flexibility for each screen or level. Additionally, the game will be probably a bit easier to play. Unfortunately, this change means also some extra work for Andrew and me. :-/ Anyways, I believe that the game benefits from this change and it will be worth the effort!  Until last year, I worked with TILED and I really loved to work with it. In this way, I could stick to MacOS and there was no need to switch to PC, until the tile map import. To make this workflow possible, Andrew coded a tile converter, which worked like a charm. This workflow was time consuming, though. As soon as I wanted to change the level design, I had to convert all things again and had to do some adjustments in GM later. In order to accelerate the level design process, we decided to drop working with TILED and work from now on with the onboard map editor of Game Maker Studio 2. It didn’t take me long to get used to the editor. Designing a new level and testing it instantly is a great benefit! Adding and changing tiles/objects afterwards is not a big deal anymore. This might be the reason, why I add more and more destructible elements to the level, like these blinking objects I have shown above … ;)  So long … 

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Platform Connector Variants In order to have more flexibility, I designed smaller versions of the recently shown platforms – 8 tiles high, instead of 16 tiles. I also added two more connectors styles: chain and screw. A tribute to the original Uridium. Step by step, I’ll add more tiles and objects to the game. Today I created a smaller version of the existing fan animation. Also couldn’t resist to design a small obstacle (X) as well. Since it’s fun to destroy things, I also designed some “Gas Cylinders” … they will explode when you shoot at them and bring some extra points.

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WIP : Space Nebula Parallax Background Today I spent some time with space nebulas and exoplanets. At the moment, we have a three layer parallax background with stars integrated. In order to let the quadrants (worlds) vary in design/colouring, a nebula background would be handy. For this reason, I created a large file with several nebulas. Colouring of the background artwork should be very discreet, since I want to avoid distraction. Maybe the final version will be a bit more saturated … I will do some testing later.