A Shooter Boss #10 Gameplay Video

So i figured it was time to bring out the fraps. I just wanted to show one of the bosses i am currently wokring on. It is a tough boss that exists at level 10. This is not the final version of the boss for a few reasons. The main one being that he has not been balanced for his position relative to the previous levels.

Balancing bosses nad levels will take more time, but also means each one must be balacned with the ones either side of it. so this Boss is set up to easily alter his difficulty by changing just a single value.

So i am going to try and link in the video, and i hope it's possible on Blogger, as this is my first attempt.

As a bonus, i also recorded the 3 Smart Bombs that created. I hope you all like what ya se.

Laters

Smart Bomb type 3 is in

Yes it is true. I have three types of smart bomb for my shooter.

I know, i know. I coulda just done one. But where would the fun have been in that ?

I now have the....
The bullet halter and fader.
The Fruiterizer, which turns bullets into top shelf fruit.
The Revertinator, which turns all Alien bullets into Your bullets and fire them away from you.

They all have their own personalities, but in the end, they will all remove bullets off the screen, and give you a break from impending doom! And hey, who doesn't want a break from impending doom!

I was gonna post a picture, but undfortuneatly this last smartbomb does not show well in pictures, not like the fruiterizer. It is a multipart thing, i guess i could show a series of pictures, but i have no way atm to capture that. After all i use the print screen key on my keyboard. Yeeouch!

The writing of this smart bomb went very smooth. I knew what i wanted, and had all the routines already written for other purposes. So it went well. Makes a change it seems lately.

Now i would write about my PS3 Home story about Space Invaders, but that will have to wait till tomorrow. It has been a busy day, and a busy night ta boot.

g'night.

A Shooter is really born

I was calling the shooting game sorcerygames is currently working on as 5th Moon. This was an awesome name, and i was gonna theme the game around this.

Now things have changed.

Originally i was going to actually call the game 'A Shooter'. But we liked 5th moon better. However one of the reasons fro using 'a Shooter' was to see just how important it could be to name the games, not something creative, but something obvious... I mean, REALLY Obvious. A lot of the games that get good downloads have obvious names. anything with a Zombie in it is a sort of good example, though not the best. Take Jonny platformer biscuit romp for example. And more if you go LOOK!

So now i am back to the original name. We shall see if this appears to make a difference to downloads. I also believe it do for the iphone apps. iShooter for example. so without more delay, here is the new title page. With more letters in the name it actually looks better too.

the letters bounce just the same way as they did when it had it's other name.

gnight.

An article on Game difficulty

I just read a very interesting article on game difficulty. Is so highlights my own feeling about the fact that computer games should not cheat etc that i thought i would highlight it here.

The Difficulty with Difficulty

When i have new teams mates and we are writing games, i always make it a point to tell them not to cheat. now they can make the AI as good as can be, which would mean perfect... Or at least perfect in the control scheme that is present. That is why they must also make AI's use the same controller inputs that the player uses. This usually helps stop them cheating speed etc. This kind of thing really helps keep players from feeling cheated.

laters

Method Boss Design... Issue

Here I am, having just completed two more bosses for my shooter. I am going with the evolutionary design if you haven't read my Blog before. Which means to evolve the Boss from one level to the next.

Evolving the boss does not mean that you play in the same way with him, and just get faster etc. In fact i am finding to my delight that small changes in the boss can make significant changes in your play tactics.

So what's the Issue i face?
Well it seems i have created a monster, a monster of a boss. He is only slightly evolved from the previous level boss, but this one does a firing sequence that makes you have to dodge his bullets in a rather unique way.. or DIE!

Questions..
Is this bad ?
I do view this as bad, because a player will come to this bos at the end of the levl and have no idea how to survive, as most if not all players will die on his third firing sequence. Nasty huh! Yet i know the secret to defeating him, and it is fairly easy...
Is this Good ?
I do view this as a good thing. It means you will have to think a bit more creatively. It means you will have to even go to video if you fail to figure it out yourself. Old school shooters and arcade shooters had learning curves and boss method learning in them.

Conclusions...
I love this, i dislike this. ARGH! some people will enjoy this challenge, but some will throw their controllers. Which pill should i take ? The red or the blue one ?

I would LOVE some input from the people that read this blog, but as you are all anonymous and also so very quiet i guess i shall have to figure it out myself.

One thing is for sure. I personally love this boss. My partner is gonna hate it, lol

Laters

Smartbomb effect #1 complete

Yes it is true. I believe i have completed the first Smart Bomb effect. Here is a picture.

I left the Boss in this picture (he is the source of all the bullets). As you can see i went with the size i previously discussed. I also added in the cardinal directions as filler or dummie lines. The only real difference between them and the real lines, is the fact they do not end in an enemy bullet.

I went with all i had previously written, but here are some highlights of this particular smart bomb.
1. It is instantly there but take a second to fully fade away. Looks pretty.
2. The bullets it hits are instantly stopped from moving.
3. The bullets that get smarted are still dangerous till they are gone (faded away).
The gameplay that is in this Smart bomb i believ to be unique in that smart bombs usualy remove enemy bullets immediatley. Not this one. You will still have to be careful for a very short time once they have been stopped. Also new bullets being launched are still dangerous. (this is boss #5)

This picture above was too pretty to ignore. As you can see, under your score you will see your available Smart bombs. Very simple and very obvious I hope. This boss is level #6 boss. He has a special method to play him. Or you die... I may need to keep him till later in the game. As he is a method boss, and not one i feel easy to discover.

This finishes up this smart Bomb. Onto the next in a few days. till then i hope to get anotehr level laid out, and two more bosses done, though it looks like i have done that now :O haha

laters

Smart Bomb effect

Above is what i am currently coding. The effect or one of them for one of my smart bomb types. In the shooter for my next XBLIG game you will have a secondary weapon. This is going to be smart bombs. Each smart bomb type will have it's own, special way of helping you out. This smart bomb effect is for general smarty pants bomb. One that just clears the screen of enemy bullets. Of course it would be boring to just make them disappear. Soooo i came up with an idea.

In the first picture you see i have set off my smart bomb and then moved out of frame. The effect is that i have  abunch of line go from my ship at time of activation and hit each bullet on the screen. Then after a second they all disappear. Oh, and for that second the bullets are stopped in their tracks. But are still dangerous !

Here in this second picture you see me just moved left from when i fired the shot. It is a picture of the 4th level bosses bullets, and i think ti loks quite cool. One downside is if this effect is fired off with not a lot of bullets it looks crap. However it looks it's best if you are surrounded as you may have noticed.

I just had to include this third picture. Generally i still thinkn that if all th ebullets are on one side it wdoes not look as good as when you are surrounded. But man, that looks cool, hitting all those streaming bullets from the boss.

So my next task is to make this effect look better in all situations, for that i am going to include some dummy lines in each of the cardinal positions, we shall see if that helps or not.

Finally i need to actually make the lines fade out, but for that i have to rewrite the list iterator code, so it can wait :D

laters