SI_Diamond Gameplay Video

SI Diamond Gameplay from Robert Toone on Vimeo.

Above is my latest gameplay video showing my second Alien I call SI_Diamond. It is in fact the diamond shaped movement routine from my 'Space Invaliens' game.

This nasty alien spawns all those little sawblades that once spawned wait a small moment to target you, then they fly right at your established position. As they come streaming in it has the effect of cornering you, unless you know how to play them. Most dangerous when there are separate groups all after you.

With its fast awkward movement and the spawned sawblades, it can be a handful. In fact two of these together makes for an interesting time.

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Da Voodoochief

SI_ONE in action

Space Invaliens SI_ONE in Action from Robert Toone on Vimeo.

In the video above you can see my SI_One alien. That is his working name and it is simple Space Invaliens first enemy. This is also one of my main Homage styled aliens. He speaks the Dum, Dum movement sounds, and at his demise you can hear him yell. I don't at this time have video of his other sayings.

There is a lot going on in this short video, and I do apologize for the way the video is formatted, Thanks to the new and way more useless windows movie maker, it reformatted it (I need to chop off the start and end bits). I guess I will have to get some video editing software on this laptop now, gah!

SI_One, moves like a space invader for the most part, though he never 'lands'. He sounds similar to space invaders, and I am very happy with the test results on the dum, dum audio. Interestingly it has 4 levels in the arcade game, and here I was only thinking 2. Then it drops bombs all over the place. By itself SI_One is not particularly dangerous, but mix him with another alien, or add another of his kind to the screen and the levels get a Lot more exciting. By creating my aliens in this way I am able to mix and match alien play styles to come up with compelling and difficulty blended levels.

You may also notice me disregarding the yellow gems that are the money for the game, and the parachuted salvage that you really want to collect if playing properly.

Tomorrow I will show another aliens, one I call SI_Diamond.

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Da Voodoochief

" I HUNGER!! "

I am continuing work on 'Space Invaliens' at a good clip. Yesterday I got to record some audio for the game, so my vertical slice has sounds. the sounds are important for this game as I really want the enemies to have character, and one way for me to do that is to add voices for them. I also bought the Space Invaliens .com web site in preparation and setup a simple it of redirect information. Still it's a start, now back to words in games.

YES, alien space ships attacking you from the top of the screen with voices. This is largely inspired by a game I played a long time ago in Nottingham, England. Me and me mates Andy and Chris travelled from Derby on the train one weekend to go to all the arcades in Nottingham and play anything we found, especially the new games. Well, we walked into one of our favourite arcades, a dark place where all the video games sounds were dang loud! As we walked in and our eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness our ears were assailed by a new game 'I HUNGER' was the first words we heard. All three of us looked at each other with questions on our faces,.. and maybe a little fear...

Check out what he said on Youtube

As it turns out playing the game also brought fear and anticipation to our time playing the game of Sinistar. It was not the best shootemup around, but the atmosphere it created was simply stunning.

Hard to create that same sense now of course, but it will not stop me trying. I will get a video soon, once I redo the playback rates of the audio. so far the SI_One alien sounds like a mouse as my playback rate is way too fast.

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Da Voodoochief

Yellow Gem Spawning

Here is a video taken a few days ago of Space Invaliens(new working title, or Publishing title.. hmm?!). Check out the video and I will describe some aspects of it below.


Yellow Gem Spawning from Robert Toone on Vimeo.

This video was taken to show the spawning of the Yellow Gems. It seems like such a simply thing to spawn collectible items like these gems when the enemy ship is hit. But there are a lot of design considerations involved. I will go through just a few of them here.

How: Well once your bullet hits the enemy ship it will spawn a gem for you to collect. These have to float down the screen so they can be run into by your ship to collect them.

Problem: You can fire very quickly. So you can hit the enemy ship with 4 bullets so quickly that if I simply spawn all of these gems by placing them and letting them fall down the screen, they overlay each other. You cannot tell how many gems there are, which is a waste.

Do what: My solution to this problem was done in several ways. The reason for that is if I tried to solve this with just one method, it would be invasive, noticeable, and to be honest I didn't like it much. I decided to spawn the gems with a slight offset from the contact position. Then I also gave them a slightly different base speed plus a random amount to float down the screen, I also added in a slight drift. This allows the spawned gems to drift apart while coming down the screen.

Now you can see them come down the screen, and can count them. Which is what I was aiming for.

Once they are close to you ship you have like a magnetic or tractor beam effect on them, which draws them into your ship. This looks pretty good, or did once I added a shrink to it as they are drawn in.

Finally: You can see my deflector shield on the ship, though with me not hitting anything, there is not much to see, but IT does work very well, and works perfectly as per my design.

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Da Voodoochief

4gency Blog post and Me

I do not tend to write whole articles about someone elses blog, Usually I simply mention them here and there and supply links. In this case though I feel I should do a bit more, as it is incredibly relevant to my current development.

Here is their Blog post I am referring too
4gency’s First Year Pt. 1: A Look at Armored Drive

It is a truly great read that is well laid out and slightly worrying. Though if I can get 6000 hours of my game played, maybe I will be happy enough.

So what's the Worry all about?

The article is about using IAP and within an Arcade style game to earn money. they also mention free to play vs paid app. As it happens I am working on an Arcade style game that has IAP in it, and I was thinking of going Free to play.. though now I am not so sure. The final similarity is the fact that they added Advertising in, though late. whereas I will be adding that in much earlier (I learned that lesson already with 'Hot Chicks'.

With all these similarities I am a bit worried that I will not be able to make back the budget I have for artwork. This is disconcerting, as making money is a dream for these games, however donating money so people can play my game is not something I want to do. I would love to at least break even for each title I release.

So what's the plan? This article has pointed me in the direction of a Paid App, and then doing Free to grab weekends to boost user awareness and downloads. As I will be going with Ads in the game anyway, it looks like I might be able to make some money their. Though I am not certain what Targeted Ads are over normal Ads. I have my Ads setup in a non invasive way and they are also click through (I have a page that appears every so often between levels). Of course my Ads are removed for people who have paid for the game.. though right now I am wondering if I should do that, or simply reduce the amount that are shown. The Ads were added when I was thinking of going Free to Play.

Hmm, well I am a long way off publishing this game, but I am worried about how much money I will allow myself to spend on the artwork for it.

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Da Voodoochief

SI Players Shield

I was working, or thinking about the players shield. I really want something to help with those really troublesome times when a player gets backed into a corner, yet I really did not want to do the usual thing of simply adding to the amount of health a player has.

So I have the answer, it is what I am calling a deflector shield. The deflector shield simply deflects single enemy bullets, rather than absorb them. It will also refresh given some amount of time to recharge itself. This will solve all the problems I have and want a shield for, and yet it seems not give me any new issues. Let em list a few of the reasons off the top of my head.

1. Don't want an extended health bar. No HUD graphics required. The image of the shield around the ship should be enough.
2. Don't want simply more health. With this being a single time hit and it pops type of deal, it is anything but more health. also it will not care how big or dangerous an enemy bullet is, they are deflected the same.
3. Great for enhancement. Instead of simply added more 'health' to the shield. This type will allow me to add more hits before it pops.
4. More enhancement can be achieved by shortening the recharge timer.
5. With the recharge it is a very powerful device, but is more for getting out of tight spots than charging through enemy firepower willy nilly. Use when in danger.

They are a few of my reasons. I would have a graphic here except I forgot to take a picture. DOH!

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Da Voodoochief

Invaders Homage #1 2nd look

Here is the 2nd video of the Invaders game. It is amazing what I can program while sat in the waiting room of a Hospital. Also while waiting for blood to be drawn, or even while waiting for the Dr at the Doctors office.
I have reused a number of systems that I either reused for the Hoopfighter game, or created while programming it. So when you look at the video, check out the reused systems.

• Effects systems are in place, and are strikingly familiar to the ones from HoopFigher
• Collectables control allows me to easily and quickly create the bullets and the Alien itself.

Invaders 2nd movie from Robert Toone on Vimeo.

I did have to create a new collision routine so the Collectables could collide with other types of Collectables. Apart from that I have not created anything new for this game, routine wise of course.

I can tell you are watching the video and thinking. WHAT THE HECK is that Alien thing moving down the screen. Instead of looking at the aliens drawing, how about looking at its movement, which I modelled on the Space Invaders wave movement. I also did several things in this prototype thats harder to notice. It is those little details that I believe sets my games apart from some of my competition.

for example,

• This alien drops bombs, not just from its center, but also from the its edges. This made a much more exciting spread of bombs to dodge. It also allowed me to not corner the player too easily.
• This alien does not fire when it does its last two strafing runs across the screen. I believe that would be unfair to the player, and not what I really want to do to a player. It is about the player enjoying the fight, not being punished because the bad guy got too close.
• The Health bar although in a test reduction configuration. You can see that I have chosen to not simply take the bar and reduce it from the right side to the left. Instead I have centered the health bar in the screen, and then I have made the bar shrink as health is reduced. Yeah, so I also colored it for more pizzaz, but really this type of health bar has a real benefit over the long line slowly shrinking to the left. The main advantage is that it is always easy to see how much health you have, also health that disappears goes from both sides and this makes you notice it so much faster.. and makes a player more worried. I also believe it being centered in this way makes it really obvious when you are really low on health.

I have more to write even about this video, but it will have to wait. I'll try to mention them in my next installment.

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Da Voodoochief