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Program Announcements / Invaders Reloaded. - Demo Download HERE!!

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 12th Aug 2009 18:55 Edited at: 13th Aug 2009 17:13
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So, there was a slight lack of interest in my previous post, but I'm not going to get upset. I guess I can't get alot of feedback from some screenshots and a video, so... we've made a short 4 wave demo!

It's uploaded to rapidshare with unlimited downloads. So go grab it, give it a play and tell us what you think!! Alot of work has gone into getting the game to this state, and now we'd really like a little bit of feedback to make sure we're somewhere on the right track!

I should point out that although I'm posting this under my username, I'm not the sole creator of this project, it is the work of Roll7, who are a london based games developer, where I work as lead designer.
We are looking to release a number of smaller arcade games over the Christmas period. For more information on Roll7, click Here

Notes:

The HUD is not even really started yet, so you'll have to deal with text.
Obviously its designed for use with the NSMindkit, but since you don't have one of those, this version has the ships weapons "locked" at 60%.
There are still alot of bugs and collision errors. Please if you experience them, don't post back here saying "that was crap", post back here with a screenshot of the error attached, and a description of how you made it bug out... help us make this game better!
Although your opinion is valid and you are entitled to it, we are on a very limited development cycle, and have little time to add new features, so although , yes, it would be cool to have warp drives, we don't have time to make it!!
This has been tested on Vista and XP, on 1024x768x32 res and 1440x900x32 (widescreen), if your monitor is not one of these resolutions, we'd like to hear how you go on!

Controls:
Arrow Keys : Move
Z : Shoot Lasers
x : Shoot Beams
c : Bombs
P : Pause
O : Unpause
esc : Quit

You should know that some other keys have dev features on them, and will probably mess up the game, as many features have been removed or limited in the demo!

so, obligatory screen shot:



The Youtube Video

GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--GET THE DEMO--


YOU DO NOT NEED A NEUROSKY HEADSET TO PLAY THIS DEMO
Note to mods. Please lock old thread!

I want robotic legs.
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Profit
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Posted: 12th Aug 2009 19:06
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good thing you posted this again because I missed it the first time


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Dr Tank
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Posted: 13th Aug 2009 02:11
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This is great! Solid workings and aesthetic. I love the black hole, and the way it sucks in your shots as well. It's cool that the player shield glows in the direction your ship is hit. Having the two shot types is great - it adds another thing to think about, and is much better to the standard shooter thing where you hold down fire all the time because you might as well. The automatic targeting "beam" is totally sweet too. Don't see this too often in DB shooters.

Criticisms? The game is a bit easy. I guess this is so you can play with the super brain device, but a harder mode would be cool. The last level was a bit monotonous. I thought it was infinite and was about to throw in the towel but then it ended. You can get away with being very careless, because the shield recharge things are very common, and the enemy shots not that damaging.

Some kind of visual change for the weapon powerups would be nice - colour, shot size and thickness. It seemed like past a certain level, leveling up did nothing.

Sometimes the "powerup collected" images were superimposed. Perhaps the previous one could move down the screen a bit if another appears.

The game took a hella long time to load. Not sure what you can do about this. Is your media in dds, dbo format? Are your textures huge? I guess it's not important since i can hit the windows key and do something else for a minute. Once the game's loaded it's hella fast and new levels load hella quick.

The "coming soon" splash screen with the boss screenshot looks sweet and I look forward to playing the finished article.

SUPER WEBSITE 22G
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 13th Aug 2009 11:32 Edited at: 13th Aug 2009 11:35
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Quote: "good thing you posted this again because I missed it the first time"

LOL, good good, I'm glad you found it, let me know how you get on!

DR Tank:
Thank you so much for your feedback, it's much appreciated! Since you took the time to write some excellent feedback, I'll take the time to respond! We played alot of old school and japanese shooters during the design phase! Glad you like the dual weapons systems, it's a gameplay dynamic I was really pleased with, did you notice how certain enemies are only effected by certain weapons?

Player shield was an experiment that payed off, and has since become an effect I use all the time. I'll post a tutorial on it soon. It's basically just scrolling UVdata, but the UV map is constructed in a certain way!

Quote: "
The game is a bit easy.... a harder mode would be cool. The last level was a bit monotonous."

I feared that would be the case. The demo is only the first 3 levels and then level 4 was quickly thrown together so you could see more enemies. Believe me, by level 14 you'll be wishing it was as easy as level 3! Unfortunately, I think someone set the "kill quota" for the last level WAAAAYYYY too high, so it takes ages to complete. I'll put a warning in the first post!

Quote: "
visual change for the weapon - colour, shot size and thickness.past a certain level, leveling up did nothing."

You're totally right. The lasers do need to change colour. I think the beams are cool as they are, maybe a slight hue change... but definately the lasers need to look more deadly!
Power ups are locked at orange level (those semi circular bars under the ship), in the full game your weapons go from orange - yellow - green, but I didn't want to give away all the weapons in the demo!
Quote: "
Sometimes the "powerup collected" images were superimposed."

Added to bug list!

The game took a hella long time to load. Once the game's loaded it's hella fast and new levels load hella quick.

That's interesting. I put a 4 second delay at the start to make sure people saw the opening screen. Load times on the test PCs are around 5-10 seconds. How long did it take on yours?! Can you post your system spec so we can test on something similar! The game loads everything at initialisation and then only ever deletes or clones during runtime, which does mean that in-game loads are like lightning!

Thanks again for the feedback, it's very much appreciated!

Anyone else? I know there have been 10 downloads, so someone else out there has been playing! What did you think?!

I want robotic legs.
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Dr Tank
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Posted: 14th Aug 2009 18:39
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Quote: "I put a 4 second delay at the start to make sure people saw the opening screen. Load times on the test PCs are around 5-10 seconds. How long did it take on yours?! Can you post your system spec so we can test on something similar!"


4 second delay? Are you using wait 4000 or something? If so, you'd be better off syncing the splash screen periodically whilst loading, but i expect you're not just delaying it and doing nothing. What do you mean be delay?

I should check again to see how long it takes. 10 seconds seems like a long time to me anyway. I guess i'm used to fast loading console games, or games where loading is disguised by other stuff.

System specs?
AMD Athlon XP 2600+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.1GHz
512Mb Ram

monitor set to 1024x728x32

Isn't it irritating how you can't copy and paste from dxdiag?

BTW i'll be interested to see your directional shield code. I have a round shield in my game and pondered putting an effect like this in but figured it wasn't worth the effort yet. It might be worth my while to copy yours though.

SUPER WEBSITE 22G
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Mindset User
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Posted: 15th Aug 2009 00:19
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Hi better fingers, I replied here regarding the space invaders videogame review, at the older post:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=155915&b=5
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draknir_
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Posted: 15th Aug 2009 01:39
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Quite a cool game, unfortunately it didn't scale so well to my 1920x1200 monitor:

http://tinypic.com/r/o8vrdh/3

The gameplay area didn't cover the whole screen, so objects hitting the bottom disappeared in full view instead of exiting normally.

It's a neat little game, I liked the little details, like how my shots were reflected by the big red beam things. IMO it's lacking some user feedback. At no time did I know how much my shields were without looking at the top left and the beam weapon seemed to run out of ammo sometimes? I'm not entirely sure.

Also, anytime I collided with an enemy or a laser beam the framerate went from a smooth 60 down to a crawl for a second or two - until I was out of the line of fire.
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Rapidrory
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Posted: 28th Aug 2009 02:03
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Great game! i liked it alot. very nice and crisp graphics. The only glitchs I noticed were the sheild bar on the right hand side didnt mach up with the sheild bar outlines(that may be intended...) and when you die, the "press return to try again.." thing doesnt disappear when the full game ad appears in the background...
other than that, fine as far as i noticed (i didnt have sound on so i cant cheak that...)

There is no such thing as "Too Fast!"
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Butter fingers
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Posted: 1st Sep 2009 11:42
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Thanks RapidRory.


I'm hoping that with a newsletter mention, there should be a few more people playing the game, but I should warn you that in the current demo people with screen sizes OVER 1440x900 will notice that the HUD goes a bit screwy.

The entire hud is being rebranded, so it's not something I'm hugely worried about, and the new demo will be available in the next few days.

I want robotic legs.
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Valle
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Posted: 13th Sep 2009 15:51 Edited at: 13th Sep 2009 16:46
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now that vid looks f*in awesome! will try it now
whats the music?

//edit
played it :
+neat graphics
+interesting enemies and weapons
-hud and screen problems
-enemies seem to spawn randomly, no pattern(?)

you also could add a bit more BOOM and BANG, keep working on this and it's gonna be great!

edit2:
This is what the hud looks like:

I can't move down further than on this picture, is that normal?
my Resolution is 1280x1024


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Butter fingers
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Posted: 14th Sep 2009 12:44
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Hey valle,

Thanks for the download and feedback.

The screen problems are now sorted and theres a V1.2 on the way.

Basically we couldn't make the game run in only one resolution, so it should be set up to resize the hud elements to whatever res the computer is in. This just hadn't been setup for the demo release!

It's now sorted by the way.


I'm going to try and get a new demo posted very soon so eyes out for that. Thanks so much to everyone who has downloaded and played. Without your (and more) help, this isn't going to get anywhere so please support independents and give us some feedback!

I want robotic legs.
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 14th Sep 2009 14:57
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@Butter Fingers:
Here's an idea for your splash screen; display it, get the current time, then start loading. If after the loading is complete four seconds have passed, continue, otherwise wait until the four seconds have completed.

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Butter fingers
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Posted: 14th Sep 2009 15:51 Edited at: 14th Sep 2009 15:53
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Nice. And thanks for the input. I just totally removed the delay now. It goes straight into the game. I don't need to show the player the controls before they start, because they are now shown in the game(It's got a propper menu screen now)

I want robotic legs.
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