The Space Game project was started as a temporary diversion from Bowmaster to give me a chance to bring some variety into my routine. I learned a lot from the exercise as I never really worked too much with a scrolling camera before. This project is still just a concept, but I do plan on making a game out of it in the future. The space game engine is what you occasionally see on the main page flying around behind in the background.
Current Status
This project is on hold until after I finish Bowmaster 2. I may release a simple interactive version before I release Bowmaster 2 but it will be more of a toy than a full featured game. I have a lot of ideas for a game that uses this style of gameplay and I'm excited about coming back to this project.
2008-11-13 CrazinessNESS!
Election madness. Economy madness. Bowmaster madness. It's been pretty crazy these last few weeks. I just want to reassure you that I'm still in business. And as a thank you for your continued support I have released a new game which you can also download FOR FREE! Yes, you do not have to pay money. It's probably one of the most economical things you can do right about now.
Check out my new space game.
Since this is the devlog after all, I'd like to tell you about some of the cool features implemented in the game. For starters, you can see that it's similar to the background space battle on my main page. This was really at first just a tech-demo prototype for camera focusing/panning. What you didn't see in that version is the ability to instantiate multiple cameras! ... it's exciting, trust me. What I mean by this is that there can be any number of views of the same game world. For example, in the game, you see your top down view and a symbolic radar view, but I've created a generic view system that allows me to make any number of views I want.
This was an exercise in the Model-View-Controler design pattern. Essentially the game logic works completely independently from the views that exist. I could create no views, and the game will run perfectly in memory (including all of the collision detections). I accomplished this by using my own bounding box collision detection system and relied only on MovieClip functions when updating registered camera views. Check out a demo below of a single battle being viewed from three different cameras. The bottom right camera uses a "low detail" mode and stays focused on a fixed position.
Yes I'm still working on Bowmaster 2. Most of these past few weeks have been spent working on Bowmaster 2. I just can't show you anything since most of the work has been on the main build (no little demos or animations to show).
Specifically I've been working on integrating the bomb effect code and debugging how units react to getting hit with blast waves. It's working well with my current damage system, as I'm able to give explosions specific elemental attributes (e.g. frost bomb).
Another cool feature I've been developing is context-specific death animations. So no more generic death animation. Units death animations may change depending on how they died. For example, I currently have code that can freeze a unit mid animation -- it looks like it is covered in ice cubes. You can then hit the frozen unit with an arrow and it will crumble into many ice chunks. Or my favorite animation so far is if you freeze a unit while he's in the air, when he hits the ground he explodes into many ice shards. I also have code for "slice in half" animation which shows a cross section of the unit with bones and 'redness'. The graphics are still pretty toony, so it looks more like a ham being sliced in half, but the effect is still pretty cool.
With respect to the space game, I already have code developed for manually piloting the small fighter units. You can fly around with the WASD or arrow keys, shoot lasers and homing missiles. You can target enemies. I plan to have mines and flares too. Mines you can drop behind you and flares will distract enemy rockets that are fired at you. Currently the enemies only fire lasers dots.
And the last thing I worked on today before posting this was the ability to control the Medium sized ships turrets. I may post an updated version of the background demo so you can play with it. You can't control the ship and where it flies, just where it shoots. It's kind of fun just playing as the gunner, trying to take out the fast moving small ships as they whiz by. Kinda feels like being in the Millennium Falcon shooting down ties (in a more simplified 2D environment ;)
