More updates – this time to Jack’o'Roid…+ more
This is crazy. Two updates in two days. What’s next?…two thursdays in a week? 
I’ve just updated Jack’o'Roid to v1.3, and just like I also did with my first version of Omega Race – I’ve made it more arcadecabinet friendly. I hope those people who uses arcadecabinets will like the changes to the menusystem. No other changes - I didn’t do online highscores in it this time, though.
Now that I have your attention I have two more things I’d like to get off my chest;
- A while back I recieved a couple of mails from a guy who took the time out to make new samples for Zektor and Space Fury. Thank you! I liked the new samples, and was going to use them, but they were in small pieces that were of no use to me and I couldn’t be arsed to stitch them together so I could use them in the format I needed them to be in. Unfortunately I never got back to the guy and I’m sorry about that. If you’re still out there, and still interrrested, you’re welcome to write to me again and then we can do it right.
- I’ve put Oids on hold for a little while. Not for long though, but I just found a new game that I just had to remake and I’ve been working on that for two weeks now. It’s really coming along a great speed and I can’t wait to show it to people, but because I’ve got as many projects in the pipeline as I have, I haven’t written anything about it – except for this – and won’t do so until it’s done…but that should be before the month is over…I hope.
I’ll keep working on the two, or three, thursdays in a week. 
YEAH!!!…3 games completed!
Wow, this feels pretty good. I don’t have to biggest output of games – one, perhaps two games a year, and now I’ve made 3 games in 3 months and that’s pretty impressive if I must say so myself…and I do feel pretty proud of having produced 3 pretty solid new retro remakes in such a short time…
…but how do YOU feel about them?…let me know by leaving a comment on their respective pages.
The 3 games are of course made for the Retro Remakes 2008 Big Competition (go there if you don’t know what it is) and the 3 games, Zektor, Space Fury & Dingo are NOW available from their respective pages which is found in the menu above, or by clicking the links above.
Special thanks goes to: Oddbob, InfamousUK & Rich Douglas who all contributed to the audio part of the games.
You’re welcome to leave any questions or remarks about the games. Just do it here.
It’s been a busy 3 months but now I can finally take some time off to go on vacation and that’s exactly what I’ll do. Later today I’ll hop on a plane and go backpacking in asia for 7 weeks.
Changes and new features in Space Fury.
Here’s a little update on Space Fury.
The docking procedure/upgrade in the original game works like this: between every wave you get a chance to dock and get a better ship. The original has 3 extra ships to choose from, which is ok considering there’s only 5 enemy waves. If you get shot in the original game you die but you keep your upgraded ship.
I’d originally made the remake like that as well. However when I decided to up the number of waves from 5 to 20, I also added an extra 4th ship to chose from. But suddenly the docking option became extremely intrusive – coming after every wave, so now I’ve changed it to appear only every third wave which is much better…considering there’s also 4 times the amount of levels now.
Here is a couple of pictures of the docking sequences: the left one is from the original game, the one to the right is from my version.
On sunday I had a friend over and I showed the game to him. Then he asked a question;
Him: “So, do you lose your upgraded wings if they’re hit?”
Me: “Err..no. Is that a good idea?”
I hadn’t occurred to me before, but after thinking about it for a few minutes I had the thought that “Hell yeah, lets have the player lose the upgrade if the wings are hit“. That was actually a pretty good idea, because it solves the problem of the upgraded ships being extremely powerful, so now you can’t just circle the centre of the screen and blast everything in sight anymore.
Oh, and I should mention that in the original game there is no collision detection (or at least only minimal detection) on the upgraded wings…bullets often pass right through, but last night I added collision detection to the upgraded wings…well, I had to if I wanted them to be destructible.
So now you’ll still die if the red part of your ship is shot, but you’ll start again with your upgraded ship (if you have it), however, if your wings are shot they will explode and disappear but you’ll stay alive.
I think it adds a bit of depth to the game…which it could use.
“Exciting” Zektor and Space Fury news.
I think it’s about time I show a little from Zektor, but instead of making a crappy low-res YouTube video (which I intend to do sometime anyway) I’ve decided to release a running demo instead.
If you click here (1 MB) you can download a non-interactive demo. You won’t be able to play it, but you’ll be able to see the menu and the entire sequence of attractmode screens. That means that now you can get an idea of how it will run on your computer…and that’s much better that a low-res video, right. 
Exit from the menu by pressing the escape key or use any key during the attractmode to return to the menu.
I finally got the last of the important code into Space Fury last night. Important stuff like collision detection, player reset and a death sequence. What’s left now are a few resources, a bit of trivial score related code, a few bugs and most of all – fine-tuning of the gameplay. I was playing last night and I couldn’t even make it past level 3 which of course makes it stupidly difficult considering that there are 20 levels AND things are currently moving at a pretty sedate speed and not nearly as fast as I think it should…but that’s why I need to fine-tune the gameplay, see.
I also re-designed my extra spaceship. That’s the new version you see above.
Got any comments?…then leave me a message.
More ships in Space Fury.
You may have read that I’m expanding Space Fury to have 4 times the enemies.
Most of that is already done. Tonight I decided that if there are more bosses and more enemies, there should also be more powerups for the player.
Powerups in Space Fury are basically new ships to fly in. You start off with a small red ship and in the original arcade machine you get the choice to dock and add something to your hull. The original game has 3 extra hulls to chose from.
I’ve just implemented a 4th powerup/hull/extraship to chose from.
Here are the 4 expanded ships as they look now. The last yellow one is the new one.
EDIT: It was pointed out to me that the new ship don’t fit in so well with the 3 original ones, because it’s curved. I thought the idea was good at the time but I’m actually not too crazy about it myself – the glow gets a bit to intense because of the higher amount of lines needed to make the curved shape, so I may change the shape to something else when I get a better idea.
the RSS feed
Twitter
Come back soon…