Another WIP: Space Invaders…sorta.
After a short while away on vacation I noticed a Google search for ‘space invaders game tardis shooting‘ so I guess someone has tried searching for a game I’m working on, but not yet posted about here (although I have posted on Retro Remakes about it).
I haven’t decided on a final name yet, so I’m temporarily calling it ‘Tempestuous Spherical Invaders‘, but that will most likely change.
This is what I call ‘a quickie’. I started it a few weeks ago because it seemed like it would be a fun little project, and I’m keeping it a small project so I don’t expect it to take more than a few weeks before it’s finished (but I know I keep saying that about every game I’m working on 
).
It’s basically Space Invaders – but played on a sphere. You move your base around the Earth and shoot at the approaching Invaders. To make it a bit more fun I’m adding a bunch of power-ups like different cannons, beam-weapons, shields and stuff like that, but I’m keeping this project small so I can get back to Black Widow again.
If you want to read more, go here.
Meanwhile, here’s a few pictures to look at;
Also shown - the readout showing you how much longer you have your powerup.
2 more WIPs – Oids and Black Widow
Just what I needed – 2 more projects that can gobble up all my free time
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, that I’m working on a remake of the Atari ST classic Oids, since I posted about it 1½ month ago. It’s coming along nicely, although I have nothing new and exiciting to tell about it. The primary reason for this paragraph is to say that I’ve now added the game to the “Works in Progress” menu at the top.
Better late than never, eh?
Another new game that I’ve also started working on, and added to the “Works in Progress” menu, is Black Widow. Yes, another glowing wireframe game.
The original was made by Atari in 1982 and I’ve been working on this remake a little over a month now and it will probably be the next game to be finished.
There’s a development screenshot below – click it to see the full version – or go to the Black Widow page to see a few more pictures.
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. 
Update to first version of Omega Race
As you may know, I remade Omega Race back in 2006 and then did it again in 2009.
Some of the reasons for remaking it again is that I wanted a game that looked better, played better and was more arcadecabinet-friendly. The menu-system in the original version was a bit wonky as a result of my just-as-wonky programming style back then.
But surprisingly the first version still gets a lot of downloads and last week I recieved request to make the menu more arcadecabinet-friendly. So I did.
I’ve now updated the game to v1.2 which has 2 things changed from the original version;
- The “Do you want to exit? Y/N” requesters has been changed so they now work with the arrow and firekeys. That means that the keys are more standard and you don’t have to remap the Y & N keys if you’re running the game in an arcade cabinet. The menu is still a bit wonky…but at least it’s better now.
- I’ve implemented online highscores so you can now compare your scores with other player’s scores. The scores that are downloaded when you sync the score are not saved locally though, so to fill out the list you have to sync after running the game. It was a bit of a rushjob so I wouln’t be surprised if there are bugs, but if you find any please let me know.
The updated game can be downloaded by going to its page, >here<.
New remake under development: OIDS.
Isn’t this just typical for me?…I should be working on one of my other WIPs…and I just start a new one. *sigh*
Anyway, as you may have noticed by now I like “spaceshooters”,
and one game I’ve been thinking of remaking for a long time is OIDS.
I don’t like all aspects of OIDS though*, so I’ve been thinking that I wanted instead, at some point, to make a game that was a bit like OIDS…but “my own”. So, one evening – not too long ago – I decided to start writing a few routines that could serve as a framework for a game like this someday.
Well, that was a month ago…and I haven’t stopped to take a break since.
* I’ve been playing the original Start ST game a lot, and a bit on the Mac version too, and now I must say that I’ve definitely come to appreciate to things about the original game I didn’t like originally.
Anyway, I’m currently working almost everyday on remaking the original Atari ST version and I must say that it’s coming together just nicely. I don’t know how long it’ll take me to make it, as it’s got a sh*t load of levels and that takes time to do, but so far I’m having a lot of fun making it, so hopefully it won’t take too long. I’m sure this’ll be my next remake though.
I’ve come up with a nice silhouetted look for the game, but basically it’s just the Atari graphics with a gradient background, and since these pictures are a just works in progress I think it’s safe to say that the graphics will probably change – one way or the other – before the game is done, but for now they’re giving me something to work with so I can concentrate on the code instead of the graphics.
Here’s a few pictures of the game as it looks now.
I’ll post further news about the game over at Retro Remakes.
the RSS feed
Twitter
Come back soon…