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I’d originally made the remake like that as well.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. 🙂

…another Space Fury update

Okay, here we are again, back for some more limited news on Space Fury. 😉

A week has gone by and I haven’t spent my time too well (again). Well, I have made the final 8 new enemies for Space Fury though, but that’s about it – I haven’t done any coding for a week. I still need to make two new bosses, but I asked a friend if he wanted to design them and he did. Which is good. Sort of…I told him he could take a whole month if he needed it, but since I still need to have some voices recorded for the enemies as well, it may have been a mistake – it takes time to get right and it makes more sense to know if you’re doing voices for an alien creature or a robotic being before you start doing it.
Oh, well…perhaps he’ll do it quickly. 🙂

So now I have most of the resources – all the most important ones anyway. Now it’s time to begin coding again, and I’d better not waste too much time because my plan is to be finished with the game by the end of this month…so that’s just 2 more weeks left.

Why the rush?

Well, I’ve thought of another game, for the competition, that I’d like to squeeze in after Space Fury. A very simple but colourful spritebased arcade game. No title yet, I want to see how it goes first. But hey, I’ll have to remake it now…
…I made the logo for it yesterday. I can’t let all that hard work be for nothing. 😀

Oh, BTW, I was asked if I could end Space Fury with a big mothership – an enemy with lots of guns on it that would have to shot off. Well, yes I could…but I’m not going to. Since my mind is pretty much set on trying to make a third game, I can’t begin to add all sorts of things to this game. It’s a good idea but that’ll have to wait until I find a game with a mothership in it, or I come up with an idea for an “original” shooter.