GUNS - Reloaded

[jasonf]

Cheers

Simpleviewer was the easiest way of me getting a gallery online.

I may change the main page on the site to be a bit wider.. most people run 1024x768.. the page is set to 800x600. So I'm wasting a lot of space.

I didn't get to do much work last night, I only managed to draw an Apache Attack helecopter, A Challenger tank and a Humvee for the military. I need to draw some soldiers now.

When you enter a city and tear the place up, the army will come in... first with troops and humvees, they'll get mowed down.. so they'll send in the tanks and choppers. Eventually, there'll be air strikes from fighter jets..

[WILL]

Just watch out when they start sending Dirk's Super-Tanks.

[jasonf]

:shock: NOOOooo!!... The Aliens will go home if they arrive.

I played TANX after the compo, it was really good.. I wasn't very good at it though :?

[WILL]

[size=9px](I think you'll like Iron Strike then... well once we fix it. )[/size]

Well I'm anxious to play Guns Reloaded. I played the DelphiX demo version before. It was hard to play as it required you to volley your shots blindly as you had no time to aim, shoot and shield yourself for all 4 guns nevermind just one.

Any control improvements in Reloaded? Or maybe tips on how to play more effectively?

[jasonf]

I don't know about control improvements... I'm open to any suggestions as to how to make it more user friendly.

One thing that has changed is that on Easy levels, your guns will Auto-Activate their shields. So if you do go off on a mission across the other side of the map with one gun, you can be fairly safe in the knowledge that your other guns are safe...ish.

I'm going to implement Freespace style enemy location markers that move around the edges of the screen to show you where the bad guys are.. I may even include a range indicator too..


The basic controls are..

You have 4 guns (some levels you will have less)
You aim with up and down
You select with 1-2-3-4
You thrust with shift, once airborne you fly with left and right
You fire with space (hold for power)
you activate shields with Enter
F requests Fuel
S requests Shields
G requests an extra gun


I don't know what else would make the game easier.

[jasonf]

Made a little extra progress last night.
I now have different coloured Tanks for different Teams. These are different Tank sprites, so I've modified their designs slightly to fit in with the colours. Screens will be added to the site

Incidentally, there is a new URL for the game

www.gunsreloaded.com

[savage]

Maybe upload a flash movie of the game play when you have a second.

[jasonf]

Yay!

I now have a working Radar..
It's not a traditional radar, no circular control, no map overview.. no machine that goes "Ping!"

Instead it's arrows corresponding to the team colour moving on the edges of the screen to show that they're to the left, the right, above or below you. It doesn't show distance, but it's enough I think.

I've found this to be immensely useful while playtesting as it even shows where your own guns are in relation to the current camera position. Your guns are shown as numbered arrows and they disappear as your guns are destroyed.

Hopefully this should help towards getting rid of that "I'm LOST!!!" and the "WHERE THE HELL IS THE ENEMY!??" feelings.

I'm thinking of adding markers for other things like Shield Rechargers and Fuel Drops.

But I don't want to add too many or the sides of the screen will become very busy.

I'm also thinking of giving an option to disengage the Bullet tracking camera.

Ideas? Comments?

[jasonf]

Just an update.. I've made more progress in terms of Graphics.
The countryside level is now covered with destructable trees, which shatter in true "Tree been hit by plasma ball" fashion.

I've come up against my first real stumbling block.. There appears to be a serious bug in my particle system. The game has a single effect builder object which generates the particles, But after a while, after generating a load of particles, the whole game hangs... doesn't raise an exception or anything, just hangs. I've wrestled with this all weekend and it is something I really need to fix before I can make any more progress. I can't add exploding goats until it's fixed.

On the plus side, I was getting a little worried about performance, after adding loads of trees, the game was beginning to slow down a little.
But I ran it on a firends PC this weekend.. A beast of a machine AMD64 bit 1800mhz 2gig Ram etc.. (Details may be inaccurate.. I have consumed a lot of Vodka this weekend) But basically, it ran TOO FAST!! So I've got to limit the logic FPS. If this machine is anywhere near the Norm these days, then my performance worries should be less of an issue than I originally thought. So the benchmark will be my machine... which to be fair, doesn't even play Doom3 very well.

I'm going to add different level types.
At the moment I've got.
Mountain
City
Country

I'm going to add

Desert - Pyramids, sand dunes and Camels
Antartica - Ice, Snow and Penguins
Ocean - Oil Tankers and Cargo Ships.. the only place to land.
Moon - Low Gravity and Astronauts
Forest - Thick Forest, Massive Trees.


After watching a mate play it over the weekend, I might make a change to the control system too.. I'm thinking of adding it as an option rather than completely replacing it.

Thrust - Up
Fly Left - Left
Fly Right - Right
Aiming using the mouse - Abuse Style.
Firing using Space or Mouse 1
Shield using Enter or Mouse 2


I'm also going to add extra weapons.
Beam Weapon
Missile Weapon
Rapid Fire MINI Gun
Possibly EMP Weapon.


I've got to modify the AI too, the Computer opponent is far too reliant on Shields for protection and although it stops you from killing them immediately, eventually they run out of shields making them very easy to kill.

[savage]

I've come up against my first real stumbling block.. There appears to be a serious bug in my particle system. The game has a single effect builder object which generates the particles, But after a while, after generating a load of particles, the whole game hangs... doesn't raise an exception or anything, just hangs. I've wrestled with this all weekend and it is something I really need to fix before I can make any more progress. I can't add exploding goats until it's fixed.

Hmm, You've probably already checked but this sounds like a leak of some kind to me.