OpenFire game: top-down shooter, bullet hell

[SilverWarior]

that's much harder Believe it or not I have never ever played a single multiplayer game either hot-seat or on LAN

Actually implementing a hot-seat multiplayer in your game would not be that hard. All you would have to do is add new player bot and bind its controls to different keys or controller than your original player bot uses. And that is all.
Throwing a quick look at your code I guess you could do this in less than an hour due the fact that you are using OOP programing approach.

I've also a question. How does the voice sound? I didn't include it in release (you may easily uncomment it in the code - there are two variants: hostile bot, reporting errors and a generic sound).

I must admit that I haven't tried your game yet. Just watched the videos. I will probably try it out this weekend.

Voice fits fine heavy music, but when the music is calm I don't like it.

Listening to the music in your video I must say that I like it a lot.
Have you ever considered of using a semi-programmatically made music? Imagine for instance that you have several sound patterns and the ability to chose when and at what speed and volume each of them can be played. Using simple manipulation of speed, volume and which of these patterns is played you can make so that music that is being played is affected by game state. For instance when enemies are far away from you and thus you are in no danger the music is slow and easy but when you are surrounded by enemies and constantly under fire the music intensifies, gets a bit faster etc. That would definitely get you hart pumping.
If you have never played any game which would change the music based on the current game state then I strongly recommend you try Dune 2 (an old DOS based game) which was one of the first ones that was changing music based on game state. And its music is just wonderful.
And while its successors tried to recreate that they still can't beat the original one.

[eugeneloza]

Uploaded new release (better AI, now it's wild hard!). Updated video.

Actually implementing a hot-seat multiplayer in your game would not be that hard. All you would have to do is add new player bot and bind its controls to different keys or controller than your original player bot uses. And that is all.

Well, at the moment I've already have 2 sets of keys assigned: up-down-left-right for movement, WASD for firing. In case of splitting the keyboard for two players I'll have to use <WASD>+<TFGH> for one player and <IJKL>(maybe <)PL;'> )+<cursor> for another... seems very short on physical space at the keyboard
The only trick is that I've already implemented mouse movement control (it's not as convenient as keyboard, but it's a step towards Android). That could release one quad of keys and then one player with <WASD>+<IJKL> and another <cursor>+<mouse> could do the job.

I must admit that I haven't tried your game yet. Just watched the videos. I will probably try it out this weekend.

The voice isn't in game. Only in video in this post. Hovewer, the files are ready and to use it you need just to uncomment 3 lines of code and recompile. I think I'll make this as an option soon (or remove it for good).

Have you ever considered of using a semi-programmatically made music?

Adaptive (or interactive) music is very powerful. Yes.
But the music in-game is the one composed by Gundatsch@opengameart.org and it is 'as is' under CC-BY license. And it has only one vertical-sync pair of tracks.
So there are 2 problems: I don't have the appropriate "vertical-reorchestrated" music and I don't know how to change that realtime in the Castle Game Engine yet. I just load the music file, assign it high priority and play.
I am an amateur musician myself, but it usually takes ~7 hours for me to compose a track. E.g. 10 tracks would take me to 70 hours of work. Moreover, my skill is much less than that of an experienced musician, so the result would look rather petty compared to e.g. Gundatsch's tracks - first of all from soundmastering point of view. And I have absolutely zero experience in composing music for games (I've written ~300 relatively simple accompaniments for our singing group). I'll definitely have to do it for my Project Helena and Decoherence games, but that'll be later.

At this point I'm using the simplest approach to adaptive music - I just calculate EnemyPower (each bot type "worth" something) and selects next track based on this value (music context varying in easy-normal-hard-boss). However, the next track might come in 5 more minutes I'll need to understand how TMusicPlayer works for at least to adjust volume or cross-fade them.

P.S. There is a small problem with the game name, as OpenFire already exists as a jabber client. I've been advised GridFire, but it's also exists as Crossfire-clone WildFire? FireMania? Any other ideas?

P.P.S. I've found a very strange bug. The game runs slower on Linux and slows down on frameskip. Why I sync all actions to SysUtils.now timer... it should work as expected dependlessly FPS and OS... (FIXED)

[SilverWarior]

Well, at the moment I've already have 2 sets of keys assigned: up-down-left-right for movement, WASD for firing. In case of splitting the keyboard for two players I'll have to use <WASD>+<TFGH> for one player and <IJKL>(maybe <)PL;'> )+<cursor> for another... seems very short on physical space at the keyboard

Well if I would have tried your game I might have known that you have 8 keys per players which makes things a bit more difficult. But still it is possible to have two players using the keyboard at the same time.
For player one you can use WASD + IJKL or perhaps UHJK.
And for second player you can use Arrow keys plus numbers from numerical part of the keyboard (does require full sized keyboard).
I also wanted to suggest you to add game controller support but taking a quick look at Castle game Engine documentation I haven't seen any information for CGE to even have any controller support.

At this point I'm using the simplest approach to adaptive music - I just calculate EnemyPower (each bot type "worth" something) and selects next track based on this value (music context varying in easy-normal-hard-boss). However, the next track might come in 5 more minutes I'll need to understand how TMusicPlayer works for at least to adjust volume or cross-fade them.

This is almost the same approach that is used by Dune 2. So all you have to do is find shorter songs so you can switch between them more easily or mix them up using different channels.

[eugeneloza]

Name of the game changed to FireMadness

Huge overhaul. Almost release
Many new bot types + 3 more bosses.
Map manager + unfinished story mode
Hot-seat player co-op mode
Difficulty level
And much much more

Video and download links updated

And for second player you can use Arrow keys plus numbers from numerical part of the keyboard (does require full sized keyboard).

Done in 5 hours Now "controls" are fixed, but I'll make them user-assignable eventually. Of course, only full-sized keyboard.

I also wanted to suggest you to add game controller support but taking a quick look at Castle game Engine documentation I haven't seen any information for CGE to even have any controller support.

As far as I remember a commit for controller/joystic is pending . So soon it'll be available.

This is almost the same approach that is used by Dune 2. So all you have to do is find shorter songs so you can switch between them more easily or mix them up using different channels.

I've finally found out a way to fade out and stop the music. Implemented.
P.S. I was a huge fan of Dune2 in late 90s... Finished it a few dozens times Even written my own RTS those days... but it was lost in the old computer...