Games

SpaceGate: released on Odo Games and featured on 8bitrocket!

2010-08-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

Space Gate has been released on Odo Games!!

Richard Hoddinott the manager is also a developer and has been releasing very successful games while establishing games portal Odo Games. The site already had a collection of some of the best games made in flash.

Ric also showed me very impressive games that he's developed himself - many of which have been played by countless millions of people around the world.

Play SpaceGate at Odo Games

Jeff at 8bitrocket has featured the game on his site with permission from Steve as well. The review is definitely a good read and explains almost the exact points that were my criteria for the game.

SpaceGate reviewed on 8bitrocket

Being compared to the classics is an honour, especially when your favourite game sites are responsible!! It must be said that most of my help in making the game was from them too.

Thanks again Jeff and Steve!

I also offered to explain how the enemy movement is handled over at the 8bitrocket site, in homage to Jeff's own blitting tutorials that made this game possible.

You can read my tutorial here: enemy paths tutorial in AS3.

Spacegate: Monochrome screen filter and other improvements

2010-08-04T03:31:00.000-07:00

I did more improvements including a monochrome screen filter as shown above, for all the retro fans out there.

I also added 1ups into the game for every 500,000 points in both modes. Survival mode is more varied now and the overall game is basically complete. I have been made some reasonable offers on the game and will shortly be announcing its release.

SpaceGate: Procedural survival mode

2010-07-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

I have integrated a new survival mode where the player must defeat wave after wave of randomly generated aliens!

Firing is 4-way (like in the games Robotron or Gamma Bros) and is auto as in arcade mode.

New controls:

Control type A: Arrows to move, WASD to aim
Control type B: Mouse to move, arrows to aim

I hope that once it's complete in the next few days that it will encourage some skills and require some replay!

SpaceGate: Monitoring memory in AS3

2010-07-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

Previously the game loaded all assets into a memory cache of bitmap data vector like in all my games.

As there are so many enemy types, I have made the game load only the assets it needs for each level, and have reduced the real-time memory usage down to around 32mb on my debug player (generally slower than the default player), as measured in the task manager on windows. I'm still caching but only a fraction of the amount as before.

In terms of real-time performance, the main loop separates some of its code into 2 tasks so that it doesn't have to process everything each frame, which is also helping, but that is another topic on duality or core separation.

There is still scope for improvement!

SpaceGate: difficulty levels

2010-07-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

So I added in difficulty levels, now you can choose from EASY, NORMAL or HARD from the options screen (selectable from the main menu). I think that the difficulty levels should help to cater for casual players as well as hardcore.

This has been my approach throughout, e.g. the option of mouse controls or keyboard, to acknowledge the divide in the preference among players on these matters and cater for both.

In terms of gameplay, enemies shoot less frequently on easier modes, and the boss fights last less time. There is also a bonus mutliplier added to the players score after winning boss fights. The multiplier is much higher on harder modes so skilfull players are rewarded with higher a multiplier on harder modes.

All that needs to be done is to tweak a few of the attack patterns and the game will be ready to release in august.

SpaceGate

2010-05-31T12:26:00.001-07:00

SpaceGate is a vertical scrolling shoot em up with a minimalist design plus a few modern effects. The game is inspired by the NES era of shooters such as Astro Warrior and bullet hell games like Xenon 2 and Cave.

Controls
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-Press 'p' or escape to pause and change the color filter and volume levels.

-Arrow keys or w,a,s,d to move or mouse. Firing is auto.

-Take control of 5 space stations over 3 difficulty levels.

-Over 25 enemy types including 5 bosses and 5 mini bosses, with different attack formations.

-Frame rate adjuster: press - and + to add or subtract 10 frames to the frame rate.

-Mouse navigated gui featuring LCD font.

-Gameboy inspired color screen filter during pause.

-3 powerup types, cannon missile and side.

-High score table integration will be added upon finding a sponsor depending on their domain requirements.

-Single life survival mode to be added featuring randomly generated assets and map with increasing difficulty.

The engine is bespoke and I am doing final tests on the explosion effect, side shot, difficulty modes and procedural survival mode.

If you are interested in supporting my game development you can donate using the box below.