Final Kapster

Featured Games
#1

Heres a little shmup I’ve been working on.

Its the year 3521, Earth is at war with an technologically superior Alien race. The war is all but lost, Earth’s final defence force has been defeated and a massive Alien Fleet is heading towards Earth.

You pilot an experimental ship, constructed specially to combat alien weaponry. Its the first of its kind and has not yet been tested in actual combat. Due to the desperate situation you have no choice but to engage the enemy.

All that stands between earth and the alien fleet now is you.

Controls: Use the mouse to move the ship, left mouse button to shoot and right mouse button to switch shields.
Alternatively you can use the keyboard for ship movement (see option menu) and Left CTRL to shoot and space to switch shields.
I recommend that you play in fullscreen for maximum smoothness :slight_smile:

I’m looking for some feedback and idea’s to improve the game to make it better, any suggestions are welcome.

You can play it here

#2

wow, that was really nice. nice ikaruga inspired theme

#3

fun game, no need for improvements. I wonder what happens if your last ship gets captured… hm maybe I should play again.

#4

Awesome awesome awesome, needs moving to the Featured Games section!?

Kev

#5

Good, but hard. Could do with some more sound too!

Cas :slight_smile:

#6

Despite kicking Cas’ butt on the highscore list, I too think it is too hard. :slight_smile:

That laggy ship control takes some getting used to… if the player’s ship movement was a little more responsive it might help. Everything is also quite big on the screen… like enemy shots and your ship… I like the look, but the first time the aliens sent a curtain of shots I assumed I was dead because it didn’t look like it was even possible to fit between them. The hit box does appear to be a little smaller than the actual sprites though… I don’t think I like that - even though it saved by butt a few times.

Overall I really like the look and the game play was generally good.

#7

Good game, really smooth graphics.

I don’t think is hard. Lost two lives in first wave, but passed the next five without diying.

For improvement… maybe some boss ship (maybe there are, but I didn’t see them).

#8

My only complain is that when you revive the ship should be “blinking” (i.e. invulnerable) .
I had 17000 points and was ready to gat hansdampf high score, but I died then when I ressurected I didnt had a chance to see what’s happening and died again … thats sad

#9

Featured! A wonderfully fun game. I loved Ikaruga, and this indeed reminded me of it. You put some awesome style into this little package, too. I agree it was perhaps a bit too hard, but really very well executed.

+1 point the game installs and uninstalls correctly
+1 point the game doesn’t crash ever
+1 point the game is slickly presented
+1 point the game has “good” graphics that suit the game
+1 point the game has “good” sound that suit the game
+1 point the game’s overall style is “good”
+1 point the game is original or brings a great new original twist
+1 point your judge enjoyed playing the game
+1 point the game is complete enough that doesn’t feel anything is missing
+1 point you don’t whine and you demand nothing of the mods (simply saying “can you rate my game please” is fine)

10/10. :smiley:

#10

Very cool! Nice fonts. :wink: I got 2nd place, just ~500 points behind. Two things:

  • Dying immediately after dying really sucks.
  • Pressing escape to skip the cinematic exits full screen.

This is typical of most shmups.

#11

Cool game, very polished. I love the mouse-only controls. Was the monochrome challenge an inspiration?!

How did you do the fake-3D effects like the shattered fragments that turn in space after you die?

#12

Boom! High score! 29k! I was smokin’! I had the old high score of 19k on only the 5th wave. :slight_smile:

#13

[quote=“kapta,post:1,topic:34195”]
Fun. I had a few thoughts on improvements:

  • Access to the options menu in-game. I wanted to play with keyboard and it was annoying to have to quit back to the main menu.
  • Access to the instructions in-game. I had my ship captured and wanted to check them to find out what on Earth just happened.
  • Explain the ship capture mechanism in the instructions. Maybe this could be unlocked when you’re captured.
  • X looks rather like H in the font you use. I wondered for a while why the Charge bar would say “Mah”. Tweakable?
  • s/Advance/Advanced/ in the instructions subtitle.
#14

Thanks for all the great feedback and comments. I’ll try and get an update out later today with some of the changes mentioned here.

don’t think it was a direct inspiration, maybe a subconscious one.

I didn’t, it’s real 3d with opengl.

already planned, but maybe after a few days, you may have already noticed (or not) the boss flying past in the background at random times.

Yup, most modern shmups use this technique, it makes the player feel better than they actually are. The Ikaruga ship for example had a hit box of only 1 pixel big.

#15

Small update today.

  • added 5 second invulnerability when ship revives.
  • added a test music track (the kevsters idea), you can use the M key to turn it on and off. Will hopefully add more sfx later.
#16

That’s a really nice one!

The only very small issue maybe is that I clicked fullscreen by accident because I keep clicking the mouse. Maybe move the fullscreen button at the top?

#17

Lol, ok well that explains it! Nice effect

#18

I’ve not had a chance to play with anything 3D. Would love to see how you did the effect!

Did you think about the issue where pressing escape to skip the cinematic also exits full screen? The work flow is, start game, escape, full screen, die on the third enemy, main menu, start game, escape, full screen, again, etc. :smiley:

Tried to fire it up and see if my high score still stands but:

[quote]Fatal error occured (5): null
java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.lwjgl.util.applet.AppletLoader.validateCertificateChain(Unknown Source)
at org.lwjgl.util.applet.AppletLoader.extractNatives(Unknown Source)
at org.lwjgl.util.applet.AppletLoader.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
[/quote]

#19

Yeh I did, but since its a browser app, escape key is really expected to exit fullscreen no matter what (like flash), I could add an exception for the intro screen but doesn’t sound like a really good solution, since you’d have to press escape twice to exit fullscreen. How about using the Enter key instead to skip intro? or maybe a skip button on bottom left? or should it be the escape key?

You might have got a corrupt download, I’m looking into this issue as I’ve seen it before, it seems to be some sort of Java caching going on even though I’ve tried to disable all caching (I’m starting suspect it might be the browser cache), current workaround seems to be to clear the Java cache from the Java control panel.

#20

Yep. Deleting everything with the Java control panel fixed it. Strange that my cache would be corrupt since the last time I played it, it was fine…

I like a skip button, and also enter. :slight_smile:

There is now a bug where the enemy is unable to capture.