Flynn Gordon - Yet another Space-Shooter-Beginner-Project :)

WIP games, tools & toy projects
#1

Hi all!

Being an business-application-developer for some years (yawn) my curiosity about game-development started to get overwhelming last year.
So i started to try to develop some basic game-concepts in various languages and game.types for fun.
My current little project (using Java this time) is called “Flynn Gordon” (the grand-grand-grand-nephew of Flash Gordon, of course)

UPDATE March 11, 2012:
http://www.schansky.at/flynngordon/0.6.1/

You can play the previous versions here:
http://www.schansky.at/flynngordon/0.6/
http://www.schansky.at/flynngordon/0.5.1/
(or if you want to visit my humble dev-blog: http://flynngordon.tumblr.com/ )

I’d be happy about any comments/suggestions :slight_smile:

#2

Oh, i forgot something!

SoundFX are currently turned off by default… so, its office-friendly :wink:

You can enable Sounds in the Options-Menu…

#3

Fun! Control is solid. Graphics look good. I like the enemy ship behavior.

I turned on SFX but didn’t hear anything (I’m in Ubuntu Linux with IcedTea Firefox plugin (OpenJDK). Otherwise the applet ran great (reporting 60fps).

Regarding gameplay, is there any strategic reason I’d want to pick up a single-shot “powerup” when I already have a tripple-shot?

EDIT: I realize that lack of sound is because I was running another sound application. I’ve also discovered this with my game in Linux. It seems that the Java sound API tries to grab the “raw” audio device instead of the proper mixer. If any other sound application is running, it can’t get the sound device. If it does get the device, then other system sounds won’t work until it gives it up. I haven’t found a reliable way of obtaining the proper mixer. This does not seem to be a problem in Windows (MacOS?).

#4

Thanx :slight_smile:

Good point. I’m not quite sure about the powerups yet…

Currently there are 3 types of weapons available to the player.
Every weapon has its own shoot-frequency, which is increased by collecting the right type of power-up. Collecting a powerup switches the ship to that kind of weapon.
So if you previously collected many singleshoot-powerups and catch one tripleshoot, you may want to return to single (because you can fire more often…)

Maybe I’ll change the weapon-powerups to

  • add one laser (single - double - tripple - one backwards - etc.)
  • add one bullet (increase fire-frequency)
    so that collecting powerups always makes you better…

No Sound… hm… ok. I’ll have a look at it.

The render-loop (ticks-based) is currently set to 60fps… :slight_smile:

#5

See my edit above regarding Java sound in Linux.

I tend to like this type of game. Is there a name for this genre? Qualities are: Flying around (usually in a space ship), blasting enemies, picking up powerups. It’s like Asteroids on steroids. This does not include games like Space Invaders or Galaga, because the ship is fixed. I would include oldies such as Maelstrom and Subspace. Similar are games like R-Type/1942 (even though strictly side/top-scrolling), because of the same powerup model. Less similar, but with same powerup model, are platformers like Contra.

Some of these games (Maelstrom) included “bad” powerups to make you think before grabbing them. Others (R-Type) only include good powerups, but with strategic differences. I look forward to seeing what you add.

#6

Moin,
twas fun to play although the ship seems to be a bit too slow. Personally, I’d probably scale the sprites up quite a bit to tighten up gameplay and make space more valuable… especially space that is not currently occupied by deadly projectiles. Apart from that I feel the background is too dominant and shouldn’t be as bright. The “boss-fight” was cool although more of a chore than a challange as it refused to die in reasonable time :~)

Still, five minutes of my life well spent. Thanks for sharing and good luck!

[quote=“Nyhm,post:5,topic:38003”]
AFAIK games like these are just called Shoot’em Ups… Maybe you should have a look at Tyrian if you don’t know it already: http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/tyrian_2000

#7

Its really nice :slight_smile: Its more my speed of Asteroids :stuck_out_tongue: I hated the physics on that game :frowning:

#8

Nice art you got there :smiley: kinda hard at later level, bullets rain.

#9

Nice game.

I like the graphic style, but it’s imho way to slow. Furthermore I want to shoot whenever I press space. =)

#10

I wonder how you draw the background, it’s so eyecatching.

Looks like there’s bad powerup, I picked it and my double shot became one.

#11

@ReBirth: i found it on one of these “free wallpaper”-sites… but some days ago i figured out who originally made it: http://casperium.deviantart.com/gallery/5748580

I’ll ask her if i’m allowed to use it… :slight_smile:

@All: Thanks for all your comments, they make me smile ;D

#12

I just made a little update and added some eye-candy to the background: parallax-scolling nebulas :slight_smile:
Have a look here: http://www.schansky.at/flynngordon/0.5.1/

I’m still not sure which powerup-system is better, what do you think:
1: powerups are always improvements

  • add one laser (single - double - tripple - one backwards - etc.)
  • add one bullet (increase fire-frequency)
    2: single weapon-powerups
  • will increase firepower for the specific weapon
  • “powerups” can decrease your ships firepower (triple-laser to single-laser)

What do you think about a “shop” between the stages, where you can configure your ships equipment for the next stage?
So instead of collecting weapon-powerups, you’d collect credits and can spend them in the shop for better lasers :slight_smile:

#13

You better add both type of powerups ;D for shop you can do it by creating a state for “shop” and a class to hold info like your balance to be read by multiple states.

#14

Hm. Maybe I’ll add a shop for mega-powerups with limited ammo, like smartbombs or a black-hole-generators, or tachyon-throwers…
Gotta google for some trekkie-dictionaries ;D

#15

The powerups are now replaced by the shop-idea ;D

The Aliens drop “energy-packs” upon destruction, which you can use in your ship to activate another laser-mount, or upgrade the “pulse-generator” (aka bullet-frequency) or repair your shield.

This “shop” is accessible after each level (when you press fire in the bonustime-screen)

What do you think of it?

http://www.schansky.at/flynngordon/0.6/

#16

The background (as impressive as it looks) distracts too much from the actual game IMHO. Try to make it two or three tads darker, so that one could spot enemies and enemy bullets easier.

#17

Nice imagery. When I died, the “A” button didn’t restart the game.

#18

I like the new version - I’ve always been a sucker for any game with an upgrade shop between levels. (I agree with others that background is distracting.)

Sometimes when I go to the applet page, it just shows me a gray rectangle. Other times it works. It probably has something to do with IcedTea plugin for Firefox (in Ubuntu).

#19

Hm, yes… its the “R”-Button… but in the “A” and “R” are quite similar in the used font…
I’ll add the “A” to the “restart”-event :slight_smile:

#20

That’s shaping up as a nice little game. I like the ambition of it: boss fights, weapon upgrade shop, etc.

Some things that could maybe be tweaked:

  • The player’s bullets move annoyingly slowly. I don’t know whether there’s something in the upgrade shop that speeds them up. (It wasn’t obvious to me what some of the upgrades actually did. If I hadn’t read about the “pulse generator” above I wouldn’t have guessed its meaning.)

  • The enemy bullets are quite hard to see. How about making them bigger or brighter (or darken the background, as Egon suggested)?

  • Upgrading the ship so that it has more guns doesn’t seem to help much since the bullets just form a big clump. How about changing the guns’ angles so the bullets spread out a bit?

  • Collision detection could be a little more precise. It felt like the collision boxes were a bit bigger than they needed to be (although it probably doesn’t matter much if the game is frantic enough).

I’d call it a “vertically scrolling shoot 'em up”, and so would Wikipedia. :wink:

Simon