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

[Nyhm]

@dishmoth

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

Technically, this is not a sroller, because there’s no actual scrolling. Yes, the background slides past, but that’s just visual. There’s nothing in the gameplay that interacts with anything scrolling. So, it’s a static shoot 'em up (like Space Invaders, except that the ship has two degrees of freedom). Just a pedantic clarification.

Simon, in the upgrade shop you can rotate the guns. I usually just set the flanking turrets one unit left/right to get the standard spread fire pattern. With three guns blazing, the enemies usually don’t even have time to shoot before they’re roasted.

[dishmoth]

@Nyhm

Simon, in the upgrade shop you can rotate the guns.

I noticed that option, but it didn’t seem to do anything. Game instructions need to be very clear to be understood by someone as stupid as me.

[BenniBanni]

@dishmoth

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

Thanks

@dishmoth

• 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.)

Good point.
The “pulse generator” increases the frequency of bullets.
I think I’ll add the possibility to upgrade the lasers (more speed, more damage)

@dishmoth

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

Hm…I dont know what to think about darkening the background, its so nice…
I’ll try to give the bullets more contrast.
If that wont work, I’ll set the background darker…

@dishmoth

@Nyhm

Simon, in the upgrade shop you can rotate the guns.

I noticed that option, but it didn’t seem to do anything. Game instructions need to be very clear to be understood by someone as stupid as me.

Good point too… a help-text in the upgrade-shop should fix that

@dishmoth

• 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).

Currently it checks the dimensions of the images (rectangle)

@Nyhm

Technically, this is not a sroller, because there’s no actual scrolling. Yes, the background slides past, but that’s just visual. There’s nothing in the gameplay that interacts with anything scrolling. So, it’s a static shoot 'em up (like Space Invaders, except that the ship has two degrees of freedom). Just a pedantic clarification.

Would this be a good addition to gameplay? Undestroyable objects, like asteroids or space-trash, which the player has to avoid? I’ll think about it. Should be fairly easy to implement…

[Nyhm]

@BenniBanni

@Nyhm

Technically, this is not a sroller, because there’s no actual scrolling. Yes, the background slides past, but that’s just visual. There’s nothing in the gameplay that interacts with anything scrolling. So, it’s a static shoot 'em up (like Space Invaders, except that the ship has two degrees of freedom). Just a pedantic clarification.

Would this be a good addition to gameplay? Undestroyable objects, like asteroids or space-trash, which the player has to avoid? I’ll think about it. Should be fairly easy to implement…

My vote would be no. Running into things (other than enemy ships) is annoying. In something like R-Type, it’s part of the gameplay, but I’d stick with the non-obstacle approach (ala 1942) for this game.

Or, how a bout a “lighting round” between every few levels. Make it all about maneuvering to get through a “hyperspace tunnel” without hitting the sides (no enemies). Sprinkle some “coins” in the track, so you can powerup afterward.

[Nyhm]

I know this is quite a delayed reply, but just wanted to report that your applet works much better for me with the Oracle Java Plug-In for Firefox than the OpenJDK-IcedTea plugin in Ubuntu. I can even hear the sound effects!

I’ll post elsewhere how I switched the plugin (without entirely changing the installed Java package in Ubuntu)…

[BenniBanni]

After months without development, here is an little update of the game:
http://www.schansky.at/flynngordon/0.6.1/

I added a nicer status-bar at the top (showing score, bonustime, energy, and shield-status).
The alien-bullets are now brighter and bigger.
The player-bullets move a bit faster.
And there are help-texts in the shop

Thanks for all your feedback!

[joeyismusic]

Very fun!
I was a little disappointed when my game didn’t revert back to a check point or something when I died!! =[
Also, I wish you offered a 2x scaled version (200% bigger) because it is a very tiny screen space.

Finally, the green things you can collect from destroying enemy ships should stay on screen just a tiny bit longer before disappearing off the edge.

[Nyhm]

I was happy to see a new version of Flynn Gordon. I like the updates. The status bar at the top is very keen.

[ReBirth]

I was tricked ;D I though it uses perfect collision. On large space ship it can be misunderstood.