Hyper Blazer

WIP games, tools & toy projects Archived Projects
#1

Yesterday night I found myself starting a new game instead hanging out in a bar :). Since I really enjoyed Trail Blazer on my old MSX, I started doing similar game. Since I just started it, it’s anywhere but finished. There’s no sound, no textures, only 3 levels, and not even a title screen. The polish and eyecandy will come later.
I do think myself that the game play is there and I like the sense of speed in it. Since the game is not very pretentious, I think I might be able to finish this one for a change :).

Maybe you could give it a go and give some feedback about if it works at all, if it’s fun, too hard, too easy, etc.
Play with you cursor keys and space bar. Should work on windows, linux and mac, but mac and linux are untested.

http://www.gagaplay.com/hypblazer/hypblazer.jnlp

#2

ohh - oldskool game!
my skill are a bit rusty tho - died at second level :frowning:
looking good. How are the levels stored ?

#3

Thanks for testing.
The levels are stored in simple text files.

#4

Bloody hell thats fast! :o ;D

Very hard though (although that could be my insistance on going full speed all the time). Could do with some easier levels to lull you into things a bit gentler perhaps?

#5

[quote]Very hard though (although that could be my insistance on going full speed all the time).
[/quote]
Well, you should be going full speed as much as possible, as the levels are designed for that :slight_smile: You can’t finish level 3 without going full speed for example.

[quote] Could do with some easier levels to lull you into things a bit gentler perhaps?
[/quote]
Yes, level 2 should probably be level 4 and level 3 should be at least level 6 probably :smiley:

#6

Nice. :slight_smile:

Play with you cursor keys and space bar.

Dont do that. Space + cursors is a bad combination for cherry keyboards. You cannot press up+left+space at the same time. Use left control instead (or just use both keys… so users can choose one).

Would be nice if there would be a smooth transition (fading colors) between the levels instead of stopping.

#7

Ahhhh I remember this game … think I had it on the C64.

Cas :slight_smile:

#8

[quote]Dont do that. Space + cursors is a bad combination for cherry keyboards. You cannot press up+left+space at the same time. Use left control instead (or just use both keys… so users can choose one).

Would be nice if there would be a smooth transition (fading colors) between the levels instead of stopping.
[/quote]
Good points.

The end of the level is where you will get points (depends on how fast you did it), so I was originally planning to stop there, display how many points you got awarded, load the next level and start again. But maybe that takes the pace out of things. OTOH, I’m planning to add different backgrounds for the levels so making smooth transitions between levels complicates things somewhat (it very much did in Cosmic Trip), and having a resting point between levels might be not such a bad thing too (the levels should become really hectic, much more than in the original trail blazer). Thinking I want to finish a game for a change, I don’t want to get too ambitious too early :).

#9

I just made it a little bit more pleasing to the eye and level 3 is a bit longer now (did anyone get to level 3 anyway? ;)). Nothing changed much otherwise (Oh I wish I had a little bit more time on my hands :().

#10

How about multiplayer on Project Darkstar :wink:

-Chris

#11

Still no ctrl… :-\

Well, played it with a joypad anyways (yay for JoyToKey) :stuck_out_tongue:

Just figured out that there is a temp-o-mat… duh… and I was pressing up all the time. Level 3 is pretty nice (totally suprised me… heh), but I didnt manage to beat it so far.

And now something different… dont use the offline-allowed tag during beta-ing. Without it the jws client will look for updates each time, which is of course nicer than having to click on the jnlp several times until it finally decides to look for updates.

#12

Brilliant!

#13

Now that would be cool! :slight_smile:

[quote]Still no ctrl…
[/quote]
Oops, sorry 'bout that. Will do tonight.

[quote]And now something different… dont use the offline-allowed tag during beta-ing. Without it the jws client will look for updates each time, which is of course nicer than having to click on the jnlp several times until it finally decides to look for updates.
[/quote]
Ah, thanks for the pointer.

[quote]Brilliant!
[/quote]
Thanks :smiley:

#14

Way too hard for first level. Maybe it runs too fast on my machine? Can you display the fps? And the way to the first door seems to long. Fun concept though!

#15

whoa, I didnt notice that insanely great explosion before. great stuff

#16

Now you can actually score points, use left CTRL for jumping, and I added an insanely easy level at the start.

#17

I just uploaded a new version of Hyper-Blazer.
Some work has gone into making it more complete, adding more tile types and adding levels. There’s still just 6 levels, so it quickly gets extremely hard but it is possible to complete all levels.
Regardless of the credits, there’s no music in there in this version and almost no sound effects. I’m in the process of changing everything to ogg vorbis format and to use OpenAL because the wav files were too big to deploy and the use of JavaSound had a terrible effect on the games’ smoothness.

http://www.gagaplay.com/hypblazer/hypblazer.jnlp

#18

I converted Hyper Blazer to use OpenAL for sound and music.
Could you give it a shot (especially people with macs and linux configs) to see if it works (especially sound)?
Any feedback is welcome.

http://www.gagaplay.com/hypblazer/hypblazer.jnlp

#19

Unfortunately it doesnt work for me. I get an Error Message “An error occured and the game will exit.”

Update:
This was the problem:
org.lwjgl.LWJGLException: Could not load openal library.

So after manually copying the OpenAL32.dll into the library path, it works perfectly now. Its really cool. Just i dont get very far either…

#20

win32 worked like a charm