[Journal] Defendrex

Contests Tiny Game 2010
#1

Though I’ll probably be submitting more than one game to the contest, here’s the development log for the first.

Defendrex is a first-person “beachhead” style defense game. Enemies will assail your fortified position from all sides, and you must hold them off as long as possible. The player’s two weapons (a precision laser and a rapid-spray machinegun) recharge and reload independently, and both will be necessary to succeed.

I’ll make optional mouse controls available using a captured cursor technique, but keyboard will be the primary means of control.

Attached is an image editor (runnable JAR with sources included) that I created for sketching and graphics; feel free to use for your own projects. s/l to save/load images, S/L to save/load palettes, and it works on a fixed 40x30 canvas. Pick a palette pen to use from the vertical strip, and change which EGA colour to fill the palette slot with by clicking in the spectrum. Filled with the “default” classic EGA palette by default. Only one palette pot selected at a time, and no fill or line tools right now… I might add separate left/right button pots later.

Edit 2010-04-16 2350h: re-uploaded egaEditor.jar; the previous version didn’t include sources as claimed.

Edit 2010-04-22 1940h: re-uploaded egaEditor.jar. Same file formats, with the following feature updates…

  • EGA and PAL extensions automatically added now; still no proper file-open dialog because I’m lazy.
  • Dual palette pots, left and right button; indicated with circle and square respectively.
    [li]Flood-fill tool; press lowercase “f” to flood with left-button pot, uppercase “F” to flood with right-button pot.
#2

that will be impressive in a 40 * 30 pixel game ;D

#3

As will mouse control in a 40x30 area!
The cursor itself will occupy 1/4 of the play area :smiley:

#4

For one, the cursor would be hidden. And though the game will be keyboard playable at 40x30, x1 scale, mouse control is probably only realistic for playing at x8 scale or so.

Progress to date: screen system finished, UI designed, palette assignments made (7 for UI, 4 of which are palette-animated; 9 remaining for game field and enemies). Starting on subpixel-antialised polygon rasterizer; implementing model/view/projection stack at present.

#5

Thanks for sharing the source of the editor! I am glad you used Markus’ framework so it’s really easy for me to add some of my own code to it. :smiley:

Good luck on your game, I like the sound of the gameplay and I hope it pans out well. :slight_smile:

#6

Work’s been slogging, so I’ve no reasonable progress on the actual game, but I did work on the editor a little bit. See first post for the latest egaEditor with new features.