Membrane Massacre! (non-Java)

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

Enter Membrane Massacre.

The year is 2160. A deadly bacteria is sweeping the world – the likes of which medical science has never encountered before. The world’s best doctors have failed to find a cure. And so what is the fate of mankind?

Enter Dr. Smallship, the recent inventor of a high-powered shrinking device. With two-and-two quickly put together, it becomes obvious that the only solution is to use the shrinking device to shrink powerful combat fighter ships to a microscopic size, and use them to battle the sinister bacteria!

Come on. How tough could a few of these cytoplasm-suckers be?

Fight your way through four grueling randomly generated levels, through hordes of bacteria that jiggle with realistic physics. Take command of one of five unique microscopic space fighters, and unlock new and powerful weapons with each one. It won’t be easy, but everyone agrees that you’re the best low-salary pilot for the job!

Membrane Massacre is a coffee-break style game, with the intent of being ideal for short action-filled sessions. The game was originally the product of a half-month contest, but ended up seeing a total of five months of development, into the polished state it is in now. So take a shot at the devious bacteria lurking within, and see if you can defeat the evil bacterium boss, El Mucho Membrane! Controls and other details included in the README file.

Good luck, pilot!

Download Membrane Massacre now!


http://members.gamedev.net/hopedagger/mm_img33.jpg
http://members.gamedev.net/hopedagger/mm_img22.jpg


http://members.gamedev.net/hopedagger/mm_img29.jpg
http://members.gamedev.net/hopedagger/mm_img41.jpg

Feedback is, of course, greatly appreciated. :slight_smile:

#2

Hello Steve. Nice to see you around here!

I recommend this awesome game to everybody. A lot was done over the course of 5 months, and despite the short time frame, the game comes off as very polished, and most importantly, fun. :slight_smile:

#3

Ah, too bad it’s not java, but that’s still really really cool. The general concept is actually something I’ve been wishing to implement in a game at some point, but I’ve been so far behind in being able to realize any of that (well not the membrane thing, but your general control scheme and throw you a bunch of awesome weapons idea :slight_smile: ). I think the mouse + wasd control scheme works excellent for top down games. Very well implemented, and nice that you could throw in some decent music as well. Laser is awesome fun to use, love the particle/glowy effects, and the freeze bomb is just really cool (no pun intended).

Can I ask how exactly you managed the collision detection with the destructible environment? One of the things holding me back is always implementing a nice efficient collision algorithm. Care to share anything?

#4

Thanks a lot for the kind words. I’m really glad you enjoyed yourself. :slight_smile:

[quote]Can I ask how exactly you managed the collision detection with the destructible environment? One of the things holding me back is always implementing a nice efficient collision algorithm. Care to share anything?
[/quote]
Certainly! The ships uses a bounding circle (radius 18px or somesuch), whereas every frame the pixels that compose this imaginary circle are checked for non-transparent pixels against the map. These are summed up, and if it passes a certain threshold a collision is registered. The cells use a similar system, instead letting the bounding circle be malleable/deformable. Although not implemented, this system can also let you do stuff like calculate better bounce-vectors (by averaging the collision points on the bounding circle), or determining how hard/roughly to bounce the ship/cell off a wall based on the # of collision points. Hopefully that’s clear – if not let me know. I’m more than happy to explain how I did any of the portions of MM.

#5

Is the entire map then just some kinda large two dimensional array? Any idea how much ram that eats?

#6

Essentially, yes. And the RAM usage has been perfectly acceptable on all of the tests/computers that I’ve run the game on. :slight_smile: