My First Game, "Spaceshooter"

WIP games, tools & toy projects
#1

Hello! I’m Ryan, and I’ve been working on my first “game” over the past weekend. After countless “projects” started, and forgotten along the highway, I’ve decided to scrap any and all ideas of being super-fancy, and I’ve settled into a sort of “Space Invader” sort of game. Very simple, just me and a friend or 2 working on a small project.

Anyways, onto the actual game! I’ve titled it, quite elegantly, I might add, SpaceShooter! It was officially started Friday, March 1st, 2013. I just thought I’d do it myself over the weekend, almost like a personal game-jam. But my graphics sucked, my code was patchwork at best (Still is, actually!), and I didn’t like it one bit. So, I rang up some friends on Skype, and got cracking. It was pretty much done by Sunday, but then we (Skype friends and I) got a fresh wave of ideas. So, I bring you, V1.0, the not-quite-Alpha version!

Links
Github (For the paranoid): https://github.com/RyanMB97/SideScroller.git
Sendspace Download Link V1.0(InDev): http://www.sendspace.com/file/fdw674
Sendspace Download Link V1.1(Alpha): http://www.sendspace.com/file/4nd9v5
Sendspace Download Link V1.2(Alpha): http://www.sendspace.com/file/bq8b5o

Realized that I never got around to creating a list of what we plan on doing! Here goes…

  • More Graphics (For enemies)
  • Background music (Self-created) of the 8-bit kind
  • Another/More weapon(s)
  • Upgrades (Later on, after game is more polished, think “Beta”)
  • Sound effects in general

This is obviously not the complete list of ideas, or the final one. Hopefully we can manage to get most of these added. Open to suggestions!

Update-Log:
V1.2 (Alpha) [3/8/2013]:
-Added a “Laser Bolt”, deals 2 damage to enemies
-Added enemy health
-Limited Torpedos (1-shot kills, 5 total, 1 shot per second limiter)
-Enemy ship graphics
Todo:
-Add a UI besides the “Debug”
-User Options/Settings?
-Levels/Stages
-Clean and Organize code, big mess that it is.

Ideas, Opinions, and General feedback is much appreciated!
Important
There is a “Readme” file inside with controls and info, read it :P!

Changed the Image [10:52PM 3/5/2013] [3:37PM 3/8/2013]

#2

Congratulations on getting this far on your first project, I’ve yet to finish (or get close to finishing) any project that I have started.

I am sure you have plenty planned for this game but here is some quick initial feedback.

  • Please, add in some unique mechanic. Creating a clone game is a great way to learn but I feel you and your team could stand out so much more by creating some unique aspect to the game. An example: giving the player a shield that deflects projectiles instead of absorbing them, allowing the player to angle themselves in order to properly reflect projectiles.
  • I see hit boxes in your screenshot but I am un-sure of how to activate such viewing in my game (granted that it’s only for developers to view). This brings the point that you need to make sure users know, or will know the controls of the game.
  • You print information to the console, which is fine for development purposes but keep in mind calling “System.out.println(“stuff”);” takes execution time. Be careful not to release a public version with too many of those included as it could slow the game down.

I could go on for a while with game-play specific feedback such as…

  • Make that background scroll to the left, that will really give a sense of motion.
  • If you hold space bar down you can fire at a tremendous rate without pause (I am assuming that this is un-intended).
  • Add ship to ship collision.

…but I’m sure that and more is already planned, good luck.

#3

Thanks for the feedback! Also, I wanted to thank specifically your suggestions and that your points are very good. I will start with saying that I should probably have not uploaded that picture in particular, it is slightly misleading. I’ve also got to ask, but did I forget to add the “readme” to the folder? I thought that I had written one up real quick and tossed that in with it. But anyways, if you wanted to see the “debug” info, it’s F3. Hope I’m not going on too long, but thanks for the feedback. We certainly have a few things planned (If even for such a small game), and I hope that we manage to finish it to the point that we want it to be!

#4

Ah, I rushed to launching the game. You do have controls written out, sorry about that (but perhaps it indicates something about the typical consumer).

EDIT: The projectiles get removed when the ship that fired them get destroyed. Normal projectiles should be independent of ship status.

#5

Hooray, got more stuff! Mostly front-end and pretty, but the code is being pretty lazy and disorganized (Not me, of course. It’s the codes fault!) So, I’ll give you the links and info and stuff:

Sendspace Download Link V1.2(Alpha): http://www.sendspace.com/file/bq8b5o

Update-Log:
V1.2 (Alpha) [3/8/2013]:
-Added a “Laser Bolt”, deals 2 damage to enemies
-Added enemy health
-Limited Torpedos (1-shot kills, 5 total, 1 shot per second limiter)
-Enemy ship graphics
Todo:
-Add a UI besides the “Debug”
-User Options/Settings?
-Levels/Stages
-Clean and Organize code, big mess that it is.

As usual, ideas, opinions, and feedback is much appreciated. I also commit all of my “Versions” and major changes to Github, which the link is the first post. Also, quick question, how do you think I should go about doing a store/UI? Opinions appreciated!
Modify: Another question, any tips on how I’d turn this into a browser applet? Either I suck at Google, or I’m picking the wrong links =/

#6

Everything looks awesome! I haven’t played it, but I noticed one thing: you dont use delta in your entity movement code! This is not a huge problem, but lets say you give your game to someone with a faster computer than yours, he will actually run the game faster! I.E. movement will be faster, the logic will happen quicker, which is obviously not good. I don’t know you know about deltas, but they are basically the time between every frame. To keep your code uniform across multiple computers, you should multiply your movement code by the delta. Other than that, I saw nothing wrong with your code!

#7

Oh, I didn’t know that! I just that that the delta worked for the entirety of the program. I saw your post and was like, “Don’t I have that in my run method?”. But what your saying is that I should have, instead of i.e. “x += movespeed”, I should change it to “x += movespeed * Game.delta” or somesuch? Also, thanks for the feedback and code scanning for me :D!

#8

Exactly! And no problem, always glad to help!

#9

Game fell through. I just couldn’t think of ways to get it further based upon my limited experience. Also, I accidentally asked for a conversion! Ignore it! I thought it was something like “Would you like to move it somewhere”, then I could ask for it to be moved to archive or something like that. Again, sorry!

Anyways, game is abandoned. Hopefully, at some point in the future, I can restart the entire thing. But now, it is done with. Anyone that wishes to use the code, images, or whatever, feel free to use the github link and stuff if that’s even possible. Hopefully my next project is more successful!

-Ryan
Newbie!

#10

Do not give up yet.

You must make it playable, or else you may end up like most the people on this forum: Knowing what to do, but being unable to do it.

Make it playable, then abandon it.

#11

Well, when you put it that way, I feel sort of crumby. Guess that I can pull it back into production for a day or 2 of my school vacation and patch it up to play-ability. I’d hate seeing myself as a “Well, if you do it EXACTLY like this”, but then having no good examples of my own. Would be slightly hypocritical… Anyways, thanks for the “motivation” (Read: kick to the behind). Will release a “Finished” version sometime in the next 2 days to provide myself closure.