SpaceBlocks demo [UPDATE]

Showcase
#1

Well, this is my first game here. It is a simple shooter game involving two spaceships blasting away at each other until only one is left.

I call it SPACEBLOCKS!

Download files:
NEWEST SpaceBlocks-7.zip
SpaceBlocks-6.zip
SpaceBlocks-5.zip

UPDATE
Done with v7! Yay! Thank you to everyone who gave me ideas and advice (not that many but still).
New features:
[list]

  • AIs can shoot special weapons
  • Rapid fire cannons from this game
  • Smoother effects (for some things, not all)
  • Less lag (I think)
  • Comes with more ships already built

Gameplay changes:

  • Ships go a bit faster
  • Homing missiles are slower
  • Need to charge explosive bullets
  • Can only have one type of special gun

Still needed:

  • Better help pictures (easy)
  • Networking (hard)
  • Bigger ships (medium)
  • Smooth effects everywhere (hard)
  • Single-player campaign (medium)

If anyone has other improvements, please comment. The support helps. thx! ;D

V6
I have added many features to v6 of this game, including:

  • Explosive bullets
  • A better background
  • Gameplay tweaks

V5

There’s not much so far ::), just a couple of modes and a ship designer.[/list]

#2

I wouldn’t say that “there’s not much so far”, since it actually already has two different multiplayer game modes and an enjoyable singleplayer gamemode.

I have a few tips which should only cost a little effort, but would make the game much more enjoyable I think:

  • The ships are way too fast IMO, I would nerf the thrusters (or make a mountain out of a molehill :P)
  • Ear candy/sounds instead of beeps
  • I wanted to give up/return to main and pressed ESC, but the application closed :frowning:
  • A dynamic enjoyable background (see f.e. the project mentioned below) with planets (instead of those circles)

This project made me think about the following project, check it out for inspiration:
http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/untitled-spaceship-game/36106/view.htmlI wonder when the owner of that project is going to push the update with galaxies…

Thanks for the fun and I hope you won’t give up this project :slight_smile:

#3

Thanks! I cut the thrusters in half, made esc only return you to the title screen (unless you are on the title screen) and made the background more “space-like”.
What I have not changed yet is the sounds (back to bfxr :cranky:) and the asteroids (although I do like the idea of planets ;)).
Again, thanks for the feedback!

#4

Really cool little game! Nice and smooth, fully functional movement and a whole lot of fun!

I noticed a bug, however. When I tried loading up a ship I had created the game crashed :frowning:

Oh, well… Keep up the great work! It’s looking real good so far 8)

Edit: Something worth adding is preview images of the ships in the “load ships” screen!

#5

hmm, can you post a picture of what the crash-inducing ship looks like in the editor? I’d like to know how to fix that bug.

#6

Nice! I really like how you implemented the tile-based ships! I’ll be sure to beat my friends at this later. Here are some suggestions:

Using esc to escape is pretty intuitive, but I wasn’t sure I could at first :). Consider adding an [esc to quit] memo in a corner.

It might be cool to implement pre-designed levels, so you would be able to have a list of levels to select from. This way in 1-player mode, the player wouldn’t have to find the perfect mix of level and enemies.

I really like how you thought to add the help screen, but it wasn’t very good. The image was kind of blurred, and from the perspective of a gamer, wasd / arrow keys to move are pretty obvious to begin with. I really like how you added multiple game modes, so if one didn’t do the trick, the others might. However some of the game modes, such as collections, would merit explanation in the help screen, or even in first seconds of the game.

I was playing with my sister, and some of the ships are really slow :slight_smile: . Maybe make the base speed higher? This would make for more action.

I’m losing 12-8 rn :o :expressionless: :cranky: :’( ???

Another issue I’m noticing is that the buttons still work when you’re playing, you just can’t see them. So If I click the spot of load ships while playing, the game changes to load ships screen

Keep it up! This is a really neat game :smiley:

#7

Heh. Kinda got to link my own game at this point. :slight_smile:
It’s interesting to see another approach to probably the same idea.

However, so far it’s a pretty nice game.
It could benefit from being a bit faster and the UI could use some polish, but i think you are overall having a nice little competition game here.

#8

Competition? feh. Your game is so much better I can’t even come close.

But I do have some questions: how did you get those transitions and camera movement to work so smoothly?

#9

Damn, I knew it sounded wrong. Not competition as between us but as between players. :slight_smile:

The answer to your question… by adding code to make it do this. Just made stuff fade asynchronously and tangentially instead of instant transitions. Really, anything works.

#10

This was supreme fun to play with two people, even though it has severe performance problems, likely caused by the collision-engine.
And the ship-editor is awesome for the replayability. :point:
Are you doing brute force collision checks or does box2d not partition the space so well?

#11

Actually, I did some performance tests on my computer, and it seems to be Slick causing the performance problems.

You can see it on stack exchange how I fixed it

Plus, in v6 I wasn’t limiting framerate, so the game isn’t consistent. I have a fix coming soon in v7 (as in 1hr, maybe).

#12

That’s great! I tried out slick2d some time ago and strongly recommend you libGDX. It’s easy, fast and comes with everything slick2d has.