Super Collider - Shmup with no shooting

WIP games, tools & toy projects Archived Projects
#1

Another quick weekend mash up, I heard the exciting news about the LHC. I don’t really understand the science but the name Super Collider sounded like it’d make a great game.

So, the idea is that it’s an arena shooter where you can’t shoot things, you can only collide with them with your shields on. However, there are 3 coloured shields and you need to be using the right shield again the right enemy to avoid getting damaged.

Each shield has a power bar which can be recharged by collecting tokens dropped from enemies. However, you can only collect tokens while the shields are down.

http://www.cokeandcode.com/demos/superc/superc2.png

Play Super Collider

Instructions in game (mouse to move, left button shield on, right button shield toggle, 1/2/3 - select shield). Glowly graphics were added mostly because it’s a feature I want to add to Slick, plus every shooter should be glowly right? :slight_smile:

Thoughts and comments appreciated. Still a bit worried about performance due to the way the glowly lines are drawn hence the FPS still being shown (though it seems to run ok here at work on Intel gubbins). So comments on performance (stutters, slow down etc) especially useful.

Kev

#2

It’s quite fun in a mesmerising sort of way, ultimately the kind of thing that people knock up in Flash usually. Its main downfall is its need to use the 1-2-3 keys, which spoils it somewhat as a casual mechanic. I didn’t play it long enough to know if there’s any interesting variation in later levels but it’ll need some new stuff in there to keep the attention span from drifting.

Cas :slight_smile:

#3

You can use right click or space to toggle the shield to the next one - but it’s way harder then

Also wondered about mouse wheel for selecting shield.

Kev

#4

It’d probably be better with just two colors… Besides, I find it kinda hard to tell the difference between the blue and the green shapes.

I’ve got a solid 30 fps here, but the game plays really laggy. It’s like it only samples the mouse position four times per second, and then interpolates, making it unplayable. :-\

#5

Wow, thats really harsh - what spec you got? Must be something the card really doesn’t like, I get around 700fps most of the time here on an NV.

Kev

#6

A horrible one that came with the computer. ATI, I think… It can just barely run TF2 at playable speed (20 fps or so).
Is there a fast way of checking?

#7

Works good for me.

#8

Looks good, wastes time in a pleasant fashion, no technical problems.

I was happy using the right mouse button to change shields. Having to control a game using both the mouse and the keyboard is too much like hard work for me.

I found that there was too much going on on-screen for me to ever look at the shield or health meters – so it always came as a surprise to me when I died! Could the shields and/or health be represented as part of the player’s sprite in some way? Maybe the strength of the current shield could be shown as a “pie chart” (pizza being eaten) in the centre of the player? I’d be a little worried that the game is close to being too complicated for the average human to play.

Possibly I wasn’t watching closely enough, but it looked like when you killed (for example) blue baddies, you’d often get blue power-ups. Maybe this is deliberate, but it felt to me like you should always get different coloured power-ups so you’re forced to keep changing shields.

I agree with Markus’s comment that the blue and green are quite difficult to distinguish. You’re allergic to the colour yellow perhaps? ::slight_smile:

Simon

#9

run very well here (62 fps/AMD 1.6/X800/XP/JRE 1.6.0_07), I found that the blue is not enought different than the green, hard do see a difference when there is a lot of enemy.