YakYak

Movie 1
Movie 2
Movie 3

All about 5 meg and require XVid codec.

Here's a screenie for those who can't view them...


Neither a dual stick shooter or a mindless blaster - well not totally

Coming soon...

Looks smart that.

That's the third game I've seen on here that looks totally up my street. Very sexy visuals, I love the camera shake effect and Vectrex style explosions. Nice Sinclair-esque font too.

Mac version?

Cheers.

Very early in dev and featuring my programmer placeholder gfx. No fixed game design but ideas are evolving organically as I chuck stuff in and rip stuff out

Mac version - hopefully? It's coded using cross-platform libs so in theory it is possible. I don't own a Mac myself so it would be a 3rd party doing the conversion (Red Marble Games converted Alien Abduction to Mac for me). If I release it as 'donationware' it would stand more of a chance I think.

Goat bless you, Mr. Cunningham.

Are you doing the whole "exploding enemies coloring the background as a victory condition" bit, like in Mono?

Also, the segmented walls are hot!

One of the things that well separated Mutant Storm from every other Robie-clone was the fact that it actually had walls. That makes a huge difference in gameplay. Moveable wall elements... well, that's just sassy

I love the fadey shootyness.

Not exactly.

I'm not 100% sure what the grid's function is yet but it will play a part somehow. Possible ideas:

#1 - powering it up by killing the aliens.

Once a certain level is reached 'filled' squares can be exchanged for 'stuff'. This stuff may be more powefull weapons, smart bombs, points, ship energy - whatever - something good happens the more you fill the grid. You may be able to do it on the fly or in between levels, sort of like a 'shop'.

You can mindlessly blast away and complete the levels but a bit of tactical blasting will deliver better results. Sort of like casual player / expert player 'modes'.

#2 - it gets damaged by 'the acidic alien blood'. If it (ie the individual squares) take too much damage they 'die' and that square is inaccessible. Grid can be repaired somehow, maybe a trade with the ships energy?

#3 - it gets infected with a virus and the player has to tend to it - almost like tending to a garden.



They are something new I've added in the last day or so. They may just be a hazard. When you kill the zombie who lays the mines you get points for each one he has laid - so keep him on screen and rack up the points - However if he drops his last one he''l leggit off screen and you'll be left with 'em.

Instead they might be used to keep the humans safely penned in away from harm. Sort of like a 'sheep dog sim' - hehe.

The may get dropped entirely

As you can see I don't have a design document - just lots of competing contradictory ideas.



It's a little all over the shop at the moment though. Really got to give each item a colour / theme I think to make it more intuitive when the action really kicks off.

It was all iconic chic until the little men and zombie wall layers gate crashed the party

It's nice to see games that are a mix of traditional style gaming and modern graphic technologies. Proves that you don't need a software studio to produce a nice looking and interesting game. Pity that most people don't believe that philosophy

Building things: Awesome.
Shooting other things: Also awesome.

Movie showing new gfx

A little small in the movie so here they are big style...



Not sure If I'll use them - I have another idea that they might fit into better. We'll see how it goes

Not really done much with this lately* but here is a little WINDOWS demo of it so far

PaladinGridDemo1



KEYS
------
Arrows to move ship, mouse to move target, LMB fire, RMB for NUKE (only nukes aliens on grid squares that have been filled - each time you NUKE square decreases in intensity)

Camera and Weapon config is listed on screen (1 to 6, q to t)
L for dynamic lighting
Hit F1 to display dynamic lighting values
and then hold down those keys that are listed and move mouse up / down to change values

e.g.

Hold Key pad 3 and move mouse up to increase 'constant attenutation'.


See level files in scripts folder to mess around with spawning enemies (the demo level is just an assortment of aliens I have so far)

Recording and playback should work but I'm not saving weapon keys so if you dick with them the demo won't play back correctly.

graphically all over the shop at present. Style tips welcome

Feedback encouraged!

Enjoy

*quit my job, Microsoft exams, baby #2, etc

Looks like it's coming along nicely. Only real gripes were having only one life per go with no respawn button, and level advancement doesn't seem to work. Even though stuff like sound is just stubbed out right now, I even like your directory structure. One question I have is whether you're going to have any conditional logic in your Lua level files to add a dimension of complexity not found in the average Robie variant?

Interesting. I hate the control scheme at the moment, but other than that it could be a lot of fun. Personally I like my games abstract, but how many abstract Robotron clones does the world need?

James

Yeah - maybe DEMO was not the right word to use. It's a very early tech / gameplay preview. Level advancement is not in yet and you will have more lives (or maybe energy)



Not sure yet but probably not - the complexity would probably come from game objects / controllers - so dumb level file loads some intellignet controller (maybe) - dunno is a better answer



Controls are how I play Mutant Storm. I'm loathed to add dual stick support - hopefully the freedom the mouse target gives will reveal some interesting gameplay possibilities later on (drawing an arc with the mouse to produce a force field / barrier; droping mines at strategic locations; manipulating enemies / objects / moveable walls).

I'm hoping to introduce enough new ideas to elevate above a simple robotron 'clone'. It will share viewpoint but the rescue / protect dynamic may be dropped altogether. I tend to shoot the little men and camp on the hot spots so I have more nuke potential. Still early doors for it and it could change radically.

I'm showing early in the hope of producing a better game

Nothing against the mouse targetting, it's just that the arrow keys are on the right side of the keyboard as is my mouse. I use W/A/X/D (and yes, I know that's weird) to control up-down-left-right, so being forced to use the arrows really messed with my sense of control. It's nothing the later addition of definable keys won't fix, so no worry.

James