Untitled Game
Blue Fire Dawn is on the backburner because making human shaped art is bloody expensive and I can’t afford it.
Fortunately all the work that went into BFD has not gone to waste and it has formed the basis for my new currently Untitled Game (OK it has a title but it’s awful and I don’t want to use it).
Untitled Game is another top-down shmup using a similar art style to Waves (because money) but with a totally different focus. While Waves is all about high scores this game is all about Power Ups and exploration.
It’s a blend of top-down shooting and tweaking your loadout played out in procedurally generated levels.
Currently the game is what I call Pre-Alpha as I’m still building all of the various systems needed to be able to populate the game with stuff but it is playable.
Here is a montage of the 4 types of weapon currently available:
From top left to bottom right: Beam Laser, Shotgun, Flamethrower, Rocket Launcher.
These are just test weapons that I made to test the weapon framework. It’s quite robust and flexible now allowing me to do a lot of different things and chain effects together.
As an example:
A Weapon can fire a random number of exploding projectiles in an arc between 0 and 360 degrees. An exploding projectile can create any number of new actors when it hits something including more exploding projectiles, enemies, explosions etc.
Any source of damage (bullets, explosions etc) can apply status effects to their target that can buff or debuff the target (setting it on fire with the flamethrower for example). These effects can be refreshed by applying them again and can even do things like periodically explode, spawn enemies etc.
So I could create a weapon that fires a projectile that does no direct damage but causes any enemy it hits to explode after a short countdown which damages nearby enemies and covers them in a goo that slows them down and slowly eats away at their health.
I’ve already done a weapon whose bullets create 8 new copies of themselves when they hit something. It crashed the game in just a few seconds.
One problem that I’ve got now is the system is so flexible that while I could create almost anything I am overwhelmed by the potential. I don’t know where to start!
If you have any ideas for weapon types then I’d love to hear them in the comments.
Tom
September 25, 2012 @ 7:00 pm
well, placing mines … that is so immoral though (and banal) … however much effective
gravitational wells are attractive …
russian roulette teleporters ? you haven’t tried one yet?
history gun … just think photoshop
Ricetlin
October 2, 2012 @ 12:16 am
Sounds good so far, let me think.
- A weapon that turns relationship from enemies in a specific area against other enemies (but they´re still hostile to the player also, maybe)
- A weapon that creates a black hole which pulls everything into it and shoot them out another hole that the player has to set so that the player can use the collected stuff as weapons too
- A rocket that splits when it launches into multiple little rockets combined by a light-chain or similar that searches for enemies. And when little every rocket got an target they bind them together and make them unfit for fighting for a specific amount of time (or they will crushed and destroyed by themselves)
- A weapon that creates a duplicate of the player controlled by AI which helps him (could also combined with the black hole, to create a duplicate of an enemy that helps the player)
Last but not least a very hard stuff (I guess, no idea about coding :D)
- A weapon that allows the player to travel in time back: So the gameplay is in slow-mow and the player can drive back a path that he has flown before. Then the game goes into normal speed and the player is on a complete different position like before
Hope you can use some ideas like that
Best regards from germany
7heSama
October 18, 2012 @ 10:07 pm
I’m liking the art style. You may not be a talented artist but I think you’ve got some skill as a graphic designer.