[PREVIEW] meteor busters ~ stage 1

just taking a small pause from forgotten myths (the link is in my signature), here's a simple *cough* shooting game that i wanted similar to a real gameBoy game.

limitation: 5 colors (might look obvious because i added a TV-like filter). actually i took the time to animate almost everything: sprites, background, extra animations in the background like other spaceships flying etc...

the game is supposed to be released before the end of the year, january the later. remember it's supposed to be a quick game (well, quick Ã* la marmotte :D )

how does the game work?
you can control up to 6 different spaceships (1 is hidden, and it's... ssshhht), that have completely different weapons and power ups (up to level #4).
basically when you begin a new game, you only have 1 spaceship. if you are destroyed, it's a game over already. between each level, you have the ability to buy new ones (actually you will be rewarded depending on how you played, and there are several techniques/additions to increase your points, like combos or distance calculation). so let's say you have now 2 spaceships: the original one and a new one that you bought. as soon as you are defeated, you play immediately with the other one at the same point (so there's no check point).

another interesting point: you accuracy is calculated all throughout the areas, so if you don't destroy enough meteorits, the area you just passed might be destroyed!
oh, did i mention that the sound in stereo (like explosions) is calculated depending on your position? honestly i'm surprised that the game runs so fast with so many animated things and sometimes dozen of sprites (explosions everywhere, missiles everywhere, meteorits everywhere). and i tested it with flash player 6 "only".

actually some people said that the taking off sequence was one of my most amazing work. weird but true (squize, are you here? :D )

anyway, enjoy those screenies:

title screen / game logotype
http://www.pixelboy-designs.com/mete..._prw/img01.gif

it's time to take off!
http://www.pixelboy-designs.com/mete..._prw/img02.gif

spaceship#1
http://www.pixelboy-designs.com/mete..._prw/img03.gif

spaceship#2
http://www.pixelboy-designs.com/mete..._prw/img04.gif

spaceship#3
http://www.pixelboy-designs.com/mete..._prw/img05.gif

oups? this one is supposed to be hidden!
http://www.pixelboy-designs.com/mete..._prw/img06.gif

thanks for your interest...

Looking good :)

Great concept, may be difficult to handle all six, do they go on autopilot when you're not controlling them?

Cant wait to see it done :D

Great idea with the stereo sound based on position, should add a cool effect to the gameplay :)

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Phlook
Great concept, may be difficult to handle all six, do they go on autopilot when you're not controlling them?

---

nay nay, you play with 1 spaceship at a time... as soon as you are defeated, and if you have another spaceship in your garage, it comes in the place with its beautiful reactor effect *cough* . so the spaceships you own aren't visible on the screen when you are not playing with them actually.

but i'll probably write an autopilot feature for the game rolling demo... unless it's all precalculated like in the old "escape the planet" (i played it once, recorded my actions in the array, so the rolling demo shows how i played at this time)...

oh btw, the game uses and abuses earthquake effects, the window is almost constantly shaking depending on the explosions. it adds something unique to the game, very arcade maybe...

Quote:

---

Originally posted by marmotte
oh, did i mention that the sound in stereo (like explosions) is calculated depending on your position?

---

I actually made that in my first game ever :D And yeah, it was a zelda-clone:p

Nice game! Can't wait! (You know i'm a big marmotte-fan;))

... but.. 5? that's few... I hope we can still eazily separate the different things, and everything doesn't melt together...

Looks very good. Where could we test a beta ?

Ooeeehh very nice Marmotte :)

The 5 colours seems like a very good idea, realy basic ;) Love the screenies :D

georgous work as usual marmotte. the effects look like there pretty cool!:)

t1ger
yep, 5 colors is really few, but look at those screenshots... i did my best to have the sprites and the whole background separated. actually i used a little technique: the game is pretty much done in 4 colors in fact. the 5th one is used to seperate sprites from the background mainly (it's the color that is almost white). so i din't think that 5 colors is an issue ;)
and thanks for being a faaaaaaan :P

hasufel
yes and... no. it's too early to be a public demo, i don't want it to be spread all around, since we are talking about possible sells of the game...

SaphuA & blinkOk
thanks ;)

simply great ... and i've seen it in motion (ha!)

yet again my usual comments about the dimmensions beeing too small ...
seeing it on 1.6k*1.4k somewhat degrades it to an animated thumbnail :| - lucky me i can play it on the second screen ... ;)

<olli/>

Hey Now, nGFX, don't get us all mad, we want to play it too!!

Great work Marmotte, like usual, annoying us by showing us your awesome skillz and keeping us from playing it ;)

-Keep it up.

just out of curiosity - i noticed the "maxspeed" in katakana in one still - do you know japanese or did you get someone to do that for you? anyway i love your style, totally retro. right on. you make me want to make better games. keep it up.

astrocalder

Yummy. And it plays as nice as it looks. Oh, and the parallax is just sex.

Squize.

thanks everyone!

astrocalder
bingo! i'm surprised to ear that you have some knowledge in japanese? actually i said to willoughbyjackson to write some katakanas for me concerning that hidden spaceship (yep, he's alive). this will be my 1st game with more than my only name (credit) at the end :D
i have people devoted for the sound too, and it sounds as it should be...
and yes, i'm still in a retro mood. i will not be surprised that my next game will be totally experimental and photorealistic :D we'll see, i have several game projects involving puzzle ideas...

nGFX
yep, actually 192x160 isn't a lot for a game (though my screen resolution is not far from you). i may add a simple x2 option (via html probably, i need to find a solution)

squize
i'm sure that you mean it, little sexy man. btw you missed the new version with the additions: lots of details here and there. the game is almost alive.
*pimp*

"the game is almost alive."

Well I know of a certain new games site that is almost alive too my balloon loving chum :)
Maybe there should be a connection between the two things ;)

Squize.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by d3s_inc
Hey Now, nGFX, don't get us all mad, we want to play it too!!

---

Yeah! It looks like there's some secret society of developers with plans for world domination... :)

:D

btw the game has a nice language selection feature implemented already, might be good to have it in lot of different languages (and yep, this will increase the amount of ending credits, which is totally good!). again, i'm using a custom function that is writing all the texts not in dynamic fields, but with bitmapped fonts...

If you want to make it in russian, I'm at your service!

Dutch (Netherlands) translation also available here ;)

Excellent game, plays even better than it looks! Loving those 'earthquake effects', really adds to the overall experience.

Nice work mate,

Marmotte, it looks awesome... I really like the limited palette (similar to sepia tones, which gives it an old look).

I can contribute with Swedish :). Though it is only spoken by 9 million people... But Sweden has the world's highest internet penetration rate at least. Have you included the letters åäö in your bitmap font? No? We use those a lot. ;)

"Yeah! It looks like there's some secret society of developers with plans for world domination..."

*ahem* Maybe early next week the secret will be out... oh nothing.

Sorry about the slight hi-jack with subtle pimping babe, and you know I feel your pain with the translations thing ( btw, you know you're down for the French translation of UXB don't you :) ).

Squize.

And also a portuguese one

I could translate it to the elf language (saw that swedish was already taken)

i'll do japanese and chinese translations then, as no one else has taken those (no, i'm serious). i'm was going to make my new game trilingual, but trying to find the space in one text bubble to fit so many words/characters was a little much. i think i'll have a certain character that speaks chinese or something - forget about a translation, it's funnier that way (wtf is he saying!?).

astrocalder

so many language proposals, that's crazy :-)
for the moment i don't have any accent available (shouldn't be hard to add some). yes i know, there are accents used in french too, but since it's all in capital, it's not needed. what about swedish, strille or twisted mind? (did i mention that twisted mind is creating the sound part of that game?)

about the languages, i would like a near perfect work, so if you generally have too many typos, well...

astrocalder, i would LOVE to use a japanese language in each one of my games (since i always get my inspiration from there). but it's an incredible amount of work for both of us, i presume? (you translating and me drawing all the letters)...

actually i can do a perfect french translation, so i'll do the english words myself too, but i'll need someone to correct them or turn them the best way possible (i'm afraid also about the length since it varies a lot depending on the language). i need to work on that aspect

anyway thanks, but remember the game is absolutely not finished, actually i have level 1 almost done, i just need to do its ending and every other level... playability wise, i think it's more than ok though :)

Quote:

---

Originally posted by marmotte
anyway thanks, but remember the game is absolutely not finished, actually i have level 1 almost done, i just need to do its ending and every other level... playability wise, i think it's more than ok though :)

---

You got me anyway...

the translating shouldn't take too long - i can't imagine you have that much dialogue, or instructions...i could also type it out for you into any format, gif, jpeg, whatever - so it depends on how you need to input it into your game. drawing it by hand would certainly take a while...

but i'd be more than happy to help. if you send me the dialogue, i'll translate it and re-send.

astrocalder

thanks for the help anyone. i'll ring some bells when it will be time to work on the texts...

actually my texts are stored that way (just an example, didn't put every value i'm currently using, but it looks like that):

otxt[0]={align:"center", txt:"push start to play"}
otxt[1]={align:"left", txt:"good morning vietnam"}

^ then a function takes care of that and write the text from bitmap fonts (actually using a clip duplication)

how would you go to input a whole different language in it (japanese for instance)? maybe a way to say that "do"=a, "ra"=b etc...?

I've got a few ifty classes to handle multiple languages, here's the basic idea

code:

---

var dictionary = new Object

var languageNo = 0



function addPhrase ( shortcut, english, french, german ) {

	dictionary[shortcut] = [english, french, german]

}



addPhrase ( 'welcome', 'EN: WELCOME', 'FR: WELCOME', 'GE: WELCOME' )

addPhrase ( 'gameover', 'EN: GAME OVER', 'FR: GAME OVER', 'GE: GAME OVER' )



function getPhrase ( shortcut ) {

	return dictionary[shortcut][languageNo]

}



trace ( getPhrase ( 'gameover' ) )



var languageNo = 1



trace ( getPhrase ( 'gameover' ) )

---

the good thing about working like this, it that you can build up a dictionary of phrases and include that set in every game you create, without having to chech what otxt[x] is

thanks token.
actually your idea is a good one, if the game is supposed to have short words like you have (shouldn't be that effective/good with a RPG full of long sentences i guess...? might be confusing for the translators to have that much text xoncentrated at the same place. that's why i choosed to separate the languages from the start, instead of having all of them embeded in a same object and/or array)

anyway, your tip is still usefull... i might use a variation of it, it still has some advantages i think...

Quote:

---

(...) without having to check what otxt[x] is

---

actually i just use otxt[0] to call the text, nothing more, no for...in loop or something. that's why your shortcut idea may be more effective (but a smaaaall bit slower because of the string check, but it's not that important)

by otxt[x], I meant - if you want to reuse the text 'game over' you're going to have to physically look through the array to find it (not with a loop)

using my version / approach you can set all variables, so you don't need to constantly look up

code:

---

function setAll ( prefix , targ ) {

	for(var i in dictionary ) {

		targ[prefix + i] = dictionary[i][languageNo]

	}

}



setAll('lang_', this)



trace ( lang_welcome)

---

Marmotte,
When painting/pixeling with a limited color pallete do you create different patterns as fills, outline the objects and then fill them with that pattern?

Are your backgrounds tiles in Escape the Planet?

Do you paint everything 1px at a time?

What program do you use?

Your work looks amazing. Sorry about the barrage of questions. it most certainly has that GameBoy feel. Well done. I have not yet played the new version, but I remember the one on pnFlashGames.com

666 posts kendude, well done :o

i'll be honest on this one, the original "escape the planet" is so-so. wrote it several years back actually, and the gfx are really ugly compared to "meteor busters". everything is a lot better in "MB" in comparison, really...

what program do you use?
adobe photoshop. i'm used to it. shouldn't be the quickest way, but well...

are your backgrounds tiles in Escape the Planet?
does it mean "did you reused some backgrounds from "escape the planet" in this game"? the answer is no. all is written from scratch. it's a really good thing, "escape the planet" is ugly :)
BUT i used the original sprites of the meteorits, just animated them properly now (it's not anymore a 2 steps poor animation)

Do you paint everything 1px at a time?
it depends on the size (or complexity) of the sprite/background. sometimes it's 1px at a time during the whole process, but sometimes it's sketchy at the beggining, and near the end i'm really going to investigate each pixel. a good occasion to add for example some dithering (to simulate a gradiant without using new colors for example) or very precise stuff...

When painting/pixeling with a limited color pallete do you create different patterns as fills, outline the objects and then fill them with that pattern?
i have the (bad?) habit to do the outline 1st, then fill inside. why bad habit? because 100% of my sprites have an outline. i would like to do something one day without apparent or distinctive outline (there are so many games that doesn't have any outline, think for example the sprites in street fighter. the little additional difficulty here is to find a way (colors? shapes?) so that the sprites doesn't mix in any way with the background.

ok, some of you are probably familiar with the forums "pixelation". i gave a quick description there about how i did the background (i absolutely didn't go 1x at a time for that part, fortunately!)

link: http://web1.t43.greatnet.de/viewtopic.php?t=7471

How did you do that TV filter? Is it just a mask leaving out little dots on a grid?

the TV filter is simply a .png that is located in a layer above all the other ones, nothing too fancy here :)

just create some black lines in photoshop, put the whole thing in 25% alpha (do some tests to have the best results depending on what you want), export it in .png, import it in flash and it's all done.

I wish I could get a preview of the game so far like everyone else. I think this is going to be a fun and professional flash game, something I haven't seen for a while. I can't wait for the full version. I hope to get some inspiration from your work.

Btw, I could also give you a hand with the Spanish translation if you decide you need it.:) Screenshots look outstanding.

I wish i could too ! :) I'm providing penguin translation.

sounds interesting. thanks andross ^_^

^ yeah, the language of the penguins *aok aok*

i'll be very busy during 2 months unfortunately (commercial work outside flash gaming, bleh), so the game is... delayed. a bit. small consolation, i put its webby online now. empty as hell, but... online.