[WIP] L.O.D - Short Trailer

Hey guys,

Firstly I would like to say happy new years, my new years resolution for this year is a simple one. Get back on track with my Flash Dreamer blog and finally finish L.O.D (Line of Defense). Now I have been working on and off the game for the past few months and have gotten pretty far into the engine. The reason I haven’t really posted anything about it is because I sort of wanted to keep the game a secret and not give to much away. Also haven’t really made the graphics for it, so not looking so great. But earlier today I decided to make a mini video clip to show a small demo of the game. Its not the best quality video and a lot of the graphics I made minutes ago for show purposes. The demo shows the explosion and pause effect of the game. There are 5 randomly generated enemys on the screen which I set all to drop a item once destroyed. The enemys and hero graphics are borrowed from Atmoic Tank until I get around to making my own.

The main ground work for the game is programmed. All thats really left for me to do is program some more A.I for new enemys and bosses. Add in more special weapons for the hero to pick up. At the moment I have about 8. From homing missiles to laser. Its simple enough to make new enemys and weapons because the game was written with classes. Other then those few things I really need to start making so graphics for it. Then some fine tweaking of the variables and levels.

Finally here is the trailer for the game. Its not very long and the quality isn’t to crash hot. I just thought I should show something.

LOD Trailer

Very cool man. The game play looks fun, same with the power-ups.

The game's not bad so far. It look very fun to play!

If there's any feedback I could give based on just the trailer alone, I'd say that the pause thing bothers me, either my computer wasn't playing the vid correctly, but it stop before it actually says "paused" or even blurs...which is a bit confusing I think.

I'm sure it'll get better though, for a WiP it looks good!

Proud of your pause mode mate ? ;)

Coming along nicely, loved the ground shake. Can't help feeling that it would look stunning with pixel art, but it's still looking good.

More please :)

Squize.

walsher: Thanks mate, one thing I am trying to add is plenty of different kinds of powerups. Theres a few ideas underway that should be fun to play with.

Captain_404: Appreciate the comment about the pause. The video clip doesnt really do the pause justice. It pauses then gradually blurs the screen then the pause comes up. I'll work on the effect so it doesnt take so long :p

Squize: Thanks champ, hopefully I can get around to making the real graphics pretty soon. Normally leave it to the end. Seems pretty stupid because then I have to make almost twice as many graphics. Im going to make it pixel art . Well my own variation of it anyway.

Thanks for the comments boys. Just sorry its taking so long. Dont get much free time these days :S

Great to see it in action, its looking sweet so far. The explosions effect and pause effect look great from what I can see. Looking forward to seeing it with some pretty graphics :)

Ali

Looks like a lot of hard work has gone into it.. much like heliattack on wheels - which can only be a good thing!

Shaking, smoke, bluring ;-) All excellent touches.

Keep it up.

Hmm, why did the Explosions are staying at the Explosion Place?
In my opinion they have to move along after the explosion.
In Air and at the ground.

some ideas:
- ramps, light bumps on the ground to make the ride more natural (aside from those shaking bomb´s ;) )
- motion blur on the vehicle for some kind of speed mode,- or maybe even on the jets?
- smoke trails on the tank on the enemy units once they are hit
- loosing parts of the tank just like in traditional 2d shooters where the end bosses loose part by part until they are naked and die

I wont comment much yet as all we have seen is a video,- don´t get the feeling yet of the FPS performance ect.

I'm waiting for the final product, I would like to see some 3d or fake 3d, I like those wheels

Maybe some bumping

reminds me a bit of this game-http://www.popcap.com/launchpage.php?theGame=heavyweapon

looks like it'll turn out good

looks cool mate. all the effects reall add to the game and it looks nice and smooth with everything going on (bullets etc)

alillm: Thanks man, im really looking forward to some better graphics too :p hopefully its not that long of a wait.

random10122: Yeah it does have its similarities for heli attack. But hopefully my added features can make it a not so similar game. Wouldn't want to compete in the same genre as heli attack. How could you possibly beat it.

X-Tender: Thanks for the recomendation. In the current version of the game the explosions actually do move. Just the version I used for the video was easier for me to make a demo of. The explosions animate as well.

renderhjs: Neat ideas! , one idea I did have was for explosions to be able to blow peices out of the ground. So little circle chunks. And since the level is written in bitmap data it wouldn't be that hard to do. Just I found that when it came to making the tank react to the missing peices the game FPS would slow down due to the calculations. I didnt really muck around with it for very long though. Sort of told myself to add it into LOD 2 :)

scheletro: I'll do my best to please you with some fake 3d.

trogdor458: I think the reason behind that is because the tank and the enimies are ripped from that game at the moment. Until I finish my graphics. Thats a pretty cool game by the way. Gets super hard towards the end levels.

BlinkOk: Thanks BlinkOk, spending most of my time at the moment trying to work out how I can optimize the browser version. It runs fairly similar but in some cases bogs down.

i wasnt too familiar with the concept when i read it, but i looked it up....

and why would one choose pixel art over something that could be done much more beautifully and efficiently in photoshop or other similar softwares?

because pixel art has it´s own charme, here is some pixel culture:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixels/new....asp?ob=rating

@ hooligan2001:
maybe come up with some more interesting designs & ideas:
http://mitglied.lycos.de/mmvr2/flash...rent_style.jpg
I hope the sketch is somewhat understandable

@renderhjs:

Nice sketch (and what font is that?) :) You seem to be both an extremely advanced artist and an expert coder - just out of interest, how much experience have you got in both areas?

VENGEANCE MX:
font: futura-heavy (beyond bold)
http://www.linotype.com/12691/futuraheavy-font.html
futura should be in any decent font collection,- don´t have the money check
for free ones,- check this category:
http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=501

as for the praises
:domo:
- flash propably 7 years
- drawing ~ 20+ years :hubba: (basicly since I was a child)
but I´d say its more as just those 2 fields,- I´ve been checking out almost any multimedia tool out there in the past (3d, game, motion, interactive, paint,...) except audio stuff- and I still try my best catching up.

okay, i see the "charm" pixel art has... reminds me of old school SNES games :P

i was thinking for this top down shooter i've got planned to simply digitize some drawings a friend of mine is going to do, has anyone tries this? im curious how it would look implemented in a game

[on-topic]

Nice work with the screen-shaking. Are you doing that with _x and _y tweaking, or are you using scrollRect()? Because if not, then definitely look into scrollRect() instead.

Maybe as well as blurring the screen when it's paused, you should fade to grayscale. Would look a lot cooler.

Also noticed that there's no cursor. Crosshairs or a (gradient fadey) laser sight would work nicely there. :)

[off-topic]

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by renderhjs

VENGEANCE MX:
font: futura-heavy (beyond bold)
http://www.linotype.com/12691/futuraheavy-font.html
futura should be in any decent font collection,- don´t have the money check
for free ones,- check this category:
http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=501

as for the praises
:domo:
- flash propably 7 years
- drawing ~ 20+ years :hubba: (basicly since I was a child)
but I´d say its more as just those 2 fields,- I´ve been checking out almost any multimedia tool out there in the past (3d, game, motion, interactive, paint,...) except audio stuff- and I still try my best catching up.

---

Yeah, I thought it was Futura... knew I recognised it (used it on my website). Comes as standard on Macs :)

I've always wondered why dafont is free... I see the same fonts going for prices on other sites, so I wonder if dafont is actually legal?

[about as off-topic as possible] Didn't know there was a Grue-mote on this forum. :domo:, got an animated one as a custom emoticon on MSN :) http://www.birchlabs.co.uk/Domokun.gif

5 years in Flash myself, started when I was 9. Also looking into improving my drawing skills, starting with sketching some Megatokyo stuff, but I'm being hindered by my lack of decent erasers.

renderhjs: Wow, very beautiful diagram. Appretiate it. And I can see how it adds more depth and realism to the game. Will be sure to attempt some form of perspective with the turret and firing.

VENGEANCE MX: Thanks, yeah the skaking is using _x , _y not scrollRect. How would you use it for shaking the screen. From my understanding scrollRect is a sort of mask. Used it before when I was testing my scrolling. As for the greyscale for the pause thats a great idea. Think I am going to play with it. Got a few other ideas up my sleve for that. Thanks again champ.

"Maybe as well as blurring the screen when it's paused, you should fade to grayscale"

Hmmm where did you get that idea from ? ;)

Squize.

hey that´s right I have seen that effect as well on zelda the windwaker before- so what about it?

Yeah Squize, we both know where I got the idea from :) (and it wasn't Wind Waker :))

Hooligan, scrollRect is a beautiful and crafty property (looks like I referred to it as a function earlier, whoops). Here's how it works:

mc.scrollRect = new Rectangle(startX, startY, maskWidth, maskHeight);

If you want to display the area 5 pixels up and 3 pixels left, we'd do this:

_root.scrollRect = new Rectangle(-5, -3, Stage.width, Stage.height);

(Although depending on your stage resize settings, you might want to replace Stage.width and Stage.height with fixed numbers instead, like 550 and 400).

Also, note that you'll need to add this line to the start of your movie:

import flash.geom.Rectangle

In order to be able to use the Rectangle object.

Thanks vengence i'll try it out and see hoe it goes. Thanks for all the input guys. I hope to have another demo up soon for crits / comments.

Thanks again