Escape Pod

After a conversation with friends about “flat earthers”, I wondered if it was possible to use Defold to simply demonstrate how gravity works in the context of planets and other celestial bodies. It turns out, with the help of Defold’s physics engine, it’s pretty straight forward!

After some further development, I’ve decided to make a simple game out of my gravity demo.

The aim of the game is to reach your homeworld in an escape pod fired from a base the other side of various planetary systems. The escape pod works as a projectile so you only control angle and power when firing off; you need to find the right tragectory that makes use of the other planets gravity along the way.

There will be other hazards to avoid or make use of such as black holes, white holes (which repel mass), moving asteroid belts and such.

Probably just targetting HTML5 for this.

Ludem Dare 40

For the first time, I took part in a game jam this weekend, Ludem Dare #40 to be exact.

The theme was "The more you have, the worse it gets" which is not the best theme but I had a go anyway.

The result of several hours work is "Germinator", a very simple game where the player is faced with germs spreading across the screen. Using a laser, the germs must be zapped until all gone - then the level is complete. The next level has slightly more virulent germs and so it goes on.. and on.

Hard to tell if it's much good as I've been playing it too much. It's certianly simple and mindless.

Try it out here - Play GERMINATOR in Browser

China Syndrome

I've always found isometric games to be something of a novelty. There are good examples around but most of them are hindered in some way by the layout - stuff getting in the way etc.

So mostly as an experiment, I wanted to create a simple isometric 3D game that's playable and doesn't fall into the trap of confusing the player as to where their character is positioned in space.

China Syndrome is a game based in a nuclear reactor that's gone into meltdown. It's the players job to clear up the mess! Using a remote controlled robot, the player needs to locate and dispose of radioactive waste found dotted around the various rooms.

A simple concept but one that will help me learn the nuances of 3D isometric games.

Rebound

Rebound is inspired by an old game named Titan which appeared on 8-bit computers and the PC Engine (remember that!?) nearly 30 years ago. The concept is very simple : you move a bat around the level and deflect a ball into destructible blocks.

To make things more interesting there are various special blocks dotted around the level and they have various properties for the player to discover.

I've had no end of trouble getting the collision detection to work properly with this. Lots of stuff going through walls and such but it seems fairly stable now, if a bit juddery in places.

I'm presently targeting browser for this game but might stretch to native builds if I'm pleased enough with the finished game.

Tower Game

After spending some time looking at I, Ball and I, Ball II on various 8-bit systems, I've started work on a similar game based around a bouncing ball.

Climb and evade

In this case, the player's objective is to bounce to the top of a tower using the conveniently spaced platforms placed all the way up. Various hazards and things to collect will be present to distract and tempt the player.

Right now the game is missing a magic ingredient, whatever that might be. I'm not excited about it yet but will hopefully be so after some more prototyping.

Current the player can bounce up the procedurally generated level avoiding lasers and collecting place-holder pick-ups.

Harrier Attack - Progress Update

Good progress has been made over the weekend developing Harrier Attack. The core of the game is all working and I'm fairly happy with most of it. Playing the game does remind me of the 35-year-old original - which was part of the plan. It looks basic on purpose as it's based on an 8-bit game with only 4 colour graphics.

In addition to the original, I've added some particle effects, moving clouds and 'real' sound effects. The various quirks of the original will also be included - they add to the nostalgic charm of old games. One being if you damage your aircraft carrier on take-off, it wont be there when you come back and you're left to fly out to sea until you run out of fuel.

The various transition stuff and menus are still to do. The main challenge to come is getting the virtual joypad to work reliably on Android - it's not as straight forward as I'd first imagined.

All being well, the game should be released next week.

Harrier Attack

Anyone over about the age of 40 (that'd be me then) may remember playing Harrier Attack on their 8-bit home computer in the early 1980s.

For the uninitiated : Harrier Attack is a horizontal scrolling shoot, bomb and dodge affair. It's hard to believe now but the game caused some controversy when it was released in 1983 as British Harriers had helped win the Falklands War in 1982.

On a personal level, it was the first game I ever owned so has significant nostalgic value for me. There is currently only one similar game on Google Play and it's quite poor so I'm aiming to provide a faithful recreation of the original - with slightly better graphics, sounds and gameplay.

I'm targeting Android and browser. This will be my first Android game in landscape format using a virtual joypad.

Harrier Attack : A mock-up of various game components

Gridlock - Weekend Project

With my last release being quite a technical game, I wanted to do something simple to let my brain cool down. Also, with Ludem Dare coming up next month, I wanted to see what sort of game I could produce in a weekend (never done any sort of game jam before).

The result is 'Gridlock', a variant on the classic Lights Out game. In this case there are 3 colours of lights and clicking will cycle through those 3 colours. Pretty simple concept that which soon gets quite tricky.

Play in browser or Get it on Google Play

Rogue's Redemption OUT NOW

Available for Android devices.

Get it on Google Play now

Getting There

I'm getting well into the latter half of development on Rogues Redemption. Most features and systems are in place and working - some still need polish and tweaking.

New Stuff

• Character selection screen allows the player to choose from 3 different classes of character
• The shop now works when clicking on the trader NPC who can be found loitering in the corridors of some levels
• Player stats screen displays various bits of information about the player, some useful, some less so
• The in-game menu toggles music, sound effects etc. and gives the option to return to the main menu
• There are now special locked rooms which contain special objects and items
• Player now gets hungry and will require a regular intake of food

Lots of fixes, graphical tweaks, new sound effects, balancing and re-writing of code as I discover better ways of doing things.

Play HTML5 build in brower

RR - Update

Dispatching a giant frog with a fireball

This week I've been working on some new graphics and have started to look at character classes. There will be 4 to choose from (probably) and each class will have various strengths and weaknesses as you'd expect.

A lot of tidying up has also been done. I thought this was a good point to make sure everything is neat before continuing.

I've also started the shop/trading screen. At the moment the player can only buy stuff though I may put in selling too at a later date.

The game now saves your progress when the game loses focus and the main menu offers the option to load that saved game and continue or start a new one.

This coming week I'll continue working on the shop, NPC interaction, add more graphical improvements and sound effects.

Rogue's Progression

Lots of new stuff in this update! I've been busy on many aspects of Rogue's Redemption.

First of all, I've decide to target Android for this particular game. I'm writing it really as a game I'd like to play myself on the go. Somehow I find most mobile games disappointing in one way or another so would like to make something that's actually good fun to play on a mobile device.

The interface has been developed a bit more with the addition of health and xp bars. Also a profile icon has been added in the top right of the screen. This will be used for various things, the specifics of which have yet to be decided.

Monsters everywhere

The player can actually die now! The game feels more like a real game now that's possible. Combat is still arbitrary with fixed amounts of damage being done on each attack. I'm not familiar with D&D and don't particularly want to be so all the 'chance' combat events will be kept minimal and will behave more as you'd expect. One thing I don't like about some roguelikes is when the random and luck elements seem to often dictate the outcome of a game.

30+ of the planned 60+ usable items in the game now spawn from chests, boxes are as drops from dead monsters. All the code to actually use the various items has yet to be written.

There are a few sound effects now for various events and actions. This really helps build the atmosphere of the game. These will obviously be added to and some suitable music added too.

The line of sight code has been re-written twice now! The latest incarnation uses Bresenham's line-drawing algorithm as suggested by some of the guys here. It's currently much slower than my previous vector based code but it can be optimised greatly. Right now it checks every pixel of the line and really only needs to check about 1 in 4 or even 1 in 8.

There is now a 'ticker' which saves 4 lines of text displaying the last 4 notable events to happen. Most roguelikes seem to have this and I like it so there we go.

The greatest challenge at the moment is collision detection. Defold's collision shape implementation isn't well suited to a grid-based game like a roguelike. I really need a way of just checking a tile for an enemy and act accordingly. With the loosely-coupled nature of Defold, I'm honestly not sure how to do this. I'm sure a solution will present itself soon enough - it always has done thus far!