Since my last game, The Dead Miles, was not appealing to most people, I've decided to develop my new 2D space shooter in public. The early demo, and many to come, should only be of interest to people interested in designing games.
What's different about It Never Ends? An evolving enemy is the new twist on this old genre; that and the ability to alter your ship to match the evolving alien threat. This is loosely based on an old game of mine called Darwin's Curse that has evolving robots. I'll re-upload it here if there's any interest.
Please check it out. I look forward to your feedback.
This demo is out there for people who are interested in seeing a project built from start to finish. The demo will become more and more game-like as planned features become reality.
I do actually want feedback on what is present. The current ten waves of aliens should follow the same pattern of movement and firing in each wave. I wouldn't mind if someone else could verify that they are doing what they are supposed to. Also, the player ship's movement, although rough, is a result of the acceleration/deceleration option in the ship yard. The aliens' size, speed, blast type, blast frequency and blast size are all related.
As the game becomes more game-like, I expect to attract more of the general population, but right now, I only expect to get a few amateur game designers, or friends, to download it. Eventually, what I really want, is for people to give criticism as I include new features. This way, I won't have to scrap a hundred hours worth of work when I discover that people don't like a feature.
Thanks.
Send me feedback on my latest game, It Never Ends.
Ah, I see. For what it is, it looks promising! I just hope this doesn't succumb to the all too present trope of a developer being too ambitious, an unfortunate event that ends far too many would-be great games. But I have faith in you
If you put a million monkeys at a million keyboards, one of them will eventually write a Java program.
The rest of them will write Perl programs.
For the record, of the five prior games that I attempted (The Mystical Arena, Darwin's Curse, The Good Life, Little Ship in a Big Galaxy, and The Dead Miles) I completed all but one. Each took 6 months to a year and a half to complete.
I am fairly confident that I will complete It Never Ends because I worked on the game conceptually, and planned the variables out for months before opening MMF 2. The only real unknown is getting it into iPhone format. I haven't done that before. Even if the game functions as planned, just getting it into the app store may be a significant hurdle. That doesn't bother me too much though since the game will still be completed, and released on the PC for free if that's the case.
In the end, as for most of us here, game making is something that I enjoy. Making money doing it is a dream benefit.
My goal at the moment is to get an update, based on a new feature, out every two weeks.
Thanks for the interest. It means a lot.
Send me feedback on my latest game, It Never Ends.
Ensure the frame rate is set to 60, as 50 messed up a lot on the iDevices for me. You must also use the Standard display mode, too. Those two things confused me for ages! Good luck with this!
Demo 2 of It Never Ends is up on my site. The game is playable at the most fundamental level now. The main features are yet to come. At this point, this demo is meant for people interested in game design. That's why I'm releasing such early demos. Feedback is greatly appreciated.
I recommend setting the ship as barely functional to start with, then letting the player add to these basic criteria. The reason is that, as things are now, the ship is appallingly slow and non-responsive if little is allotted to the basics like Acceleration. In other words, the points given to Acceleration right now are obvious and/or they're non-choices. I wouldn't stand a chance if I didn't put at least two points into that category.
Give the player a basically-functional ship, then let points add to its effectiveness in some areas. Having crappy guns (or no guns at all) to start with is okay, but having crappy response when controlling the ship is no fun.
An additional suggestion is to include additional objectives, like collection of certain items. Maybe cash pickups, or specific information pickups that add only to the "contribute to Xenology" category. There's more to flying in space than blowing up enemy ships, in my opinion. Make it worth contributing points into things other than increasing firepower: frequency of pickups, a "magnet" that attracts pickups, new tiers of improvements or secret levels available after collecting certain amounts of pickups, and so on.
I agree about the initial state of the player ship; especially concerning movement. I think I will set most starting stats at two, and give less resource points to distribute. I also need to consider raising each component level maximum higher.
I had always considered pick ups, but I had not considered a xenology pick up. It gives me an idea for something unusual. Maybe 20 close fly bys will give xenology points. The concept being that you're so close to the enemy that you learn more from them. It's a little different than the pick up concept, and encourages risky behavior.
I will spend a lot more time on the pick ups factor, including your suggestions, after basic ship functionality and alien generation is done.
Thanks a lot, SMR!
Send me feedback on my latest game, It Never Ends.
Almost all basic ship functions are in now except for the deflector shield.
The player can now have the ship's blaster shoot single, paired, or shot gun style. You can also add options to damage such as strong start (shot power fizzles with time), strong finish (shot power builds with time) and piercing. Every option you pick impacts on how much damage each shot does.
As usual, the game is only playable on the most basic level. As S-M-R noted, the ship's baseline stats need to be re-worked, but I need to get all basic functions in first to see how to balance them.
I'm fairly certain that I need to re-do alien movement to something smoother, and easier to track.
I am also going to add a repair function during combat. For the iPhone version, I think you will have to shake the device to access it. It shouldn't be easy to fix your ship in combat.
I'm really looking forward to making the aliens evolve, and adding special traits.
I value your feedback.
Send me feedback on my latest game, It Never Ends.
Just a note to let you know where I'm going with It Never Ends. The core concept comes from one of my old games called Darwin's Curse. The main idea of the game is that the robots evolve. I plan to transfer this concept and method to my new game.
Path finding for the robot was poor, but the concept is good.
You can check it out right here at the Daily Click:
Have a look at it, and see if it serves as any kind of inspiration. Maybe you can have bosses every few stages or to cap off a 10-wave set, and have the boss ships turn into larger-than life battleships.
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