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.
WF is impressive. I gave it around one hour of play, and will probably return to it. Thanks for that link.
The enemy's fire patterns in WF gave me some ideas, but I need to completely re-evaluate how my aliens move and shoot before I can integrate them. I was going to do that anyway since I've decided to model the AI after Darwin's Curse.
Hopefully, my game won't require bosses. If I design this right, each wave of aliens should provide a unique challenge.
Send me feedback on my latest game, It Never Ends.
More points to distribute to the player’s ship.
More range (1-5) for each system on the ship.
Improved responsiveness of player ship movement.
New movement AI featuring 4 different patterns (straight, tight/loose zig-zag & edge bounce).
Alien AI dodge option: Aliens might move out of the way when you fire.
The player’s firing rate is now working correctly.
The ship’s power generation should be smoother.
I didn’t expect to have the new movement patterns done, but I somehow managed it. In the future, I will add a few different movement patterns, and perhaps modify alien dodging a little. For the most part, I’m pleased with how it has turned out. Alien movement is now predictable after you watch the pattern for a little while, and that’s what I wanted.
The Future
The next step is to re-work the alien firing routine. I have most of it planned out. Aliens will fire only if certain conditions such as player distance, and their chance to hit is right.
Future versions will also give the aliens an energy supply. This means that when an alien’s energy is low, it will decide whether or not to spend its remaining energy on movement/dodging, or firing. It will be one of the AI options.
All of these changes are meant to keep the player on his or toes, and to provide a fair fight. I want there to be a little anxiety when you first encounter the alien waves. Then, once you fight them for a while, their abilities will become predictable, and you can create a strategy to defeat them.
Eventually, this will lead to my greatest challenge: Letting the aliens “evolve” from round to round. Again, I have the basic idea planned out, but fine tuning it should take a while.
Edited by Chris Donovan
Send me feedback on my latest game, It Never Ends.
I was fortunate enough to get a lot of detailed feedback from S-M-R from The Daily Click. He mentioned several things in I.N.E. that needed to be addressed. So, instead of moving directly on to alien firing routines, I had to spend some time to fix them:
Removed the alien spawner object at the top of the screen.
Added a sound effect and text graphic notifier for when power goes to zero.
Added a sound effect for the blaster when power is at zero.
Added a sound effect for thrusters when power is at zero.
I.N.E. now indicates when a new alien wave starts and the wave number.
“Sticky” Movement
S-M-R noted that movement is still off. In my mind, it isn’t, but that’s not what’s important. I think the problem is that anyone playing the game isn’t aware of how the ship is supposed to move. I guess they can’t read my mind! Two major factors are acceleration and deceleration. The ship actually builds up momentum, so when you switch direction, it doesn’t respond instantly. Additionally, if your ship’s battery is at zero, you will not be able to shoot or change direction. These factors are what make it move oddly when compared to others in the genre. I need to add visual and audio cues to make the ship’s movement easier to understand. If I can’t do this, I may have to abandon this movement concept if people don’t like it. Thanks for pointing this out, S-M-R.
DOA Aliens
I also discovered a problem where alien waves would spawn with zero hit points, and just explode at the top of the screen. This is mostly fixed, but I have to test it further.
Prepping Guns
I did manage to stick to my agenda and at least set up the new alien firing routine. Technically, it should work, but in reality, they don’t always fire, or fire way too much. That’s okay. I fully expect failure when trying something new. I just have to go through the new stuff and see where I should have used a < sign instead of a > sign. I haven’t even added the alien batteries yet, so they have unlimited fire power. That will change.
Send me feedback on my latest game, It Never Ends.
Removed the alien spawner object from the top of the screen.
Added a wave counter and sound effect for each wave.
Added a sound effect and graphic when battery powers hits zero.
Added sound effects for when the blaster or thruster is used without available energy.
Added a thruster graphic and sound effect.
Aliens now fire when within certain parameters (distance from player, horizontal firing range, firing frequency and available power).
Adjusted incoming damage, from blasters and collisions, to the player’s shield & ship.
Faster movement response for the player’s ship when standing still.
The Next Update
The next update will be devoted to polishing the existing game. I have been too eager to add new features when the old features haven’t been perfected yet. I do this because sometimes it’s more rewarding to move on to a new challenge instead of staring at the same old problem for hours. Sometimes, it’s the right thing to do, but I’ve let some things go for too long. This means that I need to go over every part of the game so far, and make the necessary fixes/adjustments.
The Future (or The Next, Next Update)
Although I really want to work on the alien ships’ special abilities, I need to focus more on the basic parts of the game. So, once I’ve polished the existing game, I’m going to try adding the following in order:
Damaged aliens will suffer a penalty (energy loss?).
The player’s ship will be damaged when it collides with the border.
The Deflector ship component will be removed. It will eventually be replaced with a choice of special abilities which you will be able to research and equip. The deflector may return as one of these abilities, but as it is, I don’t find it very interesting.
Destroyed aliens will drop resources that can be picked up.
When all 10 waves are done, you will be returned to the ship yard and allowed to upgrade your ship.
The aliens will be redesigned every ten waves, but the process of redesigning will be very rough since this is the core concept of the game and it will require a lot of work. It will be necessary to get something in place until I have time to work on it exclusively.
Send me feedback on my latest game, It Never Ends.
Before I go on, I have an offer for you. If you give me feedback on my game, I will give you feedback on a game that you made. Let's help each other out.
Finally, this is starting to feel more like a game, and less like an experiment. Some destroyed aliens now drop resources that the player can pick up. If you survive all of the alien waves, you’ll find yourself back in the ship yard with any resources that you managed to pick up. New waves of aliens are waiting for your return to the front lines.
But wait, there’s more:
The player’s ship now smoothly accelerates and decelerates now.
The Deflector option has been removed (to be replaced with special abilities later).
The player’s ship bounces off of the edge of the screen and takes damage.
Alien Dodging is less of an advantage (less duration and higher energy cost).
Aliens will save energy for weapons, or movement, depending on their generated preference.
The player’s energy regeneration is faster.
Aliens don’t arrive as fast on the screen.
The player’s ship is more durable.
Aliens randomize their construction/strategy a little every 10 waves. This method is crude, and will probably gets an update all to itself later.
The Next Update
My original goal for this demo was to fix major bugs and balance different factors. I’ve fixed all the known bugs to date except for “Runaway Aliens,” that leave the left and right edges. When it comes to balancing the game, I’ve realized that I can’t balance different systems until they’re all in place. So, I’m moving forward with the aliens’ special abilities. At the moment, there are 14 special abilities, and the aliens will have two of them in each generation. Some, are already in place, but here is the complete list:
Special abilities for the player are on the To Do List for the distant future. After that, I’ll attempt to balance all of the systems. The next thing on the list will be to generate alien graphics that are based on their construction.
NOTE: I left a debugging cheat in the demo. Press F5 during battle, and the next wave will be your last.
Send me feedback on my latest game, It Never Ends.
The aliens now have 2 out of 14 special abilities each wave. Special abilities include: stealth, illusionary ships, armor, flaming armor, guided blasts, explosive blasts, kamikaze pilots and more.
Please send feedback.
Thanks.
Send me feedback on my latest game, It Never Ends.
I have just uploaded the 8th demo of my game in progress, It Never Ends, which features evolving aliens. If any of you liked shoot 'em up games from the 70's and early 80's, give it a try, and send me feedback. The graphics are crude place holders for now. The same is true for sound effects.
The game is very playable now, except that you can't win. I also need your feedback to make adjustments.
Just post a link to a download of your game in progress, and I will be happy to send you feedback first.
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Edited by Chris Donovan
Two major factors are acceleration and deceleration. The ship actually builds up momentum, so when you switch direction, it doesn’t respond instantly. Additionally, if your ship’s battery is at zero, you will not be able to shoot or change direction. These factors are what make it move oddly when compared to others in the genre. I need to add visual and audio cues to make the ship’s movement easier to understand. If I can’t do this, I may have to abandon this movement concept if people don’t like it. Thanks for pointing this out, S-M-R.