#space_game

I've made a opening screen for Space_Game and had some new idea's on where to take the development!

On the new opening screen you'll notice New Game and Survival. Survival takes you too the normal game play, whilst New Game currently takes you nowhere, as its still under development (Development hasn't actually started on it yet..., but it will do soon!). The New Game will take you to hopefully a much larger game, possibly with a small story, although nothing major. The map itself will be huge with enemies randomly being generated and possibly a experience system where your statistics will be increased by a set amount each level (Kind of like how pokemon level up?). 

If I get time, I'd also like to add planets into the main game, making it so that you can travel to the planets and may only leave once you've destroyed all the enemies. The main aim of the game would be to go to each of the planets and kill progressively harder enemies and numerous enemies on each planet, whilst still battling your way though hordes of enemies in the "Galactic Map". Hopefully this sounds good :) And will probably be more time consuming than difficult to implement. With exams coming up, progress will be slow, but I'll hopefully get it done :)

Also currently added to the game that I forgot to mention, is the statistic screen when you die. Whilst its only simple at the moment, hopefully I can make it look better. It currently displays a few statistics, and then updates your main score onto the highscores.

The game with the new Opening Screen can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bd04t7prfxqak4/Space%20Game.exe

The Game Maker's Companion arrived in the post today, and it couldn't have come at a better time. I'd read the first one, The Game Maker's Apprentice, and it helped get me into Game Maker, but it was starting to become a little simplex, and offered no help in the more technical things that I wanted to make. So I bought the second one, and instantly noticed a reference to two things.

Homing Missiles;

The Towers in Space_Game now use a different system to fire the homing lasers. The effect looks generally better, and it doesn't constantly spin around a target if it misses the first time.

Engine and Explosion Effects;

Whilst I had originally used a mass of confusing and untidy code to make the particle emitters and generators for the particles created by the Player Ship and Enemies, it had never worked properly for the Boss ships and had to be removed. Within seconds and without any actual code, only events, I've got it so that Boss ships have both engine effects, and explosions! Thank the world for books!!

I've yet to have a good look through the book, but hopefully it will offer some more techniques that could improve the game and future games.

^^ A quick screenshot of the Boss Spawner

So, instead of working on the shop system like I'd planned, I spent most of my time today fixing bugs in Space_Game. I ended up completely re-writing the system that spawns the enemies and deals with the waves. Followed by spending about an hour trying to get the boss system to actually work like it supposed to, to finally ending up reverting to a much simpler method that didn't occur to me at first. 

Hopefully soon I'll re-add the particle bursts for the Boss Ship destruction, and possibly new Boss Ship sprites coming from Josh, as they had to be removed before due to a bug. 

I'm going to start making the sprites needed for the shop, and I've got it all planned out on how to make it work so hopefully that shouldn't take too long. 

I've also decided I'm going to add some statistics to the Game_Over page, before displaying the HiScores. Currently I'm thinking; 

Time Played

Bullets Fired

Total points gained

Ships destroyed

Power ups collected

Furthest Wave

An updated version of the game can be found here, and refer to the previous post for the controls;

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bd04t7prfxqak4/Space%20Game.exe

So, the current project I'm working on. Space_Game. Its a relatively simple game similar to the classic Asteroids, but with enemies instead of giant rocks. The graphics are simple and the music, created by Josh Sherlock, reverts back to the days of 8-bit games with a modern twist.

What's in the game so far?

Engine/Destruction particles

Progressively harder waves

Power-ups including ammo, shield restores and enemy destruction.

A score system

Boss's 

Good player movement (Including friction)

A portable tower that fires homing bullets

Randomly generated star background

What's left to do?

Finish up the upgrade shop

More enemy types

More weapons

Better "Animation" for the Boss's

Display to show which weapon your using

An opening screen and game-over screen

Want to play this game? Download it here! (There may/probably will be bugs and glitches)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4bd04t7prfxqak4/Space%20Game.exe 

No installation required, just double click and run!

Controls:

Arrows keys = movement

Space Bar = Fire

Shift = Place Turret

Control = Go to shop (Doesn't do anything yet)

Delete = Developers short cut to increase wave number