Messages

31

SFML projects / Re: Starfire - Ares Assault released.

« on: June 28, 2012, 11:04:31 am »

I have blogged my development plans for the game:
http://suisoftgames.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/mac-version-and-future-plans.html

32

SFML projects / Re: Starfire - Ares Assault released.

« on: June 28, 2012, 09:25:14 am »

Ramping is a good idea of course, so is the concept of pulling back the difficulty for a while after a new (harder) gameplay element has been introduced.

The game does have lulls between fights, due largely to the ebb and flow of the music.

Carefully hiding learning mechanics into the actual gameplay itself is another thing that goes way back to games like Megaman and beyond.

Are there any mechanics you didn't figure out?
I have some hints to add (e.g. warning before destroyer enters at the bottom).

Thanks.

33

SFML projects / Re: Starfire - Ares Assault released.

« on: June 28, 2012, 09:20:26 am »

I think maybe you should look into "ramping" the difficulty more. Start easy and get hard, but go slow so beginners get a good play in and ramp it to super crazy hard.

Thanks.

I'm a bit tied because the game is an experiment in synchronising attacks with the music. The enemies and patterns are driven by what's in my head when I listen to the music.

Maybe I could start on Easy then prompt to play the next difficulty level when it's beaten...

34

SFML projects / Re: Starfire - Ares Assault released.

« on: June 27, 2012, 03:50:53 pm »

really great work.. I love it!

Thanks. Are you finding the difficulty OK?

35

SFML projects / Starfire - Ares Assault - Released for Mac OSX

« on: June 27, 2012, 11:34:39 am »

The Mac OSX version of the game is now available:

http://www.suisoft.co.uk/starfire/

The gameplay is the same as the PC version (i.e. hard).

Next I will work on the difficulty settings to make the game more accessible and also look into the performance problems on some machines. I suspect the performance issues come down to the nebula rendering and screen resolution.

Feedback appreciated.

I'd really like to know how many people think the difficulty is reasonable and how many think it's too hard. Bloggers seem to think it's about right whereas forumites seem to think it's too hard.

36

General / Re: OSX APP file very large

« on: June 26, 2012, 10:47:21 pm »

I have traced the difference into the Frameworks folder, in particular the OpenGL.framework.

This framework is installed with the operating system so you don't need to copy it to your application bundle.

I also noticed that the frameworks folder contains header files.

Yes, that's how frameworks work on Mac OS X : put headers and binaries together to make things easier.

I'm new to XCode / OSX development. I've spent most of my time building the game under Windows (Visual Studio) then compling it under XCode and tweaking the code to deal with compiler differences. Not really comfortable with my Mac as yet.

I thought maybe the OpenGL framework could be excluded. Thanks for the confirmation.

When I have reconfigured the bundle copy I should be ready to release the Mac version.

Thanks for the advice / information. Much appreciated.

37

General / OSX APP file very large

« on: June 26, 2012, 05:23:36 pm »

I have built Windows and Mac versions of my SFML (1.6) based game. I have a lot of experience with PC development but I'm new to Macs.

The PC version is about 70 megabytes before compressing into a Setup EXE.
66 of this is game media (sounds, sprites etc).

The Mac version is 129 megabytes (APP file).
The Resources folder containing the game media is 69 megabytes.

I have traced the difference into the Frameworks folder, in particular the OpenGL.framework. One of the files in there (LibLLUMContainer.dylib) is 53 megs.

I also noticed that the frameworks folder contains header files.

Have I done something wrong in the XCode configuration?

Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere on the forum but I searched and couldn't spot anything. It's quite hard to know what to search for.

Thanks in advance.

38

SFML projects / Re: Starfire - Ares Assault released.

« on: June 26, 2012, 03:29:36 pm »

"Normal" should be playable more than 1 minute for a newcomer, too.

Maybe it's also just me. I lost motivation very early – so perhaps this type of genre isn't mine (however I loved to play "Raptor"

The energy bar on Raptor looks huge. Maybe enemies doing less damage might be the key to making it generally easier. Tweaks to the first boss attack pattern could also be good.

39

SFML projects / Re: Starfire - Ares Assault released.

« on: June 26, 2012, 10:22:20 am »

What about invulnerability and noclip for ~3 seconds after spawning?

At the moment the ship has noclip when spinning. I think the spinning just needs to last longer.

What about invulnerability Game runs very smoothly on my machine (Debian GNU/Linux using Wine, AMD Phenom II X4, NV GTX260), however I also find the difficulty way too high. It gets hard much too early which frustrated me.

Which bit did you find particularly hard early on?
Is it the first boss?

Thanks.

40

SFML projects / Re: Starfire - Ares Assault released.

« on: June 26, 2012, 10:20:55 am »

I personally feel that the first boss is kind of too hard. Also I didn't notice a difference for the boss when switching to the easyiest setting.
The tracking part, where the boss follows you everywhere is quite annoying since you don't have much room to move away from the boss, e.g. if you're in the left bottom corner you've probably lost, since you can't move up due to the boss standing crushing you on the side and you can't move left, because he's shooting at this spot and will come down from above and crush you.

I'll give it some thought. Thanks.

41

SFML projects / Re: Starfire - Ares Assault released.

« on: June 23, 2012, 04:07:53 pm »

Thanks for the feedback.

RE: Energy
The weapon and shield energy is the same. You have to balance firing against shield strength. Sometimes you need to stop firing and duck and dive a bit to recharge. You can read up on some tips in the game manual (in 'Start Menu/Suisoft/Starfire - Ares Assault'). I'm going to put the manual on the website when I have styled it.

RE: Boss from bottom of screen
I have wondered about having a warning message flash up a boss is coming. Also, some players have respawned and crashed into him so I think the respawn invulnerability delay needs a tweak.

RE: Flipping player ship
It's a nice idea (reminds me of Uridium) but would change the gameplay massively, particularly due to most enemies spawning at the top. I am considering a free roaming shooter where flipping could be an option. I need to make a decision which game to do - some many ideas, so little time!

The trick with the first boss charges is to anticipate the waves using the musical cues and weave through the open space to get into position.

An Italian blogger posted up a gameplay video that shows how to splat the boss:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJzyB2Sll4A
(about 1 minute 40 into the video the boss comes in)

RE: Slowdowns
I'm going to give priority to optimisation and have some detail settings in the game. It's very odd, as my development machine is 4 years old and the game is 100% smooth at 1680x1050 resolution.

42

SFML projects / Re: Starfire - Ares Assault released.

« on: June 22, 2012, 04:13:50 pm »

Your game is AMAZING !!!!! 
Congratz! 

The GUI, the menus, very polished
Very nice graphics and music

It runs nice on my ATI RADEON HD 5670 (driver 12.1) Win7 64bits

Thanks!

43

SFML projects / Re: Starfire - Ares Assault released.

« on: June 21, 2012, 05:34:59 pm »

I really like the game the artistic style, specially the nice menu!!

As I've already written on Twitter, I too get randomly slow downs although I'm running on really on low-end specs: Intel i7-2620M, 8GB RAM, Radeon HD 6470M 1GB

I wanted to record it with PlayClaw unfortunatly I nearly get only a black screen when running Starfire with PlayClaw.
I'd be happy to help hunting bugs down.

Thanks.

My next job is to do some performance optimisation. I'll keep you posted. Hopefully we can track down the slowdown issue.

Daft question, but are you using the latest drivers for the Radeon? I had quite a lot of problems with ATI drivers and OpenGL with my previous game. In particular the earlier 64 bit driver releases were problematic.

I haven't used PlayClaw. I tend to use FRAPS for capturing videos.

44

SFML projects / Starfire - Ares Assault released.

« on: June 21, 2012, 05:15:07 pm »

I've posted this here and on the end of the Vertical Shooter thread, now that the name is finalised.


"Starfire - Ares Assault" is now released (and FREE)!

You can download it from here:
http://www.suisoft.co.uk/starfire/index.htm

The main games page is here:
http://www.suisoft.co.uk/games/index.htm

Don't forget to use the secondary weapon on the bosses. There are a couple of tips on the web page.

Enjoy and please pass on or follow me on Twitter / Facebook.

The website is pretty basic at the moment. It needs more work to add screenshots, videos, artwork etc.

45

SFML projects / Re: Vertical Shooter

« on: June 21, 2012, 05:14:09 pm »

"Starfire - Ares Assault" is now released (and FREE)!

You can download it from here:
http://www.suisoft.co.uk/starfire/index.htm

The main games page is here:
http://www.suisoft.co.uk/games/index.htm

Don't forget to use the secondary weapon on the bosses. There are a couple of tips on the web page.

Enjoy and please pass on or follow me on Twitter / Facebook.

The website is pretty basic at the moment. It needs more work to add screenshots, videos, artwork etc.