Starfire - Ares Assault released.

[Sui]

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.

[eXpl0it3r]

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.

[Sui]

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.

[mateandmetal]

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

[Sui]

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!

[Nexus]

Very nice, especially the graphics!

Is HP and weapon energy the same? That is, if you shoot all the time, thus have low energy and then get hit, you instantly die? Furthermore, a little bit annoying was the boss coming from the bottom of the screen, he directly killed me because I saw him too late.

I too get randomly slow downs

I can confirm that.

[eXpl0it3r]

Is HP and weapon energy the same? That is, if you shoot all the time, thus have low energy and then get hit, you instantly die?

I was confused by this too...

Furthermore, a little bit annoying was the boss coming from the bottom of the screen, he directly killed me because I saw him too late.

It's also annoying that he very often gets down and new enemys are coming in from above, so you're left with nearly no space to move around. If the boss can most that freely it would make sense if the player can flip his ship around too, so he can attack the boss also frim above.

[Sui]

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:

(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.

[eXpl0it3r]

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.

I can confirm that, once I've crashed twice in a row into some enemys up on spawning.

Edit: It's nearly impossible to spawn in the astroids field, i.e. you spawn and either run directly into an big astroid and explode, or you spawn run into a few smaller ones and then can't avoid the next small one and explode...

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.

It sure would change the gameplay but I think it could still be done with enemis spawning at the top.

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.

It's kind of strange, because it feels like everything is moving in slowmotion. It could be used as a cool effect but the randomness isn't that nice.


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.

[Tank]

Edit: It's nearly impossible to spawn in the astroids field, i.e. you spawn and either run directly into an big astroid and explode, or you spawn run into a few smaller ones and then can't avoid the next small one and explode...

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

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.

[Sui]

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.

[Sui]

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.

[Tank]

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

Well, the boss itself is not that though. Enemy waves are quite huge, at least for me, who isn't really into that genre. I have to admit that I haven't tried it on the easiest difficulty, but I guess "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":

[Sui]

"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.

[Sui]

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.