Galaxy Defender - retro style shooter :)

#1 Well, it ran fine for me, although I'm on a pretty beastly machine so that doesn't mean much.

I really liked the background, especially the nebulous looking stuff. The overall feel is definitely nice and retro, but the particle effects do give it some flash, especially the absolutely ridiculous death effect =P

The gameplay wasn't that great, or really that fun, but nonetheless it was good enough I stuck around to beat all 5 levels. What I found most annoying about the gameplay was when an enemy would start moving in one direction and start putting out a pretty much full stream of beams. It wasn't at all hard to avoid, but you had to wait all the way till they hit the screen and reversed to kill them. Another thing that annoyed me while playing was thte fact that if you died near the center, enemies would still fire bullets at you, and you could instnatly die as your ship respawned.

#2 Yeah, like I said, a few rough edges :)

I'll either be adding in a shield or get the invaders to stop firing for a bit when you respawn. I'll also have the invaders diving on the player as well. And maybe some Galaga-like twirly patterns as well :)

#3 I like it. Simple yet effective. Perhaps a bit too simple for my tastes. Good retro feel with a few modern twists. And yes, the death effect is rather a bit much. I almost expect to take a few enemy ships with me after I go. "The light ... dear gods, the light!!!" =P

How did you get the scores out in print on screen like that? Just using tilemaps and the font images that come with T2D?

#4 The text (apart from the logo and the combo messages) is just text. Once you've installed a font you can use it in T2D. Providing you ship the commom/ui/cache directory with our game it doesn't matter if the user has the font installed or not.

The logo and combo messages are done with images.

#5 I like it. Seems like you are using a tilelayer for the enemies. Good idea.

#6 Nope, not using a tile layer. I suppose thinking about it I could have done it that way, but the way I'm doing things at the moment seems to work quite well.

I'll let you into a secret ;) It's all done with mounts...

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The vertical mount is first, and then attached to that are horizontal mounts (a seperate one for each row, and also each half of each row). The invaders are then mounted to the horizontal mounts.

By varying the size of the horizontal/vertical mounts I can get the invaders to pulse in unison. I can also move or rotate the vertical mount to have the entire wave move at once. By varying the position at which I attach the horizontal mounts, I can move from a wide formation to a narrow formation (as seen in the level "Stack 'em High").

In level 5 (Death from Above) I simply rotate the horizontal mounts 30 degrees in order to produce the new formation.

Using so many mounts and varying their sizes all the time probably has an overhead, but it does give a massive amount of flexibility when it comes to designing the formations.

I tell ya, T2D is the absolute danglies, and without the mount system, I'm not sure I could achieved anything quite like it (especially given that I'm such a beginner programmer).

#7 Rats! I can't get the link to work!

#8 Yeah, sorry, I seem to be having host troubles again. I can't access any of sites or my email at the moment :(

Hopefully things will be back to normal soon.

#9 Normal service appears to have been resumed and my hosts are running again :)

#10 Very nice. The effects really raise the excitement. With some power-ups, extra-levels and some pumping tunes, it'd rock.

If you were to write it up on TDN, it'd be used as a reference forever. :)

- Melv.

#11 Praise indeed :)

Not sure if my coding standards are really upto scratch to show them off to all and sundry, but maybe after I've tweaked the game a bit more I can do something.

I've rewritten the invader firing code this morning so it works properly, and the invaders give you a bit of a break when you die.

I'm currently working on getting the invaders to dive. It kind of works but I have a couple of kinks to work out.

As for power ups, I was thinking about increasing the abilities of the ship based on the combo level you achieve. Combo would give you quicker movement, Super Combo would give you a bigger gun and so-on.

I'd probably need to adjust the combo levels for it to work though. I'll think about it and see what I come up with.

#12 I liked it! The game feels solid. The sound effects are really good.

Of course I'm a fan of these types of games, Galaga is my favorite.

#13 Got it, played it, liked it!

I ran it on my laptop with no problems at all. To be honest, it's got some things going on that I have been hoping to add into my space shooter. The combos come to mind right off the bat - I was hoping to have the sort of 'squad destroyed' bonus like you see in Time Pilot and Gyruss (and a host of others).

Anyway, it was fun, I'll be interested to see more - and the cs source if you ever post it. =D

#14 I loved the effects. I did run into a bug though, where the enemies all moved slowly of the left edge of the screen and never came back. I guess I scared them off.

#15 Philip,

Very cool man, just got done playing through the demo and I must say it was a pretty cool throw back for me. Can't wait to see this running full boar with power ups and more levels!

I'll be awaiting eagerly,

-J

#16 Yeah effects are cool !!

#17 Man, all this praise :) *blush* I just hope it lives up to your expectations :)