We madez a game! Sidescroller shoot'em'up + a puzzle
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 1:06 am
Hey ya'all!
Sorry for not popping by for a while - been super busy writing my thesis, plus I also misplaced my shoulder by falling with my bicycle in February and been on a sick-leave. Just got a birthday congratulations e-mail from CCGR and I took it as a reminder from God to not lose contact to this forum
Anyway, I took a game programming course back in the Fall semester, and we made a combination of a shoot'em'up sidescroller and a puzzle game. It's really 2 different games packed into one. Both the games are based loosely on gravitation laws. I was responsible for the sidescroller part, it's partly retro but it's got some original ideas like an unique energy system for the spaceship plus a rotating turret tower. It's too bad the game maybe didn't turn out as good as I had hoped, as 2 (or I'd say 1 and ½) of the 4 members in our group decided to just slack off through the course without really contributing, so we were under-manned. So far I've contributed maybe 300+ hours to the project.
The game can be quite hard. Remember to recharge your shields, avoid bullets (move a lot) and use different velocity bullets for different enemies (blue basic enemy = high velocity, yellow = low velocity, red = any). Also use pulsars and gravitation from planets to manuever your bullets into where you're aiming 'em. Planets also give good cover. There's 3 maps and 3 bosses at the end of each map, good luck!
Currently only Windows build is available from the website:
http://www.laajala.fi/icarus
There's a YouTube gameplay video there too made by one of our project members, althought the graphics and content itself is outdated from what it is in the latest release (0.41). For example we added a lot of cool new explosions
And I know... it's got loads of bugs still >_< forgive us! Worst part has been optimizing the PhysX -physics engine to work well with both slower and faster CPUs, as I coded in a bad manner in the beginning of the project and it's been really hard to fix it afterwards.
We might do an OS X build somewhere in the future, who knows. At least the game engine would support it.
Couple screenshots (first of the sidescroller, latter of the puzzle part):
Sidescroller:
Puzzle part:
I'm also working semi-actively on a Steampunk turn-based strategy game for the future, possibly using this same game engine since it's nice free integrated environment. So far I've made the game as a 2-player board game and am at the moment tuning the rules and units and everything in it. So far it's been promising, and by playing the boardgame I've already had the joy of playing the game for 50h+. Once all the fundamentals are set (and I got the motivation), I'll start making it for the PC. Hopefully at least we'll see, God allowing. Maybe if any of you are interested in the future, you can contact me in CCGR Steam group - I go by the nickname Syksy. Right now I'm working on the different factions and the metaworld above these 2-player conflicts (=single battles) and how to get them into the bigger picture so to say.
God bless!
Sorry for not popping by for a while - been super busy writing my thesis, plus I also misplaced my shoulder by falling with my bicycle in February and been on a sick-leave. Just got a birthday congratulations e-mail from CCGR and I took it as a reminder from God to not lose contact to this forum
Anyway, I took a game programming course back in the Fall semester, and we made a combination of a shoot'em'up sidescroller and a puzzle game. It's really 2 different games packed into one. Both the games are based loosely on gravitation laws. I was responsible for the sidescroller part, it's partly retro but it's got some original ideas like an unique energy system for the spaceship plus a rotating turret tower. It's too bad the game maybe didn't turn out as good as I had hoped, as 2 (or I'd say 1 and ½) of the 4 members in our group decided to just slack off through the course without really contributing, so we were under-manned. So far I've contributed maybe 300+ hours to the project.
The game can be quite hard. Remember to recharge your shields, avoid bullets (move a lot) and use different velocity bullets for different enemies (blue basic enemy = high velocity, yellow = low velocity, red = any). Also use pulsars and gravitation from planets to manuever your bullets into where you're aiming 'em. Planets also give good cover. There's 3 maps and 3 bosses at the end of each map, good luck!
Currently only Windows build is available from the website:
http://www.laajala.fi/icarus
There's a YouTube gameplay video there too made by one of our project members, althought the graphics and content itself is outdated from what it is in the latest release (0.41). For example we added a lot of cool new explosions
And I know... it's got loads of bugs still >_< forgive us! Worst part has been optimizing the PhysX -physics engine to work well with both slower and faster CPUs, as I coded in a bad manner in the beginning of the project and it's been really hard to fix it afterwards.
We might do an OS X build somewhere in the future, who knows. At least the game engine would support it.
Couple screenshots (first of the sidescroller, latter of the puzzle part):
Sidescroller:
Puzzle part:
I'm also working semi-actively on a Steampunk turn-based strategy game for the future, possibly using this same game engine since it's nice free integrated environment. So far I've made the game as a 2-player board game and am at the moment tuning the rules and units and everything in it. So far it's been promising, and by playing the boardgame I've already had the joy of playing the game for 50h+. Once all the fundamentals are set (and I got the motivation), I'll start making it for the PC. Hopefully at least
we'll see, God allowing. Maybe if any of you are interested in the future, you can contact me in CCGR Steam group - I go by the nickname Syksy. Right now I'm working on the different factions and the metaworld above these 2-player conflicts (=single battles) and how to get them into the bigger picture so to say.God bless!
