I'll be tweaking the fighter AI till the end of time

You'll have to go sideways...

I just added another state to the fighter's menu of things to do called "sideways." about once every second, the fighter checks to see if it has line of sight to its target.  If not it picks a direction randomly (right or left) and goes into "sideways" mode.

Really it means fly tangentially to the target.  In basic terms it means face the target, now turn 90 degees right or left.   This will create a circling pattern where it circles around you until it gets a clear shot.

When there's a group of fighters together, they block each other and are forced to spread out which is really cool actually... and deadly to the target --which is usually going to be you.

This also gives them a primitive and very cheap kind of "pathfinding" to go around objects to get to their target.  Since you're in mostly open space with scattered objects. There are no dead ends, so going around things is all that's needed.  This works great with asteroids, space junk, and other ships getting in the way.

As soon as it gets a clear shot, it's back to tracking which involves fly-by shooting you and coming back around to to do it again.

I'm also encouraged by the fact that I was able to add 50 of these fighters to the game --all spitting out tons of particle trail objecs out their back ends and doing their flying around thing with no noticeable slowdown on a 5 year old cheap-when-I-got-it PC.

Oh... crap.

See the ones in the back jockeying for position? ...and nobody's on top of anybody else? It's the magic of sideways.

Also... I'm very happy with how my efighter3 turned out.... Shiny! They have some nasty rayguns on the front there and they're not afraid to use them.

OK The List Revisited

What I have so far:

Player motion and animation
1 weapon (twin laser bolts)

2 Enemy fighters (protectorate) rigged and done

1 Enemy boss (protectorate battlecruiser) rigged, but no shooting or ai

1 Friendly capital ship (alphanaut) not rigged, animation done. No ai.
(This is a huge sprite with over a hundred gigantic frames.  I may have to optimize this and lose some quality to keep loading and game play smooth)

Asteroids done.  I'm really happy with the asteroids.

Star and shadow effects are done and they look great.

Planets done.  Done and done.  However they do need things about them like bases to get stuff and status who's controlling them etc.

Starmap graphics done
Starmap and level xml needs to be done.  I figure I'll add all the elements first, then make the level organization happen next.

Level and starmap makers are last

Multiplayer.. not even started.


My first priority is to get all the ships and game elements done.  Ultimately what I want to do is make the levels happen randomly based on some rules.  In past versions I had a "Threat level" based on the cumulative hit points of the enemies there for a given system or game level.  That way I don't have to explicitly plan out every level and every ship in that level... just give it a few values and have the game make the level randomly within a set of parameters.  In other words, give me a level editor and I can make a bunch of levels over a long period of time.. give me an automatic level generator and I can make infinity of levels in a really short period of time!

It's just so much work... I think I have to take a step back and re-think the scope of what I'm trying to do.  I'd rather have less of a game than I imagine than no game at all.

Let's take a look at Doom 2

Zombiman
Shotgun guy
Machine gun guy
Imp
Cacodemon
Lost Soul
Pain Elemental
Hell Knight
Baron of Hell
Incubus
Spider Demon
Revanent
Spider Mastermind
CyberDemon
Arch-Vile
Demon
Spectre

Am I missing anything?  That's 17 enemies total including "bosses."  Really 16 because the "Spectre" is just a see-thru Demon.

So far I've got the Zombimen and Shotgun Guys done and I'm working on the "Revanant." in Doom terms.

When you see a protectorate battle cruiser it should be a pretty good indication you're going to die. It's meant to be a very scary ship.  In the video demonstrating how to kill it, I make it look easy because a) it's not fighting back, which it will.  and b) I turned up the damage of your twin lasers to like 500 a pop.  It's the equivalent of each bullet being a rail gun head shot with quad damage.  Your twin lasers are supposed to do about 10 pts of damage each.

So you're going to need bigger guns by the time you see that one --and maybe some friends --who also have bigger guns.

Also I'm not going to have that many enemies because Captain Zero has something Doom 2 does not.  Friendlies.  You have some massive ships on your side.  The Alphanaut can take on the Battlecruiser head to head and win.  You also have a Condor which I have the model done... and there's a light cruiser for the bad guys to match.    Of course the bad-guy's battlecruiser won't come alone.

There's something worse.. kind of an anti-big ship big ship called the "Dreadnought."  It just shoots one massive big ball of energy out its front.  It's useless against fighters --well not really but it's slow to turn and only shoots in one direction.  It can, however, take out a big ship in just a few hits.  It's basically a big giant lumbering cannon with rockets.  There's nothing on your side like it.

There are also a couple of helpless cargo ships and 2 kinds of star bases --which I may leave out in favor of just saying you landed on a planet for repairs and upgrades.

I know I should be thinking more about games like Wing Commander Privateer, Star Control, Star Flight, (loved StarFlight --loved all of those) but I what I really want this game to feel more like is...

...Zelda.

The first Zelda.  With its critical paths and offshoots... Secrets and bosses...  Its journey.  Cross the first Zelda with Sinistar, then let the offspring have a baby with Star Control --have her go visit Uncle Doom for a while, and that's what I want this game to feel like --after she goes to school and gets her Action Degree at R-TYPE college.

Is that too much to ask?

Probably.  But it's nice to have goals.

Why Construct 2?

So I'm in Construct 2 instead of say, Unity to make a game with 3d looking spaceships.  Why Construct 2?   Well even though there is a Visual Studio plugin, I can start developing for practically free and I can use my language of choice which is C# and take advantage of the full featured 3d engine and great indie game dev community around Unity...

I'm sticking with Construct 2 for this one.

Why?

1.  Even if it's better, I don't have time to switch gears.  I messed around with Unity and starting out with it is much more cumbersome.   People making projects that are the scope I'm looking at in Unity are usually teams, with much more net free time to make their games.

I have a test with creative software:   If I can't make a simple something in the first couple of minutes... I don't like it.  I'm not saying I have to master it instantly or make anything substantial, I'm just saying I should be able to make *something* very quickly.   That's why I like Acid Wave, and not Fruity Loops.  In Acid Wave I can see directly what's going on.  With Fruity Loops it seems there's an extra layer between me and the sounds I'm trying to make.  I'm not sure there really is, but for me and the way I think, there is.  For some people it might be the other way around.    It's why I like Paint Shop Pro, and not Adobe Photoshop.  There's just something about it I find less intuitive and instead of making pictures, I end up fighting with the interface to get it to do what I want, which should be obvious.

With Construct 2 it's almost as if everything I want to do has a "do what I want" button.  Whenever I think "I need an option to do this..." That option seems to present itself.  Even though I have to spritify some of my 3d objects (actually I don't if I want to use the ThreeJS based 3d plugin for it) It's a small price to pay for being able to put up new effects, ships and logic in practically no time at all.  

2.  For a 2d game, I don't see how it's better.  OK I can see how bringing the power of C# or C++ to bear on my game would be cool.  I could import an open source neural net for my AI and have the directions an enemy can move as "out" cells and train the s$% out of the critters.  But then if I want to code special things, I can just use Javascript and make my own objects --So in the end what's the difference?  What can I not do in Construct 2 in 2d that I can do with Unity?  That's the real question...

When I do want to do a full 3d game with modern effects... why use Unity instead of licensing Unreal Engine?  The more I read about it and look into it, the more I believe I should skip Unity all together and go straight for the Unreal.   There are tons of books and tutorials out there so what's the point of not using that? I just don't see the down side, and the upside is it's a much better engine in every way and it's industry standard and used by AAA development studios.  Not that "who it's uesd by" means anything much to me.

I hear that argument from Mac users all the time about Final Cut Pro.  Their arguments are comprised of "Bla bla studio uses it..." yet they can't tell me one thing their $1600 program on their $2000 mac can do that my $120 Sony Vegas on my $400 pc can't --besides being able to say it's the same editor used to splice together Napoleon Dynamite.   Which part of Napoleon Dynamite could I not edit with Sony Vegas? I could then take the extra $3,000 and hire Olympic Gold Medalist Jessica Hardey to do a voice over on it.  And that's just off the top of my head.  OK rant over... Back to texturing spaceships.

Haunted Minigolf

One of the few games I actually sort of finished was Haunted Minigolf:

It's 18 holes using basic physics and creepy looking layouts.  Some I created from scratch in 3D World Studio, and others I mashed together from old photographs and atmospheric effects.   

This is a great example of what happens when I use assets from an older game attempt and make a new one.  The older game is something I made about 13 years ago called Cemetery Cat.  

Cool eh?

It had some nice imagery and a cool concept --but I couldn't get it to go anywhere as a game.  All I could come up with was you're collecting roses to put on the correct graves-- but no matter how much stuff I crammed into it, it never felt like a coherent game, so I gave up.

I was looking at the graves, fences, bricks, fog etc I made for Cemetery Cat and thought, "you know what IS a coherent game? MINI GOLF..."  So I made a mini golf game out of it.  And Voila Haunted Minigolf was born. Took a while, but born none the less.

Hole 1.  Boo!

The Creepy Attic hole... One of my faves  Par 2.

Any how I "dug up" this game (so to speak), and submitted it to NewGrounds.  Please check if it's still "Under Judgement" and go judge it OK?  I'll get back to Captain Zero now I promise!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/644232?updated=1

ENJOY!

Battlecruiser, Back Story, and Space Junk.

I've been working on the Protectorate Battlecruiser... The Protectorate of Kanek are the main bad guys.  The story is coming together in my mind, but I don't want to be too specific.  This is first and foremost an action arcade style game.  There's a little bit of "space adventure" thrown in, but overall the story should be the player's story, not my story.

Protectorate Battlecruiser

This is why they not only didn't have, but didn't allow a "Doom Bible" and I don't want any cut-scenes.  That's not to say I don't have a back story in mind.  The player was a decorated war hero who reached the Confederation of Planets' rank of Captain 7 --the highest rank possible, but then left either in disgrace or disgust and found work as a pilot for hire.

Because of a new threat from a large fleet of ships whose markings and communications indicate they're called the "Protectorate of Kanek" you are re-instated in an unofficial capacity and get your ship back but without any numerical rank, hence the name Captain Zero. Also you must outfit your own ship with weapons.

Doom was one of the first if not the first video game I ever played where the dead creatures bodies stuck around.  If you killed a bunch of imps or demons in a room, the bodies piled up instead of fading away leaving a clean floor.

Those bodies are there for good. No magic cleaning.

So for all my ships there are several sets of pieces called "space junk" that end up floating around after the ships have been destroyed.  Here's the resulting "space junk" from the above battle cruiser.  The pieces float apart drifting slowly, randomly in space.

What's left of the Protectorate Battlecruiser when you're finished

How cool would it be if you had a massive bullet-hell arcade style battle and destroyed tons of spaceships and pretty soon there was debris flying everywhere!  No more exploding or fading out of existence. There are consequences for your battles! 

...And here is the result so far: