Blaze

I thought maybe it's easier to draw sprites for a 2D top down game. So I'll only need to draw the sprites from one direction.

At the moment there's a triangle that can be controlled and moved in 8 directions + jump, and shoot small squares.

I haven't completely decided on the movement. It could have controls like in FPS games.. WS: forward/backward, AD: strafe left/right and mouse for aiming/rotating the player, maybe the camera rotates too. Or 8 direction movement, but mouse can aim a crosshair anywhere, bullets/stuff would fly toward it.



You can try it here: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/wip/blaze_v001.zip - source code not included, it's a bit too messy looking... uhh..

Controls:
S = spawn player
X = destroy player
A = shoot stuff
Arrow keys = move player

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While it now looks like it might be some spaceship game.. that doesn't mean it would be a spaceship game, but it could be...

Next steps would be to clean up the code and experiment more on the movement, maybe some collisions between the things, or load graphics for them.

Could you please give us the source code! Please! I'm a beginning programmer who always failed to do anything else than CMD based programs.
Doesn't matter which language it is (yes I'm noob and have no idea if you used some fork of C or something another). I would like to see the code.
Also it looks interesting, if I can ask, what are you aiming for in a result?

Looks pretty neat and interesting, though I must admit I thought this thread was about the Mortal Kombat character.

I thought it was somehow related to 4/20...oh nevermind.

Chu said:

I thought it was somehow related to 4/20...oh nevermind.

Ditto.

Jimi: What you're describing reminds me of the excellent top-down shooter Crimsonland (YouTube). If you're going to draw inspiration from anywhere, this might be a good start.

4/20 was kind of a coincidence...

Anyway... I made the source code look a bit cleaner. But I'm a bit unsure if I'm doing things right.

Now the missiles fly in the direction player is looking, and they move faster than player. It's still 8 direction movement, but shouldn't be too hard to make it 360 degree movement.

Source code: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/blaze/blaze_src_v002.zip
Game: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/blaze/blaze_v002.zip

Edit: Here's a version with 360 degree movement, and some little randomization and delay to the missile shooting
Source code: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/blaze/blaze_src_v003.zip
Game: http://koti.mbnet.fi/jeejeeje/blaze/blaze_v003.zip

Controls are still the same.

The source code project file is for MS Visual C++ 2008 Express. It needs Freeglut, and GLEW, but I'm not sure if it actually use anything from GLEW, since the game exe works without GLEW dll... I've been checking these tutorials: http://www.swiftless.com/opengltuts.html

As it seems, Dev-Cpp fails to compile it because of missing glew and glut stuff. Anyway huge thanks for releasing the code! I'll take a closer look and try to get basics of this "real-graphic" programming. Again, thanks a lot :)

I guess this stuff kinda changed. Programming my own engine / 2D game / Doom didn't really feel like what I wanted to use for this.

Decided to use DarkPlaces engine for this instead. So far it's going quite ok and works pretty well with the simple texture style I'm using. Done a couple weapon models, player character with some animations, and have a few textures for levels.

Screenshots:

Throwing a Bomb, while holding a Sword and being in water


Pulse Rifle


Anti-Tank Rifle


Ignore the left hand holding the guns from a bit wrong place. The animation was used with an earlier Pulse Rifle model that had the front handle further away from the right hand.

Also I'll try to get the barrel more visible in the Anti-Tank Rifle...

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Videos:
Player Attacks
Player Jumping

These are about month old, so some stuff have been improved...

That's quite a change from the original idea.

I'm very happy with the new change!

The character looks like he should be able to jetpack or fly. Will he be able to? If you have an anti tank rifle... I want tanks or sentries that require the rifle to take them out. :-) I also hope there will be some precision with a rifle, otherwise why not use rockets?

btw originally I thought Blaze was about the Killer Instinct character... before I realized its Cinder and I was thinking of Mortal Kombat Armageddon's boss.

Edit >> I just saw the player attacks video. Reminds me of demo knighting. I really hope you program some beheadings, impalings or half slicings or something that makes a sword feel like a sword. I know you're using quake enemies by default, but half slicing an enemy would be fun followed with a head stomp, but that might be too Dead Space.

Watching the jumping, it does look like the player can float a little. So I think I was right when I asked about the jetpack. It also looks like a character model that can glide if you hold the jump button in mid air or something. It also looks like a character model that may benefit from wall clinging to certain walls ala Gargoyle's Quest. If you're clinging to a wall you can only use single armed weapons like pistols. It would set you apart from other FPS (even if 3PS have them) and become 'forgiving' with 3D platforming if you chose to have any.

But all of these ideas are limited to the programming end. I'm just throwing out ideas based on your character model and movement.

Over the years this project has changed/been stuck/going back and forth a lot... but I'm thinking maybe some day I'd try that programming again and make some vertically scrolling space ship game or something.

Yea, I'm thinking this character will be able to fly and have some other special powers. At the moment there's only the basic jump (hold jump key for higher jumps) and air control ability (jump in one direction, and change direction in mid-air).

I've planned that I would make 4 player characters with unique weapons and special powers. But it's possible that they'll all just use the same weapons.. or that I make fewer player characters, or just this one. Or something... At least would be nice to have a playable monster character.

Deaths will probably be just gibs always. Each differently colored part is a different mesh element, and possibly a gib. For the character animations I'm using Quake3 kind of Head/Upper/Lower body animations. So I could have some bigger gibs easily too.

The AT rifle is pretty accurate, and the projectiles will fly really fast, so they would hit sooner than rockets. I also made the alt fire to shoot an explosive round. The primary fire projectile will rip through multiple targets. The amount of ripping could depend on the size of the target. At the moment it's just a fixed 5 rips.

I've found vertically scrolling games are the easiest to make. Made quite a few over the years.

As for this project, I know you'd like to do multiple characters, but I think for 'more content quicker' I'd pick new enemies before new player characters. Unless the whole point of this is to be Quake 3 arena where its exclusively player vs player.

If you go with different player characters, offhand I'd say they should have useable special abilities like more damage for 10 seconds, invulnerability for 10 seconds and some sort of aimable teleportation. I'd say this would suit some playstyles. But really, its all up to you and what you can program in. You can even still keep 1 play character and have him collect those special abilities and have 1 at a time. Or even power ups that will buff damage by sniper rifle or buff damage by shotgun. You can only get 1 at a time, but it would make people more loyal to certain weapons. Again, all just ideas.

If the ATR will shoot through multiple targets, make sure to create levels that will line up enemies so you can make use of that feature and have the fun of using it. But really I know when playing Deus Ex and seeing enemies line up, it seemed pretty silly when they should have fanned out. So I'm not sure if by 'rip through multiple targets' could mean something like you shoot through someone then the bullet switches trajectory to go through the next enemy within an X radius then so on.

But really this sniper rifle is sounding a bit overpowered since it has explosive rounds, and can go through multiple targets.

Probably I'll focus more on the single player game, so I'll do some monsters before I do more player characters.

I planned that each character would have 3 special powers that affect movement, shield and regeneration. Each character would then have them a bit different. Like this character would have flying as the movement power, and some other character would have that teleportation as the movement power.

Haven't decided if player could use one power at a time or all, or if they all use the same energy to function or each have their own energy.

And yea I was thinking player wouldn't have all the powers right away, or their effectiveness would be minimal, and player needs to find some items or do some RPG character development stuff.

The ATR bullets will just fly straight. I had some bug with them first that made them fly in some weird way after they had hit something. Also the explosive shots don't rip through, since they explode on hit. The other shots will lose some power on each hit. On a single target it doesn't matter much which shot type was used...

New Video:
New Guns in Action

I'd hope explosive shots wouldn't go through enemies. I look forward to seeing any progress if you continue. RPG elements could be fun or rather stats upgrades to unlock perks. Not sure how anyone else would feel about such things.

So for water enemies, I'm seeing quite a few of them. Would it be possible to have an electrical bomb to shock damage anything in a pool of water or a radius?

I'll watch the rest later.

Edit >> The sword looks more satisfying to swing now that you have a blue trail for it. The ATR makes short work of what looks like a lot of enemies. Good looking weapons test.

Is it me or does the sword look like its shooting? If it is shooting, I see that as a good thing.

With your excessive killing in such a short time, I think you need to make an enemy that can take a lot of damage or something that has its own force field or hand held shield. In fact you can add a lot of dynamics with standard grunt enemies that have hand shields and force fields. Handheld shields would force the player to use the precision while force fields would require either a lot of damage to disable or an EMP grenade to take them out. You could also go RPG where a 'wizard' enemy generates magical force fields for the enemies around it. So you need to take out the wizard first. Just throwing out ideas for your next killing spree :-)

Sounds like good ideas. Yea, maybe enemies could have some shields too, so not just player who has them. I have thought of doing some shields that also spawn some small objects spinning around the player or enemy. And if these objects hit others, then they will do some damage, and maybe they could also be thrown away at someone.

Yea, and the sword got a alternate projectile attack. It can shoot max 5 projectiles that can bounce once or rip through enemy once.. so it could miss, but then bounce back at the enemy, or hit two enemies. The main attack in the sword spawns 5 invisible objects that follow the blade, and they will damage things they hit.

Ok, and now I've been trying out respawning monsters, items and HUB levels that connect to Normal levels. Maybe also use different monster layouts when player has done some stuff or found some specific items. The Normal levels could then have some goal player needs to do. Since otherwise it's just endless slaughther :P

New Screenshots:

HUB Level:


Normal Level:


HeartSphere (decided to use this old model).. plus some empty shells from the rifle.. they will vanish in 10 seconds, but I had increased the time for the screenshot..


And some others:
http://www.moddb.com/games/blaze/images/ammo
http://www.moddb.com/games/blaze/images/hub-level1
http://www.moddb.com/games/blaze/images/other-level1

So the objects that come spinning off that you can throw, is it like battle damage where you've damaged a hand shield so it breaks and you use a piece to throw? Like that? Or is it like small spinning objects that are the shield like in Gradius you can have 2 spinning orb shields that act like razor blades, but also take shots. That sounds good. Anything that makes your game stand out is awesome.

Speaking of shields that shoot, there are the old Gradius 'options' that you pull behind you and shoot as you do. There's that. I'm not sure any other game has had that. Enemies might benefit from having them too. Kind of like 2 guns for 1 enemy. If you have good enemy AI you can literally have an enemy safely hide behind a wall while its 'option' shoots at you.

Hmmmm what I forgot to mention is 'reflective' shields. That way the player really has to pick his shots. OR the player has to come in with melee only. Or a reflective shield could 'go dim' for 2 seconds as it recharges. Or again go the 'magician' route where you need to take out the magician to disable the reflective shields.

So with the bounce back at enemies. It can do that once right? What if as a player skill sort of thing, it can bounce 1 more time for every enemy that it hits. Like if it goes through 1 enemy it will bounce off a wall like you said, but if that bounced beam goes through another enemy it can bounce again. Or would that be overkill and make a hallway of enemies dead with 1 bouncing beam? But then there's always enemy defense vs player attack.

Different monster layouts are always good. Diversity of play. Like I play FTL a lot, even though its basically the same thing every time, but its randomized. So I propose to you the idea. What happens if specific enemies have a radius to randomly spawn in if not an enemy has a 50% chance to even show up.

There are always player goals and not just get to the exit, but find the key and so on. But I think get item X wall jumping or flying might be a good 'puzzle like' diversion. But I guess for a FPS, people don't always want puzzles, because if its too difficult or stops the flow, people just stop playing. With one of your earlier videos, I could see the player model in first person. That's very beneficial to FPS platforming.

The heartsphere has a nice elegance to it. The 2 screenshots look different, which is good. Lighting is a good factor in making a level look different, instead of just putting a red filter on things like some games do.

Edit >> Other shots look solid, ammo boxes too.

Yea, the spinners would be like some razor blades. Although I wonder how they would look in first person, might be annoying there's too much stuff spinning around player's view.

I also experimented a bit on making the sword able to hit the bombs, including player's own bombs, but didn't get it fully functional... Making player/enemy object reflective is probably easier to do.

I added some simple skill upgrade thing.. basically just one value that increase on damaging/killing enemies.. and the same value also increase every ability player has. Made the sword projectiles hit more stuff then and it became pretty effective at destroying everything around player.

Experimented on randomizing the enemies and using differents ones when player has found stuff and has more skill points. Overall it worked pretty nice, but maybe I just respawn the monsters too fast. Maybe on the hardest difficulty they could respawn that fast, or faster. Also made the enemies walk around randomly when they haven't seen player. Boss monsters should stay still and wait for player...

Here's a new enemy (of course now I made every enemy to be this):


It could shoot stuff from the gun, have some tractor beam kind of thing in the claw and sting with the tail at close range.

Make them invisible in first person mode. Anyway, I'll write more later.

Judging by the shots it looks awesome.

Looks badass. I'm happy to see new enemies with the possibility of a tractor beam. If there's a tractor beam, don't forget about an enemy with a repulsor beam to push the player into pits if the player doesn't kill them quick enough.

As for the enemies themselves (Bionic Bees), the stinger underneath reminds me of a wheel like they should be rolling around instead of hovering.

The sword hitting bombs would make for some nice gameplay. Like how some games you can throw back grenades only hitting them back would be smoother. And well if the player can, then certain enemies should be able to as well :-) I would say standard melee enemies, but if they're abundant, you want to grenade them. But of course then you could have a certain percentage they'd hit it back at you.

I'm happy you have the randomization. If a player can predict things, that just means they'll speed run it that much easier.

My mind is racing seeing the character ontop of the enemy. Use it as a controllable platform. Either jumping on top of it or hitting it with some sort of ride beam to transport you ontop of it and then just go wherever you want. But that could be game breaking.

The beam could probably work both ways, so it could like toss player around into walls and stuff.

In the screenshots I was in notarget mode, so it was easy to jump on them. In standard gameplay it's not so easy. Also if the enemy moves away, player falls. Maybe there could be some creatures that aren't exactly enemies and could be used as platforms.

It probably wouldn't break the game, since player can jump pretty well on its own. Player has 60 units tall hitbox and can jump up to a 320 units obstacle, length at least 700 units, and steps up 32 units. Haven't done any crouch/crawl yet, but I'd like it to halve the hitbox height. These values may change eventually.

Bionic Bees.. I thought they also looked like Shrimps. The tail will be pointing back when it's moving fast. Maybe when it's just hovering still or moving slow, the tail would be like it is now. Made them roll/bounce around a bit when they get hit.

Give the player movement control of one of them and bind the player to the bee so movement would be as one. I was imagining it would be difficult to jump on them, which is why I pitched a 'ride beam' so you could shoot them to mount them, thus allowing for teleportation. All ideas.

Tail back when moving fast, which I like. So in a way they could be like Lost Souls how they dart around. The roll and bounce should be pretty cool to see.

As for the tractor + repulser beam / hook thing. When the eye is green, they repulse, when the eye is yellow they fire, and when the eye is red they tractor in. But then there might be 10 of them tractoring the player and repulsing the player. Unless you make it so only 1 in a group can repulse or tractor at a time.

Come to think of it, repulser and tractor fields might bennefit shields. Like melee enemies that have tractor fields / shields to draw in the player, narrowing the time the player has to react. And snipers or other shooting enemies could have repulser fields to push the player away forcing the player to have to shoot them. The fields would be optional to have a field version of enemy or a non field.

There could always be exploding versions that just suicide bomber you by darting toward you or tractoring you in. Explode close but not right next to you so splash damage hurts you. Those would just be fun to shoot when they're near other enemies, watch them explode like a barrel to do splash damage. Or of course have different enemy that does it such as Ticks in Doom 3

The crouch / crawl is always a good mechanic to have for traversing, and even stabilizing shots like Left 4 Dead. If not doing a Half Life high jump by hitting crouch then jump right after.

I'm glad to see you're continuing on the project.

All this tractor/repulsor stuff makes me think of the mine levels from Tyrian that had those red&green gravity bubble things. And jump pads...

I thought to have different colors in the eye too, but if it's got red/yellow/green.. and then have those 10 of them.. it'll probably look like some traffic lights. But maybe at least red/yellow could work.

As for suicide bomber enemy, probably better to make a new one, just to have enough variety. Although I could use this as a base for it.

Crouch button in mid-air will probably make player fall down faster.. since holding jump button makes player jump higher. I made player have double/mid-air jump when he's got enough skill points.

Don't know if crouch will affect player's accuracy.. there's no random inaccuracy. There's some effect on player's movement, player can fire the weapon when changing it (probably only hits the floor), and getting hit will punch the view/weapon. So, shots will be fired in the direction the weapon is pointing.

Next video should show this stuff.. want to add some more monsters before, want to have walking/medium and walking/tank.

I like that float down with the crouch button. Good dynamic there. You can also throw in a double jump for a power up or an alternate character or just simply to say 'aw yeah I made a double jump!' Plus the crouch in mid air would leave room for a double jump.

After typing you and looking at my Christmas Tree, I thought the eyes would look like Christmas lights. But traffic lights is probably a better analogy. Or go for blue, white and yellow. Or make different enemies that repulse and these tractor. Just so in a screen shot people can say damn that's a lot of different enemies.

And I guess inaccuracy in single player pissed people off in Aliens Colonial Marines, when for multi player it makes more sense that a person can't snipe at 200 yards with a no scope pistol. And with Aliens, Fallout 3 and some multi-player games when you headshot someone there's still a 90% chance you actually hit them. Other games have accuracy cones where the closer you are the more likely you are to hit an enemy.

ooo actually to put a twist on the accuracy cone since you won't have one.... how about 10% damage increase? Or rather a non moving crouching stationary shooter gets a 10% damage bonus. Again, I'm just throwing out ideas to give you options.

Walking medium enemy and walking tank monsters right? I'm looking forward to it. Hmmm chain gun when you're not hidden, seeking rockets when you try to hide. So if you say oh shit run away turn around a hall, like a revenant, the rockets can turn down the hall.

Damage increase could work for crouch with some weapons, maybe also some defence/shield increase. The sword gets some bonus damage from player's velocity..

Well, here's the walker/medium monster. It got some chemical weapon. It could appear in two colors/attacks. Now trying with red and green. The red ones could appear in places with lava and shoot some flame stuff and the green ones would appear in places with slime and shoot slime. At the moment it's just randomized.



I'll make animations for them when I've modelled the tank monster. Yea, it could be some multi weapon monster.

The new enemies look good, the weapons they're carrying either look like a machine gun with a bladeless chainsaw... or a flame thrower. The slime and lava variants are good. If there are slime and lava.... brown sludge and blue waters? I can't imagine water hurting so much as pushing like a firehose. They should also throw a grenade if the player is hiding.

It was meant to be some sort of flame/chemical thrower. At the moment I have the flames shot straight without gravity.. and the slime shot like a grenade. Maybe I'll eventually make a grenade launcher version from it.

Here's the Walker/Tank class monster, equipped with err.. Pulse Miniguns. 260cm tall, and 1438 tris. Maybe now I could start on those animations/etc.





I was going to make it have some shoulder mounted rocket launchers, but then I kinda forgot or something. Maybe I'll add it, or maybe some other monster gets it.

Like a grenade like it bounces then explodes? I'd think slime would stick. Either way its pretty cool in my mind. If it sticks, make it able stick to the player then explode :-) You can always have versions with or without the shoulder rockets.

They look really good, inventive and different. I like the eyes and the guns look unique. I know there have been chaingun armed enemies before, but yours looks more intense. I like the size difference of everything. The enemies and project in general are shaping up nicely.

I assume tanks will take a lot of damage, might want to make some kind of battle damage or aim can destroy one of its guns or both. Destroying both could reveal a new method of attack. Like rockets.

Come to think of it, the 4 eyes could just be rockets and the eyes of the thing could be what looks like the visor below the 4 eyes. Just a thought.

The 3 monsters are now animated and more or less behave as they should. They're still missing their unique gibs and better AO bakes on the textures. That and new sounds for everything should be my next things to do..

I removed the bouncing from the slime, replaced it with little slime blobs exploding around when it hits something or existed alone long enough.

Yea, I've thought the eye looking things on the tank head could be a weapon, or just shoot rockets from the main guns.

Added some character development and powers for player, but that's still sort of early stuff. The super shield and flying works pretty well, although the current levels don't really need flying. The super shield increases player's shield quality up to 90% protection for a while.

And here's new videos:
Monsters Idling
Monsters in Action

The game is really coming along nicely. I'm glad its become what it has compared to what it was. The videos look great, seeing the enemies walk around with no player presence is a very nice touch. There are some obvious glitches you know about. The game is very vibrant with a great color pallet and beautiful particle effects, especially the slime. Its a really colorful game and I mean that in a good way. Quake was so brown and ugly, and there are plenty of modern shooters that are so brown and ugly. However, you might need to put a seizure warning on the game :-)

New sounds is a good place to go from here. It still sounds very Quake.

Its good that you have a menu for upgrades, but it too feels very Quake, but that shouldn't really be a priority.

About the 4 eyes, you could always make the eyes lasers and the guns fire rockets. It just seems like less programming involved to get it to fire 2 weapons, but its all up to you.

If the current levels don't need flying, you could always make a sort of Metroid-Vania style game where you'd eventually need certain skills to progress, such as flying, wall jumping, double jumping, keys, uh ground pounds, super dashes, uppercuts to break through ceilings and so on. But those are things you'd have to find and not buy upgrades for.