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edg3
04-09-2010, 10:57 PM
Well, I'll be using pygame for this "competition", also a big thanks to dislekcia and Aequitas from QCF for lending me some lovely cake and a look at their code for their random ship generation of complete awesome! <more props to them and shameless Spacehack punting will take place in game when I get there>

Without further ado, I will have to share with you Vector Vacuum!
http://i56.tinypic.com/2ivgxao.jpg

What is it?
The shmup I never got around to getting anywhere with, I aim to make all the art in game procedurally generated (thanks to dis and aeq for the code sample to get an idea of where to start). Essentially I hope to evolve this into a tribute to Spacehack (still waiting for this to be sold on XBL so I can buy it).

How will it incorporate the theme?
There will be a global score, to allow players to drop in or out of the game and play together. When the game isnt being played by a human it will go into "autopilot" mode where a ship will be automatically piloted but that doesnt add to total score.

For a player to "drop in" they simply have to click the left mouse button, for them to drop out they must just die (then a new ship spawns and the next player "drops in" or the current player can continue), there will be "milestones" to reach, when you reach a milestone your score will be added to the total, if you die your current score will be subtracted from the total. At the milestones I hope to let you choose new weapons, etc, and the total game score will determine what weapons will be available to you.

Auto-pilot mode will never add to or subtract from score, but at "milestones" will randomly select a different weapon that you have access to to use.

v0.4 - Beta version
~4.2mb zip, v0.4 (http://www.box.net/shared/42s2vbzxhb)

edg3
05-09-2010, 12:37 PM
bumping for next version, today is day 3/7 for me

v0.2 - first playable (no scoring yet)
Spacebar = respawn/stop ai playing (when the game pauses it is waiting for the "next player", use spacebar to respawn. the ai will shoot, but nothing else at this point in time)
Arrow keys - move around
Note: you have 10 health, so you can take 10 bullet hits before you die.
~4,2mb zip, v0.2 (http://tinyurl.com/34qxsur)

Bonezmann
07-09-2010, 05:26 PM
I gave it a whirl yesterday, it's fast, REALLY fast and my ship didn't die even though other ships were flying through it along with the bullets. I also like the wireframe sprites, they're quite unique.

edg3
07-09-2010, 05:44 PM
Yeah, I have almost completed frame limiting for the next release, but havent worked on it since friday. As for the ships not dying when they crash into you (and you also) that is on my todo list when I do day 4 of dev on friday :)

edg3
12-09-2010, 09:32 AM
v0.4 ~4.2mb .zip (http://www.box.net/shared/42s2vbzxhb) (sorry, I added dependencies again so not 100% sure what is new in the file, but from the next release there will be 2 downloads, a mini-version for people with all the dependancies, and a full version for everyone else.)


Controls: The controls are fairly simple, for movement you use the arrow keys, and for actions you use the spacebar (this currently only allows you to drop into the game).

Pickups: The pickups are depicted by letters of the alphabet that slowly move to the bottom of the screen, you will have to experiment for yourself to see which letters are what weapons, but you should note that "h" and "H" pickups heal you.

UI: At the top left of the screen is your score, this indicates your progression in the game. If you die, or the AI takes over, at the very bottom of the screen there will be a message to let you know this, and you will be able to press spacebar to drop in. The blue ship is the ship you control, with the arrow keys, and likewise the blue bullets are the bullets you shoot. The red ships are your enemies, and their bullets are green. The yellow numbers above and below the ships on screen are their health values.

Concepts: When an enemy dies it "explodes" creating shrapnel, this will at a later stage server a greater purpose, but for now, the shrapnel does nothing to you, but does deal damage to enemies it collides with. Crashing into enemies will do their health plus an extra 1 damage to your ship, so while you can kill them with this method, be sure to watch your health. Certain weapons can be better then others in certain situations, but you currently have similar weapons to your enemies, so take note of how certain weapons work and then you can decide which weapons you like best accordingly. As is typical with various SHMUPs where lots of bullets are shot at the player, the player has a pretty small collision area, while enemy ships use a bounding rectangle, so keep this in mind when you have issues surviving when trying to kill enemies.

Scoring: Your score is based on the amount of damage you deal, if you survive a boss battle the score you have become permanent, otherwise if you die you revert back to the score you got before the boss battle. (There is currently no indication of the score you could possibly lose by dying yet)

As an experiment, Im working on "marketing" this game, as I feel it has more potential then Pea Adventures, so I made a (not so amazing) youtube video: Vector Vacuum: Introduction (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qShFPgH7Ng). It is sort of a trailer showing the current capabilities of the game.

My ToDo/Wishlist:

Collecting of enemy parts to use as shields/weapons
Copying enemy attacks for a limited time period
Friendly elements (helper droids, etc)
Skills (some juicy ideas floating around here)
Bullet absorbtion attacks (single release weapons that charge up according to the damage you took)
Different methods of attack (melee "weapon", rotating orbs that float around you that deal damage, reflecting of enemy shots
More spawning patterns

EDIT: note, this is my progress after day 4/7 (did day 4 yesterday instead of on friday)

Freekybevis
13-09-2010, 11:12 AM
Interesting idea u got :) i quiet enjoyed just watching the ships spawn different. I wonder if u could take it a step further and instead of drawing lines, use cut photos of engine parts randomly, so your get a different assembled **** each time, like so : (sorry **** 1 minute in photoshop from google images.)

http://i51.tinypic.com/2isf7l0.jpg

edg3
14-09-2010, 05:42 PM
Well I dont really have time to add eye candy, everything in so far has some planned purpose to add to gameplay, rather than adding things to make it beautiful and such Im using my time in such a way as to get as much of the game together in as short a time as possible (seeing as I have 7 days of time to play with, which I only have 3 days left of). On a side note, which of the things listed on my wishlist would be best to implement this friday?