My GM shmups - Last Chance,MEGATANK, Flying V, XYX, ZPF

[Rozyrg]

The color palette in your games is perfectly fine, though. Heavy Recoil in particular reminds me of 80's Konami arcade titles... and not just for the Rush 'N' Attack looking backgrounds with gobs of military vehicles!

I really just try to go for 'the whole rainbow' effect and squeeze in as many colors as possible. For example, blending from blue to green to yellow instead of a series of all greens in strict dark to light gradation. This is also really useful for working in limited palettes, as you can utilize the low or high (dark/light) end for entirely different color ranges within the same sprite.

Anyways, I finished this controller thingie, stuck some (hopefully SFW enough) pinup art on the side and got it working in MT this morning. Wonder if I should bother with a non-OUYA specific one with an X360 style layout...

[railslave]

The color palette in your games is perfectly fine, though. Heavy Recoil in particular reminds me of 80's Konami arcade titles... and not just for the Rush 'N' Attack looking backgrounds with gobs of military vehicles!

I really just try to go for 'the whole rainbow' effect and squeeze in as many colors as possible. For example, blending from blue to green to yellow instead of a series of all greens in strict dark to light gradation. This is also really useful for working in limited palettes, as you can utilize the low or high (dark/light) end for entirely different color ranges within the same sprite.

Anyways, I finished this controller thingie, stuck some (hopefully SFW enough) pinup art on the side and got it working in MT this morning. Wonder if I should bother with a non-OUYA specific one with an X360 style layout...

Ive had to start using new software recently as my pens lagging realy badly with my new set up (laptop with quad core win 7, 64bit, 6 gig ????)

Was in graphics gale unable to change to the colors i wanted (as you say, strick light to dark) and i was sort of stuck in the same range over all the colors. So i started trying to do a rozyrg

Very interesting and i came up with this ..




That cloak in particular(violet highlights), had a lot of fun taking risks and mixing stuff i would never dream of,
dunno but i may have found some of you 12 secret spices

[Rozyrg]

Wow, that's pretty darn freaky!

What I would do there is blend the cyan highlight of the mask part into the vine and then the orange/peach into a pink or purple for the creepy tail head. That way you have a pleasing (but somewhat obfuscated) linear color gradation. Basically something like white>cyan>yellow>green>tan>orange>pink>purple

I'd definitely make the mask symmetrical too. Don't be afraid to mirror, it helps quite a bit sometimes.

[nasty_wolverine]

Very interesting and i came up with this ..

How do you sleep at night???

[Rozyrg]

I'm getting pretty close on 'enhancing' Megatank:

Currently done

• - Improved visual effects: Contra style (Alien Wars/Hard Corps/Rebirth) flame arcs for explosions, debris can be scattered by ground enemies, the spread gun will release shell casings, etc. These can all be turned off in options as well.
  - Many more sfx
  - Slightly beefed up enemy variety, added some new behaviors
  - Wave shot is now a proper laser, based on my old LCA and Fire Arrow ones; but collision is improved slightly
  - Missiles are more of a heavy impact/grenade style weapon and have a much lower ROF now
  - Simple level warp cheats (though they'll need to be enabled through play somehow first)
  - Options (also on Pause menu): set tank's movement speed, music on/off, sfx volume, vfx level
  - Control options: 360 degree aiming with the right stick or Smash TV SNES style 4/8 way aiming with face buttons or WASD. Triggers can also be held to fire in the direction you're currently facing.

To be done:

• - Redrawn ending gfx
  - Medals
  - Improved boss behavior
  - Color adjustments on 2nd stage
  - General polishing overall
  - Cover art for OUYA Marketplace

The PC version is kinda up in the air; but if I do decide to sell it, anyone who bought the old one will get it for free.

[railslave]

Control options: 360 degree aiming with the right stick or Smash TV SNES style 4/8 way aiming with face buttons or WASD. Triggers can also be held to fire in the direction you're currently facing.
[/list]

Random, pickups ? color televisions , toasters ect?

That could be aload of fun. We all know how crazy big hulking marines go for reto future kitchen ware.

Look forward to the art!!!

Be kind of cool if they were floating about on jetpacks, open the gates for alot of other things.

[Rozyrg]

I meant using the gamepad face buttons for cardinal and diagonal firing, silly. Smash TV on SNES was the best example I could think of.

Besides, MT is now visually busy enough with all the fire shooting everywhere (maybe too much, that's why I put in options to tone it all down.) I do have a bunch of unused bonus item graphics (mostly food) that could serve the same purpose, though. Stage 2 already has an optional midboss, so another one that showers you with random bonus goodies isn't out of the question.

[Rozyrg]

Great, latest OUYA update killed my ability to test anything. Consider my fun parade with the system successfully piddled on.

Very tempted to just knock it back to factory defaults and kill the wifi to prevent further development sabotaging updates; but I actually bought games for this damn thing. -_-

[railslave]

Thats a shame, your going to take that thing by storm when the flood gates are opened!!
Do you have to sign your apks as well, for ouya ??? thats the real nightmare, stopped me right in my tracks

[Rozyrg]

You have to do some of that getting started; but I haven't been able to see how it works beyond the strictly theoretical yet. Hell, I can't even make .apks until I shove a few extra $100 bills in Yoyo's face, which I'm far less confident about doing if being able to test my f*cking game can mysteriously go away in an instant. -_-

I'm not blaming the OUYA folks at all, honestly, though.

[BPzeBanshee]

In other completely unrelated news Rozyrg, you'll be pleased to know I fired up my legacy PC for the first time in ages, and Fire Arrow actually ran fullspeed with no stutter!

[Rozyrg]

Wow, awesome! I do feel a bit better after hearing that.

...and also after getting a 360 pad working with my laptop. I won't be able to test on my TV (well, not without a minor hassle); but I can at least continue working on this stuff without too much hindrance.

[Rozyrg]

Thanks to some helpful folk at OUYA.tv, I sorted out surface scaling. That by itself should provide a nice speed boost all around, I'm hoping enough to make Fire Arrow and others (use your imagination ) doable on OUYA.

I feel pretty dense for not noticing the difference graphically right off. Studio's default method seems to upscale the pixels so that sprite rotation and scaling look bizarrely clean and vectorized. It's somewhat strange looking for a 'retro styled' game; but I kinda like it... I've decided to leave it as an option.

[mice]

...but I kinda like it.

I have to agree. It's not as bad as one would imagine.
But I think the xblig versions of my stuff are how it should look. Real low res creates sub pixel movements that makes the picture more "alive". I think...
How did you do it? I guess the answer is in the forums there?

[Rozyrg]

Well, the method I used draws the game 1:1 at it's standard res, the surface (I don't know if that means anything outside of GM) then copies just that part of the screen and draws it scaled up to fit the screen/window. For whatever reason, this bypasses any upscaling that would happen normally and also any performance loss that would occur because of it.

I know what you mean about looking more 'alive.' It's sort of like you're viewing the game world through a mesh or grid or screen window or something rather than seeing oddly sharp-edged flat cutouts moving around. >_>

[dark]

Any secret behind the scenes news on Neo XYX? The mysterious intro cutscene? How the game looks now compared to the trailer from months ago? Multiple characters or just one?

[tiaoferreira]

Fire Arrow... The spiritual twin brother of Fire Dart...

HEHEHE!

[Rozyrg]

Any secret behind the scenes news on Neo XYX? The mysterious intro cutscene?

None other than it's driving me crazy trying to get it done. Comic book/sequential artist I am not! The other stuff I dunno; but I've heard the last test session went pretty well.

Fire Arrow... The spiritual twin brother of Fire Dart...

Indeed. I'm still trying to get it on OUYA; but I have to wait and see if the next update lets me test again.

--------------
ALSO, Here's an in-progress build of Megatank v2 if anyone wants to mess with it. A gamepad is highly recommended; but keys are pretty much the same as before (arrows move, WASD fires, space pauses). A lot of stuff still needs work, though, obviously.

[mice]

Ah, so you're one doing that part as well. Read about it but thought you'd done your bit. Must be A LOT of work.

The download needs login? Maaaan, I really don't need another account on the internetz.

[Rozyrg]

Hopefully this one won't.

[mice]

Thanks!

Super game! Had to set the speed to 1, as usual. I'm too old for this...
Just had a 400k run, though I'm circling the edges almost the whole time. But I guess that's ok, isn't it...

[Rozyrg]

That's why I probably need more testers. I usually end up leaving mine at the low end, too; but I still wonder of someone might want it that fast. >_>

There's some buggy stuff on the 2nd level (LT + RT when starting the game) like the ending triggering prematurely if you fight the brain miniboss. The ending also needs redoing completely and some of the later waves on l1 spawn more baddies than they're supposed to.

[BPzeBanshee]

How does one pick the different upscaling modes? Just highlight over and press?

I never noticed a difference in pixelliness on my machine, something which is usually really damn obvious going from GM's scaling to surface upscaling.

[Rozyrg]

It's more obvious if you blow up the window size - which you have to do the old fashioned way (double click the window border) for now. Apparently fullscreen is a little screwy.

The actual difference is bit subtle. Like I said, I didn't catch it all the time I was testing on OUYA beyond sensing it looked a bit different. Basically rotation and scaling are oddly smooth, pixels sort of 'hold their shape', and ignore what should be the game's resolution.

If it's not doing anything at all, though.... I dunno. Could be something GMS won't do on certain setups?

[dark]

Comic book/sequential artist I am not!

Did you do the intro art for Gunlord? That was pretty good.

[Rozyrg]

Yes I did, and thank you.

We actually had the sequence fairly well hammered out for that beforehand, which really really helped. Being left to my own devices is something else entirely, though! >_>

[railslave]

Yes I did, and thank you.

Googled it

Oh my !!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWRpyxuZ3gU


Oh my !!

[BPzeBanshee]

I think looking at rotation exclusively there was a difference but it wasn't easy to see - clearly Yoyo's done something different in their upscaling recently because I swear to you GM8.0 scale methods with standard fullscreen vs making window of fullscreen size and upscaling with draw_x_ext and vs view port adjustments there is a *very* noticable difference. Viewport upscaling in particular tends to give the vectorised look where rotation just magically looks interpolated and smooth (like Flash smooth, not necessarily a good thing).

Would be interesting to do some tests some time. Any ideas how well Warbird works under Ouya?

[Rozyrg]

I'm really wishing I had a dummy, factory default system to try it on, I'd give it a go this weekend if I could. :/ A 'dry run' Win export is totally doable, though.

Let's see, as far as anticipating problems goes, the only coding quirk I remember running into is that it no longer accepts switch arguments with "non constants" in the cases, eg:

Code: Select all

var i; i=15

switch argument0
{
case i : ;break;
case i*2: ;break;
case i*3: ;break;
}

LC has lots of this for adapting enemy spawns to different situations. Maybe it was something more specific than that, though.. I can't remember precisely.

[BPzeBanshee]

Switches don't accept non-constants? Considering that's probably bad jujus anyway I'm not surprised it doesn't work. I guess you tried putting it all in brackets already?