23 replies to this topic

[Troutmonkey]

Citadel Skies

Current Download (30-05-12), include lvls 1,2, 3 and 4. Level 5 is a boss fight test and Level 6 is a tech demo.
Alice40k- Citadel Skies WIP 17.3MB

Category:
Arcade Action Shooter

GM Version: 8.1

Vista / 7 Compatible = True

Change Resolution: No, Plays in full screen, room views scale to fit

Description:
Citadel Skies is a 2D shooter unlike any other. With intelligent enemy AI, dogfighting has never been so intense. Partake in various missions using three different aircraft, each with thier own specialised weapon systems. The RADAR and fully featured HUD keeps track of enemies and objectives, while your trusty wingman Ashmore is always at your side. An engaging story will thrust the player into action in 8 compelling missions, culminating in a huge twist at the end.

Please try the demo, and let me know what you think!

Controls:
Up Arrow: Accelerate
Down Arrow: Decelerate
Left/Right Arrows: Turn- use down arrow at the same time to perform high G turn. 'All turning slows you down'
Space Bar: Machine Gun
Alt: Lockon Targets (Locked on target shown in bottom right corner)
Ctrl: Fire Missiles (Homing if a target is locked on)
Shift: Change Missile Type
C: Flares
L: Toggles landing gear
Enter: Increases RADAR view

New Screenshots:











Current Features: (In Demo)
Mission Briefings, with map, description and voice acting
Choice of 3 planes, each with different weapon options and handling
The ability to take off and land on the 'Sea Sheppard' air craft carrier
The ability to make a high G turn (down and direction arrows)
2x Homing missiles per plane (basic and advanced)
The ability to land and reload on the 'Sea Sheppard' or Runway
Picture in Picture view of the enemy your are locked on to
Automatically scales the room view to your monitor size

Dynamic HUD and compass that:
*Warns you about missiles with a beep, text, and red line
*Warns you about stalling with a beep and text
*Turns red when low on health
*Keeps track of health, ammo and distance to objective
*Points towards nearby enemies and allies
*Has a compass
*Radar
*Shows the locked enemy in the bottom right

Scripted voice acting
Many sound effects
Smart AI -Ashmore, your wingman flys close by at all times and provides suppport
Pirates that drive around and shoot at you
Smart AI Helicopters that fly around and shoot at you and allies
Smart AI Planes that dogfight with you and other planes
Battlecruisers with up to 6 independently rotating and firing weapons
Majority of the sprites completed
Graphics Options (turn on and off smoke trails, background detail, explosions etc)

Music by Ben Tibbetts (Thanks!)

To be Added:
8 complete missions with a surprise twist at the end, hoping for 1 hour+ worth of gameplay
Fully functioning menu and save system
The ability to use custom sprites for your plane
Radio banter
Score?
Online Multiplayer?


Thanks in advance for your constructive feedback and comments

Edited by Troutmonkey, 30 May 2012 - 01:48 AM.

[KC LC]

Member has supplied a download link, so this topic is re-opened.

[Troutmonkey]

Thank you KC LC

Alright, I played a bit, but got frustrated and quit. Its good, you have some good enemy AI along with a solid engine, but the turning was way too slow. I couldn't turn fast enough to even face the enemies before they zoomed a different direction.
Also, you may want to consider the enemy speed. It seemed they were going full throttle constantly.
Good luck with this, though, it has potential.

Ok, the enemy planes have been toned down a bit- they are still fast, but if you tail them they slow down (use G turn to get behind them)
Turning angles of your plane has been increased
Helicopters of been added
SAAM Turrets with SAAM missiles have been added (the missiles follow for longer and are harder to dodge)

- Comments please

Edited by Troutmonkey, 09 June 2011 - 03:16 PM.

[DMEISTER]

Ok, the enemy planes have been toned down a bit- they are still fast, but if you tail them they slow down

That's very considerate of them but not exactly realistic AI

[Troutmonkey]

Ok, the enemy planes have been toned down a bit- they are still fast, but if you tail them they slow down

That's very considerate of them but not exactly realistic AI

But if you continue at top speed you will sail right on pass, then they will be tailing YOU

[Troutmonkey]

OK, just in the process of adding sounds to the game and finalising the story line.
If people would like to test out Demo-2 and just comment on what needs balancing that would be good,
personally I would like to speed up the fighters some more (not as much as demo 1) but if you think they are fine say so.

PS: If anyone knows of where to find some good jet sounds (already looked through freesounds.com and google'd plane sounds) that would be nice to know.

[Maverik94]

PS: If anyone knows of where to find some good jet sounds (already looked through freesounds.com and google'd plane sounds) that would be nice to know.

you could rip them off of combat flight simulator

[Troutmonkey]

right-o, story is finalized (Im not telling details you will have to play it when its done)- basically a war between the Iota and Skerricks over groups of Islands after the world is floaded.*
Added in allies*
Got most of the sounds done, and only had to rip two from Ace Combat itself (missile swap sound) the rest are either freesounds or audicity created sounds.*
Got some voice actors (my friends) lined up to do some work
Now I just need to create Battlecruisers, Carriers, and set the levels up and with mid air refuelling and landing, do some play-testing and then re-sprite everthing.

*not in demo yet

[Troutmonkey]

NEW (OLD) DEMO RELEASED!
Link:
Citadel Skies Lvl 1 Demo (8.7mb)
Link also found above

Changes:
Menu (Select New Mission)
Mission Briefing by 'Kwapple'
Selection of 3x Planes (each with its own missiles and machine gun)
Many sprites down
You take off at the start of the mission
Blue background
HUD displays DISTANCE instead of ANGLE
You can now fire missiles without a lockon
There is pirate boats
There are battleships

Note: Demo does not end. Quit when there are no enemies left

Remember:
Please post any comments you may have
If would be good if you could mention a few of the following:
Balance: Was it too hard or too easy?
Graphics: Do you like them?
Performace: Does it run at 60fps on your PC?
Voice acting: Good, bad or meh?
Volume: Too loud or too quiet?
Sound Effects: You like?
Gameplay: Was it fun?

Edited by Troutmonkey, 09 June 2011 - 03:25 PM.

[Troutmonkey]

Whoops double post!

Edited by Troutmonkey, 13 April 2009 - 12:16 AM.

[Troutmonkey]

Some new screen shots, have completed coding levels 1 and 2 (of 8)

EDITED (now up top)
If anyone is looking to do some spriting for this project it would be very much appreciated!
Hopefully new demo coming soon, just working out some AI bugs

Edited by Troutmonkey, 09 June 2011 - 03:18 PM.

[Troutmonkey]

New Demo! Contains levels 1,2, and 3 which is an AI test map
Size: 18.1MB
Host: www.alice40k.tripod.com
Link: Download Now

Updates:
Greatly Improved Graphics and effects
Improved menu system
Improved HUD
Improved AI
Graphics Options
Pause System
HUD Mini Map Zoom
Toggle lock-on targets
Music (preview)
More sounds

Edited by Troutmonkey, 30 May 2012 - 02:20 AM.

[Venomous]

Good game! Feels very realistic.
The music fit perfectly,except I kept hearing "preview" while playing
the first mission. Did you take it off some music site?
The sound effects were good,but there could be a few more.Some
things didn't have sound effects.
The voice acting was ok,but the clips have clipping.
Like the voice actor talked loud too close to the mike.
The main menu looked professional,except that you might wanna
increases the room_speed there a bit.
The enlarging effect for mouse over could use some speeding up.
Other than those few things,very good job.
Right now I'd give it a 8/10.

[Troutmonkey]

Good game! Feels very realistic.
The music fit perfectly,except I kept hearing "preview" while playing
the first mission. Did you take it off some music site?

Sorry about the preview. I found the music on a site that sells royalty free tracks, however they cost a bit and I wanted to finish the game before buying them.
Link: www.opuz.com
The voice acting was done a while ago, and all the samples had the quality dropped to bare minimum to decrease the game size. It will need to be redone as alot of the dialog has changed. It will be alot better this time as the lead voice actor now works in a media department and has access to better recording gear, instead of just a gaming mic.
I've also taken you advise and increased the menu room speed from 30 to 60.
Still have plenty of sprites to do and the graphics (espicially the islands) will need to be polished before release.
I can see this game being at least another 6 months in the making

[Troutmonkey]

I can see this game being at least another 6 months in the making

Well yeah, I can see this taking at least another 6 months.
Still working on the game, on and off.
Heres a new screenshot from a mission I am currently working on.

No new demo for the moment as not that much has noticeabally changed.
EDIT: Oh wait, the music did. Ben Tibbett's has gone and made me another great soundtrack.

Let me know what you think

Edited by Troutmonkey, 11 March 2011 - 02:13 PM.

[FixBeatGames]

not for me i'm afraid. you can tell alot of effort has gone into it, but for me the actual game-play was repetitive and boring. i wouldn't really want to have to sit through 8 full missions of it. unless you plan some drastic variations across the levels. even say, different enemies on every mission would go pretty much unnoticed because you don't get time to see the sprites on screen. others may enjoy it though, didn't find any bugs etc.

[Troutmonkey]

I'm doing my best to work on the gameplay and to make sure it's constantly changing and to give the player a fair bit of variety. I've added a group of elite enemies to Mission 2 which are much more difficult and are solely concentrated on killing you. This means you will have to dodge, flank and play smartly to get them off your tail. Mission 4 breaks it up with a stealth mission (not that many people like those, but it's variety). And in the later missions there will be at least 2 major 'boss' fights with enemies that work totally different to the normal ones, meaning a change of tactics is required.

Can you think of anything else I could add to make it more fun?

Edited by Troutmonkey, 12 March 2011 - 05:41 AM.

[FixBeatGames]

hiya.
just the kind of things you're already talking about tbh. don't take it personally. i like flight sims, but i don't really like 2d shooters. and even though this has the trademarks of a flight game, it's really just a 2d shooter in disguise. that's cool and there's nothing wrong with that, but will explain why i'm not that into it as i don't really enjoy many (if any) 2s shooters.

Edited by FixBeatGames, 12 March 2011 - 09:46 AM.

[Troutmonkey]

New WIP demo out! ~ 18MB

Play through levels 1, 2 and 4. Or play through Level 3 and face this:


Changes:
Lvl1: Bug fixes
Lvl2: Added in more
Lvl3: Fight the 'Supernova', an enemy with a regenerating shield and multiple destructable points
Lvl4: Stealth mission now included

Other:
Ben Tibbetts music now in WIP demo
Anti-Ground plane is now using Rockets, because they're awesome
Plane now has a proper contrail instead of puffs of smoke
Various other minors things


I welcome any and all constructive feedback!

Edited by Troutmonkey, 30 May 2012 - 02:22 AM.

[Troutmonkey]

New Demo and new features added!
Alice40k- Citadel Skies WIP 17.3MB
(Yes I know it's large, but it's totally worth it!)

New:
Room view automatically scales to fit your monitor resolution!
Picture in Picture view of the targeted enemy!
The ablity to land! Press L to lower the Landing Gear!

New screen shots up top!
Let me know what's wrong with it!

Edited by Troutmonkey, 30 May 2012 - 01:50 AM.