I have been working on an engine for an arcade shooter styled after the Gradius and R-Type games, with a twist. The twist is an (as far as I know) original gameplay mechanic, at least for this genre - while your starting ship has no weapons, it can infect enemy ships, granting you control over them.
Here are SOME SCREENSHOTS:
I am making the game with joypad control in mind, but keyboard controls work fine, too. Look in the game info (press F1) for controls and the basic gist of the gameplay. It's fairly intuitive once you get used to the concept.
My intention is for the game to be aggressively difficult, but not prohibitively difficult. Of course, it's traditional for games of this nature to derive their length from difficulty rather than straight play-time, so that's nothing surprising. I'm just warning you.
I am looking for someone to help me turn this into a polished game. If you are interested in helping, PM me. If I can get the game good enough to suit me, I'll try to sell it. When finished, I plan for the game to have 4-5 stages, all lasting about 10-12 minutes, with plenty of unique enemies to infect and control, creative challenges based on exploiting the game's gimmick, and original, fun bosses. Much of this is already worked out in concept; some remains to be thought of, but it will come.
EDIT: I've updated the Alpha. Following are the changes.
Spoiler
Graphics - have updated the sprites for several enemy types; in the process, have changed the method of representing vulnerability to infection. That means certain enemy types will NO LONGER change color when you infect them; but this is temporary, and will change as I update more enemy types to reflect the new system. Trust me, it IS an improvement.
Gameplay - I have altered the 'aiming' system for the main ship's tentacle so that it automatically aims in the direction you last moved; this is reflected by the angle of the sprite. In other words, the ship always shoots the tentacle in the direction it's facing. You'll see what I mean.
Stage - I've added a new section. Since both the lack of sound and the lack of a tutorial will likely add to confusion, here are a few hints.
1. For the boss, when it turns orange you CANNOT HURT IT ANYMORE. Instead, abandon whatever enemy you are infecting and infect the boss. That will move it to the next stage. When I've added sound, this will be reflected in the noise it makes when you shoot the boss. (That is, it will go 'tink' instead of 'blarg')
2. I have not made the boss's infected behaviors for a good reason - you can only infect it for a brief moment. When the next part of the stage begins, you will see a 'safety light' looking thing and a door. The door cannot be shot, or hurt, and neither can the light. It makes the door close when you get near it. I'll just tell you straight up: abandon the boss (hold 'C') and infect the light, then use either fire key ('X' or 'Z') to open the door. Then, abandon the light and move on. This will be a recurring theme in the game - you must infect not only to increase your firepower and enhance your survivability, but also to allow progress in other ways. Later in development, I will introduce the player to this via a tutorial; for now, I will simply forestall confusion by telling you outright. ._.
More updates follow:
Spoiler
1. I have increased the invincibility periods the game gives you when you infect an enemy, discard it, or get kicked out of one to about one second, which should take the edge off the gameplay. I'm considering reducing the framerate to 50 to go further, but we'll wait and see if this is enough first. (I'm making this game largely on a netbook, so I rarely get to play at full framerate; it's hard for me to remember how fast the game is normally.)
2. SOUND!!! I've added in some basic (and not very good) sound effects. All of them were produced from scratch by me using the Fleximusic Generator program, and they sound kind of like Atari noises, which is not really quite what I want, but hey it's better than nothing. ._.
More updates:
Spoiler
1. A little more stage length - just a short vertical section and then onto the boss room. No boss yet; that's coming soon, but I need to figure some stuff out first.
2. I've added a tileset, so the game looks a little less like an Atari game. In addition, I've redone the graphics for two more of the enemies - the grunt and the turret. I've redone the giant lasers in a new style as well, so it's easier to tell when they're charging.
More updates:
Spoiler
1. Gameplay of part 2 refined; it feels more natural now, and is complete up until the...
Awesome game with an awesome idea. Nice retro feel.
I've actually played a game with the idea of infecting other ships before, but it's still neat, especially since you came up with it yourself. (The other game wasn't that great by the way. Here's a tip to keep in mind from that: Add more enemies as you go along and have some that are only found in specific sections... It's no fun blasting the same three ships over and over again.)
Anyway, it was really challenging to play, but in a good way. I like the non-linear style of the stages, as in how you're sometimes going up and down, not just to the right. The enemies' movement patterns were neat, although sometimes it made it really hard to catch a ship, because the next one would destroy it. There should maybe be one second of invincibility after you infect something, just so you have time to get away. The different strengths and weaknesses of the different ships and their rareness adds a neat little strategy too. I also liked having obstacles other than walls and ships too... Infecting objects to progress was neat!
◊ TheUltimate ◊
P.S. I think you should put the updates in a spoiler or something... That's a lot of text to read!
@Foxx: Glad you enjoyed it! I'm going for an 'intense' feel, so that's exactly what I want to hear.
@The Ultimate: As a matter of fact, many of the enemies you see now are not going to reappear in later stages. The second stage is going to have a 'Waste Disposal' theme, and will feature cancerous blobs of hideous tissue that have no attacks, but can survive in the toxic waste that floods portions of the level, flamethrowing enemies with a powerful close-up attack, and insect-looking things that crawl on the background and can attack in eight directions, among other things. As the game progresses, I plan to create more and more situations where the player must choose his hosts carefully to get through the game's challenges; this is only a warm-up, to test the concept.
As for the temporary invincibility, I actually have 1/4 of a second of invincibility, but I think I'm going to increase that and the invincibility period after abandoning an enemy to about 1 second, maybe a bit more. I was afraid at first it would make the game too easy, but that seems unlikely at this point. ._.
Legal bump; the expiration date has been extended for about eight days, and I've updated the gameplay slightly and added sound. Next I'll have a new section of stage and some more graphical updates.
Whoaaa nice graphics! It's certainly an improvement from the placeholders! So... there's not really much more to say since it's basically still the same level. It was still just as fun the third time playing it though! If only the demo never expired...
Anyway, I'd suggest tweaking the end of the level. (you know, the part with all the tight spaces?) First and foremost, I'd make the boxes move at the same speed as the screen, because I kept getting pushed to the top of the screen / into the lasers. I think I died like a dozen times on that part because there was nowhere to go.
Also, for the boss and the light over the door, you should indicate that you're allowed to infect it, because this idea's so unique that many people won't know you're allowed to do that. Once you show them a bunch of times, they'll get the hang of it and be able to figure it out themselves.
Oh, and I think you should get the same health as the ship you've infected, since it takes so many hits to kill something, but you lose the ship in one hit and it feels a little unfair.
Keep making levels like this and it's sure to be a classic!
Whoaaa nice graphics! It's certainly an improvement from the placeholders! So... there's not really much more to say since it's basically still the same level. It was still just as fun the third time playing it though! If only the demo never expired...
Anyway, I'd suggest tweaking the end of the level. (you know, the part with all the tight spaces?) First and foremost, I'd make the boxes move at the same speed as the screen, because I kept getting pushed to the top of the screen / into the lasers. I think I died like a dozen times on that part because there was nowhere to go.
Also, for the boss and the light over the door, you should indicate that you're allowed to infect it, because this idea's so unique that many people won't know you're allowed to do that. Once you show them a bunch of times, they'll get the hang of it and be able to figure it out themselves.
Oh, and I think you should get the same health as the ship you've infected, since it takes so many hits to kill something, but you lose the ship in one hit and it feels a little unfair.
Keep making levels like this and it's sure to be a classic!
◊ TheUltimate ◊
Making the boxes move at the screen's speed could work; I hadn't because I'm trying to make things move in integer speeds, for better hit detection, but since it's just a death event, it probably doesn't need to be as precise.
As for the boss and the light, I'm trying to think of an elegant way to indicate it. Giving the boss its (player-usable) attacks will probably help; I've put it off since they're functionally useless anyway. I haven't re-done its graphics yet, and just making it orange (like everything else that can be infected) may be enough; I don't know. As for getting the same health as the ships you fight; well, I can probably increase it from what it is (which is 10 HP for most infected ships, or enough to survive one normal 'small' shot before dying), to 15. Making it the full amount would probably be excessive, I think - you'd be able to plow through 15-20 normal enemy shots if I did, unless you were a little pinwheel enemy.
I'm glad you like the new graphics. I've been making them myself from scratch, which is why I haven't really improved the gameplay yet - it's a little time-consuming, but fun once you get the hang of it.
Thanks for your support and advice! I appreciate it. I hope your game is coming along well, too. (:
Hmm, good point about the health. Maybe it should be half or less of the enemy's original health or something, and you could have an excuse, like you damaged the ship when you took it over.
I think it would be fun to play as the boss for a while, sort of like a reward for beating it. You should keep the door, like you've done, so you can't play the whole level as such a powerful character.
I'm glad you like the new graphics. I've been making them myself from scratch, which is why I haven't really improved the gameplay yet - it's a little time-consuming, but fun once you get the hang of it.
Ahahaha yeah, I know, it does take a while... Looks really good though!
As for my game, I've changed some of the movement, and it's a lot smoother now if you want to check it out.
