Screen Shots

Youtube Gameplay Footage!(from earlier stage)

Download Now!
UNZIP THE FILE BEFORE YOU RUN IT!!!

Rune Star Informational Website (under construction)

PLAY NOW version on YYG (slightly different from full version)



Get ready for blindingly fast battles and merciless hordes of enemies in the exciting interstellar conflict of Rune Star! Use your arsenal of arcane fighting techniques to cut through armies of robots and bio-weapons and conquer the galaxy in the name of justice, love, chaos or whatever else floats your boat. Customize your characters to create warriors that perfectly suit your unique fighting style. Hook up with a friend to take on the galaxy together.


Features:

8 playable characters. Each has a unique set of moves and stat build. You can select one of eight colors/costumes and you can modify your natural stat builds within limitations.
Informational Site
You can also download or send in new color/costumes here!
Post any of your custom-made alternate colors here and I will put them on the main site as soon as possible.

BREAKs. When non-playable enemies are hit under specific conditions the word BREAK will appear and they will suffer a special critical hit. Soldiers will lose their weapons, zombies will be beheaded, cyclopses lose their shields, etc.

9 Elements. Elements add new characteristics to your attacks, such as making enemies explode or freezing them in a block of ice. Each jobclass can play very differently depending on which element they are using.
Informational Site

Play Modes:

Survival Mode. In Survival mode, enemies will keep coming at you until you perish. Keep yourself alive as long as possible by rationing your potions and rack up a gigantic score with BREAKs and KOs. Go through Survival with a friend for the highest of high scores!

Duel Mode. Fight in a series of one on one duels with computer opponents, like in traditional fighting games. Duel against a friend in 2P Duel!

Arcade Mode. Battle through a series of randomized special encounters that get harder as you go. You can also enjoy Arcade stages one at a time by selecting them in Arcade Stage Select. Go it alone or co-op with a friend!



Default Controls: (can be changed in-game)

...........Arrow Keys - Move, double tap left left or right right to dash.

...........F and D - Attack, press repeatedly to combo(F,F or D,D), hold down for charge attacks(cF or cD), and use while dashing for dash attacks(>>F or >>D). Each character has their own unique combination of moves.

...........S - Uses a Potion. Use Potions to magically restore your health to full. You get a set number of potions in each match, once you've used them up, you'll have to finish fast or die trying!

...........Enter - Pauses the game. Dull, but sometimes necessary.

...........Escape - Exits the game. Push it at any time to return to the mortal realm.



Customized Controls and some 2 Player systems were coded by Natso. Non-music sound effects are from Partners in Rhyme or Flashkit.com. Early stage play testing by my good friend, Mr. Furry. The rest is entirely by me, Ace the Super Villain.

This game starts in Full Screen mode, uses a lot of particles, runs at 50FPS (hopefully), and is known not to work on slower computers. While Rune Star is not particularly graphic, it is heavily violence-oriented (rated T), so younger gamers should get permission before playing.

Hey cool you finished it. I don't remember posting in your WIP topic, but it's a cool game. 8/10

unexpected error.

but from what i did see?....need a custom loading bar!

Thanks. Even though I'm declaring it 'finished' I'll still make it better from time to time.


I'll get to work on the loading bar eventually, I've been meaning to do it, but I don't really know what I'd want it to look like.

Can you tell me when the unexpected error occurred? I'm guess it was after or during the 'Loading Extra Graphics' section? (I may make a version where it doesn't do that)

"ruunstaristhebestgeimewernewerstoppleiingoryu
willdei"
You actually took time to write that in runes...

The game was ok, although a bit confusing... I was doing all these cool combos without actually knowing how to. Also, when you die it says 'YOU DEAD'.
it should be 'YOU ARE DEAD' or 'YOU DIED' or 'HAHAHA, YOU DIED, SUCKER!'.

"ruunstaristhebestgeimewernewerstoppleiingoryu
willdei"

rune star is the best game ever never stop lying or you will die!

lmao nice

It's supposed to be 'never stop playing'. You guys are good, 6 months on the WIP forum and not a soul picked that up. Since you seem to be into it, the Arcana special effects also use real runes, but that's the only other time you'll see real characters in this.

I'm gonna stick with "YOU DEAD" because I like it, it adds some uniqueness to the Rune Star product and it's a bit of a tribute to Golden Axe 3
(It also fits on the screen nicely)

Glad you guys like it. I'm going to try to make a "Play Now" version eventually too. I might keep it to just Survival and Duel Modes and only 1 or 2 color/costumes per character to keep the loading times down.

Great Game! It is good! very action pack, cool music, great graphics! Well done

'never stop playing'

my bad. it's still pretty sweet

Not an update exactly, but I've added a new alternate costume for the Reaper which you can download through the Rune Star Resources Page. Also a great time to remind everyone that those who feel so inclined can make their own alternate colors or costumes to play as in the game! Just present them here and I'll upload them to the Resources Page.

It was alright I guess. The graphics were pretty good but some areas, like backgrounds, need more work. They felt kind of flat and static. It would have been better with one floor that goes up half a screen, and some background on top of it (like regular fighting games). Right now you can walk all over the place - when I was watching the gameplay video I thought that everyone was flying against the background hah. That's probably because there's no perspective in the background.
The characters are better, but I think their animations could use a couple more frames, although I know that animating takes forever.
Their moves are rather dull though. They look all flashy and stuff but they don't have any substance, they're basically the same. Just different damage mostly.
And there's no jumping. Every fighting game needs jumping.
Sounds/music was ok though.

Oh and here's a bug report. The first bug was encountered while trying to save player 2's character.



This one came when entering 2 player duel mode:

[quote]
___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object ally:

Error in code at line 52:
if(x>view_xview+view_wview){draw_sprite_ext(head,0,v
iew_xview+view_wview-28,y-56,fac,1,0,c_white,.9)}

at position 46: Unknown variable head
[quote]

After ignoring it a couple of times the fight went on without any problems though.

thanks for the bug reports.

Can you get more in-depth on what makes the attacks dull and what might make them less dull? I personally think they're all fairly diverse, so I'm interested to know where you're coming from on this. (I know they all do damage but doing damage is kind of an important aspect to fighting)

Edit: Actually I should mention that part of the reason there is a degree of similarity in all characters is to leave room for the Elements and to make sure that all characters can take advantage of the BREAK system. It's also supposed to be more hack'n'slash than fighting, duel mode was added in a gee, what else can I add frame of mind.

Take the valkyrion for instance. Her attacks look very much the same to me, except for the spinning blade thing. There's the regular hack'n'slash attack, one with a bit longer range, and another with an even longer range. Then there's a sprint attack, and I think that's about it.
It would be better with more unique and devastating attacks, and also some ranged ones. Take a look at Little Fighter 2 for example, most characters in it have got some cool moves.

I also think it would be cool with stages that you actually move forwards in, instead of sticking around in the same spot.

For me the break system didn't add in much strategy. All I saw was some random BREAK coming up once in a while from the enemies. What do you have to do for it to actually happen?

Each enemy type has a different way of breaking it, soldiers will lose their weapons if you strike them as they attack, zombies lose their heads and health if you strike them from behind, cyclopses lose their shields when struck repeatedly, etc. You can find out all of the BREAKs here. The idea was to give players the choice of either dealing with enemies "the old fashioned way" or by using "tricks" to make battles easier.

I was originally going to do scrolling stages and jumping but I decided that the extra drawing and programming involved wouldn't make it worth it. I mean I know I haven't made the next Golden Axe, but it's still fun isn't it?

Hmm, it runs great. I'm not a fan of the mouse based menu though...

I suppose you've played a lot of Dancing Sword XD

never heard of it actually

eh? Dancing Sword: Senkou on GBA... at any rate, your sprites and animations are eerily similar to the ones in that game... perhaps you should check it out...

Anyone noticing any glitches? I've found a few and I'd like to get rid of as many as I can before making the PlayNow Version. I've found:

Bar Number and Bar Percentage HP Displays don't work right on enemies
The sandstorm in Sandstorm Alley doesn't loop
Starting Duel Mode after Arcade makes it all weird

If you've noticed anything else, please let me know.

New version up. I think I fixed all the glitches mentioned above, as well as a problem with the view going whacky in 2P modes if one of the characters died.

Let me know if you detect any more glitches, keep those custom resources coming, and as always, enjoy yourselves.


(I might get started on that Play Now version, ...or I might not. Let's see how things go)

Nice game Ace. This had me entertained for a while. I hope you make a sequel for this.

4/6

Thanks, I do have plans for a sequel, but it's unlikely that it will be done in Game Maker. Will try to implement the full cast of 18 jobclasses (they were dropped due to the workload) and add jumping, boss fights and a few more BREAKable enemies.

I finally got around to trying this out (Seen it for a while but it always slipped my mind) My character and seemingly-a-lot-of-other-things were invisible.

Kinda sucks. Looks good though.

if it's invisible, you might have forgotten to unzip the game before running it. Will add a better warning for that in the OP.

I've found another glitch in 2P mode (element) so it looks like I'll be doing one more update before calling it quits. This time I'd also like to try rebalancing a few things. Pirates and Juggernauts are on my list for improving, if there's anyone you think should be toned down, any stages that seem too hard or too easy for their difficulty level or if anything else catches your eye, this will probably be your last chance to get it fixed.

Nope, I unzipped it. But it's not the game. It's probably my pc. Been doing that with quite a few games lately.

i had the same problem. but i couldnt unzip it cuz i downloaded the exe

it won't work if you download just the exe, it needs the additional files from the .zip. The exe is just for those who have already downloaded the files and want to do it faster this time around. (I'll add that too)


Sorry it's so complicated, but there's a lot of stuff in this and it's hard to organize. Anyways, I guess that does give me good reason to go ahead with a smaller PlayNow version once I get more glitches and balance fixes.

i remember playing this a while ago, it was fun. And who ever sprites for you is pretty darn good.

the only person spriting for me would be me.

(angelic chorus)

I'd still like to know what other people think of the balance in this game. Right now I feel like Pirates and Juggernauts could use a slight boost, none of the others seem particularly overpowered. Juggernauts might be fine with just a bit more power, I think I might try increasing the range on the pirate's cD and make it a non-adjacent attack.

Any thoughts...?

Alrighty, I am now working diligently on the FINAL UPDATE to Rune Star (instead of doing my homework) so you have any suggestions or pet peeves about Rune Star now is your last chance to get them addressed

Updates already:
Changed potions, now potions can be used at any time, even if flinching or attacking and if health is reduced to zero while potions remain, a stunning hitbox is created which makes it harder for enemies to 'snowball kill' the remainder of your potions
Rebalanced Pirate, Juggernaut, Legionary classes
reduced difficulty of Elves
added voice saying "BREAK" and "Ruuuune Staaaar" to the title, plan to add voice saying "Yeah!" for 20x bonus and "YOU DEAD" and "WINNER"
fixed some 2P glitches such as both characters getting the same element, the screen going weird if one combatant dies and the Sandbag level loading with VS controls rather than Solo controls
Other minor glitches and balancing
plan to work on difficulty of the Bio Reactor mission

If there's anything else you REALLY want, now is your last chance to let me know. Obviously I'm not going to do anything major like add another jobclass or revamp all the menus, but you can still ask.



And as always you can check out the new costumes on the Resources Page. And as always you can post your own alternate colors here.

7/10 pretty decent game ace...Still needs it improvments though....

*BREAKDOWN*

gameplay: 6.5/10 Kind of a wild fighting system. I suggest either more techs or a more "controlled" fighting pace. your "break" system needs more of an emphasis in my opinion a short turtorial would also help. Still fun though
originality: 9/10 It seems like you created everything from scratch.(Love originals!!)
Graphix: 8/10 Decent quality graphix your a thousand times better spriter as me.
interface:5/10 big fan of your graphix but not a big fan of your interface. Interface should be way better ecspecially since this game is original.
Sfx/Music: 6/10 I didnt really like the music...maybe consider giving your characters their own themes?

This game surely has its highs and lows. But think I it would be commercial quality if you worked more on its weak points and emphasized its strong points even more. I would be a potential buyer

It's true some in-game tutorials would probably help, but I'm not exactly sure how to do them. I'm not going to be able to put anything like Smash Bros' how to play movie together, but do you think it would be enough to just put the info from the website and the main post into the game somewhere? i.e.:

F=Normal Attack
D=Special Attack
Press repeatedly to Combo, firmly for Charge attack, while dashing for Dash attack. Master all combinations!

S=Potion
Use it when you're low on health. It will be used automatically if at 0 health, but it won't work as well.

That sort of thing. I could put info on BREAKs in to, you think I should be vague or just describe how to break each enemy like on the enemy info webpage?

or you can make an onscreen movie turtorial...compress it and include it with the game...

No, I specifically can't do that because I don't know how. Anyone who can is welcome to do so though as long you do it quickly.

Cool!


Well, you mastered the power of timeline, right?
Just use it. Like, you know, in this step, it shows attacking sprite, and shows a text "press the D button to attack".
It SOUNDS simple, but I never tried it yet.

I think an illustrated explanation will be the best/easiest way to do it. I mean it's not that complicated, Attacks, Potions and BREAKs are pretty much all there is to the entire game. I guess maybe Elements too. I don't want people to feel like they need to read a book before they can play it.

(sigh)

So what do people feel like they would want explained to them? I guess I don't really know how complicated this game seems to someone else

From the looks of it,the charcater design reminds me of PSO...

this game looks good but the girl on the screen shot bothers me...its not like the game and the boobs are sticking out in a weird way. ITS NOT NATURAL. it kinda reminds me of one piece.............................

Of course it's not natural, she's a synorg. It looks fine to me

ooooooooooooooooooooohhhhh.
it all makes sense now..... ...but i do get what your saying

even after months,
this game is still fun.

Thanks Senar! Glad to know all that hard work payed off.

Sorry I haven't been able get that final update taken care of, but what can I say? Higher education is just too much fun! (ugh)

I haven't been able to get the in-game tutorial suggestion taken care of, but I'm thinking of just uploading what I have sometime this weekend if fate permits me.

As a form of consolation, I also have a new costume for you on the Resources page. Check it out, and I should have an additional additional costume for you by the weekend. And as always, if anyone wants to send in their own custom sprites, I'm always glad to have them! Just post them in this topic, or PM me and I will put them up on the Resources page as soon as possible. (obviously other people will be able to see them and use them faster if you post them here)

And as always, thanks for playing!

FINAL UPDATE!!!!!


At long last, there is nothing else that I really think I could do with this program. (I know I said I was going to wait, but I managed to squeeze the Instructions in anyways. Good ol' F1) Changes from the Final Update include:

More sounds - You now get to hear my beautiful voice saying things like "BREAK" or "YOU DEAD"
More Balance - Improvements to the Pirate and Juggernaut especially, but other characters and enemies have also received minor fixes.
Better Potions - Potions can now be used at any time, (so you can save yourself if frozen etc.) and 'death potions' will also stun enemies, so it's harder to get snow-ball killed.
Several 2P glitches are fixed - but you might be able to find a few more. I still don't really test that mode...


Hope you enjoy it. As this is the FINAL UPDATE, there is very little chance that I will change this ever again. I might get around to making a toned down version that works with Play Now, but don't expect it anytime soon.

I have a Warlord costume that I'll get around to uploading soon.

(About the GMArcade thing)

Okay so homebrewpc from over at GMArcade.com asked me a long time ago to put my game up on his site, but I said no, lemme finish it more. Well it's now finished and now on his site, but for some reason that neither of us can figure out, it doesn't work on GMA's play online feature (it can still be downloaded from the site like normal).

So the various links to Rune Star on GMArcade aren't working for the moment, but hopefully we'll be able to figure something out soon. Sorry for the inconvenience. All of the normal download links are working fine, so you should still be able to play it the old fashion way.

Okay, so this is probably somewhat of a bump, but I don't really think this game should be lost after only 3 pages. It's one of the best fighting games on the GMC currently. Why? Because there's actually COMBOS! You know, those things where you hit buttons and string attacks together? As in, not just a week attack and a strong attack? You know, like normal fighting games by people who try? Yes, this game tried. A GM FIGHTING GAME THAT TRIED!

I like this game quite a bit, although I'm a bit confused on how arcade game actually works. I wish it was more like Frozen Blood, with a story and all (although I didn't read it , but you know, it's still nice to have a game with cutscenes and a story). My favorite character is the Reaper (although I only tried a few others) as she has a scythe, and scythes are awesome. The only thing wrong with that class is her scythe isn't MASSIVE.

I never got a chance to play this game with a friend (or enemy, it doesn't really matter), but I'm sure it would be quite fun. I like the customability (I INVENTED A WORD!) and all the costumes and stuff. The male classes didn't have as cool of costumes I noticed though. If their armor was dark, then their hair was lime green or something, which isn't good when I'm trying to find a costume that looks evil. I also noticed that grim reaper thing was used in multiple classes (at least, it looked the same) and I don't think that should be the case.

Also, the AI was very good. Be proud of that.

So let's see... This game only needs:

A story/campaign
Cooler dude costumes
No repeating sprites used for different class attacks

Oh, and you need to fix the grammar problems. I'll give you a hint: It's not "YOU DEAD", it's "YOU ARE DEAD". I noticed some punctuation errors and some other things, but I can't quite remember the specifics.

Edit: I forgot to mention. Get rid of any of the effects that are or at least look like the build in GM effects. They don't look good. The flashes and bright things look really good, so it pains me to see a gm effect, black ring come out of your character.

Just played the game but sorry to say that I didn't enjoyed it much. I would give it 2/5.
-I like the sprites and the effects.
-Gameplay...not bad.
-The background was not good.
-Improved menu required.
-Annoying music.
-Bad grammar.

I like fighting games, but this game is not one of my taste, it would be much better if you change the background. Sorry.

Seems like a mixed review, but I'm glad you at least gave it a try!

To explain myself:

If you want better male costumes you can always draw them in yourself by changing the images in the Graphics folder

The bad grammar and specifically "YOU DEAD" are a throw-back to the golden days of fighting games when japanese companies didn't bother to really check their work. I wanted to have something more memorable for my game that the same old GAME OVER you've seen in every arcade game since you learned to use a computer/gaming system. I'm probably just old, but I can't get into a game if it's got perfect grammar.

Beat 'em Ups are a real love 'em or hate 'em kinda thing too, so I'm not surprised that some people are all over this while others are just 'meh. As for the music, I love it, but I realize that not everyone is into that kinda in-your-face style, which is why I gave it a VOLUME CONTROL. If you don't like it, turn it off and play some MP3s, it won't hurt my feelings.

I agree that the backgrounds are disorienting, but by the time I figured this out, I already had most of them drawn and loads of code already worked out for the present set up, so I didn't bother going back to fix it. Any future titles I do will be drawn normally, but Rune Star is stuck as it is. I also don't like the Menus, but I also just can't think of any other way to do them. Sorry about that.

I had originally planned to make a story for Rune Star, in fact Frozen Blood's story mode coding was taken directly from early Rune Star, but FB's reception made me quit. Writing a story is hard, as is checking every little sentence of every little cutscene, and if all it was going to amount to was people skipping through it to the next battle, then I figured there were a lot of better things I could work on.



I guess may not have explained how Arcade Mode works, so if you're interested, what it does is it randomly picks a stage from the available missions for the right spot. They are arranged according to their difficulty/order in the mission screen. Battle 1 is always Space Pirates, Ruins or Galactic Gang, Battle 2 is always Cold War, Bio Weapon Outbreak or Rumble Dunes, etc.

Each mission then has its own 'style' for completion. In the most common type, they will either dispense randomized groups, and wait for you to beat them with a specific or quasi-randomized boss at the end (Space Pirates is like this). Next most often is that there will be a series of specific encounters that is always the same (like Galactic Gang). And finally, there are a few missions where enemies will keep coming at you without waiting for you to finish off the last group. The later missions tend to deviate quite a bit from the general formula to make them more interesting. If you want to know how any specific missions work, I can tell you, but I'm not going to explain all of them right now on a spur of the moment.



But hey, you gave it a try, that's all I could ask for. Hopefully you'll be the one making the next great Beat 'em Up, right?

Hi everyone, tiny tiny tweak here, I've cut down on the Reapers' attack power to make them more balanced. Fans need not worry though, they are still among the best jobclasses (maybe the best, but it's hard to judge). I think one or two other things might be shifted around, but that's mostly it.

I've only updated the Rune Star website .zip and .exe, so those playing from YoYo or GMA will still be cut to ribbons by Reapers. Again, if you've downloaded the full .zip file previously, you only need to download the .exe for the update, otherwise, you only need to download the .zip.


I've also got a new Warlord Costume for you on the Resources page. For fun, I'll also display it here:


Remember, any talented artists among you can still send in your own alternate colors and costumes.

Hey, everybody! What's your favorite Arcade Mission?

Just a few months short of a year since the first post on this page.(20 index)

Is this mindless bumping, or are you working on a sequel?