I made a game!

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Twit
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I made a game!

Post by Twit »

Why not.
This is my first attempt at making a game. It’s yet another Asteroids type thing. I used an open-source engine called Godot. Although it's all pretty amateurish, I wanted to try and do all the things that would be part of making a proper game. So it has 3 ship types with different attributes, 4 planets across 8 stages, power-ups, enemies, and saved high-scores.

Get it on itch.io. Source is on Github if you’re interested. I developed it mostly on a Mac but it runs reasonably okay on a Windows box I have as well (which isn’t a particularly great machine). It’s only 720p.

If you try it then please let me know what you think or if there are any bugs or whatever.
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Re: I made a game!

Post by unfnknblvbl »

It's fucking terrible.






...I'll download it later.
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Re: I made a game!

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No refunds! :lol:
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Re: I made a game!

Post by Twit »

Some tips:
  • Bullets don’t wrap - be careful at edges of screen (this was by design but some don’t like that).
  • You can reverse thrust a little.
  • Stay near green zone at the start of stages.
  • Try the different ship types for what suits your play style.
  • Power-ups can really turn the tables.
  • You can set the starting stage in settings if you want to keep trying later stages without staring again from the beginning.
The main feedback I’ve had so far is it’s too fucking hard dickhead! I didn’t mean to make it too hard but I did think it should be reasonably difficult because it’s just asteroids and you’re likely to get bored quickly without any challenge. I spent a fair amount of time trying to balance things but I may have suffered from playing it so much that I made it too difficult for others.

Here’s a screenshot of my current highest scores. I reset them a lot for testing purposes but I’m pretty sure the top one is about as far as I can get anyway.
Spoiler!
Image
I’m pretty happy that some people have at least tried it and that I actually made something at all. I realise this is probably “who gives a shit” territory for most people but no worries - I had a lot of fun making this and learning new things.
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Re: I made a game!

Post by t0mby »

Twit wrote:
The main feedback I’ve had so far is it’s too fucking hard dickhead!
Fuck 'em. Defender was deemed too hard too when that was shown off at JAMMA back in 1980. People are too soft now and want hand holding and regular autosave/checkpoints.

Good work on making a game, wish I could try it but I don't have any PC capable of playing it at the moment.
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Re: I made a game!

Post by Madmya »

Hard is good.

Good job on making a game!
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Re: I made a game!

Post by unfnknblvbl »

I like it. It's been ages since I've played an Asteroids clone, so I spent ages trying to work out why I couldn't throttle with the triggers or fire with the right stick :lol:

My only real criticism is about the bullets not wrapping. It's possible to be completely offscreen and firing away, but the bullets don't ever appear. It can be confusing when that happens.
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Re: I made a game!

Post by Twit »

Cool - thanks for having a bash! I played around with controller settings a bit but never really liked playing it on the controller so I wasn’t really sure how I should map it. I did once have trigger to thrust though - I must have removed it last time I fiddled with the mappings.

Making the bullets wrap … I tried that too but didn’t like it. The problem is that in a widescreen format, if I made it so the bullets always travel a set distance then they wrap noticeably further vertically than horizontally. If I made it so the bullets only travelled a set distance after wrapping then it was more weird when you were near an edge. I think the old 4:3 ratio suited this more but I didn't want that either, so in the end I decided not to wrap them at all. It does mean you’re extra vulnerable around the edges of the screen though.
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Re: I made a game!

Post by unfnknblvbl »

Twit wrote:The problem is that in a widescreen format, if I made it so the bullets always travel a set distance then they wrap noticeably further vertically than horizontally. If I made it so the bullets only travelled a set distance after wrapping then it was more weird when you were near an edge. I think the old 4:3 ratio suited this more but I didn't want that either, so in the end I decided not to wrap them at all. It does mean you’re extra vulnerable around the edges of the screen though.
My thoughts exactly... Asteroids feels really weird in widescreen, and I don't know why!
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Re: I made a game!

Post by lestat »

This looks pretty cool, just checked out the godot engine, python like scripting, it's amazing the sort of tools they have now to write games with. I remember years ago when I was in uni trying to write a shootem up, there was nothing, all you had access to was some low level graphics apis.
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Re: I made a game!

Post by Twit »

Yeah there are a lot of options. I think it makes it even more amazing what people were able to accomplish back in the day.

It’s weird that I like this Godot engine (and it’s Python-like scripting) because I normally code in C# at work. Version 3.0 of it is due out later this year and it will have native C# support. I tried Unity as well but for the type of thing I want to do it just seemed a bit overly clunky to me. Plus I use a Mac mostly at home and getting VS Code and .NET setup and debugging working and even then crashes and stuff … couldn’t be arsed.

Godot is a single file less than 100MB and that’s pretty much it. It has the whiff of open source about it but still, I found it to be good fun to work with. You can have a squiz at my source on https://github.com/KAKwit/Asteroids" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; if you like. Can’t say it’s the most elegant stuff I’ve ever written but as a very first crack at the thing it’s not too disgusting. You could basically download godot, download the zip from Github, import it and have a poke around.
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Re: I made a game!

Post by Gamma »

That was cool!

Rotating your ship feels a bit sluggish, but then I suppose it wouldn't be Asteroids if it were too quick. Other than that it's fun to play, I agree with your motivation to make it difficult. Haven't run into any bugs (OSX), and didn't even notice the way you'd handled bullet wrapping as it's never a good idea to hang around near the edges of the screen in this type of game.

Some constructive criticism: It's very hard to distinguish between 'U' and 'V' with that typeface, and even 'H' and 'X'. I would also suggest adding a thrust sound.

I'll play this again. Good job getting a game out there. :up:
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Re: I made a game!

Post by Twit »

Thanks mate! I've decided (just as a sort of final test of this whole process) to do an update. I'm going to tinker again with bullet wrapping (I might try it so it's always a fixed and small amount), plus a few little improvements I think I could make and a bug fix or two. I was thinking about trying to make it a bit easier because that's been one of the main criticisms, but I'm not sure if I'll do that or leave it as fairly hard. I think it's a bit more rewarding when you get to stages where you start getting some nice power-up combos.

On your specific points - when you say its sluggish, is that because you were trying the "Heavy" ship? If you want fast then try the light one. I suppose I shouldn't have put Easy, Medium, and Hard on those because really it's more about which way you prefer to play. In fact, the "Light" is really quick and shoots fast but is the weakest and easiest to get killed with.

Regarding the font - yeah, that pisses me of too. It's the Kenney font. I tried some other fonts but couldn't settle on anything. It particularly annoys me because "KAK" ends up looking like "HAH". It would be hugely painful to change that now unfortunately.

Thanks again for the feedback everyone - I've learned heaps doing all this and it's been great fun. I'd recommend everyone have a bash! :)
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Re: I made a game!

Post by GameHED »

Twit wrote:Some tips:
  • Bullets don’t wrap - be careful at edges of screen (this was by design but some don’t like that).
  • You can reverse thrust a little.
  • Stay near green zone at the start of stages.
  • Try the different ship types for what suits your play style.
  • Power-ups can really turn the tables.
  • You can set the starting stage in settings if you want to keep trying later stages without staring again from the beginning.
The main feedback I’ve had so far is it’s too fucking hard dickhead! I didn’t mean to make it too hard but I did think it should be reasonably difficult because it’s just asteroids and you’re likely to get bored quickly without any challenge. I spent a fair amount of time trying to balance things but I may have suffered from playing it so much that I made it too difficult for others.

Here’s a screenshot of my current highest scores. I reset them a lot for testing purposes but I’m pretty sure the top one is about as far as I can get anyway.
Spoiler!
Image
I’m pretty happy that some people have at least tried it and that I actually made something at all. I realise this is probably “who gives a shit” territory for most people but no worries - I had a lot of fun making this and learning new things.
At least you are doing something.

Can't say the same for obsidian who aren't making fallout spiritual successor and taking advantage of fallout fan's dispointment of bethesda's fallout 4 to rake in easy money for those who miss the old games. :(
When you get rich and powerful remember we told you that you sucked and thank us for the tough criticism that got you to where you are. (I will be waiting in my doomsday prepper earthship buying secondhand games from ebgames.)
If you ever make a megaman x clone game LMK. I want to play a megaman x clone game. With metroidvania style open areas and RPG mechanics. Nintendo can't make this stuff anymore but seems to be ok re-doing mario ovr and over again for portables and forgot we love metroid's universe and atmosphere. (Aliens game on the nintendo DS was the last scary metroid 2d game.. Why isn't anyone trying to do this? Please hurry)

Some suggestions for future project:

make a Galak-Z open world game.
-Multiple ship types with different transformations and specs.
-emphasis on loot (like borderlands)
-level design tool like bangai-o spirits on the nintendo ds
-options to change world size like terraria
-random events like gta2 with lot of civilian ships to interact with (most games just have enemies and you and then that is it - today's powerful systems should have a lot busier environments)
-console gaming difficulty (the longer you don't die the harder enemies get on reloops of the game. Think of it like how shmups get harder after your last completion of the final boss on the next loop - this means you can potentially never end if you are good enough)
-stealth system to hide (galak-z didn't have this)
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Re: I made a game!

Post by Gamma »

Twit wrote:On your specific points - when you say its sluggish, is that because you were trying the "Heavy" ship? If you want fast then try the light one. I suppose I shouldn't have put Easy, Medium, and Hard on those because really it's more about which way you prefer to play. In fact, the "Light" is really quick and shoots fast but is the weakest and easiest to get killed with.
My bad- I'd only tried the Medium and Heavy ships, thought I gave all three a go but my high score table says otherwise. The Light model definitely fits my playstyle best despite the reduced firepower, there are too many moments with the other ships where I can see a little asteroid hurtling towards me with what feels like plenty of time to react, then I just can't rotate the ship fast enough to either evade or destroy it. I think I missed your bullet point about being able to reverse a bit, so maybe that'll make the heavier ships more agreeable.

Do the powerups run out over time, or did I lose my triple shot because I took damage?

I did run into a bug, but I haven't been able to reproduce it- I have an additional monitor connected to my laptop and one time when I launched the game it opened in full-screen mode on the external (all other times it's opened on the laptop screen). The graphics were zoomed in x2, so I could only see the bottom left quarter of the window, yet the positions of buttons were still correct, so it was a bit of a crapshoot to hit the Quit button. Had to command-tab to a different app then close Asteroids from the dock. Launched it again immediately with no dramas.

Having played it a bit more, I thought of an idea that would mix it up a bit and wouldn't be too hard to implement- you could have little areas appear occasionally (similar to the green zone, but randomly placed) that need to be occupied by the ship for a certain amount of time to earn points/powerups, kind of like zone capture in a FPS. Would add a bit of a risk/reward aspect if their location was weighted toward the edges of the playfield, and would subtly suggest to the player that the green zone is a good place to be at the start of each round. Just throwing it out there, it's your baby. :)
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Re: I made a game!

Post by Twit »

Gamma wrote:My bad- I'd only tried the Medium and Heavy ships, thought I gave all three a go but my high score table says otherwise. The Light model definitely fits my playstyle best despite the reduced firepower, there are too many moments with the other ships where I can see a little asteroid hurtling towards me with what feels like plenty of time to react, then I just can't rotate the ship fast enough to either evade or destroy it. I think I missed your bullet point about being able to reverse a bit, so maybe that'll make the heavier ships more agreeable.
I'm thinking of adding some tips on the menu screen to tell you about things like that. Probably shouldn't be expecting people to figure it out for themselves.
Do the powerups run out over time, or did I lose my triple shot because I took damage?
Yeah, power-ups (other than instant health) last about 30 seconds I think. There's a countdown timer on them up the top left (that's why they accumulate in that area, so you can see how long each one has left).
I did run into a bug, but I haven't been able to reproduce it- I have an additional monitor connected to my laptop and one time when I launched the game it opened in full-screen mode on the external (all other times it's opened on the laptop screen). The graphics were zoomed in x2, so I could only see the bottom left quarter of the window, yet the positions of buttons were still correct, so it was a bit of a crapshoot to hit the Quit button. Had to command-tab to a different app then close Asteroids from the dock. Launched it again immediately with no dramas.
I don't have a multi-monitor setup handy but that doesn't surprise me. I had some issues as well with high DPI, which is why it now starts up in fullscreen mode. You can change that under settings if it causes you problems - maybe start it up in windowed mode and then go fullscreen. I'll have a look around and see if there are any posts about stuff like that.
Having played it a bit more, I thought of an idea that would mix it up a bit and wouldn't be too hard to implement- you could have little areas appear occasionally (similar to the green zone, but randomly placed) that need to be occupied by the ship for a certain amount of time to earn points/powerups, kind of like zone capture in a FPS. Would add a bit of a risk/reward aspect if their location was weighted toward the edges of the playfield, and would subtly suggest to the player that the green zone is a good place to be at the start of each round. Just throwing it out there, it's your baby. :)
Certainly open to ideas! I've noted that down in my "Stretch tasks" (which is basically a maybe someday list) along with control remapping and doing an Android TV version.

Last night I bumped up the Light ship type's bullet strength by 5, because it is a little bit underpowered. On my next playthrough I got a high score of 28420 on stage 12!! :shock: I only really have 8 proper stages before I just bump up the enemy frequency in an attempt to make you fuck off now.

For the bullet wrapping, tonight I was going to try something like if they wrap then let them travel for only another 0.1 to 0.25 seconds or something and with reduced strength. Hopefully that might make it a little better around the screen edges without also making it too easy. But now I think I'm coming down with a full on manly man flu so I might instead just die. If I should perish then make sure they know ... I made a dopey Asteroids game!! :wink:
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Re: I made a game!

Post by Twit »

I just committed a change to wrap bullets. After wrapping they are half strength, slower, less opaque and last 0.5 seconds. I think that's going to make it considerably easier so I might need to think of ways to compensate. All I need to do now is encourage someone like lestat to start tinkering with this Godot engine so he can also download my code off GitHub and test it out for me. :wink:
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Re: I made a game!

Post by Twit »

I'm sure you'll all be massively interested in knowing that I've uploaded a new version to itch.io with the following changes:
  • General tweaks to difficulty.
  • Bullets now wrap.
  • Ships now show damage.
  • Added tinting of backgrounds to match planet.
  • Tweaked “Light” ship type to make it slightly easier.
  • Removed “Easy”, “Medium”, and “Hard” descriptors - it’s more about play style than difficulty.
  • Tips now appear on the main menu after some time.
  • Added some controls info to the about page.
If you are using the itch desktop app (which is pretty good BTW!) then it should automatically update itself. If not, you can just grab it again from https://kakwit.itch.io/asteroids" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; if you want. The main change is the bullet wrapping. I'm reasonably happy with the result of that - doesn't change it too much but gives you that extra little bit of help.
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