NeoGAF

Just to try and get you all thinking and maybe, with a little luck, contributing, I put something together in XNA with help from Modus & theTrin in a general form which may or may not one day become a Game created by GAF. Here's the scoop, ripped from my blog.

http://joshesgds.spaces.live.com/blo...7D27!119.entry

First Upload:
I've uploaded the source to what I've been doing for the last couple of days, you can find it and instructions on how to run it here:

http://joshesgds.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!4EF72E77E937D27!118.entry

Unfortuntely it seems the deployer on Visual C# doesnt work, it deploys fine but the actual installer crashes without completing (if you have any info on how to fix this let me know). So its source only, still it doesnt cost you anything to download the software and you'll prefer having it in source form anyway because then you can try the couple of funky changes I already demonstrated last week, you lucky sods.

Anyway the release itself i should point out a few things:

Firstly: This is just a bit of fun, please treat it as such (i have a fragile ego).

Secondly some tips:

Its designed for playing with a 360 pad (on PC or 360), you can play it with the keyboard but i just realised i didnt put the key controls to change weapons in so *ooops*, guess you'll have to code them youselves if you want them (look in my blog history for how to do this).

LS = Ship Control
RS = Turret Control
D-pad change weapons

You have 4 weapons, I'll leave you to discover their intricacies, needless to say they are quite different, some of them bounce off things, some of them go straight through things, some of them refire very quickly, some of them don't...defintely worth playing around with. The idea was to show how much variation there can be, at some point id love to put a 'store' up at pre-defined intervals in the game where the player can upgrade their weapon, ship and turret locations....On the subject of turret locations

Your ship has three, one on the nose and one on each wing, they each have their own firing arc so you are more deadly firing in certain directions...again i'll leave the details down to you.

One apology i must make is for the lack of an end game, I wanted to time the players progress and keep a scoreboard but i didnt get very far with making either the timer or the display for it...maybe thats something you could add for yourself, let me know how it goes.

Now Some Thank Yous' and general begging:

Its a rip-off of GarageGames starter kit so a big thanks to them, I left 2 of their waves in as a warm up then added my own as an amalgamation of what Ive managed to figure out over the last 4 days, Turrets, link points, spawning ships, destroying ships, projectile damage and size, sounds & backgrounds, its all been tweaked and added to.

Thanks to M0dus from NeoGaf.com for the ship model that is awsome and totally not done justice by anything else in the game, and apologies to him that i didnt have time to work out banking for which he painstakingly renered all the images.

Thanks to theTrin from NeoGaf for the basic idea for the wave i made even though i decided to go with something easier to draw and that let me push the 360 to its sprite limits .

Finally I'd like to request that if you have the time and the inclination you help take Last Alarm a little further. The game needs everything; Assets from Boss sprites to projectiles to Windows Icon, Sounds, Splash screens, story, intro, and most of all ideas, be it levels or bosses or just generally how it should work.

I'd love to make this a proper community game, one made with a total mismatch of ideas and content from whoever is interested in providing them, so dont be affraid if your idea doesnt fit with whats there, just contribute.

If your interested check some of the earlier posts in the blog for info on making some simple changes to the game.

If you have any questions you can post here.

Im out of the country from tomorrow for Crimbo so have fun with the source code and keep me up to date with what happens.

As a vaguely successful cartoonist, I would be happy to provide illustrations for the game and maybe craft a simple yet charming story to be played out in 2D art and Word Balloons, as if it were a GBA game (Charming! Like I said!). Maybe Modus could help me out with making some simple animation effects for them.

Awesome. Its alive. We will have to keep this thread alive through the holidays.

Good stuff so far. Hopefully I might learn something from the code too, before I break it that is.

So this ended up being a shmup? Interest +1000000.

It should be a side scrolling adventure!

looking good!

i do art too.


think about it.

Screens for the lazy?

(PC)

How do you spawn enemy ships? With dynamic arrays?

I'd love to make this a proper community game, one made with a total mismatch of ideas and content

As democratic as that sounds, it won't work in real life. You need a central vision for the game, and someone to hold the development against that vision on a regular basis to ensure things go smoothly. Whether that's the lead designer or producer, somebody has to steer the bloody thing otherwise you'll crash.

For example, you'll need enemy design - look, AI behaviour, firing patterns, balance tuning, etc. Who makes those decisions?

I'm not saying that you shouldn't solicit ideas and content from as many people as you like, just be prepared to filter ruthlessly in order to make the game a game. Otherwise you run the risk of 1) feature/scope creep and/or 2) burnout and disinterest.

My recommendation? Put together a schedule with some dates. They don't have to be carved in stone, but you'll find that stuff actually gets delivered when there are due dates to meet. :) A design document that lists things like your high level goals and core features makes a good reference bible for anyone who might want to make a contribution. It doesn't have to be huge - and for a starter shmup, it shouldn't be - but it's always good to have a touchstone for everyone to refer back to. Stuff like:

- the player's ship
- enemies
- powerups
- backgrounds
- music

Just off the top of my head, anyways. Let me know how it goes.

Alright, I still have two creator's club 4 month codes, once leadership emerges on running this stuff I'll get the codes in the hands of the project lead-type folks.

What's the music engine going to look like? I'm a semi-pro musician with experience in making game music (and SFX, but that was back in the early 90s) and would love to contribute something...if there are other musicians that want in, I could just do a track or two. Let me know when you have ideas what format it'll use though (midi, tracker, mp3, wav, whatever).

Originally Posted by Ghost

(PC)

Oh SHIT. You should just design the ship in the same style. I like that.

I presume this leak is going to delay the game 18months?

Originally Posted by gururoji

What's the music engine going to look like? I'm a semi-pro musician with experience in making game music (and SFX, but that was back in the early 90s) and would love to contribute something...if there are other musicians that want in, I could just do a track or two. Let me know when you have ideas what format it'll use though (midi, tracker, mp3, wav, whatever).

That'd be awesome, id love to have some proper original sound in there. Its all wav at the moment.

Download the source, take a look in the Last Alarm\SpaceShooter\data\sounds directory for whats there, if you look at the .xap document in that directory you should be able to see some of the stuff you can do to manipulate those sounds.

I presume this leak is going to delay the game 18months?

Now people have the code to make the bouncing projectiles bounce an infinite number of times we need to go back and re-start from scratch :(

Ghost: You made a reference to using all 3 cores...there is a game called Rocket Commander from the same guys who did XNA Racer, apparently, and they got it running at 800 fps when using all 3 cores, it looks like this:

http://exdream.no-ip.info/blog/image...enshot0007.jpg

If yours is running slow....maybe there are optimization issues? At first I was thinking that it was XNA issues when you mentioned it, but then I found out about Rocket Commander when I was looking for an answer.

-edit-
I'm gonna give the game a shot, but I've been having some probs, perhaps related to the fact that I have Studio on my computer as well.

To alleviate issues I heard that I should install Express first, so I uninstalled both and then reinstalled Express first and then Studio...

I'm still offering that all-Kazoo soundtrack.

Originally Posted by Fight for Freeform

Ghost: You made a reference to using all 3 cores...there is a game called Rocket Commander from the same guys who did XNA Racer, apparently, and they got it running at 800 fps when using all 3 cores, it looks like this:

http://exdream.no-ip.info/blog/image...enshot0007.jpg

If yours is running slow....maybe there are optimization issues? At first I was thinking that it was XNA issues when you mentioned it, but then I found out about Rocket Commander when I was looking for an answer.

-edit-
I'm gonna give the game a shot, but I've been having some probs, perhaps related to the fact that I have Studio on my computer as well.

To alleviate issues I heard that I should install Express first, so I uninstalled both and then reinstalled Express first and then Studio...

Im sure its optimisation, TorqueX is still in beta (they havent even released the source for iit yet so i have no idea whats going on 'under the hood') and i havent gone out of my way to make the code 'clean', it does slow down an awful lot though.

Yeah sorry about those express issues, apparently MS arent supporting the publish wizard yet, and im not sure how to get it into an executable form without it.

I'm still offering that all-Kazoo soundtrack.

How about Kazoo themed level where you fight an alien construct that resembles a one man band, as you destroy his weaponry, instruments cut out of the backing track untill you are left with just a 10 minute Kazoo solo with no way of skipping or quitting.

Originally Posted by BenjaminBirdie

As a vaguely successful cartoonist, I would be happy to provide illustrations for the game and maybe craft a simple yet charming story to be played out in 2D art and Word Balloons, as if it were a GBA game (Charming! Like I said!). Maybe Modus could help me out with making some simple animation effects for them.

My idea was to have a really tounge in cheek story thats constantly poking fun at itself to cover any lacking consistancy and mine GAFs greatest asset, shitty jokes.


I'll add you to my list of people to bug in the new year.

Originally Posted by Ghost

How about Kazoo themed level where you fight an alien construct that resembles a one man band, as you destroy his weaponry, instruments cut out of the backing track untill you are left with just a 10 minute Kazoo solo with no way of skipping or quitting.

That could work!

Don't worry about it, your code works on mine, but I've tried others that haven't.

I'm playing around with sound fx. :) I'll post some here later as I go through them.

For example:

Impressive, keep up the good work.

Originally Posted by Ghost

My idea was to have a really tounge in cheek story thats constantly poking fun at itself to cover any lacking consistancy and mine GAFs greatest asset, shitty jokes.


I'll add you to my list of people to bug in the new year.

Sounds perfect.

:D

Originally Posted by Fight for Freeform

The first time I played I got the bouncing fire going on, but every subsequent time thereafter (wait, is that redundant? :P) I get the normal fire...am I supposed to enter a combo of buttons to get that original bouncy fire back? I've tried all buttons.

Anyways, I got some sfx...I'll upload them in a bit.

Hey m0dus do you have a sample of the music you made?

It's almost better, IMO, to have one person determining the creative direction for the game so everything fits together well. Ie. You designed the ship, so you know it should sound like when it fires, etc.

http://www.punkistan.com/nrxic/lastalarm/explosion1.wav

http://www.punkistan.com/nrxic/lasta...tileNormal.wav

Here are the two wav files I did...I recommend renaming the originals so it has a _prefix to it so you can keep them for reference or revert to them if you like the original ones better.

Like I said...I think the ideal situation is where one guy handles the whole creative end so it all jives together better.

Bouncing projectiles are mapped to the down button on the dpad, dpads a bit shit, i cant do anything about that unfortunately. You can change the default in the code by changing

int _currentWeapon = 2; in PlayerControlComponent.cs to 3 for bounce, 0 for missle (its not really a missle yet but its cool anyway) or 1 for Laser (which is way over-powered against the boss).

Love the wavs, i wanted to switch up some of the sounds but had none to play with.

BTW m0dus that splashscreen is hawt.


Anyway im off, so have fun, PM me or email me at Josh.gaf@gmail.com with what you've got or what you'd like to do.

I'm fairly new to programming games...so I have some elementary questions.

I got a character who'd I'd like to be able to jump. So I've set it so when jump is pressed, he flies upwards and when you let go, he comes back down. Meaning you can jump as high as you want.

Now, to have it so he reaches a height limit and come back down I can either:

1) see how high he has travelled and then force him back down.

2) see how long the button was held down for and if it exceeds a certain amount of time, force him down.

I've never really dealt with a timer before...so it'll be good for me to learn that, but I'm wondering what is the better method?

BTW, it's just a little test game I'm doing, one screen, no objective...but I want two characters that you can control. One with the left analog stick, and the other with the right, and their respective triggers cause them to jump.



I did the art in minutes, but it looks surprisingly decent. :P

I call this one: SUPER KRAZY BROTHERS

I added the second KRAZY BROTHER and he works the same way.

I'm having an issue with adding art assets to my game. I right click on the project and "add existing item", but it's not able to be played because it's not in my debug directory. So it references my debug directory all the time...and I suppose that has to do with my relative paths...but I had the same relative path for another test project and it simply looked in my project folder, not my debug folder.

So I have to manually copy my files into the debug folder.

btw, the characters ARE supposed to look retarded

Originally Posted by Fight for Freeform

Hey m0dus do you have a sample of the music you made?.

just some quick examples.


http://modusproductions.com/misc/complement.mp3

http://modusproductions.com/misc/shooter.mp3

http://modusproductions.com/misc/seventhlayer.mp3

Great stuff, bro!

I'm now focusing on a collision detection system...never did one before so I gots to do some reading, if anyone has any helpful links that would be appreciated!

Originally Posted by m0dus

just some quick examples.


http://modusproductions.com/misc/complement.mp3

http://modusproductions.com/misc/shooter.mp3

http://modusproductions.com/misc/seventhlayer.mp3

After a quick listen, I like them thematically, but they could use some work in the mixing department. The levels of the different instruments seem odd, and some of them are way too hot. What kind of software/hardware are you using for the composition? Can you export it as tracks with each instrument on one track? If so (or if you made it in software that I have access to you can send me the source) I can straighten out the levels and master it for you.

There's the second SUPER KRAZY BROTHER...which I'm thinking of renaming to STUPID KRAZY BROS.

I'm too easily amused...I crack up each time I see them jump around.

Originally Posted by Fight for Freeform

There's the second SUPER KRAZY BROTHER...which I'm thinking of renaming to STUPID KRAZY BROS.

I'm too easily amused...I crack up each time I see them jump around.

:lol :lol I crack up on each screen

Originally Posted by Brashnir

After a quick listen, I like them thematically, but they could use some work in the mixing department. The levels of the different instruments seem odd, and some of them are way too hot. What kind of software/hardware are you using for the composition? Can you export it as tracks with each instrument on one track? If so (or if you made it in software that I have access to you can send me the source) I can straighten out the levels and master it for you.

These aren't tracks for the game, they're examples of other work I've done.

Also, the MP3s are quick compiles, so yeah, you may have noticed most of the levels aren't balanced. don't worry, I'm actually solid in that department. :D

watcha want to do for jumping is give them a vertical velocity and then subtract a "gravity" value from that each frame. that way they will naturally slow down as they approach the top of their jump and then accelerate back towards the ground level.

in fact, its a good idea to always have a vertical velocity and always add gravity to it every frame. then when you detect that they are standing on something set it to zero. this way when they jump they will do the funky jump for you, and if you walk off the edge of something they will accelerate and fall nicely too.

for example: gravity = 0.01, vertical_velocity = 0.0

when they jump: vertical_velocity = 4.0 (just do this once when jump is first pressed)

then each frame: vertical_velocity -= gravity
if (player_is_on_floor) vertical_velocity = 0.0

dead simple, play around with the values until the jump feels right :)

the next thing is to add in a horizontal velocity in the same way but use "friction" instead of "gravity" then when you press left or right you add a fixed amount (every frame this time instead of once like the jump) that is their acceleration, and subtract the friction each frame. hey-presto, you have nice slidey controls with momentum like mario. if they are on ice, just use a lower "friction" value and they will slide further. enjoy!

you could even take it a step further and model F = ma

I want to be the producer because I like bossing everyone around

Total, total shamz.

Can i post renders of ak47 on a gray background on the official site?

Originally Posted by m0dus

These aren't tracks for the game, they're examples of other work I've done.

Also, the MP3s are quick compiles, so yeah, you may have noticed most of the levels aren't balanced. don't worry, I'm actually solid in that department. :D

cool. I'd offer to do some composing for the game, but it looks like that's well under control.

Originally Posted by ninge

watcha want to do for jumping is give them a vertical velocity and then subtract a "gravity" value from that each frame. that way they will naturally slow down as they approach the top of their jump and then accelerate back towards the ground level.

in fact, its a good idea to always have a vertical velocity and always add gravity to it every frame. then when you detect that they are standing on something set it to zero. this way when they jump they will do the funky jump for you, and if you walk off the edge of something they will accelerate and fall nicely too.

for example: gravity = 0.01, vertical_velocity = 0.0

when they jump: vertical_velocity = 4.0 (just do this once when jump is first pressed)

then each frame: vertical_velocity -= gravity
if (player_is_on_floor) vertical_velocity = 0.0

dead simple, play around with the values until the jump feels right :)

the next thing is to add in a horizontal velocity in the same way but use "friction" instead of "gravity" then when you press left or right you add a fixed amount (every frame this time instead of once like the jump) that is their acceleration, and subtract the friction each frame. hey-presto, you have nice slidey controls with momentum like mario. if they are on ice, just use a lower "friction" value and they will slide further. enjoy!

*slaps forehead*
Yeah! I don't know why I didn't think of that. :P

Originally Posted by tHoMNZ

you could even take it a step further and model F = ma

That was my first thought but I wanted to hack the physics for now. I think that a 2D game with a full set of physics would be awesome though! But alas, too large in scope for me.

Heck, for this game I'm gonna map it by hand (pop in coords by hand) rather than make a simple level editor.

Wow, i'm sorry guys. I didn't know this thread was here. I want help with the design of the game. Is there anything else i can do?

It has been a while since I've done any substantive coding, so I doubt I'd be much help with that. But I'm sure eager to look & learn . . . I like to keep myself up to date.

But I am an IP lawyer . . . so if anyone has any legal questions or needs some legal advice with the project, please ask me. Send a PM.

I need to go download the XNA stuff . . . this looks really cool.

I didn't know if I should bump this thread or create a new one...but I'll bump this one so GAF game can get some attention...

Winner of XNA Homebrew contest: WILDBOARDERS

http://xbox360homebrew.com/blogs/alex/default.aspx

IMO it has great visuals, sound, very polished...it's just the gameplay is a bit buggy. Once you get used to the controls, it's pretty fun.

Another title I found interesting, since I had the exact same idea for the BG:
F-14
http://aroganworld.blogspot.com/2006...-xna-game.html

A simple shooter...some may find the code useful so that they could start their own shooter.

Someone made a very simple Super Mario XNA "game" but it was more of a learning experience for him and it doesn't allow you to do much. I don't think he'll be expanding on it...but here's a screeny because it just looks good :P



ninge: Thanks again for sharing, things work great now!

I am thinking of actually finishing it up as a small game. I don't know how to do scrolling backgrounds and the like, so I'll keep it to a single screen, and simply load new screens as you travel to the right. Solve very simple puzzles, and call it a game, that way it's a learning experience that results in something people can download and try out, rather than stagnate on my computer.