Honoes! UFOs! (WIP video)
forklift
Member Posts: 386
Hey everyone, I'd like to show off an early build of my upcoming ipad game called "Honoes! UFOs!"
This is a nod to two of my favorite games growing up: Rampage and R-Type
Rampage inspired me to try making a game with GS where the buildings actually responded to physics. I wanted this to be light-hearted, so there's an 'arcadey' feel to it. If you shoot a building chunk, it will begin to burn and eventually crumble away. Rampage also inspired the types of enemies that would come after the player.
R-Type inspired the powerups and continual 'upgrade' system of the player's weapons.
Story: Earth has been spamming your planet with bad reality TV shows... it's time to stop the madness!
Object is to destory all the buildings in the scene.
Enemies get progressively harder and more frequent based on your score and the level you are playing. You only see two types here, the helicopter and the jet., though there are a few more.
The audio track isn't final, it's just a placeholder. I didn't put music in the video during the level so you all can hear the SFX.
As I said, it's an early build, so you won't see cutscenes or anything to divulge plot information here. It's straight up gameplay and I purposely don't show the powerups at this point (although one drops out of a helicopter during the video.) There is still bit of polishing to do. However, I'm hopeful I will be done with the 'lite' version in within the month or earlier and the 'heavy' version by Christmas.
Game control will feature a left or right handed thumb stick to move the player's ship. Tap the ship to switch between 'abduct' and 'destroy' mode. Tap anything to either shoot or abduct it. Abduct pilots to regain some shield. Once your shield is gone and you receive a hit, you are destroyed.
Comments and critiques welcome.
PS. sorry for the crappy screencapture quality. If you want a HQ vid, I can give a link to my dropbox account.
This is a nod to two of my favorite games growing up: Rampage and R-Type
Rampage inspired me to try making a game with GS where the buildings actually responded to physics. I wanted this to be light-hearted, so there's an 'arcadey' feel to it. If you shoot a building chunk, it will begin to burn and eventually crumble away. Rampage also inspired the types of enemies that would come after the player.
R-Type inspired the powerups and continual 'upgrade' system of the player's weapons.
Story: Earth has been spamming your planet with bad reality TV shows... it's time to stop the madness!
Object is to destory all the buildings in the scene.
Enemies get progressively harder and more frequent based on your score and the level you are playing. You only see two types here, the helicopter and the jet., though there are a few more.
The audio track isn't final, it's just a placeholder. I didn't put music in the video during the level so you all can hear the SFX.
As I said, it's an early build, so you won't see cutscenes or anything to divulge plot information here. It's straight up gameplay and I purposely don't show the powerups at this point (although one drops out of a helicopter during the video.) There is still bit of polishing to do. However, I'm hopeful I will be done with the 'lite' version in within the month or earlier and the 'heavy' version by Christmas.
Game control will feature a left or right handed thumb stick to move the player's ship. Tap the ship to switch between 'abduct' and 'destroy' mode. Tap anything to either shoot or abduct it. Abduct pilots to regain some shield. Once your shield is gone and you receive a hit, you are destroyed.
Comments and critiques welcome.
PS. sorry for the crappy screencapture quality. If you want a HQ vid, I can give a link to my dropbox account.
Comments
This part with blowing up the bridge is brilliant! Before I saw it I thought that it would be great to do it!
Just one little suggestion - you should put a rule in the car actors, that brakes the car right before the hole in the bridge - like people would do in the real world.
And if there would be more cars, they will bump each other while breaking, so many of them will fall to the water.
TheMoonwalls, you're the second to suggest the cars braking, so I guess I need to incorporate that.
username: forkliftsalad@gmail.com
password: gamesalad
Now you can download the video in a 640x480 .mov The youtube version is too compressed to even see the missles the jets are shooting.
I love all the effects and the destructions are fantastic.
I wish you the best of luck with it
Wish I had an iPad now!
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Especially those like the sheepster here, FMG, tshirt & Orbz, who give quality demos and advice.
For those that don't have an iPad, I will update my GS profile with a browser-playable version in the near future, then look into releasing it on the iphone. First things first though... finishing touches take the longest!
I also looked into the Death Worm remake and man, that's one I suggest everyone play! It almost made me want to rethink the visual style of my game... almost
What I mean, and using your game as an example:
I noticed the plane crashes down to the ground - awesome - what if it crashed into the bridge, for example, and caused damage. Or a building?
What if the the fire from one area could spread if it's touching something else flammable?
You're kind of already doing it with the bridge collapsing and the cars falling in. Would be great to have lots of stuff affecting everything
Just a thought!
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Yes, I have thought of doing this and I agree it would be awesome. My initial reservations on executing this was if fire propagated and air objects collided with buildings, then the level would probably progress/end too quickly. Being that to get to the next level, you'd have to destroy all buildings.
However, as I'm typing this, I think we can make a compromise and say that if an air actor is hit, then use a random chance (say 1 in 25 chance) of turning on the collide with physical objects tag. That way, it would happen, but not on every time. Might spice up gameplay a bit.
Good call! And thanks for bouncing that idea off me. I'll be sure to add it in now.
One way you could do it is give the buildings a damage counter/health. This way, being hit by another actor would weaken the building, but not destroy it.
For example, your building actor would have a variable added:
self.Life = 10
If you wanted it destroyed by the UFO bullets, you'd say:
If actor collides or overlaps UFO bullet, reduce life by 10
Or if you get hit by a plane:
If actor collides or overlaps Plane Explosion, reduce life by 5
Then, when self.life = 0 destroy actor (or flag it as destroyed in a global variable, if that's how you're doing stuff!)
Best of luck with it, whatever you do - love the idea completely!
QS
Edit: You could also add in a check to see if the building was destroyed with a plane crash - that way, you could give out achievements on more 'interesting' kills
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Yeah, a building health counter would be the best way to go. I like the way that the crashes are handled with the random chance of hitting a building, so I'll keep that in there just for variety, too.
JessicaLeahy,
Thanks! When my nephew was younger and he tried to say uh-oh or oh-no, it was always slurred together into a 'honoes!' with a hard H sound. lol So, that's something we say in the family and I thought it was a fun fit (rhyming with UFOs and all).
Thanks again for all the input everyone!
In the fun department... the 'lite' and browser versions now feature 11 different types of enemies:
police cruiser
swat van
f-16 style jet
apache longbow-esque fighter (redid the art for this one since the video)
chinook style cargo heli that drops...
paratroops! they walk the streets and escort...
tanks!
mobile missile launcher
3 enemy ufos (story details still under wraps until 'heavy version')
The full version has a marginal increase in enemy types, namely ships, another enemy aircraft type and a few suprises (misc. cars, trucks and random civilian air traffic)
In the geeky department... I've also changed the difficulty setting from the previous (as score increases, gets harder) to a traditional one where you pick easy, medium, hard from the options menu. Hard mode should be renamed to 'death mode' lol
Cheers,
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
Basically, I want to move onto other projects and spending time dinking around with which features go in what versions just isn't worth the headache. I will include everything in one ipad version, with 6 levels planned - I've made all the actors/art/etc. It's just a matter of level design from here on out.
All this of course, and I've not even gotten a chance to test this for real on an ipad because well, the salad is currently rotting in the fridge. Hint hint... PLEASE update so I can decide which account to purchase! The entire time I've been making this game, GS has been in limbo... :-/
I have a horrible feeling that something mystical and black will happen the moment I test it on the ipad and nothing will work right, sending me back to the drawing board.
I like your game, but I guess you don't like humans that much. :-)
It really does look like a ton of fun!
EDIT: I literally wondered if there was gong to be hookers in the UFOs! (no joke)
You are assuming that I am human.
scitunes,
I figured the graphics and 8bit sounds along with arcade physics made it a little more light-hearted than say, Gradius or R-type. In your opinion, what gameplay features would make it 'sillier' to match the title? I'm also interested in hearing why you think people would skip over it with a 'wrong impression.