Blast Riot!

[satacoy]

I'm having a lot of fun trying out everyone else's entries for GBAX. I thought I'd post a little info on Blast Riot.

The main premise in Blast Riot is to collect 5 "disks" to progress to the next level. The trick is staying alive long enough to collect five.

Different colored disks give different power-ups (although you won't see any power-ups until level 4 or so). Each disk you pick up will add one to your health, and a small dot will start circling your player.

The various monsters in the maze can also pick up disks, and use the power-ups. Dots also circle the monsters when they're carrying disks, which makes it easier to figure out who you have to go after to gain a disk.

Monsters don't necessarily get along with other breeds, so it's sometimes wise to let them thin themselves out a bit before wading into the mix.

Use the joystick to move, and the "A" button to fire. The "X" button will highlight your character in case you loose him in the chaos.

The "Start" button will bring up a menu. Hit "Start" again to select a menu item.

Some of Blast Riot's features:
* 16 distinct monsters, each with distinct AI.
* 15 individual maps. These repeat as necessary.
* 100's of on screen objects interacting at the height of the game.
* A constant 60 frames per second is maintained during gameplay at 200 mhz. It may be possible to underclock.
* No SDL or other non standard libraries used. All sound and graphics routines written for this game.
* Music and Sound volume are independently settable. All settings persist between games.
* Stereo sound effects attenuate with distance. The farther away something is, the less noise it'll make.
* Interactive tutorial/demo on how to play on startup.

A few things I'm unsure of:
* Does TV out worK? I don't have the necessary setup to try it.
* Can the game be underclocked? I don't think I'm pushing the CPU, but haven't tried underclocking it. There may be sound buffer issues if the clock drops too low.

This is a hardcore action game, you'll have to have pretty good reflexes to get much past level 10. The GP2X joystick doesn't make things easier...

If you can make it to level 20 you're doing really well. Level 20 is when the last unique creature shows up.

Enjoy! I'm going back to trying the other entries.

Pete

 

[sam fisher]

This game is great It certainly shows that you've put a lot of work into it. I look forward to playing it again later when I have some free time.

 

[greenmikey]

This game is alot of fun..it will be more fun when I get my second gp2x with a dpad in a weekish. So far one of my faves easily from the compo, has a good feel.

I would change come of the colors on the walls however..makes me sad

 

[jbrodack]

great game. its cool that you can start from later levels you finished but i think there should be some kind of survival mode where when you die thats it start from level 1 again and that mode should have a high score screen where you can input your name.

this game is so much fun as is though. gameplay is simple to learn yet has depth, graphics look simple but everything moves so smooth and looks nice exploding that it just really has a cool look and is impressive that it runs so well with so much going on.

 

[Uprising]

great game. its cool that you can start from later levels you finished but i think there should be some kind of survival mode where when you die thats it start from level 1 again and that mode should have a high score screen where you can input your name.

this game is so much fun as is though. gameplay is simple to learn yet has depth, graphics look simple but everything moves so smooth and looks nice exploding that it just really has a cool look and is impressive that it runs so well with so much going on.

Agree with that, its definitely one of the best games I have tried so far!

 

[satacoy]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

A few notes:

I didn't include a highscore table due to the fact that you could just sit in a corner with the fire button down and kill an infinite number of easy enemies on the earlier levels. I left scoring in there in general so you could at least earn an extra life per level, but a high-score wouldn't make much sense unless I changed the game to prevent running up the score.

You can restart at the last passed level, up to level 9 (or is it 8?). Some of the beta testers didn't like having to start all the way back on the "easy" levels while they tried to get to the higher levels. It's still a challenge to make it to level 20, even when starting on level 9.

Pete

 

[jbrodack]

any plans to develop this further? maybe make levelpacks or a level editor for it? I'm just really liking this game. simple yet chaotic like the classics such as robotron and beserk. yet the aim is different in that you aren't just trying to kill everything. i like having the disks as the goal which mosters can also steal.

like i said its great as is but im liking it so much id definitely be happy if even more was done with it.

 

[saehn]

Blast Riot is a remake of Crossroads (for the Commodore 64, 1987), right?

I'm surprised you didn't mention that, or give credit to the original author in the readme. Good remake, though. I enjoyed your version, especially the new features.

 

[satacoy]

Blast Riot is a remake of Crossroads (for the Commodore 64, 1987), right?

I'm surprised you didn't mention that, or give credit to the original author in the readme. Good remake, though. I enjoyed your version, especially the new features.



I was very curious if anyone would make the connection, and now I feel bad about not giving proper credit, I'm usually good about such things.

Blast Riot is indeed inspired by Crossroads, especially Crossroads II which I faithfully typed in from "Compute's Gazette" as a youngster and played until my fingers bled. I really wanted to somehow add multiplayer to Blast Riot, it's one of the things that made the original so much fun.

Thanks for the feedback and being the first to make the connection!

Pete


(I'm not sure why my replies are getting concatenated, weird...)

any plans to develop this further? maybe make levelpacks or a level editor for it? I'm just really liking this game. simple yet chaotic like the classics such as robotron and beserk. yet the aim is different in that you aren't just trying to kill everything. i like having the disks as the goal which mosters can also steal.

like i said its great as is but im liking it so much id definitely be happy if even more was done with it.

I'm glad you like it! I had a lot of fun making it, more so than I expected. I really like the concept of a "fair" game, where the mosnters can gain the same advantages as you can from picking up powerups and health bonuses. You don't see that too often in games.

I'm working on a 1.1 version that fixes some of the things that annoy me the most. I also have a "to-do" list with about 20 items on it, although the list got so big and ambitious that most of the items would probably fall into a Blast Riot II game, if anything.

In the meantime, hopefully there's enough content in the current version to keep you entertained for a while.

Pete

 

[ruckage]

Great game Pete - just the sort of game I like, love the little particle explosions. Will certainly be staying on my SD card.

 

[saehn]

Did you have to code everything from scratch, or were you able to get any useful information from the Compute's Gazette listing? I'd imagine not; I've always heard that disassembly is "iffy" in the best of situations. It's cool that you approximated it.

 

[satacoy]

Did you have to code everything from scratch, or were you able to get any useful information from the Compute's Gazette listing? I'd imagine not; I've always heard that disassembly is "iffy" in the best of situations. It's cool that you approximated it.

Heh, I didn't do anything like that. This games completely from scratch, although I did use some of DZZ's tutorial code in order to avoid using SDL. The vast majority of the game is C++ which made deriving new monsters a lot easier. There's also a lot of STL usage in there to help manage collections. I can't imagine how Crossroads did what it did all in assembly.

Pete

 

[Miika]

Know where to find that Crossroads II listing?
I wanna type it in!

 

[satacoy]

Know where to find that Crossroads II listing?
I wanna type it in!

I'm sure I have the original magazine buried in the garage somewhere!

 

[Miika]

Know where to find that Crossroads II listing?
I wanna type it in!

I'm sure I have the original magazine buried in the garage somewhere!

Cool, scan it if you come across

 

[saehn]

Jeez, don't go through all that trouble. Here's a link to both versions: Crossroads and Crossroads II: Pandemonium.

http://dessgeega.com/crossroads.html

This is a fan page that provides some interesting information on the game.

 

[Miika]

Jeez, don't go through all that trouble. Here's a link to both versions: Crossroads and Crossroads II: Pandemonium.

http://dessgeega.com/crossroads.html

This is a fan page that provides some interesting information on the game.


Lol, I know, I already downloaded them and tried on emulator.
Would just be something to do on the boring days

 

[satacoy]

I've uploaded version 1.1 of Blast Riot! here:

http://www.blastriot.com/downloads/blastriot.zip

The biggest change is (hopefully) improved joystick logic. It should be easier to control now, especially on levels with larger empty areas. It seems easier to me, anyway. Let me know if it's better or worse, or if you can even notice the change.

If you're traveling to the right, you can still push up to take the next available corridor up, but if you're off by a little bit, the new logic will help steer you toward the corridor.

There were a few other small tweaks that really shouldn't be noticeable.

Pete

 

[Gruntfuggly]

Excellent - I thought I might be the only one with joystick problems - I was putting it down to my Mk1 being crap, but if you've improved it, that's good news...

 

[Megagun]

Sorry about the little bump, but I just had to let you know that this game is great and that I look forward to any future developments with it.

The explosions look really, insanely nice, too.