Release Space Rocks!

[bzar]

Hi,

This is an asteroids clone I've made mainly to test Cloudef's glhck. It turned out nice enough to warrant a release

The game is about ambience, patience, risk vs. reward and delaying the inevitable.

repo link

Have fun!

EDIT: Ingoreis made a short video of the gameplay, thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/gQDz0V1XaVE?feature=oembed
NOTE: Ghz- pandoras need the latest GPU drivers to avoid graphical glitches! See Cloudef's post for details.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Looks pretty.

 

[Cloudef]

UFO && Power-ups randomly garbaged on 1Ghz pandora (maybe other as well), related to RandR and the current hack doesn't seem to work.

Checking if I can workaround this cleanly without adding hacks to glfw.

Edit: Sent fix to B-Zar, and it's updated on repo.

 

[milkshake]

What's glhck?

 

[bzar]

There's a link in my sig.

 

[bzar]

First serious try on pandora, level 11 with 31350 points. I lost nearly all my weapons halfway there and barely scraped by until by dumb luck I got together a level 5 laser. That got me on my feet again

 

[bzar]

This is the best game anything in the repo!



(yes yes, I know )

 

[ingoreis]

Hey thx for that Funny Game,here a short Video of Gameplay from me

https://www.youtube.com/embed/UGrcqJDAtE0?feature=oembed
Can you add that Video to the first Post too please?

that will help me for few more Clicks on Youtube

 

[bzar]

I'll see when I see it

BTW, desktop linux builds and source are also available at http://bzar.github.io/spacerocks/

EDIT: It's up now. The sounds seem to be a bit late. About half a second or so. You should've used the S1 you got for the small asteroids when up close btw (left/right triggers change weapons when you have multiple)

EDIT2: Ah, you found that out later in the video

EDIT3: I should probably do my own video as well, displaying the strengths of each weapon

 

[ingoreis]

You made this realy on your own?

Coool work

 

[bzar]

Yep, this game's all me, using Cloudef's glhck graphics system.

EDIT: Music from jamendo, graphics mostly from opengameart, rest by yours truly. Attributions and licenses are in the PND under snd and img and in github

 

[ingoreis]

Thx for adding it on the First Post.

I dont disabled Sound it was the first start.

Thx for that wonderfull Game

 

[bzar]

I dont disabled Sound it was the first start.

The sounds are not off as in "not on", but off as in delayed or not in sync with the video.

 

[ingoreis]

Oh then must i this Evening Check my Recording settings for Video and Audio,thx for the Info,

I did not rekognized it.

 

[sswam]

hey B-ZaR, thanks for the game.  I like the music, the spaceship, and the rocks.

Having some trouble with those stripey green powerups.

I have a few suggestions:

- littlest rocks are a bit too little (compared to asteroids)

- gameplay feels a bit slow (compared to asteroids) you said "patience", but yeah I'd boost it up a bit - more acceleration, faster rocks.

- different background image (APOTD) for each level ... hope nasa.gov comes back soon

- the alien ships' bullets seem really fast, I think it would be impossible to dodge in case one was on target...

I made a prototype "rocks" game a while back, with rotational inertia for the ship, gravity, and bouncing rocks (like snooker balls).

They might be fun features to add if you'd like to try that.

 

[bzar]

hey B-ZaR, thanks for the game.  I like the music, the spaceship, and the rocks.

You're welcome

Having some trouble with those stripey green powerups.

Yeah, those are because of some driver hassle. Cloudef may look into it. A bit out of my field

- littlest rocks are a bit too little (compared to asteroids)

This is by design. You're supposed to use the small movements of the ship to zero into hitting them or use a more suitable weapon. Close range Spread or Beam are good choices even at low levels. Plasma and Laser are good for this at high levels. Making them this small encourages a strategic approach instead of mindless blasting in later levels. You don't want to drown in the tinies.

- gameplay feels a bit slow (compared to asteroids) you said "patience", but yeah I'd boost it up a bit - more acceleration, faster rocks.

This is by design. The game contrasts careful and slow precision movement in getting rid of the asteroids to fast paced races for powerups and dodging UFOs. The gameplay gets a lot more hectic as the game progresses as you have less and less room to manouver. Try playing to level 20 and tell me it's slow

- different background image (APOTD) for each level ... hope nasa.gov comes back soon

Yes, this could be done. I also have a few other designs for the asteroids so those could be mixed and matched too.

- the alien ships' bullets seem really fast, I think it would be impossible to dodge in case one was on target...

Not impossible, you just have to think ahead. Fast enough lateral movement, using the asteroids as cover or using the edge wrapping strategically are few possible strategies to even dodge the 100% accurate UFOs in later levels.

I made a prototype "rocks" game a while back, with rotational inertia for the ship, gravity, and bouncing rocks (like snooker balls).

They might be fun features to add if you'd like to try that.

Possibly for another variant. This game has been made with a very specific gameplay in mind

 

[sswam]

- gameplay feels a bit slow (compared to asteroids) you said "patience", but yeah I'd boost it up a bit - more acceleration, faster rocks.

This is by design. The game contrasts careful and slow precision movement in getting rid of the asteroids to fast paced races for powerups and dodging UFOs. The gameplay gets a lot more hectic as the game progresses as you have less and less room to manouver. Try playing to level 20 and tell me it's slow

Ok, that makes sense.

Can you make an option to start at any previously attained level, like _wb_ did with nub nub?

I would really appreciate that.  You could just use some key on the Pandora for "skip to next level".

(or I can do it, thanks for being open sourcey)

Your second preview pic on the repo is a 900Kb 1920x1180 (!) png image, I think that's some kind of record...!

Spacerocks really wants to have C4A support.  It's not very hard to do that, even I managed it.

You could maintain the ship's position and velocity between levels.  I think Asteroids does that, it's up to you what you prefer of course.  If you do change the background image between levels, I suggest include plenty of images and shuffle them up randomly.  Could do some hyperspace effect ala Thrust between levels, or whatever.  Maybe hyperspace doesn't work if there are space rocks around ... vestigial plot developing ...  

Also there is a slight pause on the first "shoot", I guess it's loading that sound effect on demand, it would be better to pre-load it somehow.

What's special about the green powerups that they confuse the driver?  You're not using shaders or anything, right?  It's just regular gles 1.1?  I'm asking because I used a whole lot of different images in my game, plotted with GL and rotated them etc, with no such "driver issues".  Are you using one texture for all the images, or separate textures?  They're all sized right with powers of 2?  Just trying to figure out what could be going wrong.

By the way, space rocks is "top game" again on the repo  for a little while at least.

 

[levi]

Between this, Maelstrom, Spheres of Chaos and of course all the old Asteroids games and ports we can emulate, we're truly spoilt for choice on Pandora

 

[bzar]

Can you make an option to start at any previously attained level, like _wb_ did with nub nub?

I would really appreciate that.  You could just use some key on the Pandora for "skip to next level".

(or I can do it, thanks for being open sourcey)

Possibly, though you won't get very good scores that way. Collecting enough powerups to survive on the later levels is quite essential.

Your second preview pic on the repo is a 900Kb 1920x1180 (!) png image, I think that's some kind of record...!

Yes, oops. That one is from me playing in a maximized window on my desktop. Forgot to resize it for the shot

Spacerocks really wants to have C4A support.  It's not very hard to do that, even I managed it.

Yes.

You could maintain the ship's position and velocity between levels.  I think Asteroids does that, it's up to you what you prefer of course.

I did that at first, but it was quite lethal . I ended up trying to position myself well and stopped before a level ended.

If you do change the background image between levels, I suggest include plenty of images and shuffle them up randomly.  Could do some hyperspace effect ala Thrust between levels, or whatever.  Maybe hyperspace doesn't work if there are space rocks around ... vestigial plot developing ...  

Yup, would just need a good set of images. The current one is from hubble.
Effect backgrounds would be pushing it, even now the game slows down with a lot of blasting asteroids (you'll start to see this around level 12)

Also there is a slight pause on the first "shoot", I guess it's loading that sound effect on demand, it would be better to pre-load it somehow.

Yes, there's some lazy loading going on. Might do something about it. Not a big issue though.

What's special about the green powerups that they confuse the driver?  You're not using shaders or anything, right?  It's just regular gles 1.1?  I'm asking because I used a whole lot of different images in my game, plotted with GL and rotated them etc, with no such "driver issues".  Are you using one texture for all the images, or separate textures?  They're all sized right with powers of 2?  Just trying to figure out what could be going wrong.

A good question. I have no idea. Ask Cloudef

By the way, space rocks is "top game" again on the repo  for a little while at least.

Yay!

 

[Cloudef]

 What's special about the green powerups that they confuse the driver?  You're not using shaders or anything, right?  It's just regular gles 1.1?  I'm asking because I used a whole lot of different images in my game, plotted with GL and rotated them etc, with no such "driver issues".  Are you using one texture for all the images, or separate textures?  They're all sized right with powers of 2?  Just trying to figure out what could be going wrong.

There's nothing special with them. They just corrupt for some reason randomly (same with ufos).

I noticed this happenned when glfw poked display/resolution settings, so I added hack that those are not available. But it seems to still do this randomly I guess..

No idea what causes it really and why. I would not be surprised if it's just drivers doing their thing again.

Everything in game is atlas heavy though, so the textures you see are generated under FBO. (even more prone to driver issues)

I might do some future work for GLFW to allow framebuffer context.

But before that I probably add yet another PRELOAD hack that forces empty X11 window but actually creates framebuffer EGL context. According to wiki, this should not only be faster than offscreen X11 context, it could have less bugs.