Upskyway


Alex.

Retired
Joined
Aug 24, 2005
Messages
4,616
Hey there,

While I didn't have much time to work on homebrew in the past few months, I did play around with rough ideas every now and then. I've got going the base for a SkyRoads-like game, and I plan to make a full game out of it to be released sometime around the end of the year. If you never played SkyRoads, shame on you - go here to get what will be your newest and biggest addiction yet. (may need DOSBox)

The reason I'm posting this is to ask for your feedback - what do you look for in a game like this? What modes? Story mode, with premade levels like SkyRoads? I'd like to also make it easy for user-made levels: I could make it so you can edit them in something like Notepad++, as well as on an in-game editor :)

Enough talk, here's a mockup screenshot:

mockup.png


Any comments and ideas are greatly appreciated :)
 
Wow Alex... This one is looking real good.
A fast arcade game from you would be great!
For the features I should be looking for on this type of game:
A story mode, a level by level mode (perhaps after finishing the story mode), a puzzle (of a kind) mode with tricky moves to do.
It must be fast impressive and perhpaps giving a "stunt" feeling.
Even if it's only in one programed height, give 'graphically' the feeling of doing stunts on some particular path.
Ingame editor could be nice, but perhaps a simple external editor would be a plus. Something that generates level files from a simple gfx editor.

I have the feeling that your game is going to be a must have (again) :)
 
virusx said:
Even if it's only in one programed height, give 'graphically' the feeling of doing stunts on some particular path.
Do you mean as in interesting level designs? Stuff you'd have to memorize, and retry?

virusx said:
Ingame editor could be nice, but perhaps a simple external editor would be a plus. Something that generates level files from a simple gfx editor.
Hmm, a nice reason to brush on my patchy Java skills :)

virusx said:
I have the feeling that your game is going to be a must have (again) :)
Hehe, thank you!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
b_o_b said:
Am I correct and you don't have special effects like trailblazer?
What's that effect? I googled it and got a basketball team as a result :D
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Alex. said:
b_o_b said:
Am I correct and you don't have special effects like trailblazer?
What's that effect? I googled it and got a basketball team as a result :D



Sorry I thought you knew the game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5N80ji28ag, it looks a lot like your game/SkyRoads.
The effects I'm talking about are sticky, bouncy, icy etc.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
b_o_b said:
Sorry I thought you knew the game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5N80ji28ag, it looks a lot like your game/SkyRoads.
The effects I'm talking about are sticky, bouncy, icy etc.


Oh man, that looks awful similar doesn't it? I'll have to plead ignorance on this one. Anyway, it'll be like that video :D It's good to know my game runs on 70mhz as smoothly as that runs on 0.5mhz :D

Speciffic level effects are a nice idea, and I'll include the gravitation variable SkyRoads introduced, too. And I'll also have special tiles, for speed ups or for death (yes I'm no ashamed of stealing :D)

(though I will give credit where credit is due. I *love* SkyRoads)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You can try a trailblazer clone.
http://en.t45ol.com/play/2671/trail-blazer.html

Use the mouse to move r+l and click mouse to jump. Just entered the 3rd level (I thought the 2nd was pretty hard)

Trailblazer is a great game and available for lots of systems like Amiga/Atari-ST/CPC/Spectrum/C64 etc.. etc.. recommended stuff while waiting for SkyRoads for the GP2X ;)
 
I used to play a lot of skyroads as a fat 12-yr-old nerd. Looking forward to playing it on GP2X as a skinny 27-yr-old nerd.
 
Heh. I'll just chip in with everyone else -

"Yay - Looks like Trailblazer"

"Funny tiles would be a great idea!"

"Go for it - keep us posted"

and also

"It'll be a fixture on my SD, like all Alex games"


...that was all, right? :)

(It's a bit troublesome when you read the opening post, immediately realize what you want to say, scroll down and realize that everyone else already said that)
 
All the obvious stuff, Skyroads does fantastically - don't be afraid to copy from it a lot!

You mention a story mode - one nice way to get that might be Tyrian-style datacubes (or datatiles in your case probably) that, once landed on, mean before the next level starts you get to read whatever message was in that tile.

Of course, to make sure the story is there even if you miss some tiles, some of those messages would be automatically received, but the ones that add depth to the skeleton are picked up by the player - possibly by making them take a less obvious route through a level or such.

If you're not adding height, power-ups would be cool too, in addition to special tiles. What about a paint-bomb - you shoot a type of file ahead of you to make your life easier when you get to that point in the road? Or perhaps double jump? Extra fuel, life insurance (dumps you back on the road where you came off instead of back at the start). Jetpack.

Oh, and an alcohol tile would be cool too. Every time you land on one, the screen gets distorted so the world is less comprehensible (if you ever played Drunken Frogger, that's pretty much what I mean).

It's a shame about lack of height... that really was an extra dimension in Skyroads, but hey, can't have everything :).
 
Moxie said:
Heh. I'll just chip in with everyone else -
Thanks for the kind words :)

Tobriand said:
You mention a story mode - one nice way to get that might be Tyrian-style datacubes (or datatiles in your case probably) that, once landed on, mean before the next level starts you get to read whatever message was in that tile.

If you're not adding height, power-ups would be cool too, in addition to special tiles. What about a paint-bomb - you shoot a type of file ahead of you to make your life easier when you get to that point in the road? Or perhaps double jump? Extra fuel, life insurance (dumps you back on the road where you came off instead of back at the start). Jetpack.

Oh, and an alcohol tile would be cool too. Every time you land on one, the screen gets distorted so the world is less comprehensible (if you ever played Drunken Frogger, that's pretty much what I mean).

It's a shame about lack of height... that really was an extra dimension in Skyroads, but hey, can't have everything :).
Very nice ideas, I'll keep them in mind for when the game approaches maturity! I'm intrigued by the paint bomb, how would you target where to throw it? Maybe roads could have preset tiles that could become solid if you have the right powerup and press the button while they're in your vicinity.

trooper said:
How about temporary reversed controls, Hit a certain colour tile and the controls are temporarily reversed ?.

Trooper
That would go well with the alcohol tile, :D
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Well the simple way to target it is to only be able to shoot ahead, with distance decided by how long you hold the button, which is kinda how I imagined it.

But I suppose there's no reason you couldn't use L+R - or even the touchscreen - to more precisely target it. Except that it might feel a touch cumbersome for the style of gameplay, of course.

While I remember it - and this would be tough, I imagine - computerised opponents might also be an interesting feature, although I imagine that might break your engine if it works how I intuitively suspect it to.

Oh, and another powerup, while I'm on the same thing, might be a "spirit guide" one. You hit the button, and another sprite appears that you do your best to stay on top of, because whatever it is doing is what you need to do to complete the level. Could be particularly useful for stuntey levels :).

Visually, it would also be kinda cool if the screen could skew, too, to give impression (even if not the physics of) slopes and such. I suspect that probably wouldn't be too hard an operation compared to adding height, but that is just a suspicion.
 
Alex. said:
Do you mean as in interesting level designs? Stuff you'd have to memorize, and retry?

For the Puzzle thing... YES! A less fast paced race type mode with some extremely hard path.
The "stunt" feeling was more about some graphical eye candies when you're going to pass thru some specific path (ie: you can go on the left to go forward the level OR on the right with a 'graphical' feeling of jump or looping. If you can see what I mean (I know... It's not very clear lol)
Alex. said:
Hmm, a nice reason to brush on my patchy Java skills :)

I was ready to say "Java" too, but I let you said that :)
Designing levels like you design pixel art would be monster fun!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
dschump (dos game) was in this class of games. really fun, did not have or need multiple levels.

i can't find a vid or pic unfortunately...but you were a bouncing ball. you could not brake...backwards only happened if you hit a special tile. so really you're on this collision course, moving side to side, figuring out the only or best path through the track, given that there's holes, weak tiles, warps, tiles that reverse you, etc.

just something to think about.
 
Just came up with another idea, which might allow you to add some more of the dimensions lack of height takes back in. Namely? Wormholes!

Especially if they can be linked far forward or back in the level; I imagine the effect of going into one being the road moving *fast* back or forward to where you'd emerge, with a very short accelleration/decelleration phase to make it seem more professional. Ball gets swallowed, zoom, ball gets spat out, level continues.

Assuming you're currently designing levels in ASCII (as implied by your mention of editing levels in a text editor) that shouldn't be too hard to implement roughly (just allowing one square to be defined by W:a where the character immediately following the colon is the set of that hole). I imagine having more than two of any given wormhole might cause weird effects, but that's just a matter of saying to level-editors "do this and it'll crash".

Sorry for throwing out so many ideas which probably aren't even going to be remotely plausible until the game gets on in life, but I might as well mention them, even if they never get used :).
 
Yes! Alex! You are a goddamn god. I was hoping for someone to make a skyroads clone.

EDIT: I used to love the feature of skyroads having different heights for the roads. One thing to think about: skyroads was no real 3d game. I am not sure how exactly they achieved the effect of this sorta pseudo 3d environment, but I think it was just very simple mathematics, no vectors, no physics, no polygons etc. Are you sure you don't want to add heights in the future?
 
rokdcasbah said:
dschump (dos game) was in this class of games. really fun, did not have or need multiple levels.

i can't find a vid or pic unfortunately...but you were a bouncing ball. you could not brake...backwards only happened if you hit a special tile. so really you're on this collision course, moving side to side, figuring out the only or best path through the track, given that there's holes, weak tiles, warps, tiles that reverse you, etc.

just something to think about.
That would be an interesting mode, just plowing through a level for as long as possible. I searched for dschump too, with no results bar lots of game cheats sites.

Tobriand said:
Just came up with another idea, which might allow you to add some more of the dimensions lack of height takes back in. Namely? Wormholes!
That's an awesome idea, I'll put it in for sure :) All of your ideas are very welcome, and I hope to implement as many of them as I can. Thanks for taking the time to help me out :)

xnopasaranx said:
Are you sure you don't want to add heights in the future?
In the future, sure. *wipes forehead, that was a close one* ;)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top