Vektar 0.9

[deadlychicken22]

Regarding the competition: BubbleTrain, Beat2x, Extraterrestres, Vanguard Wars, and others all deserved prizes and applause IMO (not to mention the emulators and utilities!)

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Thanks for mentioning my game! At least I have one fan.......(my attempt to generate discussion about my game yielded no responses )

Anyways, great game dzz! Would you be willing to send me the source code & files for vektar? You could e-mail them to me at deadlychicken22[at]gmail.com

I would just like to see how you managed everything in the game as I am new to real programming (previously programmed in VB) and think it would be a good learning experience. Tutorials taught me how things function but not how to apply them to game creation.

Thanks,
-ben

 

[virusx]

Great improvements since the last version !

I really like the new enemies and their behavior (damn blue spirals ! ).
The shield is also a nice feature and I can't hide no more in the corners. Joy !
But the game is still too easy since wave 4, then it became too hard...
"I is surronded by tons of killer rainbow-pyramids from outer space" :blink:

I think this is my favorite game on Gp2X Dzz !

EDIT : A slight thing will be nice, even if it's really useless:
Make the ship in splash screen rotates (90°) with joystick movements. Just for fun ! :unsure:

 

[DisgruntleElf]

Any chance of a GP32 version? Looks great and a lot of fun.

 

[NeoStuey]

Hey NeoStuey, my icon for the game stinks, want to make me a good one?

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Whoops, I missed this post, please don't think I was ignoring you.

Let me know what you think.

I hope you like it.

 

[Dzz]

Hey, that's great, thanks! You're a true pixel artist!

I'll use this in the version 1.0 distribution.

 

[NeoStuey]

Hey, that's great, thanks! You're a true pixel artist!

I'll use this in the version 1.0 distribution.

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Cool.

I'm glad you liked it, I was having a hard time getting any ideas from my mind into that 32x32 box. I started drawing a plain blue grid and then played with the perspective, overlayed the text I had made on another failed attempt. Added the lense flair and a two layer variable density starfield in the hope it was in keeping with the game. The missing feature was to have your hero ship fly from out of the lense falir and accross the grid above the word vektar.

Too bad we can't use animated gifs.

Animated mock-up

Looking forward to the next release, I've made some more time to play it properly and I'm enjoying it much.

 

[Mikey242]

Congrats on the fantastic game Dzz. I agree with the gradient of difficulty. It goes from really easy to really hard really quick lol. Thanks for your work on this one!

Oh and i like virusx's idea, just for coolness it would be nice lol.

 

[Dzz]

Congrats on the fantastic game Dzz.  I agree with the gradient of difficulty.  It goes from really easy to really hard really quick lol.  Thanks for your work on this one!

Oh and i like virusx's idea, just for coolness it would be nice lol.

​

Thanks for the comments!

Once you get bettter at the game the current "hard" setting is too easy still at first and it takes up to 15 minutes or more of gameplay to get to a challenging adrenaline-inducing state. So I'll certainly have some way to start at a more difficult level if desired so you can just play for 5 minutes if you want even if you have mad skillz. On the other hand, I think that the game does get "impossible" a little too fast -- I think it would be basically impossible for anybody to finish wave 5, although as soon as I say that I'm sure somebody will report that they've done it. So I'll be tweaking that a little bit.

I also have a configuration-file based control customization scheme designed that will give a fair bit of flexibility for people who hate the current control layout or who just want to tweak it a little bit. It works basically like this:

For each of the 16 joystick directions, and each of 6 buttons (L,R,A,B,X,Y), you can assign any combination of the following functions:
Thrust (with a numeric "strength" value so if you want a weaker or stronger thruster than currently in the game you can have it)
Brake (again with a numeric strength)
Left turn (with numeric speed)
Right turn(with numeric speed)
Fire
Shield

These can be combined so you can do things like have the lower left diagonal both turn and brake if you want.

I'll ship a few pre-made config files, like:
Default (the current scheme, so it's easy to modify in small ways like changing which button is used for fire)
No Shield (default with no shield button, for extra excitement)
Asteroids mode (L,R for turns, A for thrust, B for brake, stick any dir for fire)
Upside down (A,B=turn, X=thrust, Y=brake, stick=fire, play it upside down)


I have a couple small bugs to fix also but not much.

 

[bacteria]

Excellent game and good alternative to Asteroids. This was the best game submitted to the Gp2x competition, by a long chalk.

 

[reallynotnick]

IDK about the rest of you but I want some more kinds of weapons and maybe a bomb even. I just find it hard to aim with the stick, a nice wider spread weapon would help.

 

[Dzz]

IDK about the rest of you but I want some more kinds of weapons and maybe a bomb even. I just find it hard to aim with the stick, a nice wider spread weapon would help.

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Thanks for the feedback! I'll keep those ideas in mind for future versions!

 

[synkro]

I like this game! How about online ranking via passwords?

 

[Dzz]

I like this game! How about online ranking via passwords?

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This is an amusing idea for a future version. How would such a thing work?

I could imagine something like this (not using passwords so not what you had in mind):

Your high score table also contains a "key" that is generated by the software that includes in its generation both an "encryption key" to make it hard to cheat and an encoded version of the score/user name. You take this key and type it into a web site which collects and displays them. A really good hacker could reverse engineer the mechanism but I can think of ways to make it difficult. I can't think of a way to make it impossible to cheat, but there's probably a limit to how many hours hackers are willing to put into cracking the score mechanism for some freeware game on an obscure handheld device.

 

[Mikey242]

I like this game! How about online ranking via passwords?

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This is an amusing idea for a future version. How would such a thing work?

I could imagine something like this (not using passwords so not what you had in mind):

Your high score table also contains a "key" that is generated by the software that includes in its generation both an "encryption key" to make it hard to cheat and an encoded version of the score/user name. You take this key and type it into a web site which collects and displays them. A really good hacker could reverse engineer the mechanism but I can think of ways to make it difficult. I can't think of a way to make it impossible to cheat, but there's probably a limit to how many hours hackers are willing to put into cracking the score mechanism for some freeware game on an obscure handheld device.

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This looks like an interesting idea. If done right this could be really cool.

Adding to what reallynotnick said about weapons, I think powerups would be really cool. One that comes to mind is the ability for your bullets to reflect of the walls, among other weapon upgrades etc.

Im really likeing this game so far, its an excellent piece of work.

 

[scorpio]

Hi,

Your high score table also contains a "key" that is generated by the software that includes in its generation both an "encryption key" to make it hard to cheat and an encoded version of the score/user name.

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It would probably take you longer to implement this than it would for someone to crack it, as with pretty much any kind of encryption where the key is public (i.e. in the code).

I don't think it's worth the diversion from working on the actual game itself. Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to have future versions keep a full history of high scores in the high scores file. To post a high score publicly, people will need to upload their entire "score sheet", so others can see if they have just suddenly pulled a mysterious mega-score out of nowhere, or if there had been a progression over time.

Obviously, there will be those who would be happy to fake a whole high-scores file, but at the end of day, anyone who is lying will be caught out in the end when it comes to the international playoffs! And who'd want to risk the embarrasment? ;-)

As regards the game itself, I'm still finding it hard going with using the stick, so I'm really looking forward to the next release where I can tweak the controls to find what suits me best. One thing I thought would also be nice to see in the game would be some kind of zoom-out, as the screen gets a bit crowded, and it can be a bit hard to find a safe path through.

 

[pipa]

I played Vektar for a while last night and really like it. I came here and foundout I was playing the old 0.1 version! I just upgraded to 0.9 and it's very cool too. A couple of suggestions:

1) Make the shield a different color than white. Maybe that rainbow effect?
2) is the shield unlimited? Seemed like it was. I think it would be better if it only lasted for a few second like in Asteroids. That way you can use it to get by a bad guy quickly but you couldn't camp.

Great game! If you have a Paypal address for donations, I'll drop some dough in the pot.

 

[bigbottombill]

Great looking game! Keep up the good work
I'm finding its one of those games I'll pick up for a quick fix!!

 

[Mikey242]

I played Vektar for a while last night and really like it. I came here and foundout I was playing the old 0.1 version! I just upgraded to 0.9 and it's very cool too. A couple of suggestions:

1) Make the shield a different color than white. Maybe that rainbow effect?
2) is the shield unlimited? Seemed like it was. I think it would be better if it only lasted for a few second like in Asteroids. That way you can use it to get by a bad guy quickly but you couldn't camp.

Great game! If you have a Paypal address for donations, I'll drop some dough in the pot.

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Hey the shield is limited, there is a little bar in the bottom right of the screen that decreases as you have your shield on.

Not sure about that rainbow shield, I kind of like it the way it is, but im not really fussed either way.

 

[pipa]

Hey the shield is limited, there is a little bar in the bottom right of the screen that decreases as you have your shield on.

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Ah. I never noticed. every time I used it and heldit on for a while it worked so i assumed it was unlimited.

Brian

 

[Dzz]

Thanks for the kind words and suggestions.

Regarding donations, I think it's great that you want to support gp2x homebrew but I don't really need the donation personally so how about this: The NEXT gp2x homebrew game you find that you think is cool, pass on the donation to them.

A quick note on version 1.0: I have gotten sidetracked doing a port of the classic "RPG" NetHack, so it will be a little while yet before I get to it. It will just have a few bug fixes, a few game balance tweaks, and configurable controls.