Alpha Rose - King Aquamentus's baby

[King Aquamentus]

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/63097522/ar5.png

So, for awhile now I've mentioned a game maker project in chat, which was essentially Gradius meets Metroid. This is what has so far become of it.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/63097522/alpharose-test2.zip

It's not perfect, especially seeing as how there is no visible indicator of your selected second weapon, but it gives an idea of where I'm going with this.

Controls are fairly smooth when you get the hang of them. The game makes full use of the mouse, as well as WASD, space, and the E and R keys.

Mouse - aim/direct
left click - fire primary
right click - hold for boost
wheel - select primary weapon
middle click - pause menu (this is stil very primitive looking)
A - strafe left
W - move forward
S - backward
D - strafe right
E/R - select secondary
space - fire secondary

No promises this is going to be something, but I figure I have to try. It'd be cool to see this actually get completed.

[Brasel]

Damn. When my computer crashed several weeks ago, it took my video card with it. My onboard graphics don't play this well. I'll have to remember to try it out after I build my new machine.

[King Aquamentus]

damn. x.x I get a new PC last summer and yours crashes a few weeks ago. Sorry man

EDIT: I started doing some tilework for the next area of the game:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/63097522/ar6.png

[ShadowTiger]

Now, when you say "Metroid," do you mean that there will be abilities and upgrades you can acquire that will enable you to reach other areas once you find them? That kind of gameplay is formidable.

[King Aquamentus]

Yes, exactly. It is an exploration title with an emphasis on collecting new items to reach new areas and new depths, just like Metroid or La-Mulana. At the same time though, quite a few of those upgrades will be new weapons you can switch to and fro. There's a heavy emphasis on shooting enemies, shooting obstacles in your way (so far just crumbly metroid blocks but Gradius's infamous regenerating walls of flesh may appear too), and a heavy encouragement to fly carefully or crash a lot. Crashing only reduces your shields though, until you blow up. Just fly carefully and you can easily navigate even narrow corridors with your ship's reduced hitbox.

[ShadowTiger]

I love the concept. A few points to mention:

1) Some people don't have a scroll wheel. Yes really. Any way to set the controls?
2) That includes WASD to the arrow keys.
3) The relative strafing is a bit strange, and I can't seem to get used to it. Any consideration to just mapping it to straight left/right/up/down instead of strafing relative to the direction you're facing? It might be a bit more intuitive.
4) The shield bar might be more appealing as numbers, like in Metroid's Health meter.

[King Aquamentus]

1) This was a concern of mine regarding any macintosh versions that might appear at a later date. I'm really not sure what I could do for an alternative, and the controls are mapped specifically rather than to some sort of numbered index that you could change out on the fly. (if button #0 is pressed you shoot. Let's set button #0 to the Q key or the up key or whatever". This is just a limitation of Game Maker. Renoki was saying the same thing.

In short, the controls cannot be set because of the way events and actions work. I can definitely alter the pause key and let you select a weapon in relative comfort, though.

2) This kinda segues into both #1 and #3, mostly #1 though. I can change WASD to the arrow keys, but they'll be arrow keys FOR EVERYONE. Which maybe they'll like. I dunno, I think of a lot of modern games using WASD so that's where I put it. But hey... We'll see which of the two is more preferable.

3) The game is very dependent on the direction you are facing, especially in terms of combat. As easy as cardinal directions sound, they would by necessity not be able to govern dedicated forward movement. While cardinal movement could be done, a seperate button would be needed for moving towards the mouse.

Honestly though, the controls are just something you have to get used to, for the most part. Even I will admit that strafing is a little bit broken, because it is supposed to reset every time you let go of the button, depending on where the mouse is in relation to it. Originally, A and D always moved it in the same direction, which got confusing when the craft was facing downward. You bring up a good point, it's just that this would not be able to govern your main forward movement and there'd need to be some more buttons to press.

That's open to change, just keep in mind what other buttons use what. Right click for instance...

4) I don't wanna rip off either game *too* much. Although they don't appear, there are health expansions that take the form of squares below your health bar (much like in Metroid), for a total of 16 in the game. Each of these is part of a global variable string for determining specific collected instances (did you get the one IN THIS ROOM yet? Oh you did, ok I"ll delete it then."), as rooms cannot remain on persistent status due to enemy populations.

Health as a number would actually be relatively easy. I could even display it in terms of TOTAL health by using the value of collected health tanks as a hundreds digit, and they'd probably work out alright with this. Again, the problem is trying to find a preferential sweet spot, something more people prefer to something else. Not impossible, just not sure it'd be popular.

In short, I can *fix* things, but I can't open them up to the player to change (due to how events are handled.) for #3, It sounds good, but I'll need to determine an extra button to use (and that could be dramatically dependent upon #2.

There's actually plans for a somewhat unique minimap system too, but it requires more knowledge of drawing surfaces than I possess.