Member-Run Project ppower indies

Although you stated this project was mainly a test of programming experience, I'll critique it from a game design standpoint, because I think it both deserves it and because when judged as one, I think it can hold its own pretty well.

So as far as vertical scrollers go, this one is quite enjoyable. I like the different ships, the different enemies (especially the ones that shoot at you) and the huge amount of enemies that show up at a certain point. Generally, I think you did a good job, although I have a few things you could improve on.
It really feels good to read this kind of feedback, firstly I thought it was very generic and unoriginal.
But I find it still a good concept to start developing own programs. :p
First of all, the player has no progression: they starts with a set amount of lives that can't be replenished (personally I feel three green lives is a little on the low side) and a set attack speed and damage that can't be increased, or in other words, the player doesn't get stronger. I know power-ups are a cliché, but they do work wonders in games like this, because they give the player more control over their surroundings. You could also reward the player as they progresses through the game, such as giving him a blue life every time they gains a level, or giving them a score multiplier.
I was indeed thinking about this, but I'll rather like it that they'll start weaker instead of getting stronger than they already are, power-ups are indeed likely to happen, maybe even very strong power-ups for a limited time.
Because I enjoy those too.
I think the difficulty ramp up is well paced: I last about two minutes per game, which I think is a good duration for a game like this. The enemy increase doesn't feel too sudden and the green and red enemies appear at appropriate times. All in all, good job.
Thanks a lot, I've been messing around with spawnrates and level progress for some time.
As for movement, I don't much like the 'sliding' effect when you let go of the arrow keys, I feel it takes some control away from here. A simple move-on-key-down, stop-moving-on-key-up would work fine here, I think.
Yeah, the ship movements has become the thing where most have been bothered around, I'll see what I can do about.
I really like the small particles on the foreground, they really help give the impression of speed to your game. The background parallax feels a bit cluttery, however, and some of the sprites (planets, for instance) look blurry (which could be filtering, but I assume it's the sprites themselves). You might want to reduce the amount of background objects a bit. Apart from that, you could try and speed up the parallax as the game gets on, which gives the player the impression he's going faster (even though he isn't).
I think the blurry part is happening because it's enlarged, I'm not quite sure how to fix that.
Balancing wise, Silvyne is clearly the superior choice, the damage of her rockets (which can one shot everything up to the red dudes, haven't survived long enough to find out if there are any more) doesn't outweigh the attack speed reduction. As an iteration, I suggest you up the attack speed of the Trex rather dramatically, which I think will both balance the ships better as well as give the use of Trex's ship more satisfaction to the player. I could be completely wrong, but hey, that's what iterations are for.
I'm not quite sure about this, I think it fits better to nerf Silvyne's ship a little. starting with that it needs 2 rockets shots to take out a green one.
(Just pointing out, the green alien has more health than the red one)
User feedback wise, I think there should be a little indication (a small sound would do) when a ship passes the player and they lose one of the blue lives, because it gives them a better idea of how much they still have left without having to look at the life bar itself. Something similar could enhance the level gaining experience, which currently is almost unnoticeable.

A minor bug I found is that the horizontal limits are not symmetrical: the player can touch the left border of the screen, but not the right one. Nothing game breaking, just my neurosis acting up.
That's indeed something minor that I'll probably add.
and I havn't looked at the screen with + ship width for quite some time, I'll look at it.
This might feel like a lot of criticism, but these are actually just quite small details. All things considered, I think this is a solid arcade game, if perhaps a bit generic. Spice it up with some uniqueness, make it your own, and I think you have a nice little web game on your hands.
I'm okay with the criticism, specially after I already got one from W1K :p
It was formely designed to be forced to use 2 ships at once, that was kinda the 'unique' thing I had in mind, but I had to agree while testing that singleplayer might not be a bad option after all.

It's great feedback, just saying 'it's good' doesn't really help me to improve it further, that's what I like about.
Thank you for the criticism, I've enjoyed the read :)
 
For those interested in the code.
I've uploaded, temporary, the source code of the game, so far nothing has changed since yesterday.
I've only released it to view the source code to give feedback at it, I don't allow you to copy the program and use it for your own.
It's created with Visual Studio 2013, XNA, so I guess that's required to view the solution:

[Link deleted]

I'll remove the source code at the 4th of Wednessday, for safety means.
 
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"May the fourth be with you"

Space Siblings v1.0.1 is now out!
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dzj9ia5riiif90b/Space_Siblings_v1.0.1.zip

This comes with minor changes and additions:
- Made some cleanup in code, thanks to the feedback I've gotten.
- Minor bugfixes and slight changes about the movement
- The game will now automatically turn on pause when clicking away from the screen.
- The Tutorial has been extended, and also includes the game's main objective.
- There's now a slight delay between firing bombs.
- Bombs won't be consumed during the tutorial. allowing you to test them out.
- The green alienships defence has been strengthened and is now more resistant against rocket explosions.
- Asteroids can now appear at different angles and upside down.
- When selecting a character/spaceship, the names are now the ship's names instead of the character's.
- The right border can now correctly be touched.
- There's now a beeping sound when an alien passed by.
- Sounds and music can now be toggled in the options menu.
 
Loving the new changes. The extended tutorial looks great, so do all the small changes. Asteroids definitely look a lot more diverse now. As I thought, the 2 rockets requirement for green ships didn't change much in terms of time but definitely makes them a bit more of a threat as you now need to align the ship properly to nat two rockets instead of just one on the go.
Also, could I ask what exactly changed about the movement mechanics? They seem to be still rather wonky.
 
Also, could I ask what exactly changed about the movement mechanics? They seem to be still rather wonky.
I was looking at the velocity stats while ingame.
It was everything but fixed, when standing still, it's the entire time flickering around the zero's, and it'll always reach outside the max speed.
that part looks cleaner now, it's now hitting 0 when standing still and correctly reaches the maximum speed. (I also reduced the max speed from 10 to 8.5)

Sadly I havn't done more on the movement and the current bugfixes were really minor.
I've tried a huge overhaul, but didn't really came out as expected, so I reverted most of the changes made.
I'm kinda expecting to have a better fix in movement for the next update.
 
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Space Siblings 1.0.2 is released!
http://www.mediafire.com/download/5buy6vo40d61if8/Space_Siblings_v1.0.2.zip

---Changelog v1.0.2---
- The highscore will now remain when exiting the game (yey!).
- Current movement is now more stabile, with a slight faster speed up and more friction.
- There's also an option to disable the friction and acceleration entirely.
- The options in the option menu is rearranged.
- The sounds have been slightly lowered.
- The progress through each level is more balanced.
- Fixed a bug where the bigger backgrounds and planets didn't spawned.
- Some other minor changes made.

Since I was testing this version alone, a chance on bugs/Balance issues is a possibility.


I guess this might be the last update with the idea of the game.
But I've ideas of upcoming changes that mat change the gameplay a bit :).
 
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I definitely love the new changes to acceleration and friction, they truly make the ship much easier to control. I also love the no-friction option as it suits my space shooter tastes, although it does simplify the game a great bunch. We'll just let it slip and call it an experiment.

With the ships control side of difficulty lightened up a tad bit, I found my focus switching more on spawn waves.
I'm not sure how random the spawn chances of green ships are, but I found multiple spawns in fast succession in various occasions, which is not too much of a problem really, it's a fair incentive for playing SilverStar as it has no problems clearing them up.
What truly I found problematic is the spawn chance of the fast moving yellow ships, as they tend to essentially swarm in big numbers on high level waves with barely any time to react, if any at all due to them occasionally spawning on opposite sides of the screen. They are easier to track down with LaserShip as one would expect due to the high fire rate, but they are still fairly hard to track down for both ships, while SilverStar makes the green ships problem not a problem at all.
Possible balance changes I would suggest are slowing down their movement speed a slight bit, so that they are still a major target but give you an easier time to react. Alternatively, a "fast movement" feature for the ship, similar to how some games allow you to speed up your ship movement on need through holding a specific key, it would be particularly beneficial as on high levels enemies are essentially everywhere and killing key targets fast is the essence.

Also gameplay changes hype.
 
I definitely love the new changes to acceleration and friction, they truly make the ship much easier to control. I also love the no-friction option as it suits my space shooter tastes, although it does simplify the game a great bunch. We'll just let it slip and call it an experiment.
More or less,
It's difficult to balance the non-friction movements, if it becomes too slow then it cannot made it in time to the other side, and if it's too fast then it'll be at cost of SilverStar's accuracy, I personally enjoy the friction more, but I just kept the function for more usage and reasons.
With the ships control side of difficulty lightened up a tad bit, I found my focus switching more on spawn waves.
I'm not sure how random the spawn chances of green ships are, but I found multiple spawns in fast succession in various occasions, which is not too much of a problem really, it's a fair incentive for playing SilverStar as it has no problems clearing them up.
hmm, they shouldn't be much changed compared with previous updates. And random is random, so I cannot really help much with it.
I can point out that the Alienships spawns are in a switch case depending on the level, with the default on the yellow one, and green takes the number 5.
...I think that's better explained in the code:
Code:
public void CreateEnemy(GameTime gameTime, HUD hud, List<Enemy> enemies, ContentManager Content, int amountOfPlayers, List<Effect> effects)
        {
            timer[0] += gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.Milliseconds;
            if (hud.level < hud.maxLevel)
            {
                spawnTimer = 400 / ((0.5f * 0.5f * amountOfPlayers) * 0.3f * (1 + hud.level));
            }
            if (timer[0] > spawnTimer)
            {
                timer[0] = 0;
                spawnpositions[0].X = rnd.Next(0, 550);
                selectObject = rnd.Next(0, 1 + hud.level);
                Enemy e;
                switch (selectObject)
                { 
                    default:
                        {
                            e = new Enemy(//make traveller (Yellow Alien) );
                            break;
                        }
                    case 5:
                        {
                            e = new Enemy(//make defender (Green Alien) );
                            break;
                        }
                    case 10:
                        {
                            e = new Enemy(//make fighter (Red Alien) ) ;
                            break;
                        }
                }
                enemies.Add(e);
            }
        }
What I'm trying to say with this is that there's a bigger change that a green Alien will spawn at level 5, and that it'll slightly reduce at each level afterwards because of the yellow ones taking the spot.
What truly I found problematic is the spawn chance of the fast moving yellow ships, as they tend to essentially swarm in big numbers on high level waves with barely any time to react, if any at all due to them occasionally spawning on opposite sides of the screen. They are easier to track down with LaserShip as one would expect due to the high fire rate, but they are still fairly hard to track down for both ships, while SilverStar makes the green ships problem not a problem at all.
Possible balance changes I would suggest are slowing down their movement speed a slight bit, so that they are still a major target but give you an easier time to react. Alternatively, a "fast movement" feature for the ship, similar to how some games allow you to speed up your ship movement on need through holding a specific key, it would be particularly beneficial as on high levels enemies are essentially everywhere and killing key targets fast is the essence.
Slowing down the yellow aliens might be difficult, since they're rectangles that uses an integer to move, which is already at their lowest.
I should use decimals to make them move slower, but I don't know if that's possible for their rectangle(which allows only ints).
Unless it's actually possible to turn and move it with a decimal, if so, then I wouldn't know how.

having an additional key to move faster would be interesting, but that can also greatly change the balance too, I'm a bit neutral about since I find the current maximum movement fine enough, but I'll look for it.
Also gameplay changes hype.
\o/
 
hmm, they shouldn't be much changed compared with previous updates. And random is random, so I cannot really help much with it.
I can point out that the Alienships spawns are in a switch case depending on the level, with the default on the yellow one, and green takes the number 5.
...I think that's better explained in the code:

The built-in random number generator doesn't provide a very good distribution of numbers. It might be worth while to look into a better way to generate your random numbers, whether it is picking something from the cryptography namespace or better yet google around and find one of the many rng classes that are based on better algorithms such as Mersenne Twister.
 
Well, with the 1.3.1 update been almost knocking on the door, I have to say that I'll stop for a little with updating this.
During the development of the game, I do have left aside my school stuff and such, and I'm still busy working on that.
And besides that, I've also some other projects and drawing ideas to do, so I'll give those a bigger priority for now.

I've still plenty of ideas planned to do for this game, including the earlier said gameplay changes.
It really feels statisfying to work on a new mechanic and then just see that it works, so I'll sure make the updates and probably also new games in the future,
but I'm also an all around gamer too. >w>

Anyways, yeah, when I've seen enough about Terraria 1.3.1 and wait for the updated adventure maps to come, I'll probably work on this thing again. :)

And just in case, my own highscore with the current version is 2170 points (with LaserShip in singleplayer), just to give you something to do in the meantime ;)
 
This is a pretty fun little game. I really enjoyed shooting those aliens. My only critique would be that using space on the menus seems slightly counter-intuitive; I expected something like enter. It's not that much of a problem though!

Can't wait to see any future projects you make ;)
 
I'm catching this up with some good stuff, changes and additions.

The main focus on this update are items, which might rarely drop from the alienships.
There are currently 5 different items in the game, where I'll probably keep it like that for now.

Some of the items restore something, while others give a short power-up:
Entering Hypermode.gif


Besides items, plenty of other stuff is coming too. :)
 
The Update is, program wise, done. but I decided to wait another week for testing purposes.


This will most likely be the last major update for this game, but this is also a pretty big one too.
This update will come with things like:
- Ability to switch control settings.
- able to choose 2 of the same ships.
- Balancing and longer playtime.
- Controlling 2 ships at once.
(Technically, that was already possible since the start, but I got carried away and named it under '2 players / multiplayer')

Also, I've given the four testers their own reference in the game, as a thanks for the help.

And a screenshot with some of the features:
Game View v1.0.3.PNG


Changes are possible that I'll return to this and update it again, but I also want to move on to newer things.

But nonetheless, I feel like I've made a thing where I can be proud of.
I've now finally a neat product that I can show that I've made on my own :happy:
 
It's finally ready, Space Siblings 1.0.3 is out!

http://www.mediafire.com/download/1e48oso8s7lqx2a/Space_Siblings_v1.0.3.zip

This comes with many additions, gameplay changes and the said items.
It was huge for me, but I've tested it for numerous times and the things are going as planned.

Features:
- Enemy forces have now a chance to drop a random item to be collected. this can differ from a life restore to a temporary power-up.
power-ups will activate on it's own when collected, and has a duration meter to show how long it remains active.
Using a bomb will destroy the items on the screen, and items will be ignored if it's not needed (like when it's already in use, or you have already full health).
- The Spaceships will now start shooting at a slower fire rate. but can collect a certain item to improve it's fire rate.
- You can now change your ship controls, with the options 'Up,Left,Right', 'W,A,D,' or 'I,J,L'.
- There's a new menu that allows you to select Spaceships before playing.
- A bonus spaceship with a new weapon has joined the team, this is unlocked when reaching 2000 points.
- Thanks to the 'Manual Robot Control', It's possible to play with two types of the same ship, this is unlocked when the new spaceship is arrived.
- A rare non-playable ship may appear during the fight, helping the spaceships with providing supplies.
- All options and settings are saved when exiting the game.
- The Alpha-testers now got a small reference.
- De title background has now an animation.

Changes:
- Changed the 'P1,P2/2 players/multiplayer' text. Because it's not obligatory to have 2 players to play. The game's main feature is to be able to control 2 ships at once.
- You can change the amount of ships during the ship selection.
- The point requirement to reach the next level after level 5 has been increased. (to reach level 15, you now need 2200 points instead of 1700)
- Bombs are now a collectable item, so you'll only start with 1 bomb.
- The Traveller/Yellow Alien has a smaller chance to activate its boost.
- Credit.txt became README.txt and has more content.
- The Defender's Health is no longer buffed when playing with 2 ships.
- Fixed a bug when 2 bullets hitting the enemy only counted as 1 hit. (this means that the LaserShip will now correctly do double damage when both lasers hit the enemy)

Minor:
- There's an additional background planet (to fill in a blank placeholder).
- The face icons now show all their animations.
- The Tutorial can now be skipped by pressing esc.
- The selection arrow can go around the menu. (a.e. pressing down while at the bottem brings you to the top)
- The game window will no longer hide your mouse cursor away when clicking outside the screen. (I'm suprised that it's not a standard feature)
- The spaceship now correctly start at the center.
- Fixed a bug where instakill attacks, like the bomb and ship collisions, might not destroy the enemy you were shooting at.
- Fixed a bug where the spaceships loosed a final shot after a game-over.
- Done quite a bit of code cleanup.

This will be the last major update for a while, mostly because I want to get back some older projects and drawing.
But like I said earlier, I've really enjoyed developing and playing it and I hope that I'll improve more after this.

I'm open to hear more (minor) suggestions and eventual bug reports, I don't mind if it's done in PM or said in this thread.

And with that said, enjoy this nice patch. :happy:
 
-snip-
because everyone loves cheats, right?
I'm not sure what the rules on the forums are with thirth party programs on someone's else game.
But it does violate me to see this actually happening to my own game.

Ah well, I've made the game balance like this so it's enjoyable like it is now,
but I've also have changed several of variables during testing just for fun, and to see a massive amount of bullet spam happening.

whether it's legal or not, it's up to you if you want to use it.
 
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