Lunar Gravitar wip

[Shockman]

I'll check that out. After the lander is destroyed anywhere, it should spawn above the surface near where it does in the arcade version.

 

[Shockman]

The fixed res, 1024x768 version is updated and uploaded.

You can jump, right into Lunar Lander by pressing L at the title screen.

Lunar Gravitar wip - Pinball Nirvana Forums

 

[Shockman]

Lunar Gravitar Updated

The HD version is uploaded as well.

second post in this thread

Lunar Gravitar wip - Pinball Nirvana Forums

 

[kristian]

Hi Shocky.... been really busy with my house (construction work)... will test this as soon as possible... looking good...!!

 

[Shockman]

The HD version is updated to 0.6.3

- Lots of behavior changes.
- All planets in the first system have landscapes respective of the arcade version. There are differences in guns and fuel pods. Planet 1 for example has turrets on the base. Other planets have turrets on the bunkers. Planet 3 of the second solar system has original arcade guns and fuel pods. I will choose a style as universal.
-The second system has planets 3 and 4 , also modeled after the arcade version, and the link. The link for now links the two systems without changes. You can do half of system one, link to system 2 and come back to one to find it as you left it.
-Link planet two has turrets in it. Unlike the arcade version, in which you don't see them until you engage the reactor, you see these on the way in, but they are inactive. These too are the arcade style bunkers that fire blindly. They have a proximity detector that activates them. All turrets in the game does. The arcade don't.
-Bonuses for every planet in the game. Runs down as you play the landscape. The remainder is awarded when you complete that mission and escape the planet without crashing or being shot. The bonus is shown at spawn at the system map.
-You are placed close to the planet when you leave it, with a mission complete or not. if you are killed you are place at your home base.

It's a friggen hard game, and my version is hard as well. The control of the ship is slower and smoother but still some of the landscapes take some trial and error and planning to get these turrets without crashing.

IF it is too hard type IF at the title screen or just I or just F. I is an improved invincibility where you are truly invincible now, but be careful to not get lost off screen below the landscape, as there is not a lot of point to code wrap or bounce for a test function. If it creates a problem I could add a upright function key. F is unlimited fuel. I is reversible with the O key and you can still play with limited fuel with the F hot key that in the game just adds 400 units.

Lunar Gravitar wip - Pinball Nirvana Forums

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

cool- sounds good. let's see if tonight will be a good night to get back to testing.

btw, do you have people at the yoyo forums doing some testing as well?

 

[Shockman]

It has not even been downloaded there as far as I know. There are 4 people I could ask and they will do it, but I have not talked with them yet. The last version was put up there for the first time. Being in the WIP section, and the fact that it is old school, makes it a bit obscure. My finished releases are not even downloaded a lot, but are rated high by those that do.

You Ike, will want to get the first post version for lower resolution, fully scaled to your monitor. I'm going to update that version now.

If anyone wants a 4/3 version I could force that as well (no monitor stretching).

 

[Shockman]

Lunar Gravitar v0.6.3

lower resolution version Updated. Exactly in sync with the HD version, but with 1024x768 viewports.

Lunar Gravitar wip - Pinball Nirvana Forums

 

[Shockman]

Since no one has downloaded it yet, I sneaked in a minor update that fixed some things with the lander without bumping the revision. Lower res version only so far.

This version I fear is going to have to have a major adjustment, being native 1024x768 instead of the scaling down of the larger surface, to make it sharper.

I am leaning towards only Gravitar and Lander now, and this lander landscape will be one of the harder levels and in it's place wider pads on an easier landscape.

I know I need to get the Gravitar section of the lander planet to look better as well.

 

[Shockman]

Things that are fixed for the next release which will be at the earliest when I finish the planets for the second solar system. Probably tomorrow.

- More improvements to the lander.
- Lander has it's own fuel supply.
- Fixed super bonus puking out points till the timer to display the text ended.
- Bonus countdown is suspended while playing the lander.
- Ships now crash into the landed ship. only the flying one is destroyed.
- Fixed super bonus and made it 20000 points (exactly lander which is 400 per pad). I am going to make it give the pad total, then if all, a exactly multiplier.
- Fixed bonus amount for planet 3 of system two.
- Depth adjustments. this broke some depth issues with the temp invincibility cheat. Not a big deal.
- Improved the subterranean planet 4 of system graphics.
- Fanfare sound when mission complete.
- More realistic alien pursuit pattern. needs work though. The shooting aliens hold back and fire, the could run into you, but they tend not to. A bit elusive. The rammers will ram, but not a direct move towards like before.
- Alien shoot sound.
- Game Over. five lives.
- Bullet proof cheat. more fun. shots don't kill you, but collisions with ships and land will. Invisibility will work as before and will turn on bullet proof.
- Infinite lives cheat.
- Cycle through systems with the S key.
- Worked on sounds and volume levels.
- Turrets will not fire on lander. They probably should, but a couple is so close and trying to fire through the ground. It don't sound good. If I can make them smarter (line of sight), I will certainly have them fire at the lander.
- The third solar system is complete. Just 5 more planet landscapes to build.

TIPS,
- Don't rotate the lander before you cleared the pad a few feet.
- Pick up the fuel pod on the surface of planet 4 which will be added to the landers supply.
- Be careful not to go for another land pad if you don't have enough fuel. Watch the fuel closely. Save enough to either get back to the fighter, or to fly up and out to the solar system.
- If you really want the super bonus, save some turrets for last. If the mission is complete and you crash the lander, out of fuel or not, you will be returned to the solar system and the planet is gone.
- Use your home base as a shield. You can shoot out through it, but the aliens can not.
- Be careful when approaching the alien planet, as that is where the aliens are spawning. After some time the safety is stale and they can spawn.
- Try to get all the turrets in planet 4 of system one, the subterranean one on an orbital run without thrusting after setting the orbit. It's possible, if you enter the orbit just right.

 

[Shockman]

Last compile gave an out of system resources error. This is not good. I am going to have to create a cleaner environment, and optimism the game. It's a bummer, but not so big a surprise. Just running game booster and deleting some .pngs I used as templates has it running again, but that will probably not remain enough. I only need to squeeze in three more worldscapes and the rest is code manipulation. I do have some lazy routines in it that can be re-written, but I will have to learn some things.

At this rate still I expect a beta version virtually complete in 1 1/2 to three weeks.

The .exe will not have the overhead of the dev. kit. If I can compile it, you can run it.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

"Out of resources error?" Seriously? Are you designing for a C64 or for modern systems in which conserving resources is a base affront to how the modern paradigm works?

Dear, dear, dear.

-cell post

 

[Shockman]

I'll tell you what the problem is. This new computer I am using does not have a GPU other than the on-board one that shares the ram. That's the first part. The second is that all the landscapes are sprites, and some of them are bigger than the screen which is 1920x1080 in the version I am working on. If they were full color and had alpha trans. it would have been over much sooner.

The reason I use massive sprites, is because GM does not have sprite, or object to background collision, and if it did it would be very slow. The only alternative to sprites is math coords. and I would not be a quarter of the way through the first landscape, and that would be very slow as well anyway. There is one other way and that is checking on a pixel by pixel bases (color) and that is very slow too.

Not relevant, but in line, GM does not have a flood fill function. People have written routines to do that, but to fill one if these landscapes, if I was doing that, would take minutes, not seconds.

New computers can run out of resources, it's just that it takes a lot of resources to max them out. This game might require a minimum specs statement, but I would not know how to calculate that.

Another reason is that I am not a master of programming by any means. I have spent this evening Optimizing the game, and the problem is bumped ahead. How far ahead, I don't know. The graphics is the hog, but I can take some comfort in the fact that I am using on-board gpu sharing the ram. So, as I said, if I can compile it, you can run it.

The sounds are pre-loaded. They are not huge files, but this takes resources. If they weren't there would be a loading time the first time each one was used.

Scaling back on the idea is always an option, and that dates back to forever.

I have all the solar systems zooming and animating. I have the planets in the first two systems in, and that just leaves 3 more for the last system, though I hope to get 4 in it. The forth being the last and hardest Lunar Lander super bonus planet.

After getting the game back to compiling I made the second link planet hide the guns till the reactor is activated, and made the third one have more guns, and start with the guns showing and activated. Unlike the planets, the alien link planets restart with all the guns, even the ones you shot last time, and the regular planets hold your progress in that respect as well as spent fuel pods.

The remaining planets might be done in a day or two. Then it's just a matter of going through the three systems again, changing variables.

In the end you will not be able to link back to a previous system and find the planets as you left them, you will cycle forward, and that will free up a lot of resources. When a mission complete message appears and you leave that planet, It will be deleted and all the guns, fuel pods etc. as well. It's the same amount of objects, just keeping the instances of those in check.

 

[Shockman]

I actually need to put one more level in one of the planets in the second system. It was going to be one with the lander bonus game. I will just clone the first lander level and put it in, this will just take a couple of minutes, then I will clone the levels of system two for system three. If instead of just calling the same routines I actually made clones of them it would tell me for sure that I have room to make unique ones before I commit to building another solar system. Then it can be out for testing maybe tomorrow.


EDIT,

I think it was all the running of the game, testing code. I know I am not freeing up everything, so there is a memory leak. I restarted the computer and cloned the sprites and backgrounds and everything. All the resources the game will need is now part of the code. They just need unique drawing. There is no problem. I will be sure to give you all your memory back before I release it.

 

[Shockman]

Here is a sample of the font I am creating for this game. It will especially make the lower resolution version much better.

The sample shows an F. Its actually two. The first one is white, and the second one is off white over it. The white is the upper case and the top is lower case. It is notched so the glow at the intersections is more. It is thicker so is nice looking and easier to read when scaled.

It's a .ttf font, not a picture. It was actually made using cut and paste of the actual font via MAME into the High Logic font editor. It will have off size letters to match the Gravitar arcade vectors. It's a bit fat, but I had the game on double line thickness, otherwise I could not see the aliens and turrets shots in MAME.

 

[Shockman]

Lunar Gravitar v0.7.0L Updated

The 1024x768 version is uploaded.

-New font, just the upper case is done. It looks much better than the vector font I was using.
-No unique planets on system 3 other than the link planet. These planets can be visited, but share some variables with there counterparts, dump you to the systems their counterparts are in, and the viewports are not tweaked. It's best to just not visit them.

The game play and behavior is getting there. Systems one and two are very playable.

-The I cheat is really just for testing areas quickly, but B for bullet proof does not take all the fun out. L will give you unlimited lives. F will give unlimited fuel.

Fuel and Invincibility have hot keys F, and I

S during play will cycle through the systems.

The screen shots are new.

Lunar Gravitar wip - Pinball Nirvana Forums

 

[Shockman]

WIP report (no update)

-Further refinement of the font, making the height closer. Forget what I said about double striking for vector overlap, it's just too much work to lay out and I failed to realize that the numbers would not work that way.

-The rammers are working right. They are persistent, but won't drop too low. They will be hanging around for you to come out.

-The lander game has two working levels with progressively harder landing sites and gravity. This is the same whether playing the lander game only or as bonus games in the main game.

-Disabled the remaining three worlds that are not built yet . The planets are built and appear in the system map though.

-Fixed elements that appear in sections they shouldn't, link the door or fuel pods.

- Other stuff

 

[Shockman]

Here is a variation of the frog planet, on easy mode.

 

[Shockman]

These are all the planets that are in.

As you can see there are consistency issues with line thickness, proportion, and aspect ratio.

System one, level one is working perfectly, System two, level one needs just a couple of issues with spawn points, exit points, etc., and System 3, level one needs a bit more of the behavior plugged in.

I went with the original style of guns and threw out the turrets. Each level is modeled after the arcade version. This will give a solid base if I want to create a level designer to change up the landscapes or to redraw them for a sequel.

I expect to have a true beta release in about 3 days time, perhaps with all 4 levels, as all the elements are now in.

Each screenshot here shows all the worlds in each system.

 

[Shockman]

Beta 1 is finished and testing is going well. Will be released late tonight.

It has all 4 levels. That means first run through all systems have regular gravity (pull towards surface) second time through is reverse gravity. Third regular gravity and invisible landscapes, and 4th time through is reverse gravity with invisible landscapes.

The ship now has a shield along with the tractor.

There is no lander mission in the third system. I will make an original mission with a dynamic gravity point. Perhaps a wandering or intermittently shifting black hole.

Many other improvements too.

It is unlike the arcade version in that,

- the ship is more sluggish, but smoother and easier to control.
- you need to visit the link planet to link. if all the missions are complete you will link to the next system. If not, you can run through the link planet and activate the reactor.
- the aliens and rammers are there, but will not force you into the close up battles. This was my least favorite part of this game, and it will never be in this version.
- the zooms do not grow but instead switch instantly. Not much I could do. These sprites are too massive to animate that way.
- other than the link, the planet armament do not increase in number per level. I will change this later.
- the tractor orientates it's self to the ship, not the ground. You need to rotate away from items you tractor. I might change this if I can get it to know what the closest ground is.
- differences in scoring, fuel consumption and bonuses.
- sounds
- presention
- other things
- gravity is more constant. I am going to work on that though.

Next I am going to see if I can create a level editor for this. If not I will slowly replace the missions in a new build with all original missions. Debugging this is first though.