Blue Fiend - updated and open sourced!

[CyanPrime]

Recommended: 3ghz processor.

Controls:
WSAD || HOME/END/DELETE/ PAGEDOWN = MOVE
LEFT MOUSE = LEFT GUN
RIGHT MOUSE = RIGHT GUN
E || PAGEUP = BOOST
V = PAUSE

Tip: Boosting makes you invincible.
http://prime.turquoisegrotto.com/java/bluefiend.jnlp

[kappa]

runs a bit slow here, guess the mass of System.out.println()'s don't help performance.

[CyanPrime]

runs a bit slow here, guess the mass of System.out.println()'s don't help performance.

That and the blur makes this thing a beast Still, it runs at 40% on my p4..

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[zammbi]

Does use a lot of cpu, but does run for me.
I found it easy, boss was no challenge but guessing this is only the start... Keep up the good work.

[CyanPrime]

Thanks. I already updated it to version 1.1 you can try it with the link in the first post.

[CaptainJester]

Totally unplayable here.  It just continually jumps around all over.

Windows XP Pro
Java v1.6.0_06

[CyanPrime]

Totally unplayable here.  It just continually jumps around all over.

Windows XP Pro
Java v1.6.0_06

processor and ram?

edit:
I have some ideas about my game I think I'm going to implement

Like taking out the Z+X gun

And making it so that the X bomb goes off even if it hits something

Also, should guns lose power if you're boosting since boosting makes you invincible?


edit 3: removed center gun, fixed x bomb, added strafing (A,S) and changed how boosting works (hold down to use);

[CyanPrime]

Added new controls.

[teletubo]

The mouse aiming is a little strange, if I point directly into an enemy I wont hit it, I have to calculate a small "deviation" ...

Also, the controls are a little awkward for this kind of game . Normally you rotate you ship and go forward - backward .

Apart from that it can be a good game if you work in the control issues

[CommanderKeith]

Cool graphics, but like the above, mouse aiming is weird since the bullet doesn't go where you click.

I like the way there's no security dialog and it just works. How did you do the blur etc? Just using java2D?

Great work,
Keith

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[Eli Delventhal]

Pretty cool, worked fine on my laptop. You'd probably get better performance if you used images instead of lines - I find that Java's drawing tools go really slowly.

The boss was super easy.

Also, the enemies eventually would just stack on top of each other in the corner and shoot me from there, instead of moving around.

[CyanPrime]

added in new enemies, and made endboss not suck.

[CyanPrime]

(8:17:49 PM) CyanPrime: I got rid of the reload
(8:17:57 PM) CyanPrime: and made the bomb gun only have 3 shots
(8:18:04 PM) CyanPrime: I made the player bullests fater
(8:18:14 PM) CyanPrime: and I gave the player powerups
(8:18:19 PM) CyanPrime: when he kills 15 and 30 people

[hexatronic]

It worked for me, but it was quite jerky. I recommend you try one of the openGL bindings if you would like to get smooth vector gfx. I also had the mouse deviation problem. The control system is unusual but interesting -- you should persevere with it. I am not sure what the blur is trying to achieve, it just seems to confuse things.

cheers

josh

[CyanPrime]

Okay, so I got rid of the background to make things less confusing, and I halfed the blur. Also, I made the player ship twice as fast.

...Oh, yeah. I open sourced it too.
Just click on the get source button here.
I'm looking for ways to make it use less resources, so if anyone figures out how t cut it by like half please let me know.

[CyanPrime]

Cut health by 1/4th.

[Mr_Light]

weirdly enough on my freakish icetea ubuntu broken x - it ran smooth.

some comments:
controls are 'unusual' - but I like it.
quite crowded quickly - perhaps make all the units and bullets smaller ~ scale the 'map' bigger
use colours to differentiate between power ups - I suddenly was firing 3 bullets while I couldn't grasp how that happened.
perhaps add heat seeking missiles or something and or objects to hide behind - but that's something up to the creator
build up of difficulty could use some tweaking


imho offcourse


//edit

(8:18:19 PM) CyanPrime: when he kills 15 and 30 people

hmm notify the user more I gues - free game fade to 50% gray or alike and splash the screen with "15 kills! - powerup" or killingspree! and resume or some other visual aid.

//edit2
That also gives a better sense of achievement - adding additional objectives (or rather more targeted ones) will have towards that respect

could be me but aiming seems to be a bit inaccurate at times - can someone confirm?

[CyanPrime]

I can conferm the aiming. It's a bug I've been after for weeks now.  someday it WILL be fixed.
Also, I will be adding the power up notification to the next version.

[SunshineKiller]

i actually enjoyed this game. The only thing i could say would be to try and make it act more like a space ship with some physics, but then again that might not make it as fun.

[CaptainJester]

The first time I played this was on my work computer.  Now that I have played it at home the playability has improved a bit.  However I think the biggest performance hit is having all those ghost trails for everything.  It really makes the game hard to follow.

You might want to scale everything down a bit too.  With the size of my ship and tha bad guys, the control system makes it hard to not run into everything.

[gouessej]

Hi!

I only have a Sempron 2600+, it is a very little bit slow but quite playable. Is there any sound? I don't hear anything. The aiming with the mouse is not accurate enough, I have to beside the ships to shot them successfully. Good work, keep it up.

[mh114]

Runs a bit too slowly to be playable (Ubuntu Linux, Java 1.6.0_10, old Athlon XP 2600+). I'm not a big fan of the controls, they feel awkward somehow, but perhaps it just needs some time to sink in.. As for the graphics, nothing wrong with using vector/line graphics, but I think you should pay some attention to the choice of colors. A more consistent color scheme would make the game look nicer. Currently some of the color choices contradict each other and it looks more amateurish than it actually is.. But if the graphics are just place holders -- ignore everything I just said.

[DzzD]

I like the gameplay for such game (but I dont like such game : shoot them up), anyway it look good except that it run a little to slowly here (also I would have prefer an Applet one):

- AMD 1.6
- Java 1.6-07
- ATI X800

[ChrisM]

[size=20pt]Recommended: 3ghz processor.[/size]

Controls:
WSAD || HOME/END/DELETE/ PAGEDOWN = MOVE
LEFT MOUSE = LEFT GUN
RIGHT MOUSE = RIGHT GUN
E || PAGEUP = BOOST
V = PAUSE

Tip: Boosting makes you invincible.
http://prime.turquoisegrotto.com/java/bluefiend.jnlp

Whaaaa?

[gouessej]

Whaaaa?

This should not require 3 Ghz, there is something wrong.

[h3ckboy]

yeah, that is one reason why he wanted to switch to opengl.

[h3ckboy]

I finnaly decided to play your game.

WOW, taht was fun! I didnt run slow at all!

I like the bad physics. it makes it more fun. more controlable.

[Gudradain]

... You need to fix the mouse aiming. Should be your priority.

Otherwise the game idea is good, but still need some tweaking on the gameplay. While the blur might be a cool visual effect it doesn't help the gameplay, much rather the opposite.

So overall I would say this has a good potential. Good luck.

[Eli Delventhal]

Hm, it actually seems worse than the last time I played it. Now I couldn't tell what was going on because there was too much on the screen plus the game was lagging.

[ewjordan]

Nice start!  I died fairly quickly, but it ran okay on my computer, at least until things got crowded.  The blur is probably causing some of the slowdown, but I suspect some other graphics slowdowns lurking somewhere.  In any case, I think it's worth seeing how it runs/plays without the blur, I agree it gets a bit distracting, and not in a more typical Robotron-clone manner.

One suggestion: try playing with the color scheme a bit.  Yellow/red is a tricky combo to make work, I don't think it's probably the best choice for a retro shooter, especially when you've got blues as well.  You might also want to rethink the stroked polygons - single pixel non-AA strokes tend to look pretty bad, see if you can figure out how to get them anti-aliased (depends how you're drawing), and it will be an improvement.  If that's not feasible, you might consider leaving them out or doing something else to add graphical interest to the ships

...then again, I'm saying this after spending too many hours fighting with my iPhone to hack anti-aliased fat lines by texture mapping (no AA line support on the chip, alas), so maybe I'm a bit too focused on smooth lines at the moment to be taken seriously...