Space Shooter - Feedback?

[GustavXIII]

Hi there!
I had to make a game for school, I worked 5 months on it.
I dont like it at all but I think its good enough for the school project.

If you have time can you test it and maybe tell what I can improve?

[size=6pt]New Download[/size]
Download



The controls:

ESC - Menu
SPACE - Shooting / OK
Pfeiltasten - Movement
P - Pause

Its only 1 level with a boss at the ending. Perhaps I did it to hard I dont know.
To start it just click "Start Game"

WARNING:
The game only runs on Windows x64.
I could not test Linux etc.

[princec]

URL's broken.

Cas

[GustavXIII]

Haha thanks I changed it ^.^

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[ra4king]

82.3MB?! What's in this?! I'm on hotel wifi that's tunneled to my home server right now....give me an hour...or two......or never

I'll update if I ever get this downloaded.

[GustavXIII]

Sorry!!
I know I hate it too.
I had to use .wav for Slick.

Because its only for school I did not care but you are right maybe I should convert it into something smaller that slick support too LOL 

[teletubo]

80MB of WAV music... is that really necessary ? at least to show us you could remove this.
Your chances of getting anyone to at least downloading your game will increase dramatically.

Now about the game...
Honestly, the screenshot looks way better than the actual game
the lack of animation, specially on the explosions, is a real turn off.
The enemy movement could have been smoothed a lot, I had the impression the pilots were sneezing constantly while driving that < looking ship.

There are some design flaws that I think you could easily fix, for example there's no visual/audio feedback when you hit enemy ships. They could blink red.
My shots go past thru the flying asteroids. That means they're in the backgound, right ? Wrong, I died when I hit them. Either they should not hurt my ship or they should block my shots.

Anyway for a game "for school" I think it is quite good. But, if you have time you can make it better.

By the way, I tested on windows XP 32, I just replaced lwjgl 2.7.1 libraries.

[GustavXIII]

Thanks!
Yes I will change the music and reload it tomorrow.

Explosion? So I shall do it more smooth?
What animation could I build in?
Are the bullets animation bad? "

Enemy Movement, you mean the blue enemys? You dont like it that they only fly straight left?
Haha I did this on purpose xD"
It should be the first level and the enemys should not be so skilled.

Yes I will add the visual/audio response then you hit a enemy ship
But I cant make them blink red because they shall be destroyed then the player collide with them.

Yes, at first I wanted to make that the bullets dont can fly through the asterroids but then it was difficult to targets the enemys >.<

Thanks for that I try to change it.

[Cero]

slick supports OGG, just encode to OGG

[UprightPath]

Building on what Teletubo said, it seems as though firing the gun itself was hit or miss (Ba-dum-kish!). If you're not just holding the button down it doesn't always catch that the button was pressed. I tend to prefer strategic shooting, so when I tap space three times in a row and nothing at all happens? Then I hold it down and I fire off ten bullets in rapid succession... Well you get the point.

[tberthel]

Great job for a school project.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[GustavXIII]

Ok I changed the Download now it is only 20Mb.

I will change the explosion animation so it looks smoother.
And I fix the Space Button.

I found a bug, when you die in the cave the ground enemys dont spawn again
I have to fix that too.

Did you manage to get to the boss or was is to hard?

Ok after that I will start again to work on my RPG.

Great job for a school project.

Yeah I think for my school it should be enough. I mean I could have done something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GyFiEKu-eOw

[princec]

A good start. Might be an idea to work on polish? Eg. game menus and UI, animation, collision detection and feedback, some more interesting alien behaviours - just general stuff to give you an idea for just how much work the "other" 99% of game development is. Then maybe start on that RPG.

Cas

[deathpat]

did you take the graphics from the amiga game project x ? They are very similar

[ReBirth]

Win64?

[GustavXIII]

did you take the graphics from the amiga game project x ? They are very similar

I took them from Gradius 3.
And I dont remember where I found the background Image

@ReBirth
Hm?

[princec]

btw to get it to run I had to copy over my own LWJGL jars and dlls over yours (mine are 2.8.3). The ones you've distributed with it don't seem to work.

Cas

[Jimmt]

82.3 MB and 5 months?

See, this is why you don't learn thru the school system.

[GustavXIII]

82.3 MB and 5 months?

See, this is why you don't learn thru the school system.

You have hurt my feelings :(

[size=4pt]:D
[/size]

[Jimmt]

Calm down bro. Just saying, I don't like the way schools teach. I don't know about your game, didn't want to spend too much time downloading.

[Ultroman]

Well, it's a great start. Well done! Again, building on the things others have said:
The enemies suck up way too many hits. I thought half of them were invulnerable (the < shaped ones). Turns out they just need 7-10 bullets to die. The game seems too fast paced for the amount of enemies when they can take this much damage.

Enemies can shoot for a long time before the enter the visible area. I find myself sometimes dodging 20-30 bullets, without being able to see a single enemy

It should always be possible to hit the little cannons on the walls. Sometimes it is impossible.

No health-indicator on the boss. I had no idea if there was a specific place I was supposed to hit him, so I don't know how close I've been.

The hit-box on the player-ship (and probably all ships) shouldn't be a square. You should incorporate some sort of simple-shape collision detection (triangles and squares in different sizes for each ship; that's not too hard. Many good tutorials in here for that), or maybe even do it on a per-pixel basis so you can only hit the drawn part of the ships.

[GustavXIII]

Well, it's a great start. Well done! Again, building on the things others have said:
The enemies suck up way too many hits. I thought half of them were invulnerable (the < shaped ones). Turns out they just need 7-10 bullets to die. The game seems too fast paced for the amount of enemies when they can take this much damage.

Enemies can shoot for a long time before the enter the visible area. I find myself sometimes dodging 20-30 bullets, without being able to see a single enemy

It should always be possible to hit the little cannons on the walls. Sometimes it is impossible.

No health-indicator on the boss. I had no idea if there was a specific place I was supposed to hit him, so I don't know how close I've been.

The hit-box on the player-ship (and probably all ships) shouldn't be a square. You should incorporate some sort of simple-shape collision detection (triangles and squares in different sizes for each ship; that's not too hard. Many good tutorials in here for that), or maybe even do it on a per-pixel basis so you can only hit the drawn part of the ships.

Haha thanks Ultroman ^.^
Hm yes I think I should change it that the enemy first shoots when he is in range of the player or I reduce the enemys.

You didnt saw a boss HP bar?? That weird because I did one O_o
It is in the bottom of the screen maybe you could not see it or it was a bug I have to check that.

HitBoxes Improvement...Yes I take a look at that thanks.

[Jimmt]

I agree with Ultroman's hitboxes with different shapes. Can't have an enemy destroying a nonexistent side of a spaceship.

[Ultroman]

You didnt saw a boss HP bar?? That weird because I did one O_o
It is in the bottom of the screen maybe you could not see it or it was a bug I have to check that.

Well, there might have been. I was very tired, and had just finished reading up for my exams