Starscape a space shooter/strategy game

[wubitog]

http://apps.facebook.com/starscape/

I've been working on this Facebook game with PBE r470. You can build harvester type ships that will gather asteroids to add to your "matter." And build fighters to take on the enemy ships and base. Ships shoot at each other and play little sounds on firing and impact. The background stars and the asteroids get recycled and randomly repositioned after exceeding a distance from the player's ship. The player's ship has 3 rotating turrets that point roughly to where the mouse and fire when clicked.

Its been fun but also kind of frustrating making this. Flash was completely new to me, and at first I tried using the latest version of PBE which looks promising but lacks examples and documentation.

The nicest thing about PBE is how easy it will (should) be to add more ships and gun types. As well as expanding the turrets on to larger NPC ships. Hopefully that homing missile cruiser isn't far off.

What do you think?

[bengarney]

Good start!

You have a long way to go on polish, though. Are you planning on taking it further or leaving it be?

[wubitog]

I want to keep working on it. I'm interested in suggestions. I'm doing it on 0 budget so I don't think I can get around the mismatched graphics. I'm just using flash textfields for menus with no idea how else that would be done. Animated explosions and smooth turn rates might be nice. And it needs far more units and types.

[bengarney]

I think most of what is needed to make it feel good is very doable on 0 budget. My suggestions:

• Make sure everything is consistently aligned. Simply centering text in the button's box would take care of this. Right now the text is uneven and it is bad looking and distracting.
• Add some inertia to the ships. Have the player control velocity, damp the velocity every tick, and add the velocity to position every tick. This will make them feel and look 100x better.
• Try some different zoom levels. The player's ship is quite large and the game might play better with the camera "further away" since you would be able to see more.

I think that if you take care of those things, the game will feel a lot better.

[phil]

Keep in mind there are some excellent resources available at no charge:

http://code.google.com/p/pushbuttonengine/wiki/GameAssetResources

Keep going!

[wubitog]

I've kept at it. I'm focused more toward a single player version for Kongregate.com right now. I want to iron out the features that will be common to single and multiplayer before I release the multiplayer. I released the single player before making many changes from the facebook version and it got mostly bad reviews initially. It has been getting some 5/5 now but it has a lot of ground to make up and its loosing its place in the 'newest games' list.

I made revisions since the initial release on Kongregate (and the old facebook version).

Warp, multiple systems, and the map were removed. Once a base is destroyed another one spawns with more matter and the difficulty is increased.

Text/buttons were adjusted. The system info box was centered and the matter/ships buttons were turned transparent.

Explosions with sounds were added.

Sound levels were balanced (hopefully) and new sounds were added for different gun types.

New ships have been added, 3 bombers, 2 with homing missiles, and an enemy boss/turret ship.

Upgrades are available now that influence the entire fleet: weapons, shields, thrusters, mining.

Most of the player's ships have gone through the acceleration/velocity changes. They have much softer movement (accept for turning which is still abrupt)

Kongregate allows you to save high scores of whatever stats you want. I'm saving highest difficulty reached, most ships killed of all games played, and most matter harvested. The integration of the stats part of Kongregate and PBE/FlashDevelop was very easy.

So far I'm having far more fun at Kongregate than facebook. I got bad reviews for posting the game in its unfinished state but I got great feedback and testing compared with facebook. Once I polish it up, I either need to re-release it as a new game, or somehow get a horde of positive ratings.

I would say my biggest problem is the media/art. I need good, consistent graphics, but I don't know how to get them. I don't want to use ripped graphics from other games or even mismatched public domain images. Kongregate has a collaborations section, but there seem to be far more dreamers and programmers than artists.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/wubitog/starscape-endless-battle

Improved?

[bengarney]

Hey, I actually had some fun playing this build! Big improvement!

I really like building the swarms of follower ships. That is a blast.

The ship movement is dramatically better, but the ships still need some inertia to feel right. They come to a full stop too readily. The follower ships could also have more interesting behavior.

You might start looking for an artist to help you with some of your UI. The buttons are clunky, but they do work and don't get too much in the way of the fun.

Congratulations on sticking with it, you are showing definite progress. I think with some more refinement you could have a really fun game.

[shaz]

you reminded me of this post. Perhaps these guys are still available.

[houen]

There's also these guys for artist connections: http://www.flashgameart.com/
Its by the same people that made FGL