Lazer Bee

Introduction

After a somewhat long hiatus, LitSwitch Productions is back to work. We were working in several different games, until we've decided to try a little endeavor. Something like NobodyX's "game in 4 days challenge". Well, we decided to go with "a game in a week".

NobodyX's challenge was to make a game in 4 days, everything from scratch, if I recall correctly. Our's won't be as hardcore as that. We brainstormed this past to weeks to come up with a concept, and discussed various details. I'm also not coding everything from scratch. Strasteo also made a few graphics so we could decide the look and style of the game. Still, we want to finish the game completely, starting now and ending on sunday (July 17th)

About the Game
Laser Bee

It's a puzzle shooter. You have 3 beam colors, and you must match the color of your beam with the color of the block you want to destroy. Same color blocks cause chain reactions, earning more points. There are also various special block, some hazardous, some good for the player.

In Puzzle Mode, you have pre-made stages where the objective is to destroy a "goal block" at the end. Arcade Mode is an "endless mode", where you must destroy as many blocks as you can before dying.

Well, that's it. Wish us luck!

Good luck! I'm looking forward for another game by LitSwitch.

Good luck! I'm looking forward for another game by LitSwitch.

We hope we can meet your expectations!

Figured I could use this thread to show a daily report. Well, here goes mine.

Luyren's Report #1
Since I'm mostly using my RPG Platformer Kit as a base, it went quite smoothly. The Bee received a vertical movement behavior, and a firing behavior. I then used the Equip Weapon behavior to customize the four laser colors: red, yellow, green and blue. Each weapon deals a "color" damage type. Minor changes were made to the Bullet Damage behavior on the laser to change animation based on the damage type.

Created the blocks. I used the Damage Type Modifier to make each one vulnerable to it's own color damage type, and invulnerable to the rest. Also made a chain reaction: if you kill a block, all adjacent blocks of the same color will be destroyed.

The boy who controls the bee was finished. It only plays an animation when you switch weapons and another when you get a combo.

Next up was the combo system. If you kill a block, it adds a score to a pool, increase the hit counter and start the timer. If you kill another block before the timer reaches the limite, you get another hit, and the score is added to the pool. After the timer reaches the limite, the pool is multiplied by the amount of hits, and the total is added to your score. If you hit a block with the wrong color, the hit color and the pool will be reset.

Looking forward to it! You guys know I played the heck out of your last game.

Thanks for the comments guys. We hope it'll be a solid game at the end!

Strasteo's Report #1
Bumped into a bit of a problem with the design of the Bee. May need to alter certain game mechanics to suit it, or change the design overall. Will work on it.

List of graphics to be made:
-Logo
-Laser actors
-Proper background
-More block type actors
-Font
-Color indicator icons

Graphics to be revised:
-Lazer Bee

Good luck! Can't wait to play the end result!

Thanks, Epic!

Luyren's Report #2
I had an insanely busy day today, wich left me less than 2 hours total to work on the game. Though it was the best day I had in quite a while. Also tried to provide support on the chat, but multi-task prevented me from completely solving an user's problem.

Lives System done. The bee stays inactive for a time after it reaches 0 health,
then "restart" after a set time, staying invincible for a couple of seconds.

Chain Reaction time. Made so the blocks will be destroyed one by one,
instead of all at once. I think it's a nice touch to see a chain reaction step by step.

Created the element color blocks. Elements are like regular blocks, but when they are destroyed, they unleash an Area of Effect skill. Great for clearing some blocks. Haven't finished yet. We still have to discuss if an element block can be destroyed by a chain reaction or not. The AoE skill behavior is done, I just have to configure all the blocks now.

We decided to go with a resolution of 320x192, at x2 scaling.

The problems I'm facing now are two: actors with 0 bounciness and 1 friction are bouncing when hitting each other (yes, the game will have gravity, so the blocks will fill in the gaps); and the game is running at 22 FPS when half the screen is full of blocks.

Strasteo's Report #2

Apart from a dental appointment early this morning, had most of the day to work on this.

Getting some more graphics done here; good to see progress. There's probably much more I'm missing, but for now this is what I've accomplished.

List of graphics to be made:
-Logo
-Laser actors
-Proper background
-More block type actors
-Font
-Color indicator icons
-Proper HUD graphics

Graphics to be revised:
-Lazer Bee

There's still work to be done, so the report won't go right now. Instead, I'm asking for some assistance here.

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/5318
This is the arcade mode. The blocks are randomly generated. The problem is that the performance goes down pretty fast. With half the screen full, I get 30 FPS, and when the screen is full, 5 FPS in the player, 10 in the browser. Can someone provide any insights on how to improve performance?

Some info: the blocks do collide with each other. I disabled collision between them, but it didn't have any effect. Attached is the behavior that generates the blocks. Although if I directly place the blocks on the scene, it lags still.

Well, I'm stuck with this issue, so I'll fet some musics done.

I can't wait to play another great game from you guys!

Luyren, I'm looking over your logic and I can't see much room to improve. I don't think that behavior is the problem. It looks fast enough, until you have several columns. Maybe the Repeat block is causing problems, but it shouldn't be at such a low number.

Curious, do each of the blocks have behaviors constantly running code checks?

I ask this because a level that KungFuFurby made for ASLoF was quite large and contained just as many blocks as this game does, when the screen is full, or more. And I have noticed that the game drops to roughly 30FPS even though each block is running what is a rather simple behavior. Only when the blocks are made visible/hidden do I run many more lines of code, but the difference in FPS doesn't change all that much.

Anyway, just thought I'd put that out there as one possible reason for the lag.

Yeah, they have. The basic block has 6 behaviors, for handling health, damage modification, chain reaction, death, recycling when offscreen and score. The elements have 2 more, for the area of effect and one for the condition to use it.

I tried removing the Damage Type Modifier, but there was no noticeable difference in the frame rate. Anyway, thanks for the input Epic, and HNF for the comment!

Luyren's Report#3
Gee, already three days! Still, I feel we can make it by the deadline.

Element blocks finished. We've decided they will be activated when part of a chain reaction. They can lead to some nice chain reactions when properly used.

Title is set up with placeholder graphics and layout. It's the same style as Dungeon Rush. I also made a music for the title and mode select screens, thought I might make another.

Full-screen bombs done. They destroy all the blocks of the bomb's color, and there's also a bomb to wipe out the screen. Also made an undestructable block. You can only hold one of each bomb type.

Treasure Blocks drop randomly one of the bombs. I still have to change the way the bomb is awarded, but it's not difficult.

Set Game Modes scrolling or not, and made the random Block generator. It creates one column of blocks at a time.

Biggest concern now is to find a solution for the performance issue in arcade mode. I tried placing directly the blocks in puzzle mode, and destroying them all recovered the frame rate. In arcade mode, clearing the scene didn't have the same result. Or I could be imagining things.

Strasteo Report #3

On a roll!

-Logo
-Laser actors
-Proper background
-More block type actors
-Laser hit animation
-Elemental effects
Inferno
Tornado
Waterfall
-Font

Graphics to be revised:
-Lazer Bee moving animations
-Color indicator icons
-Proper HUD graphics

Looking good guys.  For the performance issues -- just as a test, have you tried removing ALL behaviors from the blocks that you're spawning?  I'd try removing everything, as well as the collision boxes.

That will give you pretty much a blank slate so we can see if it really is just the number of Actors on screen that is causing the issue.

Thanks for the tip Greg! Using a behavior-free block and disable collision, it ran fine. I think collision more than behaviors might be the issue here. We wanted gravity to affect gameplay, so the blocks would fall in empty spaces, but given this issue, I don't know if we'll keep this idea or not. I'll test some more tomorrow.

Luyren's Report #4
HUD for showing the inventory and the equipped weapon is done. Can probably be revamped later though, as I did without consulting Strasteo. Also added the lives to the HUD.

You now get the item from the treasure when you kill it, instead of when you pick the pick up.

Made some sound effects and imported some of the final graphics. Tried to compose some new musics, but couldn't get something with the right "feel".

Yep, it was a slow day. Tomorrow I'll work on the puzzle mode (unlocking levels and stuff), and fix (hopefully) the performance issue.