Awaken - finaly finished! Ver. 1.0 aviable

GAME ITCH.IO page: http://tryzna.itch.io/awaken-underwater-odyssey
IndieDB profile: http://www.indiedb.com/games/awakenunderwater-odyssey
Dev.Blog: http://www.lurkerslair.com/

About:

Awaken: Underwater Odyssey is vertical scrolling shoot em up game. Game takes place in far future on planet Neptune. You are member of Kraken squad whitch is stationed inside Leviathan class carrier craft owned by RPE corporation whitch oversees gas extracting operations on neptune.

Game is about anihilating thousands of squid like aliens while you pilot Orca MK II submarine whitch is highly customizable to fit pilots style.

Latest trailer aviable on youtube: http://youtu.be/eeYke7vvl4k

PRESS REVIEWS:

http://games.softpedia.com/get/Games-Demo/Awaken-Underwater-Odyssey.shtml
http://retromaniacmagazine.blogspot.com.es/2014/12/disparos-submarinos-en-la-demo-de.html
http://indiegamemag.com/survive-the-deadly-deeps-of-neptune-in-awaken-underwater-odyssey/







You can get the game by visiting its itch page or you can dowload free demo from indieDB here: http://goo.gl/D8Kw0b

Right now you can download demo containing first two missions for free and if you ll enjoy it you can support this project by purchasing the game BETA whitch contains everything except onslaught mode. Link for full version ll be sent to you when the game goes gold.

Things that ll be implemented befe the game goes full:

- Onslaught mode
- Rework options and preferences
- Possibility to control hangar menu with x360controller and keyboard as well.(Righ now you have to use mouse)
- full screen filters as an unlockable rewards(sephia, bloom, black and white etc.)
- difficulty balancing

I do love your HUD.
And the blue circles. Great light effects.

Looking forward to see your progress.

Small update of whats done list;-)

Created gun drones and their behavior, added bit of sway to their movement so they dont look like part of the ship. Still have to make them generate air bubbles behind them, but that just little detail i forgot about for now.

Created first boss, it shoots two of its weapons at player and moves from side to side. However with it i created first problem on today "to do" list. Actor it self is pretty big and i have problem with dying animation. For all other actors in my game death is represented by rotating self in random direction over half second and generating small explosions over self each 0.1 sec finished by one bigger just beffore the actor is killed. For all other enemies it works perfect(thx god as i spent whole last sunday on it)but cant find reason why the same piece of code, copied from existing alien ships does not work with the boss. Well it works, but the animation and whole game FPS get cut by about 90% during the dying animations.

Second problem is time distort bubble i created today morning. Player is able time to time to distort time around it self(kind of lightning reflexes/adrenaline rush ability)slowing all other actors around him self for couple of seconds. Everything works, but again the performance is lacking and still, not sure why. Speed of every actor is stored as variable and our bubble do simple thing set speed of the actor to speed/4 while inside the chrono bubble. Everything works, but during boss fight when there is more than about 50 bullets on the scene game gets choppy again. I hope i ll find a way to fix this problem as it would be shame if i ll have to drop one of the game mechanics becouse of performance.....and i wanted to generate matrix-like bullet trace effect for every eactor that enters the bubble:-/

Anyway, im still happy with progres and would like to thank you for reading and feedback!

All right, time for the weekend update. Spent the two days fixing bugs and polishing everythink. Made couple more weapon types to test weapon spawning system and to my surprise after few minor changes it works just nice.  Core of main game is almost completed, now i just had to ad about dozen types of enemy ships, make few bosses and then check all the graphics and improve what i can.

Unfortunately i had to drop time distortion bubble idea as i done some testing with all weapon slots on ship equiped with high rate of fire weapons and  boss spamming shoots at the player as well. Withou te time slow bubble everythink runs just fine, fps ocasionaly droping to 50 fps, whitch is fine i think if i take a number of actors on screen in to acount. But as soon as i spawn time distortion bubble, changing velocity of eveythink inside, then the game drops to 10-20fps whitch is not acceptable. Im kind of sad about that at is was kind of funny ability to use. Especialy combined with the combo system i implemented as combos were charging "adrenaline" and when that reached certain ammount, player was able to use it to distort time around him. So this way i wanted to encourage players to kill as much as possible, instead of beeing somewhere in the corner, just avoiding enemy fire.

However, i needed some rest from stencyl and i used the time to make a first game teaser. I hope you ll like it;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpYqYgO__s

Hi again,

After yesterday break i felt like its time to move on and continue work on Awaken(huray game got name finaly)and with core of main game almost done i decided to start with the part im most worried about, but been preparing for it since the begining and everything should proceed smooth and easy.

Yes i ve been worried about shop interface and how to implement it in to the game. As you can see from the picture i simplified everything as much as possible. Background of the Shop screen is scrolling background from one of the mission for now. When the game ll be nearly done i ll see how big it is and if the size ll allow me i ll add dock interior background. (yes im trying to fit in to kongregate 20mb max size)



Screen description:

Credits window is obvious as it ll show your current balance.

Ship fitting window is just a visual, here you ll be able to see how items u are purchasing will look on your ship.

Confirm pruchases is another obvious feature.

Ship stats. - here the game will calculate overall statistics of your ship with currently fitted items.

Ship weapons and equipment window - here, player ll see all the aviable upgrades he can get if he have enought credits.
Equipment is divided in to 6 ship slots.

Torpedoes - few different types, default low damaging with aoe effect, strong ones with no aoe but huge damage to single target etc.

Front deck weapons & hull weapons. - many kinds, but divided in to three basic types. Sonic weapons have high rate of fire and relatively slow projectiles. Rail weapons are slow firing but have huge alpha damage and insane projectile speed. Laser weapons, compromise between the two. I know according to logic lasers should be faster than rail projectiles, but cmon, its a scifi shmup, who caress?;-)

Drones - again three basic types, gun drones, shield repair drones, hull repair drones. Drones fly around your ship and do their job. For most of the game player is stuck with theese three types, but later in the game advanced drones with shooting/shiled/hull rep will become aviable.

Shield & propulsion - shield is obvious so lets skip to propulsion whitch is obvious as well, but with beter engine player ship ll dont scroll through mission faster, but ll have increased agility so player is able to move around screen faster.

Oh and the big ship in background? Not sure about that, just resized copy of player ship whitch ll be fitted with weapons player just finished mission with.

Next story mission button - ll start next story mission. Game it self has no difficulty setting as i dont like that idea, instead of that advancing in game by doing just storyline mission ll be har as hell as player ll lack credits for upgrades

Next random mission button - ll start semi-random generated level based on player equipment. Few different types like survival where you have to survive as long as possible. Assasination, kill the boss or number of enemy ship types etc. Basicaly bonus level idea is hidden behind this. After you complete the game game ll start generating insane difficult levels for players who want to compete for higher score online.

 

Looks like we have some competition here xD.

Great work buddy, graphics are awesome and smooth!

Thanks for compliments about graphics, hope you ll have same opinions about gameplay;-)

And now to update, ingame shop is working. It gave me couple hours of headache, but it works, hopefuly its bug free right now, everything changes as player clicks components and i have good feeling about it.



Now that means core of the game is done. I have all components except mission sellection screen(but that should not give me any trouble)and saving game(questionable how hard it ll be, but seems pretty easy)ready.

Now its all just about creating graphics for more components as i allready have "code" templates for them and eventwise it ll be just about changing few atributes. Im glad this part is behind me for now as i was worried about it and now i just have to mess with pixels and compile them to something pleasant for eye. I ll be hard, much harder than making a program core of the game and all success ll depend on this part as first impression is almost always strongest.

With all the work done now, while work on eye candy starts maybe its right time to start website or facebook page for the game and start building a little "buzz" about it as i realized game ll not fit in to 20mb size for kongregate with all the atmospehric elements i want to add like voiceover, definetly want more than two music tracks, unique background/foreground layers for each level etc.  So becouse of that i ll have to invest in to indie or studio license for stencyl and release the game as win ap. and as aplication it ll be much harder for game to find its way to the players.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day!

Wow, are you sure you can finish this in time?

Actualy i can finish it within a month, but im not planning to rush it. I want to take my time and release first demo at the begining  of the summer and release the full game latest just before september.  Its hard to tell exact date as i dont know how many problems ll appear and as 80% of work remaining is of artistic nature u can never tell when ideas ll come and how many times u ll want to rework certain parts that seemed done weeks ago.
Im especialy worried about game music, as im still not decided if i ll buy extended licences for some tracks on soundcloud as there are pieces with stunning quality i would love to use(for example https://soundcloud.com/semblanceproduction/hyperion) of i ll compose my own music whitch should not be a problem as i can play quite a few instruments and have experience with making film music, but it would be terrible time consuming to achieve desired quality and in the end even more expensive than buying tracks worth couple of hundereds usd. Especialy after i sold all my recording equipment just year ago. I would se we ll see, if the feedback for demo ll be great i ll not hestitate to invest some money to enhance the game even further.

Well either way, you are doing an awesome job.

Is it just you deloping this game? Or are you in a team?

Well either way, you are doing an awesome job.

Is it just you deloping this game? Or are you in a team?

Thanks, i hope you ll say the same after the demo release;-) And to the team question. Im lone wolf by nature, have bad experience with teaming up for whatever reason so yes, its just me.

Haha, same here! People just leave you with all of the work D:

Can't wait to play it! If there is a leader board, i'll be right up there

(I will always enjoy a game made by a small team, or solo (They have better respect for they're games))

Hi again with another update. Today i would like to show you what i meant with graphics overhaul whitch i am working on right now as majority of the "coding" is allready done.

Here you can se the most basic enemy you ll encounter while playing Awaken. I wanted all enemies in awaken to look like mixture of living organism and mechanical parts. Whitch is very hard to achieve for me as i was never even average at drawing, however when i want something i try really hard to get it. I know it ll be hard to compete with awesome graphics of my benchmarks whitch are Raptor and Tyrian, but at least im trying to put some love in to every piece and hopefuly players will appreciate time spent on every pixel.

Before:


Now:


I think now its clear im obscesed with tentacles and later on you ll see i like crab claws as well While the ressult is still not at level i would like to achieve, i think its quite improvement of the basic alien probe. Hope you ll like to shoot at it as well.

Thanks for reading!

Does that tentacle monster have a bra on? Don't look! xD

Haha, expert work here

If the graphics are as good as that Mech-Organism thing, then i'll be damned, you could be sitting on a gold mine.   

Here i am again, with a little update on was done on Awaken over the weekend.  I does not look like it, but a lot of work was done. Reworked spawn system so now aliens come from all directions, not just from above and that allowed me to implement new behavior patterns for enemy ships.
Then explosions were reworked once again and it was worth it as now its more enjoyable to shoot down alien than before and thats another important thing that counts. I know it ll be hard to recoginize improvement from a screenshot, but i hope i ll provide demo soon.

I added new enemy ship as well, and started a dev diary blog, site has still improvised look as i wanted to spend time working on a game, than on a blogger template, but ll improve it over the time always by a little to have it ready along with demo release. Still did not bought domain for it as i want to keep sober about this whole thing as i can hardly judge if the game is good or not, so theese things like own web domain, soundtrack and many other things that costs money have to wait as the  demo feedback ll decide if the game is worth to spend some money(i hope it will, i love burning money).

Thats it for the weekend, i know theres not much to show, but it kept me quite bussy. Oh, and dev diary blog url is: http://www.lurkerlair.blogspot.cz/ if you want to watch the game progression in more polished form than these "ah, just woke up" posts;-)

Thanks for reading!