Tanner Game - [GRIDPHREAK]

[Tanner]

http://tannerrogalsky.com/blog/2012/05/ ... ridphreak/

This past weekend I participated in the largest gamejam Toronto has ever seen. Over four hundred people got together, each trying to make a video game in 48 hours. Last year’s TOJam was the first gamejam I’d ever gone to and I credit the hardwork of Rob, Em, Jim, their compatriots, and all the jammers with making TOJam such an amazing atmosphere to work in. I will do this jam every year it is hosted; it’s the best.

This year I made a game that I’ve had in my head for a while. It’s a top-down schmup (shoot-em-up) like Crimsonland, Smash TV or Asteroids. Where it differs from each of those games is that it also has dynamic lighting: you can’t necessarily see the enemies on the screen unless you or someone else shines light on them. The controls are very simple and are right on the game menu when you open it up.

Graphics were done by Derian McCrea and myself. Code and concept are mine.

Downloads:

Windows 32-bit
Windows 64-bit
Mac (Works on OSX Lion, not confirmed working on earlier)
Source

Linux users should download the source and the appropriate Love2D binary for their distro. It requires version 0.8.0. Compiling Love2D from source is also really easy on Linux but I feel like you’re sort of making your life harder than it needs to be.

I’m happy enough with how it turned out that I do plan on continuing to work on it. Any further updates will come with a blog post until a more suitable update method can be established.

Let me know if there are any problems with the downloads or, you know, if anything is really cool.

[乳头的早餐谷物]

Downloading. Obviously.

[yahoozy]

Cool just downloaded it from Tanner Rogalky . Com.

[otters~1]

Jesus Christ. Frantic game. I freely admit to not trying hard or insane mode -- easy mode was almost impossible to stay alive in for more than a minute with a trackpad. Probably easier with a mouse. I really loved the graphic style, very polished and fitting to the temperament of the game. Gameplay I was less enamored with, but again I'm not sure if that was because I can't find my mouse. The hectic style was pretty fun but I would have liked to live a bit longer. I felt like most of the time I was skittering about shooting things that were about a centimeter from me.

Still had a lot of fun with it and I'm impressed with how it's completely different from the last couple of entries you've made.

[Tanner]

Jesus Christ. Frantic game. I freely admit to not trying hard or insane mode -- easy mode was almost impossible to stay alive in for more than a minute with a trackpad. Probably easier with a mouse. I really loved the graphic style, very polished and fitting to the temperament of the game. Gameplay I was less enamored with, but again I'm not sure if that was because I can't find my mouse. The hectic style was pretty fun but I would have liked to live a bit longer. I felt like most of the time I was skittering about shooting things that were about a centimeter from me.

Still had a lot of fun with it and I'm impressed with how it's completely different from the last couple of entries you've made.

Thanks, man. I'm actually surprised you could survive for a minute without using a mouse; it definitely wasn't designed for trackpad play. I appreciate your feedback! :)

[Seneschal]

HOLY MOTHER! NEW HIGHSCOOOOOOORE!

This game is awesome! I'd just got the hang of easy mode when BAM boss creature (I think? Unless there's an even bigger enemy than the orange starfish thing). I really like how on the harder modes it seems easier at first, because those yellow creatures make it brighter, but you're soon overwhelmed by the critters anyway. And boy does Insane mode lives up to its name: it gets very laggy (it does in Hard mode too, to a certain extent), which makes it feel like I'm playing in matrix bullet-time (which is awesome).

A few points of (I hope) constructive criticism:

-I'm not finding the torches terribly useful, since usually their range is slightly too small to flag enemies in time and I tend to be able to kill enemies without much help from them (though their ineffectiveness might be due to the spinning strategy I'm using which seems to be the best way of surviving). They might work better if they were like the yellow things in that they shot out a beam in one direction before gradually shrinking.

-The colour of the stuff you fire is virtually the same colour as the stuff the enemies fire, which is a little confusing, visually speaking. Might work better if the player shot white stuff, the yellow enemies shot yellow stuff, etc. Also, when the yellow things dies, it would be nice if their spotlight faded instead of just disappeared, so that the player can still see their last few energy shots and not be surprise killed by rogue energy

-A pause button would have been nice, although, then again, games tend to be pretty short anyway.

Anyway, I am really enjoying this. I'm even going to put up my highscores:

Easy mode: 72.1 seconds, score of 45
Hard mode: 68.2, seconds, score of 53 (quite frankly a heroic effort)
Insane Mode: 24.7 second, score of 33

PS: those green things are so damn annoying in the best possible way, I mean goddamn

EDIT: argh insane

[Tanner]

-I'm not finding the torches terribly useful, since usually their range is slightly too small to flag enemies in time and I tend to be able to kill enemies without much help from them (though their ineffectiveness might be due to the spinning strategy I'm using which seems to be the best way of surviving). They might work better if they were like the yellow things in that they shot out a beam in one direction before gradually shrinking.

-The colour of the stuff you fire is virtually the same colour as the stuff the enemies fire, which is a little confusing, visually speaking. Might work better if the player shot white stuff, the yellow enemies shot yellow stuff, etc. Also, when the yellow things dies, it would be nice if their spotlight faded instead of just disappeared, so that the player can still see their last few energy shots and not be surprise killed by rogue energy

-A pause button would have been nice, although, then again, games tend to be pretty short anyway.

Thanks for the feedback! Bullets are high on my list of things to change, both visually and game mechanically. I still need to do some work about how enemies, guns and bullets inter-relate before I can really flush that out. Fading spotlights and just more spotlight variation in general is a much requested feature and it's probably next on my feature list. Pausing may already happen with the window looses focus? I forget when I implemented that. Thanks again for playing and commenting. :)