Galactic Bird Beta

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shawn

Well, I've been busy learning GLBasic for the last month or so and I decided to make an arcade shooter. Spent many late nights playing around coding this and it has been great fun. Not quite finished yet but I thought I should probably get some feedback before I spend time polishing it and making it complete.

Remember this is my first game and I only started to learn programming games a few weeks ago so don't expect too much!

The basic idea is that you are a Galactic Bird protecting a planet from aliens that want to extract resources from it.

QuoteStop the ships from landing on the planet. You can either shoot them or use your bump shield to smash them.

If you let an enemy ship pass the bottom of the screen you will lose points.

Each enemy you destroy will add to your bump shield (meter is to right of bird) which you can use to smash into enemies and destroy them. Use your bump shield in the atmosphere at the bottom of the screen to score more points. Bump enough enemies in this zone and you will get to use a special bomb.

Bumping into enemies without the shield engaged will decrease your health and bump shield.

From level 5 onwards a small helper bird will float by the top of the screen and release energy balls at random. It will also release an energy ball each time you shoot it. Collect these to replenish your health, collect more than 3 for another special bonus.

Every 5 levels the difficulty is raised, difficulty is indicated by the enemy ships colour.

Green = Easy - enemies are slow and take one shot.
Orange = Normal - enemies are faster and take two shots.
Purple = Hard - enemies are fast and take three shots.
Red = Extreme - enemies are very fast and take four shots.

Once you get to the Extreme difficulty it's just a case of seeing how long you can last. Surviving and getting a high score will depend on your tactics.

Arrow keys to move, A is shoot and S is bump shield.

That was strange to explain but hopefully you will get it if you have a go. I hope I haven't messed anything up here.

Please check it out if you get the chance and let me know what you think!

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Moru

Plays really nice but mabe write somewhere in the game that the A button is shooting? :-)

Windowed mode locked my mouse in the left corner outside of the game window, returning to the same spot all the time. If I run windowed mode I expect to be able to use my mouse for other applications still. Especially since mouse is not used in the game.

Absolutely great for a first project!

matchy

Yes - that's very good for just starting out games programmer and even as a developer if you created the music and backgrounds.

The only issue that stuck out was the "Level n" wasn't centered and the lack of on-screen help.

shawn

Thanks for the comments! Yeah, all gfx and sfx were made by me but the music is an old MOD from 96 that I pinched for the test version. Hopefully I can make something halfway decent in that PxTone program to use for the final version.

I'm thinking of adding a small tutorial level to show people the controls and stuff accessed by pressing T on the title screen. I also want to add a high score table.

I never thought about the mouse in windowed mode so thanks for pointing it out!

:D

Wampus

Great first game, especially if you're new to programming. Keep it up!

Also, the music is Hybrid Song (Funky Stars) by the incredibly talented Trance/House DJ Axwell.  This is the sort of thing he's up to nowadays: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgQk_xrTj0
:nw:
Since the track is public domain you are free to distribute it. Would be the done thing to give him credit as Quazar of Sanxion of course.  =D See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axwell

shawn

It's been a while since I've coded anything, life got in the way etc. I thought I should probably finish this game up. I've added instructions, high scores, my own music, title screen with buttons and some other stuff. Hopefully it all works.

Let me know what you think!

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