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Space Battle Update


Dave Neuman

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Excellent update! Thanks for making those changes - they help the game a lot. It feels much more balanced now.

 

Still ran into the issue on the landing screen where I'll sometimes initially appear in the same place as the alien guarding the landing platform (instantly dying). Can the players ship always come in from the top on the landing screen (as it does after you die)? It looks nicer, plus it gives you a few seconds to get oriented after a boss wave (or at the beginning of a game).

 

Still had an alien drop fuel just out of my reach, on the left side of the screen. It was right next to my base, but I couldn't move over one more pixel to catch it.

 

The bosses seem to all follow the same pattern now (at least as far as I've gotten in the game). The previous version they were less predictable, and more challenging. Now they're too easy.

 

Finally, whenever I died with one ship left at the bottom of the screen, the game ended. Are those counted as total ships (including your current one) or reserve ships? I think it's more intuitive for those to be reserves.

 

Minor Update

 

Fixed restart bugs.

Fixed missile glitch.

Tweaked fuel pod drop zone.

Set players ship to top of landing screen for all occurances.

Changed bases remaining to bases in reserve ... it is much more intuitive!

 

My name is munged on the title screen until I can find a few more bytes. :(

 

SpaceBattleFinal4N.bin

 

Thanks,

Dave

Edited by Dave Neuman
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Dave!

 

Great updates, thanks for posting them so quickly. :) A few comments:

 

1) On the landing scene, when you mis-land, your fuel goes down VERY quickly. Too quickly in my opinion. The first time I didn't even realize what was going on before I was vaporized in a soul crushing explosion. ;)

 

2) I do agree with Nathan that the bad boss guy monsters are a bit easier to kill this time around. Although two versions ago they were really tough to kill. Just curious, what are you doing to increase the difficulty on this wave each round?

 

..Al

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Dave!

 

Great updates, thanks for posting them so quickly. :) A few comments:

Thanks! its a lot of fun! :D

1) On the landing scene, when you mis-land, your fuel goes down VERY quickly. Too quickly in my opinion. The first time I didn't even realize what was going on before I was vaporized in a soul crushing explosion. ;)

I'll tweak this a little bit!

2) I do agree with Nathan that the bad boss guy monsters are a bit easier to kill this time around. Although two versions ago they were really tough to kill. Just curious, what are you doing to increase the difficulty on this wave each round?

Enemy Movements are based on level. When I changed the level increase system I forgot to modify the movement routines. The attached version has more eratic Boss Movements after the second level ... and I saved 12 bytes!

 

Thanks,

Dave

 

SpaceBattleFinal4N.bin

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Lookin' good! But it seems the bosses' movements are still the same from level to level. I played up through level 10, and didn't see any difference.

 

Also, the game select switch doesn't seem to work for a few seconds when the game first starts up (yes... I'm a little impatient ;) ).

 

On the plus side - the collision detection seems rock-solid now on option 2. :thumbsup:

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Lookin' good! But it seems the bosses' movements are still the same from level to level. I played up through level 10, and didn't see any difference.

 

Also, the game select switch doesn't seem to work for a few seconds when the game first starts up (yes... I'm a little impatient ;) ).

 

On the plus side - the collision detection seems rock-solid now on option 2. :thumbsup:

 

Thanks! :)

 

Fixed missile fire glitch when Game Over from Landing Screen.

Fixed Scanline glitch before blank screen.

Increased Boss difficulty.

Added seperate timers for switch debounce and enemy fadeout.

 

Game select is more responsive now and the enemy fadeout is a little longer. I was using one timer for both functions and it was always a compromise between the two.

 

SpaceBattleFinal4N.bin

 

Thanks for playing,

 

Dave

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Hi,

 

Another minor update.

 

Fixed screen roll (finally) between level and in Armada Screen.

Fixed intermitent Game Over showing a bomb in middle of Boss Screen.

Fixed intermitent stuck sound on beginning of boss level.

 

Thanks for looking,

Dave

 

SpaceBattleFinal6N.bin

Edited by Dave Neuman
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Sometimes the boss won't explode when hit for the final time. The screen will just go black, then the next level will start. I haven't been able to figure out when it does this, but it has happened several times on the first level, and a couple of times on the second.

 

 

Opps, this would happen if you died on the boss level after 8 hits on the Enemy. Now setting explode timer right before its needed.

 

SpaceBattleFinal8N.bin

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Couple of minor changes :)

 

Fixed Landing pad graphics glitch.

 

1) On the landing scene, when you mis-land, your fuel goes down VERY quickly. Too quickly in my opinion. The first time I didn't even realize what was going on before I was vaporized in a soul crushing explosion. ;)

..Al

It was way too fast ... so I reduced the fuel consumption rate by half when landing pad is missed!

 

SpaceBattleFinal10N.bin

 

Had to fix missile centering after I posted :( ... new binary attached!

 

Thanks for looking,

 

Dave

Edited by Dave Neuman
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Had a chance to test it on real hardware tonight.

 

I think I found a couple more bugs. They seem to be present in emulation, too.

 

One, if you catch several fuel cannisters in a row (sometimes the bottom row will drop three right after each other), only the first one replenishes your fuel. The second two just beep, but don't bring the level up past the point of where the first one boosted it.

 

Two, if you boost your fuel level up out of the red or yellow zones, the color doesn't change back to yellow or green, and the low-fuel alarm doesn't sound again when the fuel goes back down.

 

Maybe not a bug, but it seems the bosses all still act the same from level to level. In one of the previous builds, they would periodically reverse direction (left to right) after a couple of levels, which made them very hard to hit. That would be nice to add back in (maybe after level 3). The more erratic the bosses could be at higher levels, the better.

 

One request is for the player's shot to go just a little faster than it does now, so when shooting at a boss, your shot could catch up to him. Right now, the shot moves at the exact same speed, so you can only hit a boss when they're moving downward. That's a little frustrating (although in higher levels, that would be fine since it would add to the challenge).

Edited by Nathan Strum
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Had a chance to test it on real hardware tonight.

 

I think I found a couple more bugs. They seem to be present in emulation, too.

 

One, if you catch several fuel cannisters in a row (sometimes the bottom row will drop three right after each other), only the first one replenishes your fuel. The second two just beep, but don't bring the level up past the point of where the first one boosted it.

The Re-fuel routine only has 5 possible refuel bands within the fuel bar, so you can only replenish the band that is currently active. You do however continue to add points for catching fuel if you have replenished the current band.

Two, if you boost your fuel level up out of the red or yellow zones, the color doesn't change back to yellow or green, and the low-fuel alarm doesn't sound again when the fuel goes back down.

The fuel bar colors bug is fixed now. The fuel sound will now reset if you boost fuel from yellow to green.

Maybe not a bug, but it seems the bosses all still act the same from level to level. In one of the previous builds, they would periodically reverse direction (left to right) after a couple of levels, which made them very hard to hit. That would be nice to add back in (maybe after level 3). The more erratic the bosses could be at higher levels, the better.

Enemy Movements are more erratic now.

One request is for the player's shot to go just a little faster than it does now, so when shooting at a boss, your shot could catch up to him. Right now, the shot moves at the exact same speed, so you can only hit a boss when they're moving downward. That's a little frustrating (although in higher levels, that would be fine since it would add to the challenge).

Boss screen missile moves faster now!

 

Thanks for bug testing and suggestions!

:)

 

Dave

 

SpaceBattleFinal128N.bin

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The armada is perfect now! Having them change directions works great! They're really evasive little buggers.

 

The faster shots are a welcomed addition too. :thumbsup:

 

The bosses, however, are still too easy to hit. Even though they move more erratically, which is good, they still always move left to right. If you can get one (or both) of them to unpredictably change directions like the armada ships do, that'll be perfect!

 

A suggestion to make the bosses more progressive: In early waves, have them start out at a smaller size, and take fewer hits to destroy. Then, over a few levels, build them up to their final size, and add in reversing direction.

 

Maybe:

Level 1 - small boss, six hits

Level 2 - small boss, eight hits

Level 3 - full-sized, eleven hits

Level 4 - full-sized, eleven hits, reversing direction (since that's when the armada begins doing that, too)

 

Thanks for all your hard work on this game. It's really turning out great! :D

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There seems to be a couple bugs. But I'm not sure what triggered them. The first time I started, after the landing sequence when I started the wave 1, my ship exploded right away. ??? of the game continued as normal less one spare ship until I got game over.

 

After I got game over, I went to start a new game via fire button and in the landing sequence, the background was flashing (color cycling) and my ship exploded in mid air. Then I started wave 1 without having to complete the landing part. But my ship was invisible the whole time. I managed to get the screen shot of the invisible ships.

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post-11037-1165652013_thumb.png

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There seems to be a couple bugs. But I'm not sure what triggered them. The first time I started, after the landing sequence when I started the wave 1, my ship exploded right away. ??? of the game continued as normal less one spare ship until I got game over.

 

I've seen this one as well, but can't regularly reproduce it. The only thing I can think of, is that there's a shot that's already coming down where you happen to be, when the level begins.

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The armada is perfect now! Having them change directions works great! They're really evasive little buggers.

 

The faster shots are a welcomed addition too. :thumbsup:

 

The bosses, however, are still too easy to hit. Even though they move more erratically, which is good, they still always move left to right. If you can get one (or both) of them to unpredictably change directions like the armada ships do, that'll be perfect!

 

A suggestion to make the bosses more progressive: In early waves, have them start out at a smaller size, and take fewer hits to destroy. Then, over a few levels, build them up to their final size, and add in reversing direction.

 

Maybe:

Level 1 - small boss, six hits

Level 2 - small boss, eight hits

Level 3 - full-sized, eleven hits

Level 4 - full-sized, eleven hits, reversing direction (since that's when the armada begins doing that, too)

 

Thanks for all your hard work on this game. It's really turning out great! :D

 

 

 

Changed Boss Movements sizes and hits to die

 

Level 1 - small boss, eight hits to die

Level 2 - small boss, nine hits to die

Level 3 - full-sized boss, ten hits to die

Level 4 - full-sized, eleven hits to die

 

SpaceBattleFinal129.bin

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There seems to be a couple bugs. But I'm not sure what triggered them. The first time I started, after the landing sequence when I started the wave 1, my ship exploded right away. ??? of the game continued as normal less one spare ship until I got game over.

Is it possible that you missed a couple of landing attempts before a successful landing and your fuel got very low? The fuel is not replenished from the landing sequence to the Armada Screen. As soon as the Armada screen starts it begins to consume fuel and your ship can explode almost immediately if your fuel was very low after landing.

After I got game over, I went to start a new game via fire button and in the landing sequence, the background was flashing (color cycling) and my ship exploded in mid air. Then I started wave 1 without having to complete the landing part. But my ship was invisible the whole time. I managed to get the screen shot of the invisible ships.

 

I will check this out. I'm probaly missing a variable reset when restarting from fire button.

 

Thanks for bug testing :)

 

Dave

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There seems to be a couple bugs. But I'm not sure what triggered them. The first time I started, after the landing sequence when I started the wave 1, my ship exploded right away. ??? of the game continued as normal less one spare ship until I got game over.

 

I've seen this one as well, but can't regularly reproduce it. The only thing I can think of, is that there's a shot that's already coming down where you happen to be, when the level begins.

Bombs should not drop at beginning of a level until you hit an enemy. Maybe fuel was almost gone after landing and ship exploded within a second or two on Armada Screen? :ponder:

This happens to me fairly often as I am not a very good lander and it takes me a couple of attempts sometimes :(

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