Breakthru by DataEast

[acidbottle]

New project in progress, is my 2nd side hustle to a "main project". Not the most exciting game on earth but a nice score attack shooter. Thanks for looking!

[ Show youtube player ]

Area 1 is near finished. Have a few bugs to iron out, game mechanics need more refinement, mostly in relation to the power up system, but is in a reasonably nice playable state.

Still lots of work to be done but progress has been swift, for now at least

Although currently running nice on 1MB Amiga, that may change, as later levels get real busy with bullets. Will almost certainly be perfect on 14Mhz or better machines.

[TCD]

Looks good Haven't heard about the game before, but it seems like a fun shooter.

[Fiery Phoenix]

Love this game and can beat it. Pity the C64 version was the pits!

[acidbottle]

Blimey, the C64 version was a bit ropey, after having a look at it! The spectrum version was fairly neat but suffered from being easy to beat by just pressing jump all through the game lol Best home version was NES in my opinion.

This version will be arcade accurate but with some minor caveats. Will be adding high score saves to since I think this game lends itself to that nicely! Arcade version annoyingly kept your score after you died and added more credits, so ruined the fun and challenge a bit.

[saimon69]

Was thinking that this game was an easy port however never got an amiga version - when things are more advanced you can get in touch with me for the audio part

[Superman]

Nice work and it moves at a decent speed too.

[nikosidis]

Acidbottle strikes again!
This game looks very nice .
I am ready for beta testing

[AmyMor]

I find this title very fascinating and in my opinion it would be a great coup to have it on AMIGA!

[alkis21]

Thank you very much for doing this, I used to love this game! How will the car jump if you have a single button joystick? Will you use the space bar or something like down+fire?

[jotd]

I didn't know that game, but any 1:1 arcade port is good news since most arcade games are good games

[acidbottle]

@alkis21 Yes, it would be best using a 2 button controller but should be able to implement a spacebar for jump if needed.

@niko and saimon thanks guys

@jotd, agreed, very few arcade games were unplayable, they wanted your coin afterall! It may not have been the greatest shooter ever but it's relative simplicity lends itself for speed/highscore runs which is nice!

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by acidbottle

@alkis21 Yes, it would be best using a 2 button controller but should be able to implement a spacebar for jump if needed.

Maybe a fire+up combo so not to get distracted? (might be an option, space, 2nd button or fire+up)

[jotd]

space bar is not the best idea. All games do that and space bars get worn out quicky. Better use several possible keys (like Pinball Dreams does)

[lmimmfn]

Looks great, looking forward to this!!!

[acidbottle]

Firstly, thanks all for the suggestions. Whenever anyone has an idea it does not go unnoticed. Secondly, will do some irregular updates in this thread to show some progress, much of the first update is fiddly boring stuff but helps the gameplay immensely.

Progress update 1:

Added powerup timer. This was done through Scorpion panels which have bugged out on the latest build but when fixed should be spot on.

Added random spawn locations for some enemies on Area 1. Adds some nice unexpected variety in each game run, some stuff is random, some stuff isn't.

If anyone is familiar with arcade gameplay, I believe enemies never fire at you unless you are roughly in range with the enemy y axis. Some do not behave this way, those that do have been added.

Big tank mini boss from Area 2 has been created, not 100% happy but is a start.

Began to populate Area 2 with a variety of enemies, quite a complex level, going to take a while to finish this.

Saimon/JMD has kindly offered to start on the audio. Is a 9 channel main game track, going to be a mission to compile in itself!

[acidbottle]

Progress update 2:

Been fairly productive, as far as developing the game engine itself. It is more or less done, bit of polish and that but essentially ready to populate the game maps.

3 speed car working. This has taken up a chunk of time but happy how this mechanic works.

Powerup in place, working as intended, see the first screenshot below.

All area maps 1 - 5 are ripped, edited and in place. Almost all of the sprites have also been ripped, just a handful left to do.

With no optimisation done, can say it runs on all OCS Amiga with 1MB chip. It will however slowdown in busy areas so you are best off having a better spec for this one. Progress with an optimised the game will begin when it is near complete.

Next task will be to continue populating and scripting the enemies. Also to begin working on the score/hi score elements.

ETA is a difficult thing to nail, but it will very likely be before the year ends, for sure, hopefully much sooner!


No video this time but some pictures showing some elements not seen as yet:

[TCD]

Thank you for the update Looks very promising.

[acidbottle]

New video. Most of area 3 now complete but accidently forgot to set the audio track on the video. Next time will have the tune in place!

[ Show youtube player ]

The core elements of the game, up to area 3, are now in place.
JMD has swiftly created the main audio track.
Partial progress made on area 4.

[saimon69]

Am damn swamped helping my wife with its studies, hope to find some free time later in the week -_-
i even have to finish all the WB3 soundtrack (and so far that one is good)

I was thinking: maybe we could do some alternate fields considered the game has only one set of maps and loops?

[Photon]

+1 looks like it could be fun! As feedback, my best enjoyment comes from shooters where you can
1) Shoot everything (not have to dodge) e.g. like Commando etc, you can go back and clean up/go again
2) Sprites/bobs are not too big for the screen size (enough lookahead to react - placement or aiming)
3) Accurate collision detection, both for player and enemy. Greatest source of frustration in shooters all platforms