*If you backed Spook-o'-tron on Kickstarter please check your KS UPDATES
inbox and fill out the registration if you are interested in contributing levels to the final build of the game. Submissions are due August 1st!
Kickstarter campaign launched:
https://www.kickstarter.com/proje...
An amazing review by Daria! Historical, interesting, the whole works:
An excellent video review of the demo by swlovinist. Can we bottle this excitement?:
The demo
IS Scoreboard compatible, so give it your best!
Update: 3-17-17
In celebration of St. Patrick's Day (spook O'tron), KHan has added the demo to Scoreboard! Submit scores on the Game Over screen, and BEFORE going to the High Score screen. This will prevent your high scores from getting onto the in-game scoring screen, but they will not save in the demo version anyways. Have fun, and let's see what you can do!
Update: 3-16-17
As you have probably noticed, Spook-o'-tron is now live on Kickstarter! This has been one of the reasons why I have not had a decent update here for the project in a while. Things were really coming together behind the scenes thanks to the testers, and we were having quite the time of using the level editor. That little feature is why I decided to go the KS route, since it will allow for the project to be expanded to backers. It is also the feature that caused me to miss last Halloween. As fun as it is to use, it was a lot of work to get it functioning correctly!
The other big secret that I have somehow managed to keep under wraps all this time is of course Virtual Boy controller compatibility. To the best of my knowledge, nobody else has used this controller in a homebrew application (i.e. designed a game for and around it). I had read about people modding them to work with a NES, and how the buttons had to be re-mapped for A and B to work as they would on a NES controller. By default, down on the right VB D-Pad is B, and you have to bridge across things (or something like that) to get B to be B. Well, if down was being read, then that meant that it was
doing something. If that was the case, then a game could be programmed to use all of the buttons on the controller. Thanks to bunnyboy I figured out how to read the controller (and the SNES controller too), and I built a little test program to see what button went where. It was a jumper wire mess, but I got it working!
With that figured out, I already knew what type of game I wanted to do with it, since it would also teach me how to better work with sprites. Oddly enough, though, I had not ever played Robotron... yet. I finally got the chance at MagFest last year, a few weeks after mapping the VB buttons, and that solidified the decision. The game of course had to still be enjoyable with dual NES controllers, but VB support would be the driving factor behind it. In the end, I even made it so that the level editor uses all 14 VB controller buttons
.
Since the VB controller does not need the battery pack or AC adapter, I decided to fill that space with a plastic piece. Thanks to a local maker shop (
http://www.makesouthbend.com/...) I was able to get that figured out. It was a lot of fun to finally delve into the world of 3D printing, and I'll be refining the back piece as I play around with the tools more. From my previous projects, you've probably realized that I like unique pack-ins, and this is a nice item that can be different with each VB compatible game.
SNES support was there from the beginning too, once I saw how Smash TV used it on the SNES. Thanks to Memblers, the adapter was born.
Looking ahead, I plan on offering SNES support for pretty much every project from here on out too, so the adapter will not be a wasted purchase. It is the best controller after all. Not an opinion, just solid fact there. Plus, who wants to hit Start to go to a menu when X feels so much more natural . This adapter will also work with the SNES Mouse, which was used in Thwaite and will be in KHan's upcoming Isolation game. Someone needs to go bump that thread!
Same too for the VB controller. While it does not make sense to use it in every project going forward, the Spook-o'-tron sequel is already sketched out to use it. A lot of the routines from the first game will transfer right over, but it will be a considerable expansion in terms of gameplay. But hey, one thing at a time. That is one of the hard parts about having the game done except for the levels created by backers, as my mind is already moving down the road some. All of that to say, controller options will be returning in future SGP projects!
As with planning AVS-specific features, there is a balance between programming for a post-NES feature and creating an enjoyable experience using standard hardware. I could make a game that requires all 14 VB buttons, but few would be able to play it. So, the task for me in designing things is balance. An example would be if a game had multiple weapons. The VB trigger buttons would be great for switching between them on the fly, but how would the the dual NES option fare? Outside of the two d-pads, only the Select buttons are easily accessible. If they are both already in use, what then? Well, if one is a menu button, then weapons could just be changed that way, on a separate screen. Many games did things this way, so it is not a downgrade necessarily in terms of enjoyment for the dual NES version. The VB triggers, or SNES shoulder buttons, just add a feature, without breaking the dual NES experience. Hopefully that makes sense. It is key to my design philosophy, so you'll see it again, or feel it when you play!
I'll have a guide up for how to mod VB controllers soon, and I'll have some modded ones up for sale post-campaign as well. I do not have a lot of them, since I could not take the risk in stock, but there are some. I did not make them part of the KS campaign since it seemed like the rules prohibited the sale of modified pre-existing items. More on that post-sale.
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8-25-16
SGP's Halloween Series:
It seems that everyone is doing a Halloween game these days, so why not join the party. I started work on a Halloween themed game a couple of years ago, since the costumes of the season assisted my limited drawing skills. Plus, I like Halloween! I'm not a big horror guy, so don't expect any of those types of games. The purpose of the series as a whole, which may or may not happen on a yearly basis, is to serve as a place to experiment with other game engines that I have either worked on previously or am wanting to test out for a future project. It is a way to somewhat recycle some previous work, but to flesh out its content or format in a unique way. So perhaps if I do an RPG set in the usual fantasy environment, a Halloween themed one with completely new content and some gameplay differences might just make an appearance. Or, as with a project like
Family Vacation, one that needs a smaller mini-game, a different version might just be called for with holiday content.
Spook-o'-tron:
Spook-o'-tron is just that: an arcade game built with the overall same mechanics as to what will be found in the
Family Vacation mini-game. The "mechanics" I have in mind are being able to move in eight directions and shoot independently of movement in eight directions as well. The return of double-fisted action! Other than the arena-like setting, the rest of the gameplay and graphics will be different. No cheap re-skins here. On the whole, Spook-o'-tron will be a longer gameplay experience, since my goal with the
FV mini-game is to kill the player as fast as possible in order to make them waste their tokens
. Figuring out this game is also a significant step in getting
Family Vacation closer to completion, since it is effectively the "hunting" portion of the game (tokens are used to play the game, the game yields tickets, tickets can be exchanged for food; follow?).
In the little odyssey that has been my personal journey into the world of programming,
Family Vacation was chosen due to its heavy use of backgrounds. At the time when I decided to begin work on it, I had formed a decent understanding of backgrounds, but had almost no knowledge of sprites. I won't go into the reasons why I couldn't figure them out, as I've discussed them elsewhere, but
Spook-o'-tron was chosen as a way to counter this; a means to learn how to do sprites and more importantly learn how to do them well. I could not think of a more challenging type of game than what it is based off of, at the programming level at least, since the game is all sprites and uses as many as possible. I even found a couple of websites and forum discussions that said that it couldn't be done on the NES! I like to give myself a good challenge, and from this experience I feel ready to tackle almost anything. Well, almost...
Spook-o'-tron features some excellent graphics by NA user cacciatc. His skill at depicting colorful and expressive sprites in a tiny, 8x8 pixel space is commendable. Death by cuteness. Working with him has also been a wonderful experience, and he put up with my many requests and made some suggestions of his own that kept the project on track and looking good.
As for music, we'll see... it would be nice if I could find someone local
.
The goal is to get the game finished in time for the holidays, but I am hard at work on another, non-programming project at the moment that takes priority (almost finished?). The engine is probably 80-90% done, and the game mostly just needs polish after the last couple of enemy types are finalized. Balancing and bug chasing, those types of things. Something always seems to crop up, though, so time will tell. A wise man once told me never to name a release date, so I won't!
Spook-o'-tron will be the first, released game designed and programmed by the Goose himself, so it holds a special place for me. It is both great to finally almost have a game finished (three and a half years after beginning the programming journey), while at the same time it is also terrifying since I hold myself to a certain standard.
I'd post better or more screens, but as usual I forgot to take shots of the game last time it was put back together. It's ripped apart again for testing and bug chasing, the usual... You can get the idea though.
Happy almost fall!
SGP
