Here is my entry for the August 2011 Experimental Gameplay Project who subject was Offspring.   I have called this entry Survival of the Fittest.

Survival of the Fittest - Wave 4

In this game, the player must shoot square parent objects.  When a parent is destroyed, it spawns for children.  Those children then seek out other parents.  If they reach the parent, they add their attributes to the parent, making it stronger and more dangerous.

There are three types of parents and children, which bear strengths in different attributes:

• Blue – Increased strength.  Can with stand more shots from the player.
• Green – Increased speed.  Faster than the other types.
• Red – Attack ability.  Fires shots at the player.

The concept is based on an idea another designer shared with me.  I put my own twist on it.  All in all full development took about 28 hours of actual work put in over a week’s time.

Enjoy!

Download Survival of the Fittest

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Controls:

Move – WASD
Left Mouse Button – Fire

Here is my entry into the October Experimental Gameplay Project.  It is called U So Fine! When they said to make a game for girls, I immediately thought of something I’d want my sisters or niece to play.  So, I’ve created a date trainer.  I hate hearing about how women fall for a guy’s charms so easily only to only never hear from him again.  I wanted to teach girls how to keep a guy’s interest.

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So, I’ve decided to try and do the next Experimental Gameplay Project Challenge.  I’ve been up all night working on my idea.  I don’t want to say too much about it just yet.   I think I’ll wait till the full idea is implemented before I divulge too much.  But here is some of the art.

I am developing how I like to develop… on the fly.  I fear I may paint myself into a corner, but there is something to be said about having the game speak to me.  I’ll implement a feature here and there, then evaluate.  Look at the game.  Listen to what it is saying and make improvements.  I wish I could do this in all my games.  Especially at work, however that’s such a different environment.

Well, time to sleep the daylight away.  I’ll try and update soon.

Marcus

Final Update!

I’ve tweaked the movement speed.  I’ve added in some player art.  I’ve made the firing emanate in only one direction.  I’ve added different enemy/platform types.   I also put in a counter to show how far you’ve dropped or climbed.  I tried adding in some effects when you climb up, but it got ugly.

There is still a lingering bug where the platform respawn doesn’t always work.  You need to fall down a bit then climb back up and it seems to work.  Not sure what is the problem.

I’m about done messing with this project.  I’ve given it a about a month’s worth of time.  It’s more than enough.  I’m ready to move on.   It didn’t turn out as fun as I would have thought.  It is some what a clever idea, but not overly compelling.  It is probably hampered by my naive understanding of Game Maker.  There are some minor adjustments I would make if I were to continue working on it, but it’s time to move on.

I have an itching to get back to the Action Prototype, but I’m intrigued by the latest Experimental Gameplay Project challenge as well.  We’ll see what happens.

Marcus

DOWNLOAD: Rise and Fall Ver.9

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Controls:

• A – Move Left
• D – Move Right
• Space – Jump
• S+Space – Jump Down
• Enter – Fire
• F4 – Full Screen
• Esc – Exit the game

This is much, much more solid than before.

• I’ve updated the spawning so it is programatically placed.  Before I just wrapped the object around so when a platform or enemy went off screen it just teleported to the opposite side of the screen.  Now I actually spawn more enemies above or below you as you climb or fall.
• I’ve added the a climb counter so you know how high you gone or how far you’ve fallen.  I want to tie that into some cool graphics that intensify as you get higher or fall further.

What to do next?  Either I will create art for the player object and make the player character fire in one direction, OR I will try and expand the platform types and gameplay.  We’ll see.

Enjoy the update.

Marcus

DOWNLOAD: Rise and Fall Ver.7

The September Experimental Gameplay Project is over.  It was a challenging and fun experience.  What I did learn is that I don’t understand Game Maker as well as I would like.  I had a lot of crazy bugs in there.   I’ve decided to remake the game.

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Rise and Fall

UPDATE – I’m working on fixing the issues in this prototype. You can see the progress here.

Here is my submission for the September Experimental Gameplay Project Competition, Rise and Fall.

The main concept is to climb as high as you can by shooting the enemies and making platforms out of them.

It is my first challenge ever like this.  As a result you will see the bugs in the build.  Hopefully in the future I will refine my creation process and mitigate issues sooner.  This is about 7 days worth of work during the evening after my day job.  I used Game Maker to create the “game”.  For more information on the games creation check out the journal posts here.

Thanks for checking out the game.

DOWNLOAD: Rise and Fall

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Controls:

• A – Move Left
• D – Move Right
• Space – Jump
• S+Space – Jump Down
• Enter – Fire
• F4 – Full Screen
• Esc – Exit the game

So, I got a late start.  Ended up working late at the paying gig.

This is still broken, but you can see bits of main foundation of the game.  It has potential for more, but there is no sense of scoring or progression.   I wanted to color the world with more vibrant colors and objects.  Pulsating circles and spinning rectangles.  Then as you fell, the colors would diminish to a gray world.  I also wanted to add in different enemies with different movement and platforms.  Bounce platforms, disappearing platforms, moving platforms, etc.

I spent a great deal of time just trying to fix collision issues.  And when you play the build you will see the same problems.  Maybe I will continue trying to fix the issues in the near future.  I think it may be neat to see a truly working build, less prototype-like.

Oh well.  It was good practice to bust my butt for a week.  Regardless of the quality of the end product.

Marcus

ARGH!!! This is sooo broken.

The pieces are there, but there are sooo many bugs.  One more night.  This is not going well for the kid.  Gotta finish strong.  Hopefully I can locate the final bits of bugginess tomorrow.

Ok, new update.

I think I said this yesterday.  “I think I got the major collision issues done. ”

I changed the jump physics to allow for a difference between tapping and holding the button.  It’s subtle but it is there.  This in turn caused headaches getting the appropriate jump spacing and heights.  I think I broke the ledge grab too.  It’s not consistent.

Anyway, the projectile is in.  That was fairly easy.  I just need to make it shoot something.  Or rather have something to shoot.  Getting closer to doing game design as opposed to engine design.  2 more days!!!