MyGame - ShootMeUp *Working Title*

hey guys and girls…

first, thanks TLL for Codea, i’m just loving it!
and your community here is great too, so i want to get your opinions (it’s not something i usually do)
i want to create a game and i want to sell it in the appstore (like many of you too) but it would be my first game to publish.

Its a ShootEmUp, nothing extremely special, just fun action, a little story, ipad-created graphics, hopefully ipad created music in the background (and i plan to share that if i get it to work playing mp3’s in the background)

the game should have 4 worlds, a world consists of a space section, like this:

and the you proceed on the planet, near above ground… and i wish i had a great idea to do the scrolling on the planet…
what comes to my mind is one of these options:
1
draw the elements one by one, so if i have e.g. a street going from left to right, that could consist of 20 tiles… or green grass, that could fill the screen completely, i think that could be too slow… so i would have to make it less detailed…

2
draw “pre rendered” larger sprites… so i would have maybe just 4-5 sprites for the background, which get created on the fly as the level proceeds with context() to a sprite image out of the litle ones…

3
just use primitives and be very creative making it look good

any suggestions about speed, any other ideas etc?

i would love to hear from you…

i made everything in this video, and i do plan making everything in the game by myself…
The slowdowns are just by recording

Looks good!
Not sure if I fully understand, but do you want to turn this into a sideways scroller when you get to the planet? If so, the following might help. Sideways scrolling with a 3 level parallax (?) effect where objects further in the distance scroll slower than nearer objects


-- Use this function to perform your initial setup
function setup()
    xpos=0
end

-- This function gets called once every frame
function draw()
    -- This sets a dark background color 
    background(60, 126, 237, 255)

for i = 1,40 do
       sprite("Small World:Tree Round Dark", xpos/4+ 25*i-100, 90,40,50) 
    end  
        
    for i = 1,20 do
       sprite("Small World:Tree Round", xpos/2+ 50*i-100, 60,60,70) 
    end
        
    for i = 1,10 do
            sprite("Planet Cute:Grass Block", xpos+101*i-100, 0)
        end
    xpos=xpos-1
end

no, i didn’t wanted to make the second part as a sidescroller, but it’s a great idea and i think i will implement it!
so that you have to turn your device to play the second part, that could be unique :smiley:

and the idea with parallax scrolling is perfect, i think i will do that… thanks!!

here is an update, thank you @West for this great idea, it turns out to be quite playable… :smiley:

Graphics, Music etc. by me… 80% done on an iPad (Procreate, Codea)

Tell me what you think…

Awesome! I love the parallax effect and the rotating planet!

The changes look good. I’d buy it. When there are more than one gameplay dynamics, it seems to keep the game fun for longer.

thank you very much @pepinganos & @Vega,
i planned making the boss battles in another perspective (e.g. from the back of the ship like in space harrier but without scrolling, but i don’t know if it’s a good idea… it would be rather unique though… :slight_smile: )

and psychological interesting, the gameplay mechanics are nearly the same, just rotated 90 degrees, but it’s a totally different experience…

special plans on the game are:

maybe just this one world, more worlds in updates (i wanna get this game out as soon as possible to get more feedback)

global hiscore lists (maybe gamecenter)

storymode (maybe with your facebook or twitter picture, but you can switch the storymode off, like just the action without the blah)

maybe - future ideas:
endlessmode (one random endless level just for hiscore)

I’m in love with the water-skimming effect. Looks great.

Very slick and fluid. Has an old school feel, but nice effects.

Excellent! Love the clouds in the sideways scroller, particularly the semi transparent top ones