==[THE GAME]== 10 Seconds Gunner is a classic Asteroids clone were your weapon changes every 10 seconds.
Controls: W or Up arrow moves the ship. A / D keys and Left / Right arrows rotates the ship. X key of Spacebar to fire.
==[THE TOOLS]== Code: AS3 with FlashPunk and FlashDevelop. Graphics: Voxatron Editor and Blender for rendering; Paint.NET, Texture Packer and Fireworks for sprites treatment; Photoshop for title screen. Sound: FL Studio with reFX Nexus and Audacity. Revision control: Dropbox.
==[POST MORTEM]== And here we are. After almost three days of messy code, our second Ludum Dare Jam entry is done. We get really excited when the theme came out as its allowed us to build up an idea very quickly (the far opposite of the Minimalism nightmare, ugh). At the beggining we tried some different mechanics to make the game more Geometry Wars-like, but as issues grew bigger, we droped most of the initial design and ended with an Asteroids clone with, we believe, were fair enough to demonstrate the 10 second mechanic we initially thought.
We are very happy with the result as we managed to get done everything that was crucial to the idea, with relative ease.
Know issues and possibly future updates: Inaccurate collisions: because the lack of rigid body physics the collisions sometimes are buggy and we were also unable to make the asteroids collide with each other; Sound issues: we couldn't make the beats loop properly and for some reason the sound effects got a delay on the release version, it doesn't happened on the debug one. Plus some adjustments in volume and mixing are needed. Gameplay balance: even if we are happy with the asteroids spawn rate, it would be cool if some balancing were done according to the weapon; Weapon change: The simple random selection is not cool. Even if we prevented 2 weapons to happen consecutively, some probability logic in it would make it much better; Animate backdrop / Camera movement: We tried this at beggining, but failed; Messy code: with low time the coding was harshly rushed with caused a very messy and hard to manage code. Refactoring must be done in almost all classes if we want to continue the project; Controls: although this was made to mimic the classic Asteroids inputs, the controls feels weird and gamepad support is a must have.
Also, it needs more enemies, some power ups and some animations too.
==[FINAL THOUGHTS]== We had a great time again taking part in Ludum Dare. The result were good and we are considering a commercial release sometime. For the future, we will try to learn and use another engine as we bumped on some FlashPunk limitations this time. We are happy mainly because our organizational, design and communication skills improved a lot since last time and despite being a two-man team and feeling more comfortable about the theme, this is a very significant step we took.
Quite well produced, and well executed! It was bit too easy (I never got that frantic asteroids feel, even when I was a pacifist), probably because the controls are much less floaty than Asteroids. Still, you have several nice touches, particularly in the music.
Also, I have never played a game where mines were fun to use. Somebody really ought to do something about that.
Good asteroid game! Would have love to see much more crazy weapon, because your take on the theme is very original! (changing weapon each 10 seconds) Congrats!
Fantastic game! My only feedback for future projects is to make sure the GUI text stays visible at all times (it can get covered by asteroids; or maybe you did that purposely, what do I know?). Again, great game!
I really love the presentation in general. The music is great and so is the art, including the menu. And then the game-play itself is simple but good fun. I really enjoy having to dodge the asteroids when pacifist activates.
Very interesting take on the theme. I enjoyed this, though the asteroid spawn rate could have been a bit more increased. The 'powerup roulette' is very intriguing, and I found myself enjoying this quite a bit. Nicely done!
Well done, would like to see mor but anyway i read that you learned from the experience and this is what is all about!
R
refreshcreations28 Aug 2013, 21:45
Mmm asteroids, I do love me some asteroids and this is a rather nice version of it some nice variance in weapons add different strategy to the game, particularly the mines and pacifism phases, also, yay for vocoders, the bgm is rather nice too, looking forward to the post-LD version!
I didn't like too much ship physics, I would have preferred a more inertial behavior (as in original asteroid game). Graphic is good, but music is superb! I really enjoyed the "machine gun" weapon, too!
Good use of the theme. The various background music sounded awesome and fitted whatever weapon was currently active! The art style was well done and everything seemed polished. Nice job!
Nice use of theme, loved how the gun did change to different types from time to time. Great job. I featured it in my LD27 video compilation series, if you'd like to check it out :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GXNOecUq9c
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Just that sometimes the voice is hard to hear over the background music.
Anyone else with broken link?
(Asteroids on steroids) ;)
But I need more asteroids to shoot!!
The game was quite easy though, especially because of one of the weapons being highly overpowered.
However, considering your notes about improvemts, this could turn out to be a really great game!
Also, I have never played a game where mines were fun to use. Somebody really ought to do something about that.
Would have love to see much more crazy weapon, because your take on the theme is very original! (changing weapon each 10 seconds)
Congrats!
The best power ups are Pacifist and the Gatling gun :P
Graphic is good, but music is superb!
I really enjoyed the "machine gun" weapon, too!