Messages

Alright Major Update Time:

First and Foremost, the game now has proper patterns that spawn at a fixed rate (the delay gets shorter on higher difficulties intentionally)
while it is also possible to customize patterns adding them to a pool of pre-made patterns that the RNG manages.

Secondly we now have Smart-Bombs

1 Smart-Bomb is given to the player for every 50 + X kills he/she scores (where X starts at 0 and is increased by 10 for every bomb gained during gameplay)
whenever the player triggers a smart-bomb a shock-wave is created from the center of the field that expands towards the edges, instantly
destroying any advancing enemy walls it comes into contact (pretty much clearing the area)

seeing how it's relatively easy to get a smart-bomb at the start (50 kills, and by this point you might be going from normal to hard difficulty)
it's a good strategy to save them for when you reach a higher difficulty, have most of your shield destroyed or when X is already at 40+ in
value.

Next up we also have the endgame screen already done.

basically once your core blows up, (taking all the objects in the screen with it) the endgame screen (still a WIP) appears,
as of right now I only have it ask the player if he/she wants to continue or quit the game, eventually I'll also add a local high-score system
(similar to that of flappy bird / super hexagon where if your current score > high score, the screen instead tells you,
that you've reached a new high-score)

Also a small update on the particles, while I did spawn them successfully they seemed to always explode in the same exact pattern which kinda
made the explosions look stale, now the patterns are totally randomized and look a lot better.

And to give people something to anticipate, here's a brief vid with the new updates in place, NOTE: smart bombs ARE implemented here, but there's no HUD
element for them (yet...) hope you guys enjoy ;D

Spoiler: ShowHide

To sum things up here's a new updated list of all the features my project has at the moment, while also showing
future updates to work on:

Spoiler: ShowHide

WHAT I HAVE SO FAR:
+Title Screen (not shown in the vid, there's a transition but it's disabled atm)
+Core Gameplay (95% done, bombs need HUD elements)
+Particle System for most explosions (smart-bombs excluded)
+Smart Bomb system
+Endgame options (to be expanded)

INCOMING:
-Main Menu ( STILL designing it, but won't implement until I sort out the other features.)
-High Score system, (working on it as we speak, to be implemented on endgame options)
-Music & SFX (For the next update I'll probably have a placeholder to show.)
-Jukebox (once I have a good set of music tracks I'll work on this)
-A finite survival mode (rather than just kill for score, in here it's kill to successfully end the game)
-HARD MODE (You start in MELTDOWN instantly with only 3 bombs, no additional bombs, the core is NOT protected by a shield. )
-A port to Android (I'm aiming for 4.2.2 ;D)
-Gyroscope Controls (to be seen and possibly discussed.)

WISHFUL THINKING:
(the following I'd LIKE to implement, but with my current skill are possibly best left out.)

-MP3 recognition, (While I cannot implement it anymore as part of the core gameplay (script issues) I'll try to at least make it
so that players can overwrite the game music with their own)
-Online Scoreboard (DISCARDED: Local score is good enough.)

And to wrap things up: should the next batch of updates get implemented successfully, If possible by the end of this week
(or the start of the next one) I'll have an .exe (and hopefully an .apk) to download over here

To the Mods:

Once the demo .exe is released, would you please consider moving this topic from "New Projects" to "Projects"?
(assuming all the requirements are met) not only would this help the project get a bit more notoriety but also help
me find play-testers more easily to keep polishing the overall project, thanks in advance

Until Next Time ;D

Brief Update time:

Successfully added a particle system, now whenever an enemy wall is destroyed a brief particle explosion is seen,



I also attempted to take Ryex's suggestion and tried adding patterns.... surprisingly enough, the way I handled the script that spawned
enemy walls somewhat made it easy to add patterns + hook them up to the RNG,

HOWEVER I did ran into a brand new (and annoying) fork in the road, while the system DOES indeed now spawn patterns from a pool of
possible patterns randomly, it spawns them all at once, apparently it has no delay, the only saving grace is that at least my
"only 10 enemies on-screen at once" rule still applies, so to soften the blow I added a brief delay between spawns but still
has some tendencies to go all out on the player from time to time.

I also slightly sped up the player movement + decided to change player bullets on-screen from 1 to 3.

I guess I'll handle the speed/delay issue a bit later on when I start thinking about it a bit more clearly, but until then I'll move on
with the endgame conditions (the red core exploding) + high score logic.

May I suggest some game-play improvements?

1) right now it appears that the walls just spawn randomly. meaning that your ONLY methods of controlling difficulty is the spawn speed and the wall thickness. while this seems fine on the surface you end up with the same problem early versions of tetris did. if instead you designed some spawn patterns and selected form the patterns randomly you would have a much greater control over the difficulty of the game. example if one of your a patterns spawns a wall and then another wall with a slight delay on the other side you have a difficult spawn pattern. but the difficulty of that pattern can be adjusted by changing the delay.

Hmm this IS sort of true, as of right now, the only form of control I have over the enemy spawns are their overall speed (handled by the timescale, I know it's risky but gives
a good clean solution to difficulty scaling) the spawn rate, basically I can determine what are the odds for one of the spawners to spawn an enemy wall, and number of enemies
on-screen, the condition for the spawners is, as long as there are 10 or less enemies on-screen use the RNG to determine if you can spawn or not,

while it cannot be appreciated on the video due to the speed on which I destroy the enemies, the game is will only accept 10 (this value can be changed) enemies on-screen
at any time, if the cap is reached, even if the spawner RNG rolled good spawn numbers, it would never spawn any more.

as for patterns, I figured it would be slightly more thrilling if it was all random, to counter unfair patterns I was actually thinking of adding a 1 second delay on the spawn (which would be affected by the scale, meaning it would not make the game TOO easy on a higher difficulty) to give the player enough time to react accordingly,

but all in all, I feel it would be best to try both methods and see which one yields better results.

2) give your player a hint as to where and when a wall is going to spawn. if the outer wall pulsed slightly just before emitting a wall you give your player a chance to plan their movement to best break them. if the size/brightness of the pulse was linked to the thickness of the wall emitted even better. also with this feature you give yourself yet another knob to adjust difficulty by lengthening or shortening the delay between the pulse and the wall being emitted. this kind of behavior will be especially important if you link enemy spawns to the rhythm / mood of the music.

This one did kinda slip off my mind didn't it? yup it's a good idea if I implant it should it be based on rhythm but sadly I lack the proper experience to do this one, I'll probably
save it until later one when I learn how to import MP3's & detect wavelengths.

as for your bomb mechanic I'd suggest starting with zero and gaining them after a number of kills. that required number of kills should go up with either the number of bombs you already have or with the difficulty, your giving your player a git out of jail free card. they should start with one nor should they be flooded with them as the difficulty goes up and they start getting more and more kills because the spawn rate is higher. The game should have the same number of bombs available per second through all difficulty levels, perhaps even getting bombs more slowly as the difficulty goes up (yet another difficulty adjustment knob, find your balance). Heck with that concept in mind you might want to link getting bombs to the number of seconds they have been playing, perhaps in addition to the number of enemy kills.

Hmm this one's a good one, originally I planned on having just 3 for a single playthrough and have the player decide when it was a good time to use them, but then I realized
how stale of a run would be if a player decided to save them for a harder part only to accidentally die before using them, hence the poll, what I had in mind with gaining bombs
based on number of kills would be, something like this:  50-60 Kills + X where X would be rising by 10 for every bomb gained, eventually I would cap X to 140-150 in order to have the player kill 200 enemies to gain a bomb late game. and of course, cap the number of bombs you can carry up to 3 at a time. (I'm actually debating this one, should it have a cap of 3 or keep it unlocked for players who want to hoard them for later on?)

it looks like you might have a nice game concept here. with some polish and some play testing you'll have a great  game for your portfolio. Get it our to play testers ASAP. the feedback you get will be invaluable.

Thanks I know it's still in a very early development stage but with some polish, bugfixes and good music, I'm pretty sure this could be a good game for android/PC especially for
people who play old-school arcades/get on the bus a lot.

oh that reminded me.... the wall thickness you talked about, it's not that the wall is thick it's that the RNG decided to apparently spawn 2 walls close together giving the illusion of
them being 1 thick wall, I'll probably address this issue on the next update, thank you very much for pointing this one out

Hopefully with the next update (with a test .exe included) I'll have enough content to move this thread into an active project and possibly recruit some play-testers.

                                                                                    Project R.E.M.S.
                                                                                                        By: R.A.V.S.O.

Project R.E.M.S. (realtime, emergent, multi-tasking, simulator) is a shoot-em-up, I designed on Unity 5.0 sometime during college's programming competition
around 2-3 years ago.



while the game did not even got close to winning (it was full of errors and looked totally different) I still decided to salvage the core concept and
retry it once I learned a bit more on how to use Unity/C#

GAMEPLAY:

The core gameplay is simple, you control an (indestructible) red spaceship that orbits around a red core while both are surrounded by a
green hexagon that spawns advancing enemy walls at random intervals. the red core itself is vulnerable to enemy fire and is only protected by
a 2-layered shield, it's up to you as the red ship to take down as many advancing enemy walls and keep the red core intact for as long as you can.

The LONGER you remain alive, the HARDER it gets. (speed-wise)

Video demonstrating the gameplay in action.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Here's the twist though: rather than moving the ship, when pressing left or right, the entire field moves around, keeping the spaceship always
at the top, if you see enemy fire coming from one side, it's best you move the field to position yourself accordingly.


FEATURES: (While there is a playable demo you guys can try as of today, it's not yet the full thing, expect even MORE changes as I carry on.)

Spoiler: ShowHide

WHAT I HAVE SO FAR:
+Title Screen (still missing 1 animation but is not crucial for integrity, will work on it.)
+Core Gameplay (100% implemented, but can be enhanced, I WILL discuss this later on.)
+Particle System for most explosions (smart-bombs excluded purposely)
+Smart Bomb system
+HARD MODE (You start in MELTDOWN instantly with only 3 bombs, no additional bombs, the core is NOT protected by a shield. )
+Endgame options (to be expanded)
+audio-tracks (about time don't you think? ;D of course some are placeholders and I'll work on this later on)
+randomized audiotrack system, (everytime you play this game 1 out of 3 different tracks will play for that one game.)

INCOMING:
-Main Menu ( STILL designing it, but won't implement until I sort out the other features.)
-High Score system, (working on it as we speak, to be implemented on endgame options)
-A finite survival mode (rather than just kill for score, in here it's kill to successfully end the game)
-A port to Android (I'm aiming for 4.2.2 ;D)
-Gyroscope Controls (to be seen and possibly discussed.)

WISHFUL THINKING:
(the following I'd LIKE to implement, but with my current skill are possibly best left out.)

-Online Scoreboard (Will decided inbetween local and online, will depend on how well the project comes along.)

The game is at the moment only for PC, but if everything goes smoothly I'd like to port it to Android as an apk for 4.2 systems and above.
there's no .exe yet because it still feels naked as I only have core features implemented but I'll probably release one
with the basics once it's done.

And now the moment you've been waiting for:

DOWNLOAD LINK:
Current Version: 1.4
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oc3jyghktp40oc7/Project%20R.E.M.S.%20Demo%20v1.4.rar?dl=0

The file weights around 45-50mb give or take, and is neatly packed as a .rar compressed folder,
in order to play it, simply select the .exe file inside.

CONTROLS:

The demo uses some simple controls.

Arrow Keys Left & Right = Rotates the Field.
Z Key = shoots bullets.
Left Shift = use a bomb (if you have any)
Enter = Pause/Unpause the game.

Spacebar = starts the game (when viewing instructions)

CLOSING COMMENTS:

I know the game is FAR from finished, but releasing a demo with a taste of the main gameplay is a good way to show what's about to come later on,
the finished game should have most if not all the features mentioned above implemented, while adding a fix or two along the way.

I hope you guys enjoy this demo, and hopefully I'll have an android version to upload as well ;D

let's asses the situation shall we?

Q: WHY is there a lack of interest?
A: people seem to lack a will to try out your demo.

Q: why do people seem to lack the will to try out your demo?
A: according to the people who have seen your pics, (even me) your maps feel empty, too big,
and by the looks of it, sorta repetitive on the tilesets.

Q: why do people criticize it like so?
A: when people play a demo, thy expect that you have at least a half-fleshed out character to
take out for a spin, on some (at least) diverse populated maps, with at the bare minimum the main
objective in their sights (the single sentence describing Alex leaves little to no incentive on players
wanting to know who he is)

Q: What can you do about this?
A: First off, your character, who is he? the only thing we know is that he's an amnesiac in a
car crash, but what about his backstory? what's so special about that character surviving the car crash
where might he go and why? (I DO take in mind that he is an amnesiac, but even then the player
should at least know SOMETHING regardless of the character knowing what to do or not)

Q: OK Improve the character, now what?
A: Most people would tell you, that the following step is mapping, eventing etc.... not quite.
I'd say first and foremost you need a solid plot, you don't NEED to reveal it to us, but make SURE you
know what your plot is from start to finish, why? because later on when you're map designing the
areas of your plot it HELPS to know what to map and what to leave behind (many designers make up
areas that they never use later on, or if the plot contradicts itself, some of your maps wont even make
sense etc...) long story short....  stabilize your plot BEFORE even starting map/event/battle designs.

REMEMBER: your audience does NOT know what the full plot is, therefore you must have some form
of way to attract players into the setting, if you keep players for more than an hour without figuring
out what to do (or even worse, how to properly play the game) expect them to lose interest.

Q: OK I have my plot designed and know where to start, now what?

A: You're gonna need some maps, not just ANY old map though, what calls people into trying out
a demo more than the plot itself is the gameplay derived from the maps and/or battle-system (if any)
when it comes to making a map, bigger isn't always better, having small yet properly designed maps
is good if you know how to populate them, the point is that no matter what size your map is, it should
always have some (optionally interactive) eye candy to go along with it, (forests should have winding
trails instead of just a road line from point A to B, caves should look irregular, while buildings should have
small features to make them look like someone actually lives there), in short keep your maps with good
content WHILE making them look natural, bonus points if you have the player interact with it.

NOTE: Try using some new tilesets, the standard ones aren't bad but you can certainly make
maps look even better with other ones, lucky for you, this site offers some great tutorials on
mapping if you get lost.

these are SOME ways to start off your game,
not ALL of them, just remember, it's always better to have a short yet functional game over a long cluttered
mess of featureless maps.

don't give up, and if you feel you're lacking skill on either mapping/eventing/battle-systems etc... feel free to ask around.

Lastly, sorry for the wall of text, but it's kinda hard to cover the essentials on a single post.

Dunno about you guys but.... THE MEDIC IS A SPY!

EDIT: not sure if this is intentional or not but when replying to a post, if you check the previous posts below your reply you can still see
         who is who....

I kinda find it sadistically hilarious how they also target RPG Maker files as part of the encryption process...

oh well, hopefully everyone here is smart enough to avoid shady downloads, or at least use a good antivirus or heck...
read the comments before downloading.


EDIT:

Seems the TeslaCrypt encryption was based on the previous CryptoLocker ransomware (the desktop wallpaper looks almost the same)
and therefore has its own vulnerabilities, eventually CL got a "fix"

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/08/new-site-recovers-files-locked-by-cryptolocker-ransomware/

apparently, a company in the Netherlands managed to find most if not all of the keys used to encrypt the files CL was using
and it let you recover them without ever having to pay ransomware owners a cent.

hopefully IF TeslaCrypt was loosely altered from CL, its more likely for them to keep some of those keys, but that's jus wishful thinking.

*looks at the list on page one*

oh my.... my list appears empty, (aside from my FC)

here's a rundown of all the games I own atm, games with an * can be played online

-Mario Kart 7*
-Azure Striker Gunvolt + Mighty Gunvolt.
-Kid Icarus Uprising*
-Pokemon Y*
-Super Smash Bros for 3DS*
-Kingdom Hearts 3D
-Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate* (recently added)

just mentioning these because they're relevant (most play online) & my list looked rather lonely with not a single entry
to add, and as a heads up that I got MH4 as well.

hopefully we can play a round or 2 online on the incoming weekend.

(sorry for the necro btw)

Shading is something that applies to 3D game development, your use of the term shading is either wrongly applied or perhaps you mistook it for
another function (considering we're still talking about 2D Rpg Maker here)

shaders are only handled afaik on 3D graphics software (3DS max, maya, blender etc...) (and just if you're curious enough blender is the free-ish one)

now if you want to do 2D resources, there's loads of programs available,

-paint tool sai
-gimp
-paint.net
-photoshop
etc...

or you could brave up, and pop out good ol' MS Paint like I did
(it's actually a good way to make simple minimalistic HUD's, minus transparency)

Ironically I managed to get it yesterday at night myself XD

I pretty much liked the charge blade and decided to stick to it, first time I played it fully (I only tried PSP demos before so it's a start)

NOTICE: Big images are big, so will be properly shown via spoiler tags.

Alright so after dusting off my old account I managed to get back into action pretty quickly, here's today's craziness in summarized pics.

Spoiler: ShowHide

There's no better way to make a comeback than throwing a monster 3 times your size and possibly weight
15 feet across the floor in the middle of a desert raid followed by a massive storm of insect-like abominations.

Spoiler: ShowHide

The enemy units level up the higher the wave number is, fortunately, you also get this bad boy to take
for a ride, no surprises here, I love this mech segment.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Guns aren't your main concern? try slicing up EVERYTHING in front of you for massive damage.
from standard combos to this sick dash attack, guaranteed to deal at least 10k damage per hit
(considering the insane HP some of the bosses in here have I'd say this evens things up a bit)

Spoiler: ShowHide

Cool swordplay & gunplay still not enough? If you've made it so far as to reach the final wave
they give you THIS, this deathray can singlehandedly make or break the wave as you basically
decimate whatever the hell stands in your sight, did I mentioned how much I LOVE this ride armor?
well it still needs more emphasis XD

Spoiler: ShowHide

I gotta say, these A.I.S. Carriers are purposely OP as hell, then again seeing how this is an EQ with a terrible
success rate it's understandable why they give you these, it's also noted how fast they are,
you can reach the edge of the map in SECONDS by simply spamming the dash button, (feels good man)

Needless to say, this EQ was hard as hell, but worth it, aside from 10 nega-photons (meh) I did get some
good meseta (around 80k with a tri boost 100%) it also gave me some cool armor parts + enough fun
points (I kept reviving everyone) to get my weapon camo.

Well I've finally made some space on my PC, but tbh I totally forgot how to properly install the game + patches,

anyone still have the install guide? also are you guys still active?

hmm if my memory serves me correctly, last time I played I believe I decided to keep
modding my class into Braver/Hunter,

fighter has some cool stuff but hunter's overall ATK is what sold it for me, (besides I look cool wielding a cloud-sized blade as a plus)

I'll probably get back to it once I'm done with my SQL hi-jinx next week

Oh CRAP XD I uninstalled mine to make room, but since you're going back to PSO2 I might just as well reconsider a download XD

as for the error 249...

try the following.

-use the proxy function on the PSOTweaker (if you don't have this, download it, as it also takes care of your patches)
-check your PSO2 related mail, most of the time (at least on gmail) it supports translation + they usually tell you server status
-site could possibly be on maintenance, wait it out a bit.

should you manage to get in and start replaying, my suggestion is, to use those EXP +50% & 100% items when an emergency quest is about
to start.

speaking of those.... DO NOT try to do the Shingeki no Kyojin EQ alone, that stuff is hard without team coordination XD

Also think, Formulas.

if you come to think about it, most battle systems, if you take away all the eye candy, and the animations, and whatnot, in the end
you're left with cold hard equations and formulas.

while I haven't done any battle systems myself, I can still say parameters (such as HP, ATK, DEF, etc...) play a big role on this, before even
considering choosing what type of battle system you'd like to do, ask yourself this:

-how will I handle damage? how does a player's ATK and DEF affect the standard formula?
-how much can a player control on this system? can he move? is he stationary? is it on turns?
-how is a battle dissected? do enemies attack first? what is my priority at the start of the turn?

....the list goes on,

but if I were to choose an absolute starting point I'd say, WIN/LOSE conditions, when does a player win a battle, and when does he lose?
assuming that you're choosing the standard win/lose condition of having all members in one side have 0 HP, next would be, deciding how
to deal damage, selecting a standard formula, sticking to it and whatnot, then add conditions to it,

basically you gotta start from a very simplistic addition/subtraction system, then once you have stabilized it work your way up to the
details, from simple to complex, you get to decide as you build it.

I wonder if they'll decide to take over the flag and enable uploads + the original features .se had.

either that, or there's always kickass torrents

Technically speaking TPB.cr was always there,

it works as a side-server, but mostly used by people near costa rica when they have trouble accessing .se
it's almost the same except that it might look a bit less organized then .se did.

sweden only has jurisdiction over .se, and when it got taken down, site savvy uploaders focused over to .cr

coming from someone who lives in Mexico,

TPB helped me (and my career surprisingly) in unorthodox ways....

Yes, it's true TPB is a very common source for your pirated games, movies, pr0n etc... but coming from Mexico most of the stuff you'd genuinely like to
obtain through legitimate means is quite scare due to such content simply not being available over here, this is a double edged blade.

take Netflix as an example, over North America Netflix hosts entire series and movies with little to no restraints, over here you're lucky if you
find the same exact series complete (most have either seasons 1-2 barely complete or simply season 1), also to add insult to injury the movie
catalog is heavily restricted as well (apparently Netflix Mex, does not add a series or movie if it doesn't have a spanish dub or sub at least)
I know some of you might say.... why not use a proxy? indeed I could have, but when my relatives eventually want to do this on their own
or the proxy is an overall slowdown, there were alternate less stressful methods, TPB was one of them, simply because chances are what you
were seeking was not available for Netflix (heck Naruto fans in Mexico are still bitching about how shippuden is still not available over here)

afaik most people in Mexico resort to Netflix because as far as they know it's the only source of their movies, and the few people that decided to
seek content not found in netflix decided to try their luck at TPB, heck I've resorted to TPB myself for Linux isos more than movies itself
simply because it was easier and usually came with some form instructions, same with Maya 2015,

long story short, yes while it was used for piracy it was also used for access to content that might have been restricted elsewhere.
either way, afaik TPB will re surge, somewhere someday, like the old saying says.... keep circulating the tapes.  

I'm still playing this on weekends (college is taking a toll on my time during finals)

most of the english speaking community lies on ship 02, blocks [B-06] and [B-20]
just... mind [B-20] during the night, people get trigger happy with the explicit images you
can use as image-chat.

Well they also added a casino with 2 minigames, (similar to Sonic Adventure) basically a slot machine game and a shooting minigame that
feels like the trophy shooter game from Brawl.

since most of you have your old accounts you'll probably have tons of rare weapons/items in your inbox as we speak
(I had some for me too)
but you also get 2 casino passes which is basically free currency.

that and nearing December, PSO2's Ultimate mode will be released.

remember PSO1?

it had 4 difficulties, normal, hard, very hard, and ultimate,
from N to VH enemies had slow movements, and your standard RPG status ailments, BUT on ultimate, not only did the
areas change visually but enemies chased you and had OHKO moves sometimes, tbh it was a thrill,

same for PSO2, once ultimate is released not only will the level cap go up (possibly to 100) but old areas will have
quite the makeover,
(SEGA is also hinting of an even harder difficulty, traditionally speaking PS games tend to have a level cap of 200, and PSO2
is still in it's 70's, + a missing episode)