gravball

My Idea: make planets, that circle aound the sun.

Then the player has to launch a sattelite from the earth,
and try to hit a certain planet.

For example: shoot the sattelite from Earth toward Jupiter, and then
take the velocity to reach Pluto or another planet.

Could be even a battle game.

Or try to hit a big Comet, like Halley.

Thanx for the comments and hurray for physics

Well I am plannign to put some nice sun's and planets (maybe rotating around them) in the field, but the game will be not to defend something or much action, it'll be a puzzle game. You have to find the right angle and speed to navigate your ball through the level and pick up as much items as you can on the way to the target. That will be the game in big lines, and I'll try to add some nice effects and more nice functions to it.

But I'm stuck on the damn GUI now I hate 3dgs on that part.

huh? I thought ur GUI so far, or at least the little "X" and "arrows" button u have are great. Kinda funny. looks like you've put some complicated mathemathical equations in there, and then you're having a hard time making the UI?
My point is: The game so far is very simple, yet amazing. I wish I would have had the idea... and I'm sure you'll do good on the UI as well.
Keep it up! I'd really like to see different planet sizes (and different gravities)...
good job, very nice idea,

Micha

Somehow, I did not notice before, that panels can be created
dynamically. Thanks to your skript reminding me on that, I can now save a lot of
time on gui creation.

@ Germanunkol:
Well I need to make a whole editor from where you can select objects and put them on screen and since 3dgs always screws up the z-order and interaction of panels, I'm al-ways having trouble with it, it seems I just can't make a GUI in an easy way but oh well, gotta take a little longer then. And the mathematics aren't that complicated once you get into it .

I will make some different planets and stuff, no worries about that but artwork will be done later on. Functionality first

@ Damocles:
Anytime without dynamic panels it would have token ages to get me this far, plus the maximum amount of duplicated objects wouldn't be much. Though for the GUI itself, the interface, i'm using normal panels as that is easier to use.

Oh p.s. got a small video set up from the current demo, no update yet tho, still trying to get a simple folding menu to work and putting in some more objects.

Anyhow here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ufVOdl1e_8

Updating this asap.

Small update shot, added some more objects and the blue dots are ment to be picked up when the ball moves over it. Although you see lots of balls on this screen, in the final game you can shoot one or maybe two at the time. So just to give you the impression of what I want to make .

Currently implementing more objects which have different effects on the balls. (sun should burn the balls, they should crash on planets and asteroids, asteroids need to move around, and more items to pickup like powerups and stuff).

Also want to say that I did not paint these objects, I got them from the internet. I'll probably replace all the artwork by home made stuff when the game is finished.

Nice update Jostie
I like the effect off the shadow on the different planets, the asteroids are a great new option too

Cheers

Frazzle

Why not just a half-transparent sprite that always follows the planet, and the origin pixel always faces the sun sprite? (the origin pixel would have to be on the light side, of course.)

Yeah, that could work too indeed. With the shader thing though, you'd only need a sprite at the origin of the sun, instead of a sprite for every planet,

Cheers

Well, if I then place the planets further away, the light would fade too much to gray. I rather would see it bright at one side, dark at the other. So I'm guessing the only way to go is with seperate sprites on each object then... or am I missing a point here?

Okey, I'll show some pictures then ;

1.) The planets without shadows or light, should be a bit neutral, but you could play with this to get a higher contrast.


2.) With the white sun sprite visible;


3.) Through a shader you multiply the underlying pixels to make them lighter;


It's all 2D, the shader might need pro or sylex to get it to work perfectly though,

The biggest advantage of this is that you can move the sun and it's lighting will simply follow changing on all the planets accordingly practically automatically.. Disadvantage is that it's pretty hard to get it to look really realistic perhaps,

Cheers

However if you move planets further away instead of a static distance from the sun, you will get all shadow instantly, which isn't very realistic. So I think every planet should have such a white circle, but smaller. When positioned correctly you would have a shadow and bright side all times wherever you put the planet, which is more realistic than becoming all shadow instantly when moving away . That was my point ^^.

As for the shader, I thought it was possible with commercial. I tried some simple multiplying on level blocks and that worked. If it doesnt function perfectly then thats not a real big problem. I just want it to finish, doesn't really matter alot when a few minor problems with graphics occur .

It's been a while
Dropped this project for a few weeks, but decided to work on it again. I did the whole game in 2D, using panels and stuff. But that didn't work out as I progressed so I remade the whole game in 3D as fake-2D. Then I had another problem with the interface, the way menu's folded and unfolded. I wrote that part like 3 times and thought about it over and over again. I couldn't solve it without the use of Lite-C. I then decided to learn Lite-C and when I knew enough of the language I would remake the game in Lite-C. Well from learning Lite-C didn't came alot but I still wanted to finish the project. Eventually I kept it with a simple menu where all the items are listed in.

I see that the screens have been gone for some reason :|, I'll show them again using another host.

Very first screenshot:


Progressed screenshot:



So the game was all 2D, and I had to convert it to 3D. Most of it works now, but I haven't implemented all stuff yet (like asteroids). I need to look into the small buttons on the objects (which you can see in screenshot 2, to move or remove them). Not sure if and how I am gonna implement them again. Uhmm well, I think that's it for now. I swear I'm gonna finish this game whatever it takes .

Screenshot from the current state of the project :






When this project is finally finished I will put it in user contributions as a celebration of my first real finished project o_O.

Merci

Good to see this project fired up again, keep on going Jostie, the screens look promising !!
I hope you will be able to finished your first project because finishing a potential game idea isn't as easy as it sounds when you're at your own. Btw, that was the first time I saw you wrote a French word ( ik dacht dat Nederlanders geen krakken waren in het Frans maar eerden in the Duits )

Cheers

Frazzle

looks interesting

This reminds me of an online game I once played called Orbit. It's pretty much the same, but you just had to keep your little "comet" from hitting any of the planets.

Argh, complications and more complications. The basics are all kind of working now. The menus are working, mainmenu is integrated, saving and loading works perfect... but the editor can not save homecooked levels and load those levels with a different gravball game than the one of which the level is made with... so game_save is unusuable for this purpose... which results in the happy alternative that I basically have to rewrite half of the game and add a save/load script which stores and loads all the objects and their positions in a text file...

Don't hesitate to yell a better alternative plz ;_;

And because we all like screens, this is the mainmenu for now :




P.S. MrCode:
Damn you had me addicted for a few hours

nice the menu looks cool
Regards
Aztec

The main menu looks quite creative jostie, great job
It seems that you're really enthusiastic about it too which is a positive thing for the game itself and all of it's features if you know what I mean

Cheers

Frazzle

Coming on good frazzle, a long way from when we first enjoyed the initial release and looking to be a bit on the complicated side for advanced actions too.

\o/ I'm done, going on vacation to Swiss tomorrow and this SENIOR DEVELOPER **hint hint 1000 posts hint hint** !!!CAKE FOR EVERYONE!!! is gonna release his game as a first Beta. It's fully functional! Except for all the highscore storage, powerups, more objects, a help, background scenery, storyline, tutorial text, game- and editor- options, music and sounds. I wanted to make the editor unlockable when you finished all the levels and there's no "Hurray you finished all the levels"-screen but there's no time anymore, I need to go on vacation

I didn't pack the game in one exe file (I tried but none of all the 3dgs packers worked for me, shoot me, no clue why) so the source is visible as well. I wanted to release the source in a seperate zip in user contributions but oh well, here it is anyway:

*******************
GravBall
*******************

EDIT: There was something wrong with the standard level load, I didn't include the levels but it's fixed now.

"It's fully functional! Except for all the highscore storage, powerups, more objects, a help, background scenery, storyline, tutorial text, game- and editor- options, music and sounds."


Okay, I've played it. Not finished all levels yet (need to go to bed...SO tired), just 5 or so... all I can say is: WOW.
Everything: just WOW.
starting with the (sound) effects and ending with the gravity code: Great work!!
I think this reaches the same level as "angelas world"... amazing game idea. I just love it!
Keep at it!!
Micha

Thanx for this reply I really appreciate it.
But so far there is just one sound effect... which is actually just a reversed sword sound effect guess that can be WOW but a lot more of sound effects can be added ^^.

How did you played it? The download is not available.

:\ I have to check that

EDIT:
I don't know why but the hoster stopped hosting the file. I don't know any good file upload sites, but found one anyway and I hope it remains stable.

You can download gravball beta 1.0 here [direct download link]:
www.2shared.com > Gravball

or if somehow this link is renewed, download here and click on the download at the bottom:
www.2shared.com/file/Gravball.html

rapidshare or megashare

I guess you know this game: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/320669

allright. It´s pretty good, but too hard. It´s hard because it´s very very hard to say how much gravity a planet has. The gravity contrast between the stars and planet is so big that it´s hard to understand how much a planet comes into weight, because the planet almost doesn´t do anything with a star next to it. And of course because I had to collect all of these glowing objects to complete the level If collecting these glowing things would just be a bonus it would be easier.

Anyways, good game. Nice grafics, but a space sky cube or something as background would be nice (see the flash game).

As I want to make a lot of effects in this game, I could make the gravitation force visible for each planet somehow. Maybe a nice idea. And in fact the gravity difference between stars and planets is not big at all, unless I put multiple stars on each other in the editor .

I'm not gonna make the glowing things as a bonus, but I do want to make more objects that can be grabbed as a bonus. It should be a puzzle game so there's only a few ways to complete a level. I agree that it's a tad difficult but I made the levels very quickly and yes, at the end they are almost impossible. I may make a hint system or so to make things easier.

The background will get some flashy effects and stuff, im still working on that.

Anyway thanx for trying out .

sry, my bad. should have said "effect", not "effects"^^
just proving how tired I was^^... no... I just meant to make my point when saying I like it all.

I like those shooting/ collecting games, it looks relly nice!

Your sunsystem effect is awesome. :-)