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It's a long way from finished, but I now have something approximating a playable demo of a 1- to 4-player cart I've been working on.

Here is Star Shield for your... Uh... Enjoyment? Or whatever you want to do with it.

Premise

Defend your base against the stars' relentless assault by activating your left or right shield at the correct moment. Rack up a high score in single player, or be the last base standing in multiplayer!

Stars speed up after several deflections, and new stars appear at high point thresholds. Extra lives are awarded to particularly beleaguered players.

Controls

  • LEFT or (o): Activate left shield.
  • RIGHT or (x): Activate right shield.

For proper orientation, imagine yourself seated behind your station, looking into the circle.

  • Player 1: Red (South)
  • Player 2: Blue (North)
  • Player 3: Yellow (West)
  • Player 4: Green (East)

Cart #starshield_demo_v05-0 | 2020-03-30 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
1

To-Do List

There is a lot that I'm still working on. Namely:

  • Moving stars along lines at intersections, rather than teleporting.
    • In an ideal world, the stars randomly decide whether to hop on a line when they pass them, and then randomly decide to travel counter/clockwise at the end of the line. I'm really struggling to come up with ways to go from circular movement to linear movement and back... The stars always fly off into space, never to be seen again!
    • The travel to the center circle is necessary for 3- and 4-player games, so that stars aren't trapped between two players.
  • Better shield activation windows.
    • BTNP allows an indefinite shield (defeating the point of the game), but BTN keeps it up way too briefly.
  • Displaying "empty" life markers when lives are lost.
  • Nicer title and menu screen.
  • Music and sounds.
  • Optimized maps and starting positions for 3-player games.
  • Much cleaner code!

I will update this thread as I progress.

Thanks for reading/playing!

P#74322 2020-03-30 04:23 ( Edited 2020-03-30 04:31)

The colors and layout are welcoming and clean.

Idea: Maybe a late shield activation, and successful blocking, moves the star along the outer circle. An early shield activation, and successful blocking, moves the star along the inner circle.

Also, perhaps an activated shield sprite, that was wider than the base, may make it clearer that the shield is active vs the shield is ready to deploy.

P#74348 2020-03-31 02:45

only got a chance to try out the single player version, but I really love the tension that comes from having two circles. I found the game really fun and intuitive.

P#74640 2020-04-11 02:32

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