Be a X-Wing pilot!
Take a seat in the most advanced fighter of the galaxy. Fight against the evil empire!
Use proton torpedo to quickly dismiss enemy forces or your 4 blasters (aiming skill required).
Go through 4 epic missions, discover the alternate ending.
Copyright Notice
Starwars logo/music/... credits to their respective owners. Don't sue me :/
Dev Log
This is a demake of the X68000 Attack of the Deathstar game, (kind of) complete with space/ground/trench missions.
This version departs from the original with a less arcade/grinding gameplay.
The un-minified version can be found (as usual) on my Github page (includes all 3d assets).
Tie Fighters
All flying NPCs are following boids behavior (seek, avoid, follow) and are really a blast to watch in pack (imho)!
Baddies will try to get on your six to fry good old r2d2 :/
Proton Torpedo
Proton flight path is following Proportional Navigation rules. Gives a nice interception path (and the math is cool :)
3d Engine
Engine is a edge renderer (wireframe only as you certainly noticed!). It supports faces with an arbitrary number of edges to reduce visual cluter and achieve good performance.
Face culling is using object-space culling, the normal.point constant is pre-calculated when model is loaded.
Quaternions functions ported from ThreeJS.
3d Sound
(sort of...) Sound volume is changed at runtime according to sound emitter location, using the PICO-8 "feature" that sfx can be modified without impacting currently playing sound.
Note: sfx 63 is reserved for that use.
Software Pipeline
3d assets are modeled in Blender, exported in sprite/map format using a Python exporter .
Models are unpacked from spritesheet/map memory at startup and made available in a global table.
All game data are expressed as JSON strings, supporting references to global functions. Ex:
_g.update_player=function(self)
self.x+=1
self.y+=0.5
end()
local player=json_parse('{"x":0,"y":0,"update":"update_player"}')
-- works!
player:update()
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Mini json parser from Tyler Neylon: lua JSON parser
Code is minified using picotool.
Music lifted from "public" MIDI files, simplified and converted with midi2pico.
Changelog
1.0:
- Initial public version
- Bug: not able to restart after gameover (will be fixed soon)
1.1:
- change: redone control scheme (flat turn, optional roll)
- change: removed boost
- change: laser auto lock
- change: difficulty curve
- fixed: NPC flight AI
- fixed: torpedo aiming
Strewth this is rad, zooming in and out of the ship is the best thing ever
Lots of fun, can't wait to see how this progresses :D
::
Even with boost it feels ridiculously difficult to get TIEs in front of me. Like, last-level-of-the-entire-game difficult.
Have you sat a fresh player down with this and watched them play it, without giving them advice? You might not be your own best focus group due to familiarity and practice.
Looks really good, btw. It's just balance I think is off.
::
Yeah I really wanted to see more because the GIFs and graphics look amazing but after like 10 minutes I glimpsed at the first ti-fighter like twice, let alone actually get the thing in the crosshairs. Tried just ignoring it and flying straight to the deathstar but it didn't get any closer :(
::
Just tried again, for the heck of it.
Honestly, I have a hard time believing that even you, as the dev who knows the code inside and out, can consistently and successfully get the TIEs on screen long enough to shoot them.
I wonder if it's a web player thing. Have you played it on the BBS? I'm telling you, I know my reflexes are poor, but I also know it's nigh impossible even if I account for that.
It seems like either you're pulling our leg or there's something amiss between your dev environment and our experience if you think you have to dumb down the TIE fighters all the way to "fresh out of flight school" mode to make it playable for us. Something seems off about that, like we're not playing the same game.
I'd love to see a video of you playing it as it is right now.
::
I'm afraid I have to second this - I got, like, one hit successfully on a TIE and couldn't destroy any! They're just too fast and are not within my view cone long enough to hit.
Whilst the left/right rolling is neat and is nice to have, I think you might be better served by having left/right linked to yaw rather than roll as roll in conjunction with pitch is nigh-on impossible to keep the TIEs within your view long enough to hit even if you can anticipate where they're going.
Just a thought - gameplay issues aside, it's a tremendous technical achievement.
::
This is so cool! I love the little dialogue/avatars at the top of the screen! :>
I agree with what others have said about the difficulty in the first part. I did get to the second part a couple times (only to get shot down pretty quickly by the turrets), but only by mostly using proton torpedoes since I could rarely get the TIEs in front of me long enough to hit them with lasers, which felt wrong to me, someone who plays a lot of the Starfighter Assault mode in Star Wars Battlefront II and is usually pretty good at hitting ships with lasers, based on the match scoreboards :) Maybe it would be easier if they flew in straight lines more often...?
It also helped a bit when I read what you wrote in a response about boost making you turn faster, but that's not at all what I would expect from a "boost" button, i.e. usually ships turn more slowly if they are going faster (which is what I would expect "boost" to do) so I didn't find that intuitive without explicitly reading that it does that.
Another thing that would be nice is if the exterior/interior view could be changed via a menu entry, so you can still control that (albeit requiring a pause) while using a gamepad. This is especially important because it's easier (I find) to track/chase the TIEs in the third-person camera mode because you get a wider field of view, so if you don't have a way to enter that view, it effectively makes the game more difficult.
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This looks really cool, but I wish I understood better how to play at all. Every time I try to play, I have a game over in roughly 10 seconds and haven't seen a single tie fighter. Haha.
Sweet. I'd been looking forward to update to this. You've done a good job of improving an already great game.
I like the new control scheme, it's surprising how such a small thing really changes the feel of the game. Just generally with all the tweaks you've made, I think you've got it to a good point where it's easy to jump in and start playing for the first time, but the difficulty ramp keeps it fun.
I could just be the visual of seeing the reticle jump to the target, but the aiming lock-on seems like it happens from bit too far away to me. Then again, I didn't find the tie fighters that hard to hit in the first version.
i hadnt logged in in months, but i saw this on twitter and i had to just to star/heart this. its amazing
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Thanks guys!
note: I cannot check right now but 3d sound is likely broken.
@davbo: the lock signals you can launch a proton torpedo - dunno if you find out, the lock time is rather short (and difficult to keep)
@paranoid: I was initially aiming for a simulator kind of game, hence the initial pitch/roll flight control.
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