Slick Forums

Tons of new stuff:
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1. You can now buy shields.
2. Enemies drop gold.
3. Asteroids produce children (ie, break up)
4. Shield charges quadrupled.
5. Enemy bullet damage reduced.
6. Enemy ambush zones doubled in size.
7.. Added cargo system. Player begins with 20 cargo, and can store items of a certain space in this. Gold takes up .25 space per piece. If space is full, the player can't pick up the gold.
8. Added logic for buying items. If an item is already in your cargo bay, you will be able to pay for it, but not be able to put it on your ship, and it will be trashed. (I should fix this). Also, buying a new weapon replaces the weapon you currently have in the cargo bay. You are not reimbursed for the weapon it replaces (again, I will eventually fix this).
9. Added logic for gold exchange. Getting gold no longer causes you to magically get money, but it just fills up your cargo bay, you then exchange it at a dock automatically for the exchange rate (currently $200 per piece).
10. Added display for cargo bay. A bar display represents the cargo bay in-game and in the buy menu. In the buy menu, your cargo bay is graphically displayed by the icons associated with each item in the cargo bay.
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1. Pirates can now run into each other.
2. Pirates avoid each other.
3. Players can choose whether or not to exchange gold for money.
4. Added "repulsar shield", which repels bullets and missiles.
5. Decreased accuracy and range of pointdefense weapons, but made missile hitboxes larger.
6. New sentry gun art.
7. New trader art.
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1. Enemy health, starting weapons, ambush size are editable.
2. Patrol zone linger times editable.
3. Dock and trader gold transfer rates and jump fees are editable.
4. Tool tips added for all editable fields (hover the mouse over the text field to get a description)
5. You can now jump between systems.
6. Added new level.
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new maplist:

Level 0:
Starting map.One lush planet in the middle with a dock, 30 asteroids in a ring around the planet.

Level 1:
Two desolate moons are seperated by an asteroid field, a trader goes from what is presumably the sun, to these two planets, and back again.

Level 2:
One lush planet and one desolate moon are seperated by a huge, empty space. The only source of revenue is a clump of 5 asteroids in the middle. However, three pirates attack a stranded trader near the desolate moon. If you can reach the trader in time, and kill the pirates, he will give you enough money to jump to the next system.

This is all I have so far.


New functionality for loading maps:
The game now realizes what level you are on, and what is the maximum level you have reached. If you are trying to jump back a system, you will be charged a trivial fee of $200. If you are jumping forward a system beyond the "max level" you have reached, you will be charged a huge fee of around 20K. For instance, if you are on level0, and your max level is level1, you can jump to level1 for $200, but if you want to jump to level3, you have to pay $20,000. After you pay this fee, you can jump back and forth for $200.

The game will also reset to the current level, rather than level0, if you die.

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1. Two new planets added: "MARS" and "LUSH" map-editor supports these, and they are included in levels 1 and 2.
2. Map editor now supports entity deletion. (double right click)
3. Map editor tool tips are more informative.
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1. Mission system now works up to level 2.
2. Added concept of a "hit-list". The hit-list contains certain entities that you are supposed to destroy before continuing on with the mission.
3. Background music added

.jnlp updated. (It's now 30 MB, up from 5MB, because my background music is a 25MB uncompressed .wav )

Why not use the ogg format? You can convert the wav file using Audacity.

_________________
My website about game development http://anotherearlymorning.com

.ogg crashes the game in eclipse and in webstart. I don't think I have an ogg codec, or the libraries required to play it.

it gives me an unsatisfiedLink error

actually now that I included jogg and jorbis as libraries, I get this error:


When loading the .ogg file. The ogg is only 8MB, so I don't see why it eats up the heap space.

1. Made a new Ally type called "PATROLLER"

The patroller is essentially the same entity as the Trader, except the patroller sports weapons, point-defense systems, and will seek and kill any pirates in the system. The patroller will follow his merry patrol path just like a trader would, until a pirate is spotted in the system. If a pirate is spotted, the patroller will race towards him and kill him with a barrage of missiles. After all pirates have been destroyed, the patroller will go about patrolling.

Unfortunatley, I didn't take into account the fact that patrollers have no idea where asteroids or planets are, so if a patroller sees an enemy on the other side of a planet, he will race towards the planet and prompltly explode on its surface (I find this HILARIOUS by the way)

I'm thinking about either making patrollers fly above planets and asteroids, or make them "repulsed" by them. Giving patrollers repulsion will probably lead to bugs like the patroller deciding it will be a good idea to go towards a planet, back up, and go towards it again ad infinitum. Getting patrollers to pathfind around planets and asteroids will be a monumental task that I don't have the skills for.

2. Patrollers and traders now use the same boid behavior as the pirates.

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1. Patrollers given ambush range just like pirates.

2. Added new entity called a "mine". Mines are missiles that sit in one position until the player comes near, and then will track the player, allies or enemies. Mines do 50 damage, and can be shot down with point-defense weapons.

3. Added new level, the "vesta cloud", which is a huge asteroid field filled with mines.

will update .jnlp soon.

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1. Music is .ogg to save space.

2. Map editor menus are now transparent to make them take up less of the screen.

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1. Began localization of sounds in 2D space. This means that, say, an explosion far away and to the right will be quieter and panned more to the right than an explosion on top of the player.

2. Mines now utilize 2D sound in a very cool way. They emit a beep noise when activated. The pitch of the beep and the frequency of the beeping increases the closer the mines get to the player. Think manhacks from Half-Life 2 and you'll get a good idea of what I was going for.

3. Patroller and Trader movements are MUCH better now. Many thanks to my programming recitation class. When class was canceled, I pulled out rocketpod and people started getting interested. We ended up staying for about an hour to fix patroller and trader movements.

Now, patrollers will drift past their patrol nodes, and will gracefully turn to get to the next node.

4. Updated to Slick b237. I fixed the input bug, so it now works with the latest version of slick. This means generally improved performance and stability.

5. Added a new weapon called "EMP" that is currently only available to pirates. Pirates use the EMP weapon to disable the player. When the player is disabled, he can't use any of his weapons, tractors, thrusters or shields, and emits a particle effect. While the player is disabled, pirates will not attack him, but will instead dock with him and steal a significant quantity of money, and then run away.
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1. new enemy type called RAIDER, which is basically an enemy patroller. This is in level 4, but level 4 is not complete.
2. Added incomplete level, level 4.
3. Added item selling. This is not very advantageous to the player though, because all items are sold for between $150-300!
4. Added a new weapon, the "Repeater" on a request from my assistant producer to have a more powerful chaingun. The Repeater does 10 damage, which is 5 times the damage of the regular chaingun, and 1/5th the damage of the heavy cannon. It fires slightly slower than the chaingun and slightly faster than the rocket launcher.
5. Various improvements to enemy AI. In particular, enemies will now properly attack and kill patrollers, traders, and sentries.
6. Added scripted camera control. You can see this in level 2, where the camera focuses on the trader being attacked while the trader asks you for help.

7. .jnlp updated.

3. .jnlp updated.

The game is now basically complete (engine-wise), but unfortunatley is lacking in content.

However, my time limit is up for the project, so consider it released!

You can get it at the website here:
www.kittsplace.com/klingenco/rockets/Ro ... /Home.html