G-Force? I remember that…
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Has it really been six months of this year that I’ve been unable to get close enough to a computer for long enough to actually develop something? Blimmeny.
It’s been quite the year for “things that do get in the way of working on a game”. Not being well for a while earlier in the year, my computer biting the bullet and being pulled out of the mire by the kindness of Retro Remakes folks who donated something to tide me over till I could afford to upgrade, my house being turned upside down whilst I was stuck in one room with only a Macbook to work on (and as it’s the darling wifes machine, no installing of my own shit allowed), finally getting the chance to upgrade to the beast I’m working on now, and the usual array of child/wife/cat chaos that ensues normally. Not that I’m moaning, far from it - I’m pretty happy with my lot in life and sometimes shit just happens.
Things are settling down here in Chez Bob a tad, so I’ve been taking the opportunity to familiarise myself with G-Force all over again. Having a six month gap in things is weird. Luckily, I can still find my way around the code (with a few head scratching moments) and was quite surprised at how close it was to being able to throw out in a game complete state. Buggered if I can find the menu file though. There’s always something that disappears in the hard drive transfer clusterfuckery.
But no promises as to a final release soon, because they seem to go eternally wrong - but there will be another beta dropped before the end of the week once I’ve tidied a few things up.
Anyway, I’m back working on it - I’ve got a checklist of roughly ten things I want to add to the game, of which I’ve got three in already. So things are going alright in that regard.
New stuff that’s in now - new background effects. No game is truly complete without something that wibbles, and that’s now what the background in G-Force does when you shoot a nasty. Different nasties produce different wibbles. Shooting the flippers produces a glowy wibble (it’s a technical term, alright?), shooting the spinners produces a wobbly wibble and so on and so forth. I’m quite pleased with it, it’s nothing major or special - but certainly adds to the visual intensity of the game.
New and improved text effects, now also with extra wibble. Rather than just appear on screen, they now wibble into view, stretch a bit then sod off. Again, this isn’t anything really major but makes things look that little bit nicer than before.
The third is an amendment to the pulsar behaviour. More of a visual thing than anything, the pulsar now drifts in and out of the screen (it looks better than it sounds, trust me) instead of just floating across moving left and right.
Most of the rest of the stuff to go in is where things are going to get a bit awkward. It’s mainly all the control scheme stuff I wanted in from the off and didn’t get round to putting in. At this late stage in development, it’s going to be a bit fiddly and require more work than if I’d got off my arse and included it in the first place, but I’ll feel better for it being there. Most of the stuff is down to being able to slow the game down if need be, support for more than just keyboard and joypad, autofire etc…
Codewise, it’s all quite simple, but implementing it right is the challenge. I want everything to be pretty seamless to the user and wherever possible, have it so that menus are kept to a bare minimum. I’ve got a page or so of scribbles and a pile of test files to work from trying different routes. As a backup and in fortuitous timing central - there’ll be support for 4Noah off the bat.
Other than the controls, it’s just a few secret bonuses to earn to be done.
So far, things are going alright. I put a test build out to a few folks late last week and reports that it’s going “like shit off a shovel” make me very happy indeed. Well, in one way - the other makes me wonder precisely at what point I can actually manage to kill peoples machines.
I guess it’s time to get some screens out, and a video recorded in abominable low-res-youtube-o-vision so you know where I’m up to.
And you can find the last video in action here, from when I first added the background wibbles.
Speak your brains
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Mersey Remakes is the home of Retro Remakes administrator Oddbob.
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tim on 
Ok, it’ll probably look even better, I’ll give you that, but please (oh pretty pretty please) can we get a slight increase in the rate of fire after level 16? It really get hectic you know… Oh, and how about an interview?
Gnome, sure to both!
I’ve already tackled the speed increase. I don’t know if it’ll be *enough* because I’m not the best judge of these things being able to waltz through the entire thing with nary a whisper of death breathing down my ear - but I guess I’ll see tomorrow/later tonight when I bung this out again.
If you want to drop me a line on err… rf001g8432 HAT blueyonder.co.uk without the headwear for t’other. I’m barely on any messengers lately with not getting much time to sit down without baby or kitten nipping at my legs.
Wibble?
It’s a technical term
Oooh - I like that!!
I particularly like the glowy-ness of it all!!