Intro and Menu Screen

Hi Everyone, I beefed up the presentation a bit and here is what I have.  A short opening bit saying I make the game and a simplistic yet nifty title screen.

I like em!

-Liam

Foxlike Class Diagram

This more or less how its current state in terms of objects and what is inherits what.

The white arrows detail inheritance and the black ones detail interaction.  What touches what.  There is a bit more interaction than is detailed, but that would have made everything a mess.

-Liam

My God It's Full of Levels!

None of which are more than an 3D icon.  Still it was fun to fill it up.  I'm kind of a fan of the ultra low poly planets.  It seems to work well.

-Liam

Added A Level Select Screen

I have tentatively titled the campaign Ganithracks Malice, mostly because it is what I came up with when I wanted to test the title bar and also because it doesn't contain a V, which I haven't implimented yet.  I only have one level Icon right now, so I just put down Earth --which has clearly been rendered in the highest of detail-- three times. 

The greyed out ones are not yet selectable as you've got to beat Earth before you can move on to Earth 2 and then you have to beat Earth 2 before you can do Earth 3.  The cool thing is you can do arbitrary dependencies which should allow for fun and varied campaigns with multiple paths.  With this additional menu, it seems much, much more like a game.

-Liam

Foxlike - Where is it at?

I've been travelling at bit and haven't had too much time to work on it, what with currently being in Belgium and all.

The stuff I have been working on has been mostly internal.  I'm currently converting everything to run at something other than 60 fps.  Previously I used a very explicit timing method of basically assuming every computer could pull of 60fps and then limiting the fps to 60.

This is somewhat untrue and on some computers - my netbook - Foxlike really doesn't perform like it should, so I'm currently revamping everything to update based on time elapsed.  This means that pretty much any computer will be able to run Fox-like pretty well. It's not a very exciting change, but it really should happen sooner rather than later.  The end result will be pretty cool.  If you have an awesome computer, your performance will be smooth as can be.  If you have not such a good computer, than it will still be playable.

The next bit will probably be to improve how my objects are stored and used in collision detection.  The current algorithm is pretty amateur, and I can think of a few ways to make it much better.  Doing this will probably require another layer of abstraction - woot!

So for the next while Foxlike will be all about black triangles.

-Liam

Foxlike: Scenery, a Fancy Camera, Intros and Outros

I added a bunch of little things in the past couple days.

The coolest is a slightly more cinematic camera that can be put at any point in the level.  This works pretty well for any beginning exposition or ending recap.   This can be seen in the first couple screen shots.

Also of note, things don't have to be in space anymore and the sky can be colored and ground can be generated.

The other cool thing is the edition of scenery.  I added some code to allow the drawing of anything you can model.  They don't have much - if any - game logic or collision detection attached to them, but they can work pretty well for beefing up the environment.  Usually they'll be to the side of the level adding ambiance or in a place that doesn't matter too much.

Finally a found a pretty large collection of creative commons music I like as well as a large collection of creative commons character portraits, so those are in there now.  The portraits can be seen in the screens, the music cannot.

Anyway it's very game like now and you can even string levels together one after another.  That's pretty cool in my books.  There is no transition between them or anything, but it works.  Right now the first 'level' loops forever.

The next big thing is to come up with a boss for the first level and a few more enemy types.  Then I can start thinking about asteroids for the obligatory asteroid level.

I'm also ruminating on a potential plot.  Honestly there doesn't need to be one, but it was suggested to me once that the characters literally always talk and I like that idea a fair bit.

-Liam

Yet Another

Kinda small update, but here it is: Foxlike 0.1.1.1454

-Liam

Pillar-Tastic

Foxlike now has obstacles.  Pillars to be precise.  Why they are in space, I can't really tell you, but getting them in there was relatively quick and painless.

I also implemented some functionality which allows the level to control the speed of the ship.

Twas a good day for development.


-Liam

Added Some "Particle" Effects

Particle in quotes because I'm pretty sure there are better ways to make this happen. I'm sure full blown particle system would use some textures to great effect, but I kinda wanted to see what I could do with some triangles alone and this was the result:

Now you have an engine trails which looks pretty cool and when you destroy enemies they explode in a cloud of debris.  Some larger enemies will shed debris as you hit them.

Kinda cool. Not sure what the next step is, but it was fun to get back the game for a bit and make it better.  I like it.  There is a beautiful simplicity with only using colored triangles as particles.

It also fits with the old-school motif that I might be going for?

-Liam

Foxlike on the move again

I've finally got some time and I've been using some of it keep on cranking out my Starfox Clone which is tentatively named Foxlike.

I've also managed to port it over to windows, so that's pretty cool.  Hopefully I'll be able to post a build sooner or later and people can give it a go.

The "engine" is more or less in the place.  The only things that's not quite working is sound, but I should be able to get it up and running soon.  I'm using OpenAL, so there is a bit of a learning curve there, but so far it seems to be pretty reasonable to work with.  It's also designed for 3D environments, so that's cool.  It appears to take care of all the heavy lifting - and can do things like the Doppler effect.

Anyway, I'm always open to receiving some artistic content to go into the game.  If you feel like you have a n idea, send it my way.  I'm always looking out for some storyline/plot/characters, art, models or music.  If you'd like to get something in this game, let me know.

-Liam

New Ubuntu Build

This one includes the test level for you to try. It also has the white box where portraits will appear in the future game. Its linked to on the side. It should also run in other Linux environments. I Just tested it at school and it functions.

Also if you go into the levels folder, you may edit l1 and try changing the game. Be warned you can't go beyond 50.

The Controls are:
w - moves you up
a - moves you left
s - moves you down
d - moves you right
q - spins you left/counterclockwise
e - spins you right/clockwise
r - speeds you up
f - slows you down
space - fires! (honestly the funnest button)

It's ALIVE

I just implemented my level loader and by virtue of its existence, a level editor as well. The level editor is your favorite text editor and the levels are written in plain text.

Anyway I made a very simple text level 1. Here's a picture of it in action. There is only one enemy in the game, so all there is is a whole lot of eyebots. I have them working really nicely now and I'm very happy with how they turned out.

First Playable Build!

First mac build! Excited, probably not, but hey. I'll link to it regardless

http://web.uvic.ca/~liamk/f1/f1il10401.dmg

I know most people are running winblows, but if your using a mac, you can give it a shot. It's compatible with 10.4 and 10.5 intel and power pc. So if you've purchased a mac anytime within the last 5 years it'll probably run, and run well. Its runs super smooth on a new intel mac. Like better than my pc at home.

AAAAH it's so easy to make mac games/software that run on every god damn Macintosh computer ever. As oppose to windows where its going to be hard to get it going on xp, and it certainly won't run on vista or windows 7 without more work. What the hell is wrong with Microsoft!

Ok back on track. So far the game isn't much. You can fly around and shoot one guy out the air. He's a little glitchy, I haven't cared too much about polishing him off. That will come later.

Anyway here is your chance to try out the controls and tell me if you like them.
w - moves you up
a - moves you left
s - moves you down
d - moves you right
q - spins you left/counterclockwise
e - spins you right/clockwise
r - speeds you up
f - slows you down
space - fires! (honestly the funnest button)

All the collision detection lines are present right now. I actually think they're very cool

Cheers!

-Liam

Welcome to Fox-Like

This is a blog chronicling the creation of my rail based shooter which has a ship and takes place in space. I've termed the genre Fox-Like because the game will play a lot like the old Starfox games of the past. They're some of my favourite games of all time.

I'd be happy to have you follow me on the devolpment path. I'm making the game for ubuntu Linux, so it will be released for Linux and Mac OS X at the very least. I can probably do a windows port at a later time, but I'm not sure what that entails. I'm using openGL and Glut, so it should be very portable. Expect me to post all my early builds of the game for you to try out.

Thanks for reading.

My name is Liam Kiemele, and I'll be your developer for the next ever.