What ho, ladies, gentlemen and inbetweeners! It is finally time for me to unveil the ♥♥♥♥ out of my sort of large project, which is (CORRECT GUESS) a game. It is called...

Angry Laser Space
A tale of angry lasers in space

Or something like that. It's not me exclusively working on it though, i have my dutch friend Chartle (his nickname) doing programming along with myself.



The background there isn't made by me (it's by a chap who calls himself Bojan), but is made for me with this specific purpose in mind. Anyways, for those of you who didn't see the screenshots i posted in the art dump, it's a vertical-scrolling top-down space shooter arcade-ish game (HYPHEEEENS). You select a difficulty, start the game and start shooting bad guys. (pictured is NOT the first level)



Once you've shot bad guys and gone through the first level, you find yourself in a shop.



In this shop, you can use the cash you earned from shooting bad guys (silence disbeliever, it is a totally logical concept) to buy upgrades for your ship, which you will NEED in order to complete the following levels. What you can also find from within the shop is...



THE SKILL TREE. These upgrades are tailored towards attack or defense, and are not mutually exclusive. However, once we get some more levels done, the rate of skillpoint acquisition will be slowed, so the player will end up with approximately 10 skillpoints by the end of the game.

IMPORTANT THINGS THAT YOU MUST READ:
- You have two weapon systems, accessed by left (turret) and right-clicking (double front).
- You can fire massive super shots by pressing E (turret) or F (double front). They expend energy, which is the blue bar next to your health. 55% for E, 90% for F. Energy recharges.
- You can move in all four directions.
- With the appropriate upgrade, you can dash by pressing SPACE and moving sideways (i.e. ASD for right, DSA for left) and holding the last key down. Once you let go, you stop dashing. You cannot be hit by non-instant lasers while dashing. DASHING IS VERY USEFUL FOR THE LATER LEVELS.
- You can pause the game with P, restart the level with R and exit to the menu with Esc. The latter two open a prompt before doing anything.
- The "Badges" system is dysfunctional, but is due for an overhaul.

The kicker? I'm doing a Data and releasing running beta versions as we progress. Final goal is 20 unique levels, with every fifth being a boss battle. Past that? We'll see. :U
At the moment though, there's only 19 levels done, including the two boss fights.

Download here!

Oh yeah it's made with Game Maker, and you can press F1 at any time to open a slightly outdated help screen.

DO YOU LIKE WHAT WE'RE DOING? WOULD YOU LIKE TO THROW MONEY AT YOUR SCREEN? NO? OH WELL, HAVE A BUTTON ANYWAYS.



;o

The game crashed after I completed the first level. Something about it being unable to save.

Well, ♥♥♥♥. Uhm, i think it requires admin permissions for that, but if that doesn't work, i'll take a closer look tomorrow when i get back home. Wouldn't be the first time that Chartle and i get problems when merging versions (though it's worth noting that i didn't get any problems myself). In any case, that saving system shouldn't even be there, because it's wonky as hell. :c
Apologies for the inconvenience!

Looking pretty good so far. The glowy shooting effects are nice, the music is well-done, and the upgrade text is particularly excellent.
I think my only complaint is that the waves have such a huge number of enemies that it makes your guns feel kind of weak. When you get to later levels, it's not too bad, but the first level does make them feel kind of underwhelming. That could be what you're going for, though, to make the progression feel more pew-pew... y once you've got bigger guns. So, yeah. Don't let me stop you if that's the case.

Fair point, though at this point, i don't really know how to make it less underwhelming without screwing up the already dodgy balance (as it stands, speccing for offense > defense). As you mentioned though, it does make the weapon progression pretty apparent, especially once the early mook types just die like flies. I like to consider that the player starts out power hungry, then gets that power to play with in the first 9 levels, and then the aliens hit back in the levels 10 and forward. That isn't to say i'm not considering the first levels, though.
Also, i should probably mention that the music isn't made by me, but i have gotten permission from all musicians involved.

@Harzipan: I can confirm that the public version does work (just ran through all levels on Normal), though as mentioned, it might require running it as an admin, since it will try to create a savegame file.

Hey, this is a good game.

I really like the art work, it's pretty good and funny at times.

Thanks man! I am super pleased to hear that my spriting works for an actual game, since that'd be a fairly large step towards my final goal. c:

... what do you mean i'm late

eh

ANYWAYS, Jomn reminded me that the download link here is broken, so i updated it to one that actually works. In case you can't be assed to go search for it, here you go:

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/4knron1ddh68im ... 6.zip?dl=1

Also, now that i'm here and remembering it, might as well hit you with the few news i have. POINT A: I've contacted an awesome musician and asked if he wanted to do some music, and he said yes! All at his own pace of course, but assuming that everything works out, you'll be hearing some rad tunes in the future.

also also red sentries



they shoot deadly red boolits at you

also also also



THIS HURTS YOU

As in one-shots you on Normal and upwards. Might tune it down so it only deals 90 damage on Normal, since it's a green beam and not a yellow one. Then again, getting hit by a beam with a diameter that exceeds the diameter of your hull generally hurts a lot, so i'm probably keeping that "one-shot ♥♥♥♥ you" approach. They're probably not going to appear before level 18 anyways. I have still to get to work on the level 15 boss, but i'm thinking it'll be a large carrier ship with large guns that ♥♥♥♥ you over. :U

Why is it angry?

The anger comes from the player when he/she (i know there are females somewhere out there, don't know if any of them ever played this but hey) dies to the final boss on Hardcore mode. :U

@Non: so a literal "♥♥♥♥ you" cannon

...

i like this idea

Shook...thats a nice game thar, but srsly, SOOO many deadly Bullets and Ships? Cant you reduce it a little bit for the "easy" mode? I cant even kill that boss with the Yellow Boolets
EDIT: I just found out about Difficulty. And that you shouldnt play on ANGRY BABY MODE >:C till lvl 15.

Really? I'm personally worried that it's too easy on Normal, but that probably has to do with me being the one who knows the game in and out (my baseline balance is "can i complete this on nightmare?"). But yeah, difficulties are there to customize your experience, and on Easy and baby mode, the enemies actually shoot less (not significantly so, -10% rate of fire per step below Normal). Might have to make the difference more notable, even though the damage reduction you get on these difficulties should be enough on their own. I mean, taking only 30% damage on baby mode effectively allows you to literally ram through the levels with impunity! (especially with maxed defense, you'll take 7,5% of the full crash damage, and you'll regenerate said damage in a second or two)

To give you an idea of how much of a roflstomp baby mode is: With maxed defense, i had to actively try to die against the first boss for MINUTES before i died. On the other end of the scale, EPIC MAN MODE >:C has you dying every other second against that boss. Not just because you take 20 times as much damage (which is not a typo), but also because enemies fire 50% faster. It's a bit like a danmaku shooter, except your hitbox isn't tiny and you have no panic button (but there are also fewer boolits).

also you are using both mouse buttons right?

because that's pretty important

Also E and F for super shots, if you didn't know that already.

Yeah, i know about the LMB and RMB Stuff. Turrent and Front Guns. And about the SUPER BOOLETS you shoot. I only got to the second boss, as i said, on normal. It was pretty hard though, and i didnt come forward. On the other way, ANGRY BABY MODE >:C is too easy for me, if you only buy all offensive stuffs.

A'ight, just checking. I've had people who were only left-clicking, which obviously makes the game a LOT harder. :U (also good to know that baby mode is a cakewalk, i specifically made it for people who enjoy walking on cakes)
Also yeah, the second boss is a damned tricky thing to balance, because it fills the entire level with boolits (also homing rockets). Would you believe that it has actually been nerfed pretty significantly since it first was created? :U

Might still have to tweak it a little (or maybe change those slow shots to something else), but not to the point of it becoming too easy. After all, the bosses are supposed to have roughly the same lethality by themselves as an entire standard level, but packed into a shorter time. That said though, this boss is practically impossible on the higher difficulties, since i'm pretty sure it's impossible to dodge all the shots. It IS possible with the first boss (i actually managed to complete it on EPIC MAN MODE >:C while recording it, though i did use devhax to get all the upgrades [and this was before the current skill system]), it's just tricky as ♥♥♥♥ because of the random timing of the hitscan beams (which i added specifically because it was too easy to just get into a rhythm and dodge everything).

can you add like

VISIBLE upgrades?

( like hardened hull and like the ship is a bit shiner )

You mean to tell me that the shield isn't visible already? :U
But yes, i probably could and will do so eventually. Might have to slightly update the player ship first though, because i have learned yet more arty things that may help it look a bit better. At the moment, it looks rather bland and generic. :I

Also since i've failed to keep you guys up to date on the run, here's some of the things we've been working on:

BEAM WEAPONS



BOOLET GUNS



ROCKET LAWNCHAIRS



GLOWS



GREEN SNAKEY SHIPS



AND YELLOW SNAKEY SHIPS TOO



also yes yellow shields deflect your shots in a harmful manner



FLAK CANNON SUPER SHOTS



PERSISTENT OPTIONS AND KEYBINDINGS



COOL NEW START MENU SO YOU CAN SELECT THINGS



THE LAST TIER OF SHOP UPGRADES



FANCY ARTILLERY EFFECTS FOR THE THIRD BOSS



AND RANDOM EVENTS



BUT THAT IS NOT ALL, NOPE! See, we've acquired a musician to do music for us.







He's good. c:

SO THERE NOW YOU'RE UP TO SPEED. We're actually pretty close to releasing the next version, which is v0.9. We pretty much just need the last few levels (or stages, as they're called now) done, and then IT'S PUBLIC TIME. Hoping for early december, but NO PROMISES MADE. Last time, i thought it could be here in november, but that turned out to be wrong. :I