So, I was able to get levels, waves, and enemy patterns somewhat working today hopefully I'll have another demo video of some sort tomorrow.

After many weeks of working on another programming-related contest entry for school, I've been able to work on this again I took about an hour to help myself re-understand my code, and now it's like I never stopped working on it in the first place. Enemy patterns, stages, etc. are coming along; hoping for a demo video by New Year's Eve.

Great job! I can't wait to see the demo video tomorrow; I'll keep poking you about it if you happen to forget.

looks like I'll be right on schedule for once! I have stage-shifting, simple enemy entrance patterns (zoom in one at a time), boss mechanics, level shifting, and a few other things. Right now I'm working on enemy bullets (to be honest, it won't be hard and will take only the time of converting an image for the first type of enemy's bullets, plus 5 minutes), and then I'll work on death animation! Hoping to have decently polished working game tomorrow, with 2 full levels each with respective bosses, that could pass as a full demo of a game.

Viola, a late, but now done demo video! This new demo video shows a few new features, such as multiple enemies at a time, player explosions (no enemy ones yet), bosses, multiple stages/levels, enemy movement patterns, enemy bullets, and a few other things. It's still has a few kinks to iron out before I'd call it a polished demo run, but I wanted to finally show something, since I promised I would. Video:



EDIT: this looks rather laggy, but I assure it runs at an average of 21 FPS (ranges between 20-22, 20 is when there are as much as 100 enemy bullets, 50 player bullets, and a dozen enemies -- it scales well.)

A little blurry, but it looks awesome! May I recommend you make the background scroll at half-speed compared to bullets for that sexy parallax effect?

I'll make it an option There is actually some parallax already (not visible from the awful video), but I can make it more pronounced.

EDIT: for statistical point, the stars move at 2 px/sec, and the bullets for the small first enemy move at 6px/sec -- they look similar speeds though because of their sizes in proportion to their speeds.

I have now added a phoenix-like shop, money system, and 4 new very cool player weapons. 80% done with this game. Expect a good contest release!

Huzzah! I hear that it even goes too fast, so you had to reduce GCC's optimization level. Cheers for that.

Thanks I think it'll be the most speed-intense Prizm game yet, running at over 20 FPS consistently. I have 2 things left now, and only two things: code 12 more enemies and 5 more bosses, and allow for bonus stages. Most of it is just drawing out the sprites. I hope to get it done tomorrow and have a final demo video.

EDIT: oh, and I'll have to have Highscore table entries as well for new highscores.

this wonderful game will be released tomorrow?

good work Ashbad, youre the best!

Aw shucks, thanks

The due date is tomorrow at midnight, so technically in about 9 days -- the contest judges don't want the entries released until all judging is done, to prevent community bias. But then, it will be released

EDIT: that being said, I'm going to be busy as hell working on this tonight and tomorrow -- all real coding is done, just have lots of sprites and a few last additions to make, which surprisingly may take me many hours to finish.

Don't forget to submit it on time! I'm excited to have this among the many impressive entries for the contest, and to playing it and spreading it among the community thereafter.

This looks very nice from the video, especially at that speed. I also like the scrolling background.

Last demo video of this in action in beta form before release. I only show off 2 full levels and part of the 3rd, though there are actually 5 in total so far. The video shows about 6 different enemies and 2 bosses, there are almost 20 enemies total though. I put this in cheat mode so I could easily play while recording, and show off the 5 current player weapons:

- Photons: 1 dmg, 12 speed, 1 bullet
- Double Photons: 1 dmg, 9 speed, 2 bullets
- Wave Cannon: 5 dmg, 3 speed, 1 bullet, multi-colored, moves in wave
- Missile: 10 dmg, exponentially increasing speed, 1 bullet
- Seekers: 6 dmg, exponentially increasing speed, 4 bullets

Any ideas for a 6th? I'm saving that slot for a really cool idea. I'm also in the middle of adding forcefields, which will protect from 8 shots each and can have charge added from the shop each round end (will also use alpha blending for graphical effects). Finally, I am planning 6 more levels, ending with the last boss, "Raptor". The bosses right now in order are "Bird of Prey", "Seagull", "Falcon", and "Eagle". Trend, anyone? (for another teaser, in the source code all enemy bullet enum identities are named after sub-atomic particles... )



Enjoy the video, more to come soon; namely, a full release this coming Monday.

Edit: you'll notice those heat-seeking kamakazi enemies are fun

This coming Monday, assuming I can coordinate Rivereye and myself grading fast, that is. Also, separately from my role as a judge, I'm quite impressed with some combination of the work that you put into this and the faster development that Prizm + C allows compared with other platform + language combinations.

the game runs very fast, like a mobile phone

i can´t wait ...

That's what happens when you have a fast color-screen calculator that isn't tied down by a company's (cough, cough) unilateral desire to make money and not do the right thing.

Indeed It's also what happens when a developer goes through extreme efforts to optimize graphical aspects of a program, not settling for one cycle larger in assembled form than possibly needed! (with that being said, I did look at the .s output of the game, and have been tracking assembly-level optimizations as I went along to much avail. I don't do anything inline assembly though, because almost everything can be represented in optimized, cryptic C, and because GCC's Inline Assembly format is utter garbage and ugly IMO). For note to the judges, this is why the source code, all 1800 or so lines (+1500 data in data.h) is so messy, in in some parts very hacky looking. But I digress; it's fast!

I'm going to be continuing work on this in addition to a very new secret prizm project (no news until something major has been done!) that I'm somewhat working with KermM and Buckeye on. So, progress here will be a bit slower, but of course, that's fine considering how fast I got everything else done up till now.

I'd encourage you to finish this first, actually; how much more stuff do you need to do? It sounded to me as if you were nearly done with it.