Tri-Strike Squadron: a primer
As per the last few posts, the next game is called Tri-Strike Squadron:
You take command of a dynamic formation of three unique space ships, each with its own distinct mobility, weapon systems, fire rate, passive traits, and a powerful special ability. You'll need to change between ships on the fly as you adapt to intense, ever-changing battle scenarios where positioning and timing are everything.
Between missions, you’ll oversee your base of operations: upgrade your fleet, unlock cutting-edge technologies, and train elite pilots to maximize your squadron’s potential.
Face off a diverse roster of enemies across multiple game modes designed to challenge not only your reflexes but your strategic thinking.
Lead, adapt and dominate! Coming soon
Tags: tss
The roadmap
Whenever I need to do a playtest of a new feature or a fix, I keep an unhealthy amount of time doing so. So I guess at least I like the game, and that's good enough. So, this is the roadmap for Tri-Strike Squadron:
- ✅️ Initial mockup to test movement, shooting and different mechanics
- ✅️ Define special and passive abilities for the ships
- ✅️ Define enemy ships
- ✅️ Mobile-compatible layout check
- ✅️ Add sounds
- ⬜️ Make background art
- ⬜️ Make final UI
- ⬜️ Make player-to-player incursion mechanics (includes map maker)
- ⬜️ Marketing approach
- ⬜️ Story elements
- ⬜️ Make final art
- ⬜️ Compose music
- ⬜️ ???
- ⬜️ Profit!
Tags: tss
That moment when you KNOW you are fking up
I spent the day (holyday) researching for art and marketing. I don't know if I should be doing this at the moment, The game is still on early stages, but it seems fun (addictive) enough to spend time on this. Just drawing characters for the pilots and crew... but it seems off.
Only time will tell. I also bought a website on a whim. So I might migrate my data there.
There's already a name for this game: Tri-Strike Squadron or TSS for short.
New features
Today I did new features:
- new enemies
- a long and tortuous rescaling to better adapt the game to the different screen sizes
- unified several configurations to be easier to tinker with.
- health bars for "bigger" enemies
It's been a long day. But I feel good as this looks promising.
Tags: mobile
Another productive day
The grind keeps going!
- Two new special abilites, the barrel roll and the countermeasures. One makes you invulnerable to collisions and bullets, the other makes every homing missile go haywire.
- Homing missiles? Well duh, now special enemies can shoot homing missiles.
- A new kind of enemy that lingers on screen.
- Now you can carousel-revolve your active ships during gameplay.
- Configurable amount of spawners
- Explosions, turrets and lots more!
Tags: mobile
Two Months Later
Development has started on the mobile game. It's about space ships, nothing too fancy. You can change between ships ingame and they all have different firing modes, special abilities and passive abilities.
In two days of coding I got it running with the following features:
- switchable space ships (each one with a different firing mode).
- a special attack which for now is common to both 3 ships.
- dumb enemy (the ones that just try to crash into you)
- shooting enemy (beefier, with a shield)
- special enemy it lingers onscreen shooting at you
- explosions
- score keeping / game over.
Next step is working on the backgrounds to define a kind of "map" and making static enemies (turrets) that shoot homing missiles.
After that, I'll need to do the real special abilities for each ship.
Tags: mobile
Ch-ch-ch-changes
I've been redefining the goals. I want to make games, the ones I like but I need some kind of $$motivation$$ also. So, the new plan is a 3 game cycle:
- 1. A mobile game
- 2. An old style game (see below)
- 3. A game I like
Mobile Games:
Trash cashgrabs with a twist. No, really. Trying a honest mobile gaming game with one rule: Only the player can decide when to watch an add.
Old Style Games:
Games that look like they are from the Atari 2600, or Coleco Vision. Even better if I can match the original pixel size. These ones are for fun and I plan to have a series of them.
Games I like:
Like the one I've been calling just "wizard" before in this blog. They tend to be really challenging and usually end up in the design or prototyping stages. By making two simpler games before the "one I like" I'm priming myself and getting experience as I go. I know myself, thus I know how to cheat myself.
So, what's next? The mobile game. What's it about? Space ships. That's all I can say right now. It's an arcade shooter like 1942, River Raid, etc.
See ya.
Tags: molusco
Work is NOT being done
I was on holidays so I didn't made any progress. I expect to return to work as soon as I catch up with my -actual- job.
I had a few ideas for music and style. I like the cute "Nigel & Marmalade" style, and it's crazy denizens. Also the Pikuniku soundtrack.
Anyways... nothing to see here, move on, move on please.
Tags: wizard
Work is being done
I did some work. Mostly in the game design document, defining the mechanics and the spells. So far there are 50 spells and I don't know if I'll get to implement every one, but so far these three are implemented:
- Telekinesys: target an object and make it fly and move it to another place. Useful to move things around.
- Shrink: reduce yourself to one fifth of your regular size (and your speed). Use it to hide and to pass through small crevices.
- Swoosh: hurl yourself flying in a straight line at high speeds. Maybe useful to cross a chasm or to get away from danger.
Now the un-fun begins. The prototype seems to work and now I need to put some elbow grease on the programming. I need to write a few state machines to make things right. This will take some time. Some boring, boring time.
Tags: wizard
The chosen one
Predictably, the one game I chose as a starter, was the unnamed wizard game. I started prototyping the engine and writing some definitions, including a game design document.
So far, it's nothing more than that: just a prototype using Kenney's 3D assets. The main goal is to test if the core game is fun or not: solve puzzles and don't get killed using magic in a dungeon.
Here's a quick demo:
Tags: wizard