GAMES
- February 19th, 2010
drone part 1
Be warned, this game requires a “reasonably good” computer (the instance count goes well over 1k towards the end of the game). Windows only at the moment. But it will run on a emulator if you know how to use such a thing.
>>>>>>CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD SELF-EXTRACTING EXE<<<<<<
OR
>>>>>>CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD ZIP<<<<<<
Introduction:
Here it is. At last. After some 900 hours of work, its finally at a stage where it’s worth showing to people.
“drone” is basically a top-down shooter combined with a tower defense combined with a RTS with a bit of driving sim and rpg in there. You kill enemies to collect money which you may then spend on weapons, ammo, armor, buildings, or vehicles. The fun is in how its balanced. It is possible to finish the entire game without using any weapons – just buildings. Likewise, you can finish the entire game with just weapons and no buildings at all.
There are 10 weapons, 10 buildings, 3 sets of armor, 3 vehicles, 16 enemies, 5 levels, 3 hours of game time minimum. This game is in HD up to 2800 x 1750 but will auto scale to your desktop’s resolution by default. If it is running choppy on your computer; turn the res down. It should run at 50 fps. Please take the time to play with the settings in the menu to get the game looking right.
All the art, programming, sound and design was done by me. The music was done by Alex Vaatstra.
Detailed instructions (the in-game tutorial explains most of this, but here is the extended version)
- The controls are: W,S,A,D or up, down, left, right to move.
- You always look in the direction of the mouse.
- Left mouse will fire a shot in the direction you are facing.
- Left mouse will also buy things.
- Left mouse will also place a structure after you’ve bought it.
- Left mouse will also sell things while you are in sell mode, right mouse will exit sell mode.
- When you buy a weapon, you must equip it from the “inventory” in order to use it.
- Equipping a weapon will place it on a “list” which you can then scroll through with the mousewheel or E and Q. (I did it this way because towards the end of the game, you will have several weapons which you may not want to continue to use. Accidentally selecting them while you are trying to run away from a boss, shooting into a crowd in from of you is beyond frustrating. Furthermore, hotkeys are not an option as you have to remain mobile while switching weapons.)
- Equipping a spanner while driving the juggernaut will cause you to spontaneously heal it.
- To drive a thing, stand in the white circle on it and don’t touch the move keys.
- While driving a vehicle, you will constantly move towards the mouse pointer at a speed relative to the distance between you and the mouse pointer.
- While standing in the command tower, 2 circles appear where the mouse pointer is. Friendly units that enter the inner circle will follow your pointer until they leave the outer circle.
- Some weapons will fire once per click, others will fire as long as the mouse button is held.
- You can sell and repair vehicles, but not robots.
- Right mouse will dismiss the sell icon and cancel a building before it has been placed on the ground.
Videos:
Screenshots :
"The portal room, with all the doors open and the menu showing"
"a juggernaut tank shooting at an axebot, base on the right"
"burning some axebots with a flamethrower, while taking fire from a machinegunner."
"shooting an axebot with a railgun while being chased by a boss axebot having just left a scorch mark on the ground with the medium armor."
Fantastic game. Great.
My only gripe is that occasionally the window won’t scroll upwards (I think it’s the area where the menus sit). I have to fire at things I can’t see, or get too close to them for comfort (especially if they’re those nasty axebot-spawning jobs).
Also, while I’m offering unsolicited advice, I thought the ‘bosses only’ area was too easy. You get so much money from the fixed mites. On ‘normal’ I spent the last level driving round in a jugernaut (just to see what it was like), but hardly even got to use it because my lasers and miniguns zapped all the bosses, while they were still trapped at my four-node decoys on the edge of the map. And I had $40k left over. OK, I could play on ‘hard’. But the other areas were challenging on ‘normal’.
But that’s all just in an awe-struck spirit of constructive comment: it’s a brilliant game, and looks beautiful too.
Thanks for the comment!
Yeah the screen not scrolling up over the menu thing was intentional. It was really annoying when you go to open one of the tabs and scroll up. It’s because the tabs are too small. I should make it so you can scroll up if you mouse over the edge of the screen there, and double the vertical size of the tabs, that would fix both problems.
The difficulty curve of the boss area is a bit wonky, I’m sure it’s just a matter of fine tuning the amount of tax to get it right. Currently, you get 60% of the money you pick up (to offset the amount of cash lying around) 40% would probably be better.
I’m glad you like the art, I’ve had mixed opinions of it, which made me think I should re-do everything. However, I made a few concept drawings and they’ve have the same kind of reception. I’m beginning to think that’s just the nature of art – you can’t please everyone.
I personally like the art in the game more than the concept stuff I’ve done, so I’m thinking I’ll just tidy up the old sprites a bit, but leave them mostly the same.
I take back the ‘too easy’ comment, having encountered Area 6! Ouch.
Still haven’t managed to defeat the (I won’t spoil what’s in it) last wave. Hmmm…I need more lasers…lots more lasers.
Yeah those things were designed to kill bases
“I personally like the art in the game more than the concept stuff I’ve done, so I’m thinking I’ll just tidy up the old sprites a bit, but leave them mostly the same.”
Seconded. My feeling is you pretty much nailed the art style on the first go. Looking forward to “2″.
I’m not a programmer so I’m not down with the lingo, but what programming language did you use?
I used “Game Maker” to make it. The language used in Game Maker is called GML, it’s a C++ based scripting language for noobs, but can be surprisingly powerful if used correctly.
Iji, Spelunky, Cave Story, Immortal Defense, and everything made by Cactus was made in Game Maker, so it’s not THAT bad.
It’s a great language to learn if you have no prior knowledge of programming languages.
Thanks for the response I’ll look into it. Development of small games like this intrigue me, but I’d rather avoid flash.
Very fun game. Couldn’t put it down until I finished it.
One little bug encountered in Area 3: one of the large roving mites had a resource node spawn in such a way that it could not reach it – its turn radius was too slow but it insisted on moving forward so it kept going around and around the resource node.
Damn, thanks for letting me know.
fuuuuuck bro. That has come a long way since when it was in development. I thought i would just have a wee bit of a play and now im hungry and its dark outside. The armor is absolutely mint. I will pay you for that.
lol awesome
Yeah I changed the areas up a fair bit since the last time you saw it. I have to make another post about concept art, but I’m still thinking of a plot. Something to do with transhumanism I think.
Wow, I played this on the weekend and I’m hooked! I didn’t know you could make a game this fun with GM! Hats off to you
OTOH, I do hope you can make some sort of survival mode where there’s no end and the enemies will randomly spawned. Otherwise, this is one hell of an addictive game!
I’ve considered putting in some kind of survival mode because it’s fun spending time making a nice base without coming to the end of a level and having to start all over again. It’s the feeling of character growth over time I think.
But as time passes, the waves have to get harder and the number of enemies that can be on screen at any one time can’t go above a certain number, or else it causes the computer to slow down.
In some games I’ve noticed that they get around this by adding more hitpoints to the enemies towards the end, but because the hitpoints are displayed on everything, I’m worried that doing something like that might seem a little transparent.
I’m sure I’ll think of something though, survival mode would be awesome. Thanks for playing
Damn, the “no weapons” achievement for the last level is really hard
I don’t know exactly how to take down the last boss wave with only structures, considering their base-destroying potential. A hint would be greatly appreciated. ;D
A few carefully placed light tanks to absorb the waves of cannon balls is probably the easiest way, or the special ability of the heavy armor also works. I should have mentioned somewhere that the vehicles and armour don’t count as weapons for the achievement
Thank you very much for your game.
I have some suggestions
1. Basic upgrades for buildings and weapons. For example – rotating speed of the laser turret. I think that it’s not very hard to implement.
2. Survival mode.
3. Level/waves editor.
Anyway, keep up the good work
No problem, thanks for playing it
Basic upgrades would be easy to implement, but sorting out the interface to add the upgrades on would be a bit of a pain, I plan on doing something like this though.
Survival mode would be good, but I’m not too sure how to do it while keeping the instance count at a reasonable level. I’ll figure something out.
A level/waves editor would be very easy to implement as the waves are generated using only 5 variables. I probably should have added that before I released it ><
> I’m not too sure how to do it while keeping the instance count at a reasonable level.
If you can easily tune such things as HP, rate of fire, damage and speed – it’ll be no problem. Who can stand against 10 juggernauts with 100000+ HP?
have you made part 2 i have finished the game and thought it was awesome and really want to get another version
I’ve been rather slack these past few months, trying to sort out some kind of plot and decide what to change/keep the same, but It should all be finished by Novemeber.
Can you edit this so I can change the controls – I have used QWSD rather than WASD for years and can’t re-learn the keys!!!
Making the controls editable would be quite a lot of work, I might add the ability to do that in the next game, but I don’t I’m going to make any further updates to the freeware version at this stage.
The up, down, left, right arrow keys also work for moving. Would those be any better?
Is there any episode?
The last wave in area 6 is easy, using two tanks as shields and one laser plus several machine guns.
Oh, and a few cannons
Yeah, that is THE best way to deal with the last wave, but not the only way. Some might say it makes it too easy… but I think if you’re clever enough to figure it out, then you deserve to have it easy.