Blaster Master

[twj_888]

I'll try and get the sprites "modernized" a bit too.

Johnathan Nelly (former sky & space magazine publisher) -- drew the background for this game.

The sprites were extracted straight out of MAME and processed in Photoshop (crop, scale & save as a bitmap)

I'm good with Photoshop but I can't draw.

Keen to see what sort of a job Johnathan can do with the sprites.

[twj_888]

www.trentjackson.bigpondhosting.com/blasterm.zip

What do you think of the scrolling now?

Any ideas on how to take the repetitiveness out of this game?

[Namo]

Ah, so so so so close!

You see, towards the top, how the horizon flashes yellow, the lines should flash yellow as well, but only when in that general area.

It's not really that noticeable during actual gameplay, or really at all, but little nitpickers like me will notice and definitely say something.

As for removing repetitiveness... You should try having more types of aliens if possible, and maybe even boss fights against giant enemies.

[twj_888]

Can fix.

A nice big scary powerful boss to blast away at every 3 levels sounds good.

This could add some strategy to the game if implemented correctly.

Any thoughts on the behavior for the bosses?

[Namo]

Multiple weapons; perhaps a homing missile that goes after the player. With correct timing this can be avoided by making it orbit around the player.

[twj_888]

Top line now blends in yellow.

This is an interesting optical illusion as such -- if you let your eyes relax it looks so real (movement and perception of distance)

But if you look intensely enough at it (focus on one part of it and don't go with the flow), then you can straight away see that it's nothing more than horizontal lines that are moving.

I wonder if the case would be different if I were to literally shift the background in pieces (broken up tiles)

There's probably not enough definition in it to make a difference?

[Namo]

Who can say until you give it a shot?

[twj_888]

Few days and we'll have them all running for their lives with rev b.

I have increased the difficulty a fraction too.

The firepower pickups don't have as much ammo either.

Adding a nice special effect at the end of each level (the player's ship rockets forward descending into the horizon)

I tried syncing up some rock sprites with the lines, makes it appear even more realistic.

I have 11 classes in this project, don't really want to complicate it any further and spend much longer on it.