Strike Eagle V 0.11

You’ll notice that I skipped V 0.10. The program is getting to the point where I am worried about damaging the stability of the program with every new line of code that I add. So I am taking more frequent backups at every interval.

In this long iteration, I completed the enemy attack logic. They can shoot a number of missiles that forces the player to dodge. After being hit, rather than showing a “life indicator”, I just made the plane smoke to show damage. The more damage, the more smoke. After 3 hits, the plane rolls uncontrollably and explodes.

I also found out that my pre-loader was not functioning properly. I put too many assets to “Export on first frame” rather than having them export on the second frame as recommended by Michael James Williams.  I am very thankful for his great tutorials in helping me fix the issues in my game.  But in the end, the MochiAds pre-loader will precede mine.

Also, I had to lower the quality of the Flash file so that it performs faster and smoother.  So far, I like the results.

Next up:

• Extending the level with a variety of attack patterns.
• Adding a “secondary fire” element – player missiles.

And last:

• Rounding off the Briefing with control instructions.
• Adding the MochiAds API and Leaderboard.

Check it out!

I think I’ve made it past the wall. Now I just have to tweak the game to make it challenging and hope that it remains fun to play. But I’m glad that I pushed through. It has been a long journey for me, coming to this point in my life. I’ve always wanted to make computer games since I was a child. But I’ve always had this block that I wasn’t smart enough or good enough to do it. So being on the verge of publishing my first game is an exciting moment for me.

It doesn’t matter that the game is fun or not. I hope it is. And I certainly hope that I place. But I’m just happy to finish and to show people the fruits of my labor – especially because I know I’m only going to get better.

I thought that I had already posted this video, but I had not. This is a video of the late Prof. Randy Pausch, who was one of the inspirations for me to finally get up, and put in the time and lose the sleep to make my dream come true. This is something I believe that every indie developer – that every dreamer – must see.

For me, the line that spoke to me the most was when he said,

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!” – Prof. Randy Pausch (1960-2008)

Strike Eagle V 0.9

Now in this version, you can blow away some Mig-29s with your F-15’s vulcan cannon.  The mouse controls the HUD and depressing it will blow them out of the sky.  I’ve also done some more artistic changes to make the sky look more interesting and added a few more to the credits.

Here, I’ve had to do another major compromise.  I plan to have full 3D Mig-29s to display in the Briefing, but for the game itself, the moving backgrounds make it nigh impossible to put on more than a couple Migs on the screen without it starting to noticeably slow down.  So I “cheated” and took screenshots of the Migs to make it more lightweight for Flash to handle.  The plane itself is still a full 3D model, but in order to make the game really go, I had to make the Migs into MovieClips rather than true FreeSpin3D components.

Another thing I wanted was real particles to shoot out of the front of the plane.  But given my time constraints, I cut back on it and made the bullets invisible.  I am planning on coming back and adding missiles for the player to fire to clear the screen.  But right now, my main concern is finishing in less than 2 weeks.

Now, my main concern is gameplay.  This feels a little boring to me.  But perhaps it is because there is no challenge yet.  So my next iteration will include planes flying at the player and launching tracking missiles that forces the player to dodge and aim at the same time.  So hopefully, my next iteration improves the game significantly.

So after this, it’s beefing up the instructions, adding the leaderboards, and hopefully getting in those missile swarms.

Check it out!