Strike Eagle V 1.0

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Check it out!

The game has been completed and is now pending approval on MochiAds for publication on their site and for the contest. It has been a long month and it feels like I’ve been working on the game forever. Now I am officially releasing all the interim builds along with their mistakes under the “Strike Eagle” tagline. I think it is important not only for myself, but for other indie developers to see the struggles, compromises and changes that go into game development especially when under time constraints and pressure. This blog is meant to educate and inform and show game design and development in action.

Among several major compromises was that the game is far too short for my liking. I would loved to have done several different landscapes, levels and breaks in the middle of the game. But I had put in about 3-4 hours a night for about 6 weeks to get it this far and I had to cut back on my final vision. Admittedly, a complete rewrite of the 80’s “Afterburner” arcade game in Flash in less than a month and a half and working only at night is quite aggressive.

During this time, I had to sacrifice an astonishing amount of sleep which I recovered on the weekends and on some weekday nights where I could not stay awake any longer. My youngest son, was constantly by my side, sleeping on the couch and waking up from time to time to remind me that I’m human and that I need rest. My eldest son was encouraging me by his excitement and enthusiasm to just play the game and asking for more features such as shooting down enemies – and maybe someday I’ll add the robots he asked for in another game.

And my beloved wife… I couldn’t have done it without you. I almost gave up had it not been for you.

There were some very unexpected events that happened during the making of this game – most especially sad was the loss of the beloved cat Louie “The Count of Monte Meo.” He is actually the mascot in the logo for “Counterpunch Games” which is a play off his nickname “The Count.” After much discussion and deliberation, we retired the logo and put a dedication to him in the actual game. We hope to resurrect his memory in a much stronger and more thought out brand for our future game endeavors.

There is a long list of people whom I wish to personally thank, especially the friends who helped me, inspired me, and encouraged me along the way.

Mike Bilter and Scott Lightfoot who I first met in my first attempt to start a game development career and inspired me to go indie. Scott, thank you for the late-night discussion of making a game just like this.

Sheridan Layman and Jeremy Alessi who I met through the Richmond Game Designer’s Special Interest Group. Thank you Sheridan for creating the group and getting us all together. And thank you Jeremy for your inspiration as a published indie game programmer with much accolades from indie guru Jeff Tunnel himself.

Jeremy Kane, Brian Lowry, and Todd Scarola are some of the most brilliant and talented people I have every had the privilege to work with. Thank you Jeremy for showing me that no matter how busy your family keeps you, you can still make time to learn more and master your craft in the wee-hours of the night. Thank you Brian for your entrepreneurial spirit and inspiration. And thank you Todd for encouraging me to not doubt myself standing shoulder-to-shoulder with programming giants.

Thank you everyone. I hope you enjoy the game and I especially hope to make many more of them in the future.

But for now… I need some sleep.

Strike Eagle V 0.13

Now the level is fully fleshed out.  It is decently challenging.  The first time I played it, I died on the last volley of missiles.  And it is very fun to simply hold down the spacebar to clear the air with a missile swarm.  The challenge is getting the highest score, which means taking risks and not moving the plane too much because it tilts the horizon.

Now I have to round out the Briefing so that the player has more information that their mission is to take out the enemy air support, and a mention of the game’s controls with the keyboard and mouse.

Last is the adding the MochiAds leaderboards and MochiAds pre-loader instead of mine so your score becomes relevant to other people.

Check it out!

On a sad note…

Originally, I was contemplating on removing “Counterpunch Games” in favor of “Game Devigner.”  But today, the beloved cat, Louie “The Count” died today due to complications with diabetes.  So, in honor of “The Count”, I’ll be keeping the logo for this game to honor him and how much he meant to me, my family, and to all my friends.

Strike Eagle V 0.12

There was a number of crazy math tricks I had to use to make the missiles track and follow an enemy plane when fired.

Now for the final version…  This means:

• Refining the level so it has a number of enemies to shoot and get lots of points for the leaderboards.
• Refining the introduction screen and the briefing.
• Adding the leaderboards.

It’s all about polishing now.

Check it out!

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!

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!