Strike Eagle Icon

It’s been a couple days since Strike Eagle has hit the Internet on MochiAds, NewGrounds, and Kongregate.  And none of the ratings and feedback really surprise me.  There were a couple bugs I had to quickly remediate and repost, but nothing drastically bad.

On NewGrounds, the folks there asked for more enemies, bosses, power-ups – the usual fare that you find in a shooter.  But overall, I got positive feedback and a score of 7.8.  I think it mostly has to do with the technical merit of the game.

The 2.5D effect was incredibly hard to achieve.  My original design idea was just to make a regular 2D shooter that had a transition screen that used the FreeSpin3D component as an effect.  But after some consideration, I thought that it was a cop-out and that the folks at FreeSpin3D were hoping for something that would truly showcase their product’s strengths.  So after some fiddling with the ActionScript 3.0 API for FreeSpin3D, I decided to do an “Afterburner”-like game.  I really didn’t know what I was getting into in terms of technical difficulty.

Mig-23

The game itself is really 2D.  There isn’t any 3D background, much less z-ordering or z-calculations going on for the background or enemies.  That is what made it really difficult because I had to somehow “fake” a way of making it act like it was 3D with no clue whatsoever of the z-location of the enemy planes, player players, missiles, etc.  I originally wanted to do gunfire with tracer rounds like it was in Afterburner, but without a z-location, I couldn’t do a proper collision test.  So I left it largely to the mouse location.  I also wanted planes to have hit-points, so it took more than one shot to take it down.   But considering the difficulty it would be to track the planes with a mouse, I left it at one-shot kill.

I think I’ll be revisiting the shooter genre later this summer when I have more time to create more a thought out design.  But I think I’ll cut it down to a 2D shooter with robust particle effects similar to Space ROX than making it 2.5D/3D.  3D is hard enough to achieve, and good-looking 3D is impossible without a dedicated artist.  There have been quite a few indie games out there that use 3D and unfortunately look very amateurish because of how difficult it is to create good looking 3D models.  Sometimes I think that it is better to stick with great looking 2D than it is to go for a decent 3D look.  Strike Eagle suffers from that.

Landing Strip

With the less than 5 weeks of time I had, working only in the late evenings, and with no real 2D or 3D artist support, I had to make due with any art I could find online.  In either case, I had to do with the minimum available.  As it was, the artist of Space ROX, only really created the runway.  The rest of the game was taken from free sources and modified slightly to make it look more appropriate for the game.  For my next shooter game, I’ll be sure to make some extra time to really take more time to produce some quality art assets.

The other factor is sound.  I really didn’t feel like I had enough time to truly dig up some great music or buy some decent sound effects for the game, so I made due with whatever was free online.  The  music was something that was dug up from the archives of older songs that the artist of Space ROX, had done.  If I could have had the choice, I would have loved to have kept Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” still in the game, just for sheer comedic effect.  But it would not have been legal to do so.

All around, this is a complete game with excellent technical merit for the 2.5D effect, but it isn’t polished to the level that I think it should have been for a full release.  But given the time-constraints and limited resources I had on hand, I think that it turned out rather nicely.  But if I had all the time in the world, I would have put a more robust z-calculations to make it look even more realistic, longer levels with refueling cutscenes, and an end scene where you would be gunning down the actual missile silo for the nuclear warheads.

Code Boom

I think that I will have to do a follow-up “post-mortem” for the Actionscript code because that is the ugliest part of the game.  I’ve learned a lot about design techniques from just getting my hands dirty in Actionscript 3.0 and there are a ton of things that I would never do again.  But that is the strength of the Agile development method I used to get the game out.

Rather than focusing on proper object-oriented techniques and planning and fully thought out requirements – the game was finished in an astonishingly fast pace with many clean iterations to review and look at.  Halfway through, I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to determine collisions and attacks because I created the 3D ground effect without one.  But instead of focusing on what I hadn’t designed, I kept on going with the current design and found ways to “cheat” a 3D effect and produce a game rather.  It would have been counterproductive to have scrapped the game design to do things “properly” but instead, I kept going with what I had.

My initial attempts of game development were really slow and because I tended to “over-think” the game-design and thus I ended up doing nothing.  I’m sure many indie game developers suffer from “analysis paralysis.”  So doing things the “Agile” way really broke me free from spinning my wheels.  Fast-iterations and tangible results are the best way to getting feedback and excitement over a product.

Jennifer Ann and her Father

For my next contest, I’ll once again be putting my interim builds in private for others to comment on and review until I submit it.  The game will be for Jennifer Ann’s group who want a game that is both fun and educational that talks about “Teen Dating Violence”.  The big design constraint is that the game itself cannot use violence.

I’ll be starting in about a week and a half.  I first need to finish a minor freelancing job.  I may post screenshots ofmy freelancing product online as a demonstration of the Agile methodology at work once again.

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.