Tower57 - AlienBreed/ChaosEngine-inspired co-op shooter Amiga4life

[DwarvenFood]

The way you implement movement and shooting is definitely the way to go - with shooting towards the cursor. So many recent games could have done this but don't (probably because they prefer controllers to keyb+mouse).

Looking forward to the demo.

 

[benitosub]

Hi guys and gals!

This week, real life sort of got in the way in the form of crunch time at work, so the big feature we had planned will have to wait another week ...

That’s not to say we have nothing to show though

But first I wanted to quickly give a shout out to another indie game called Steel Assault! I'm sure some of you are already familiar with it from other sites, but I can't for the life of me understand how, with such a modest goal - 8K! - it possibly hasn't been founded yet.

So just in case this could bring them but a single additional pledge, here is the link to their Kickstarter, please consider backing them up if you haven't already, they've only got 10 days to go!

Now with that out of the way, let's move on to the actual update:

First up is this week's new weapon: the ... huuh... "sticky orbs" (obvious working name, if anybody has any, and I do mean *any* better suggestion now is your time to shine :D )

This gun fires a pair of, well, sticky orbs (now that I'm typing this out, I'm glad we didn't call them sticky balls...), which can attach themselves to any hard surface (oh god...) and generate an electric current between the two.

It can be used to conveniently speed up your search for loot ...

... or to lay traps for unsuspecting robots:

Though the little buggers don't always co-operate:

We also wanted to show what polished items might look like in-game. Cyangmou has been putting a lot of effort into making everything feel very dynamic and alive; for example these health and ammo crates should convey a feeling of "take me! take me!"

While the little sparkle on the key-card should help visually identify it as a ... key ... item ^^

Even currency gets its own little spinning animation:

And finally, just because bugs can be fun too, a couple of blooper gifs

Have a great week everybody,

Cheers!

 

[benitosub]

The way you implement movement and shooting is definitely the way to go - with shooting towards the cursor. So many recent games could have done this but don't (probably because they prefer controllers to keyb+mouse).

Looking forward to the demo.

Thanks! You're probably among the first who doesn't complain about seeing a mouse cursor in there, so thanks for that too ^^

The way we are solving this on gamepads is to use the left stick for movement, and the right stick for the shooting direction (with the option to auto-shoot when you move the right stick, or have the shooting mapped to an actual button).

It's obviously not the same experience, but I would say the difference is similar to how playing an FPS game with a gamepad feels versus using keyboard and mouse.

Cheers!

 

[benitosub]

Hello everybody,

and thank you for clicking on this thread once more! This week we have new character animations, a new enemy, and of course a new weapon (who would’ve guessed huh?).

First of all, the main character (as well as any “humanoid” enemies in the game) now has a proper “strafe” animation for the legs:

Not exactly a revolutionary gameplay feature or a unique selling point, but it makes player movement just that bit cooler ^_^

Next up is our second enemy: a distant cousin of the hexapod, the flybot patrols the skies, its shadow the only give-away to its presence, until suddenly …

Obviously it looks a bit out of place inside but some levels will have open parts such as overhead bridges connecting various parts of the tower, rooftop gardens with beautiful vistas of the decaying city below, etc.

And finally, introducing our latest addition to the game’s arsenal… the stake-gun!

While it doesn’t do any damage per-se, this baby fires a harpoon-like stake…

… capable of impaling any enemy for a few seconds, giving you plenty of time to get creative:

Of course this works even better in multiplayer, and together with the ability to impale several enemies at once, will hopefully create some cool moments!

And that’s it for this week, thanks again for checking in!

 

[benitosub]

Welcome back everybody, (and thanks for the brofists!)

This week's update is all about shadows, destruction, and a new enemy!

First up: shadows. Once more, not exactly a revolutionary feature, but it certainly makes the items feel more grounded.

Next we have a new enemy, and it's not another robot :D ! (well, kind of...) The turret is a staple of action / arcade games, and Tower57 is no exception:

Don't let the fact that they are static fool you, these turrets have excellent aim, and when placed strategically can require some thinking to dispatch them most efficiently (so basically, the opposite of what I did in the next gif) Furthermore they will come in several (deadly) variations such as laser turret, fire turret, etc.

And finally, we have been refining item destruction, and adding several stages of "decay" rather than go from "ok" to "fully destructed" in a single step.

Melting steel columns? No problem!

This meeting is adjourned

Anybody remembers Terry Gilliam's Brazil?

And that wraps it up for this week! Looking forward to the next update (we have something quite cool in the pipeline), until then I hope you all have a great week!


P.S.: found this while going through my stuff this week, couldn't resist the urge to post it ^_^' now I just need to find an A500 on e-bay...

 

[benitosub]

Guess nobody noticed the sunglasses ^_^ ?

 

[benitosub]

Welcome back everyone,

and thanks for checking out our progress once more!

This week we’ve been working on various ways for the enemies to spawn. Here are some of the designs we came up with:

We took a vote, and decided to start with the “spawn gate” and the “floor elevator”.

Here they are in the actual game:

And here I am negotiating my way past them

We also thought we would go a bit behind the scenes, and showcase some of our design process. I should stress however that the following concept sketches are just that, concepts

Some have already been mocked up in pixels, so it’s just a matter of time before they make their appearance in-game, others are just “would be cool to do this” ideas but may ultimately not make it in the game if they prove to be not as fun as we had imagined.

First up something that actually made it in game (allbeit in a slightly revised form), the initial sketches for the hexapod:

Some mention has been made in previous updates about human(-oid…) enemies, so here’s one idea we are playing around with. Death from above!

The same care goes into sketching out and designing the levels themselves. As mentioned in a previous update, the ground floor of the tower is used as a terminal for import and export of goods, new arrivals (nobody ever actually leaves Tower57 ^_^), and customs.

Here are some sketches of the train the player would arrive in, and the train platform:

And as also mentioned before, we would like the game to feature “hub areas”, where you could sell your loot, upgrade your weapons, maybe meet some NPCs, etc.

One of these hubs could potentially look something like this:

And that’s all we’ve got for this week. Let me know if you’ve enjoyed the concept sketches, or if we should stick to in-game gifs, and hopefully see you all next week.

Cheers!

 

[benitosub]

Hello again everyone!

This week we are finally able to introduce a feature we have been wanting to post about for a while… player characters!

Taking a cue from some of our favorite inspirations, players will get to pick among a ragtag group of heroes, each with their own abilities, preferred weapons, and of course unique appearance.

I should point out however that - unlike said inspirations - there is currently no plan to give the characters rpg-like stats. Instead, the character choice will determine your initial load-out (primary and secondary gun) as well as your special skill / ability (one per character).

In addition, while each character is slightly more proficient at using his weapons of choice (better range, more damage, bigger ammo clips, etc.), they are in no way limited to those particular weapons, and can still use any of the other guns scattered across the levels.



The first character is The Beggar:

Equipped with an old musket and some throwing rocks, The Beggar is the perfect character for players who like a good challenge. He can also be a powerful ally when picked as an AI companion, although he may sometimes be more interested in grabbing all the coins rather than helping you out…



The next character is The Diplomat:

His weapon of choice is the flamethrower, with a healthy dose of fire grenades on the side for good measure. If you don’t mind the short range and the potential for hilarious accidents, this is the character for you! His only downside is a propensity to start small fires when left alone for too long…



Of course there are more characters, which we will gradually introduce in the coming weeks up until the release of the demo, but in the meantime there is another little thing we thought you might enjoy:

Also hats…

(and facial hair…)

And that concludes this week’s update Thanks again to everybody for checking in, and see you all next week!

Cheers!

 

[benitosub]

And here is one more weekly update!

This week was mostly dedicated to optimizations on the code side - making sure to keep things running at a non-cinematic 60fps - and character polish on the art side.

Since most of the core features - rendering, animation, input, sound, pathfinding, ai, loot, destruction, etc. - are either in place or over half-way there, we are actually starting to add a bit of polish, wrapping up some lose ends, basically going from a prototype to something that feels like an actual game, and slowly getting ready to start putting the demo together

Anyway, since I doubt many people are interested in screenshots of performance profiling or finding out how many micro-seconds a particular system takes to update itself, I’ll skip over the optimization stuff and go straight to the character part…

First things off, we have a new character, The Don!

Most dystopian societies living under the oppressive rule of a dictatorial regime have a thriving underground economy and the Tower is no exception. The Don is the go-to character if you need a favor (or massive discounts at the shops), however be prepared to lose a limb if you get on his wrong side. His weapons of choice are the Tommy Gun, which he uses to mow down enemies and fellow team members alike (accuracy is not his forte…), and handy hand grenades.

Also as I mentioned above we are starting to wrap up the lose ends such as missing animations, and more specifically in this case, the shooting animations:

And finally since all that profiling and optimization was starting to get boring, I also went ahead and started experimenting with the dash ^_^ (the effect is a work-in-progress).

That’s it for this week, hoping to see you all again next week for more!

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

I hope there will be diffrent alien enemies that will splash with green blood all over.

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

Watching those gifs automatically this music starts playing in my head



Will you have the contextual music too ? One of the first games to really use it. Chords coming in when finishing level a commenter said in the vid, had even forgotten about that. Can't wait.

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

Also will you add an optional CRT filter to get that washed out analogue look that saved us from the pixels back then ? It's so jarring just to see old games emulated with cold hard perfect pixels knowing they should blend and colour bleed slightly into eachother.

 

[DwarvenFood]

And I always wondered why the older games look so.. different.. these days than from what I remember.

 

[Jarpie]

And I always wondered why the older games look so.. different.. these days than from what I remember.

If you mean amiga/c64/etc games I'd say because tvs of the time displayed picture differently than moderm lcd/tft monitors.

 

[DwarvenFood]

And I always wondered why the older games look so.. different.. these days than from what I remember.

If you mean amiga/c64/etc games I'd say because tvs of the time displayed picture differently than moderm lcd/tft monitors.

More like 320x200 games on CRT (full-screen obviously) VS. playing them at 2x or 4x windowed / or full-screen on TFT

 

[benitosub]

I hope there will be diffrent alien enemies that will splash with green blood all over.

Yes! We have at least 2 enemies that can bleed (and walking in the puddles of blood leaves footprints!)

Will you have the contextual music too ?

Also yes! I've already experimented with layering tracks and switching / fading in and out based on triggers which can be anything from an actual trigger to number of enemies on the screen, how much health you have, etc. Now we just need our sound guy to actually send us some tracks ^_^'

Also will you add an optional CRT filter to get that washed out analogue look that saved us from the pixels back then ?

Again, yes, although I personally enjoy the pixels But a CRT filter will definitely be available in the options for people who would rather play that way.

Cheers!

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

 

[benitosub]

Hi everybody!

This week work continued on polishing the character animations. The next weapon to get a make-over was the laser gun:

We have also integrated the tommy gun animations from last week into the actual game:

On the code side, we have been refining the behavior of the hexapods. Considering their insectoid appearance, and as a homage to one of our main inspirations, we really wanted players to feel like they are being swarmed by enemies.

Therefore the logical step seemed to be giving them the ability to form swarms! This choice is also in line with our "emergent gameplay" goal since (quoting wikipedia here) flocking “[…] is considered an emergent behavior arising from simple rules that are followed by individuals and does not involve any central coordination”

We started off Craig Reynolds’ 1987 flocking algorithm, which simulates several entities moving as a collective by applying three simple rules, generally referred to as alignment, cohesion, and separation. The result was hexapods which form flocks. Colliding flocks will either merge into a single flock, or split into several flocks, small flocks get absorbed by larger flocks, etc. It’s actually quite mesmerizing to watch, kind of like a lava lamp

(PLEASE NOTE I zoomed the camera back for these gifs to make it easier to appreciate how the hexapods are behaving)

The next step was to extend this system to support getting around in-game obstacles such as crates or barrels:

And of course to make things interesting, the flocks needed the ability to actually swarm the player rather than just wander around:

Putting all of this together, we got swarms of hexapods whose behavior relies on following a set of simple rules, have the ability to navigate around obstacles in the map, and can track down and rush the player.

And in actual in-game “resolution”:

That concludes this week’s update, hope everybody enjoyed it, and as usual we’ll be back next week for more

Cheers everybody!

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

Like looking at screenshots from the one amiga back in the day.

Spoiler

In the chaos engine, as this review mentions, one player was primary and the other secondary, resulting in being transported around the screen. How are you going to handle this ?

 

[DwarvenFood]

Also, I know realism isn't something important in these games but laser should have no recoil. Just Sayin'.

 

[Modron]

Also, I know realism isn't something important in these games but laser should have no recoil. Just Sayin'.

Shouldn't that be near zero recoil, light has momentum after all right?

 

[DwarvenFood]

Yeah every time I walk outside I feel the sunlight hitting my face.

 

[Luzur]

Did Alien Breed have mouse controls? Last gif looks like keyboard movement + mouse aiming which gives off a Cannon Fodder vibe.

From what I recall, the original Alien Breed (and Chaos Engine) were 8-way digital joystick controlled with only a single firebutton and I think alt/shift(weapselect)/spacebar(special abilities). There wasn't a rotatable target function like in that gif (contemporary controller thumb-sticks make that easy..). Later, non-Amiga versions prob had different controls..

Yes, Alien Breed was joystick only, but had some keyboard buttons, cant remember anymore which ones.

 

[benitosub]

New week, new update!

This week a lot of work was done on the first level, which is now actually playable, although it still looks very ugly (this was the first “gameplay” pass where we set up enemies, loot, keycards, etc. and play-test the hell out of it until we feel the “flow” is right… now that we’re pretty happy with it and most further changes should be tweaks rather than major overhauls, Cyangmou can start applying his magic to it!) so not really much to show yet on that side.

We did however bring back and polish an old feature that was essential to building a proper level, namely doors:

Of course doors can be unlocked or locked:

In which case you’ll need the appropriate keycard to get through:

On the art side, Cyangmou continued polishing the shooting animations for the main characters, and we’re now down to only a few weapons left (such as the lightning gun):

And last but not least, we are happy to introduce Rafael Langoni Smith, who will score the demo (and possibly the rest of the game if the demo is well received). Rafael has been writing music since he was 5, and has worked in film and television as well as on a few other games before (you can find out all about him over at http://rafaelsmith.com/).

As for how it’s handled in the actual game, the music is made of several layered tracks, which can be faded in and out depending on what is going on in the game.

For example here is a 10 second excerpt of the main character exploring an empty room:

https://soundcloud.com/tower57/quiet

However if that room was full of enemies, it would sound more like :

https://soundcloud.com/tower57/action

Of course enemies on the screen will not be the only thing affecting the music (anybody remembers the music speeding up as you got low on health in sf2 ?), so hopefully we should end up with a pretty dynamic soundtrack!

Next week depending on our respective “regular-work-schedules” we’re hoping to be able to show the first screenshots of the first level, so make sure to check back in if you’re curious about how the actual game is shaping up ^_^

Cheers!

 

[benitosub]

Welcome back everyone!

This week we’re incredibly proud to be able to show the first screenshots of the demo level. As I briefly explained last week, now that we are fairly happy with the general layout, Cyangmou has started painting over our prototype to create the final polished version.

Please keep in mind that the props (crates, columns, etc.) are not in place yet, so it looks a bit bare, also the overhead layer and the background parallax layer are missing, and of course the lighting is disabled, but hopefully the results speak for themselves as to whether we are on the right track:

In addition I also wanted to take a few lines to expand a bit on one of our core features, namely the so called “emergent gameplay”. As a quick reminder, the idea is to create a set of simple rules, or systems, which can interact with each other in complex ways, resulting in unforeseen or unscripted situations.

If that sounds confusing, think of the cops in GTA and the countless funny videos on youtube of them doing seemingly ridiculous things. Those situations were obviously not planned or scripted by rockstar, but are the “complex” result of the “simple” rules that govern their behavior.

Taking this idea back into our game, a good example would be the hexapods: their movement is governed by simple rules (such as flocking, chasing, etc.) which interact in complex ways so that their behavior will never be exactly the same in different play-throughs.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because we have tried to apply this philosophy to the weapons themselves. So for example a turret shoots bullets. But if you set that turret on fire, the fire will spread to the bullets it is firing, so you have now created a flaming-bullets-turret.

These simple rules are applied to everything indiscriminately, and since players have two weapon slots, this means you can combine two weapons - essentially by firing both at the same time - to create unexpected results.

Allow me to demonstrate.

The flamethrower is a short range weapon. However if you combine it with your tommy gun, you can effectively extend its range:

This doesn’t apply just to fire though, as electricity also travels from entity to entity, so logically combining your tommy gun with your lightning gun results in something like this:

You can even get creative and combine for example the harpoon gun with the flamethrower to create flaming harpoons that will not only impale enemies but also fry them:

We currently have 9 weapons - not counting the various types of grenades - so that means 36 possible weapon combinations, and we are still considering a couple of additional weapons so that number may still rise.

Hopefully this will produce enough variety in the ways you can beat the levels to entice players to go for additional play-throughs

Thank you again for following our progress, I’m looking forward to posting another update next week!

Cheers!