Defenstar out now!
Community Forums/Showcase/Defenstar out now!
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DEFENSTAR. OUT NOW! A Defender / Datastorm inspired game. * 50 levels. * 25 unique attackers. * Mini bosses. * Big bosses. Youtube playniax.com Last edited 2010 |
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| Congrats! Looks really cool and plays really smooth. But what I found confusing though was after I cleared the area of all enemies I flew into that blue thing. Some effect happened and I thought my ship was gone. Then some boss comes in, kills me, and it's game over... I didn't even know my ship was still in game? Though these are not really my type of games I must say I was impressed by it though. Good sound and graphics. Smooth gameplay and animations. I didn't like the default control settings either but it's easy enough to change them. Good luck with it and it's a very nice showcase for your framework. |
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| @Htbaa: By blue thing you mean the portal? I think the effect was the light when you save a pod (pods have to be picked up and flown through the portal). Maybe it was blinding you from your ship. When the last pod is saved the boss will come yes. But thank you for your compliments! |
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| Very nice visuals -- good luck! |
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| Ya the game looks awesome and speaks volumes for your framework Nice work! |
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| Thanks guys! And hey _Skully, I see your doing great on TileMax. |
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| Very impressive! I assume you created this with your framework? [Edit] Just checked the credits, and I can see that it does use your framework. What a great showcase for what can be achieved with it! Last edited 2010 |
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| Very impressive! Silky smooth here. I assume you created this with your framework? [Edit] Just checked the credits, and I can see that it does use your framework. What a great showcase for what can be achieved with it! Last edited 2010 |
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| Yes it uses the framework indeed but a more advanced version of what is on sale now. I am currently updating the framework and I expect it to be online very soon! |
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| Congrats Mr Playniax on finally getting this awesome game out there! *three cheers* |
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| played the demo. it's fun and has nice visuals. great work! how long did development take? |
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| @ImaginaryHuman: Thank you! @maverick69: TOO LONG! :) No seriously, I started around 2 years a go on the framework and Defenstar but did other stuff too. I have to say, I'm happy it's done and BlitzMax is a great language! |
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| Really like it, excellent graphics and smooth visuals :) Only thing I can say in criticism is that I'm not too sure about the demo starting at level 10 as it was way to hard for me, not that I was ever that much good at defender style games :) I can understand the logic in that you want to show more of what the game offers, but personally I was put off by the difficulty that early on. |
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| +1 to what Pete said. Visually, the game is brilliant, it goes without saying. The playability needs some work. So much seems to revolve around rushing to get powerups, which I find a little off-putting. I got to the big boss after a few attempts, gave him a fair pummeling, then ran out of weapons. There should always be at least a low powered weapon to fall back on, IMO. For lack of firepower, my only option was to commit suicide! Good effort, but could be so much better with some tweaking. |
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| One idea... leave the weapons in play until you run into a new one. Put some on the map that are unavoidable and/or send so many the player will eventually run into those while avoiding enemies. |
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| @John Galt: I see your point but it seems to revolve around rushing to get powerups because the DEMO starts at level 10 and normally if all goes well in the full game mode you enter level 10 with some or all of your weapons so you have more 'air to breath'. I will think about maybe changing something about the demo mode. Anyway, if you 'figure out' Defenstar you will find it's not really that difficult. But I guess you need to buy the game to agree with me:) |
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| I gotta say this is probably the best looking defender/datastorm-like game ever made! |
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| Thank you! |
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| Big congratulations for getting Reyn Ouwehand on board to do the music I have been mightly impressed by his talent after listening to his awesome GREEN BERET track on YouTube That framework name is sweet too - "Ignition" ! Downloading the Defenstar demo now ... |
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| Thank you, Reyn is the man! I think he did the perfect job on Defenstar. Last edited 2010 |
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| I gotta say this is probably the best looking defender/datastorm-like game ever made! Have to agree, and silky smooth too - even with the highest resolution and graphic settings turned up. Last edited 2010 |
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| Wow that is one sweet looking game, love the special effects and that epic font. Congrats on finishing it and getting it out there! |
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| Nice game! Cool graphics :) BTW please... please dont call your game setup file "setup.exe", Ive got so many setup(x).exe in my download folder I dont know what any of them are... |
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| Yes that confused me too, I actually deleted it as I thought it was something else I had already installed :-) |
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| Thanks you guys! Ok, no setup? But this is common no? Defenstar.exe then? |
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| Trailer online! |
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| Well done Playniax nice polished looking game. Unfortunately switching on Delta timing (for me at least) causes the framerate to drop to 1 frame every minute or so but the keys seem still responsive?? (I can quit back to the main menu screen by pressing ESCAPE instantly). Don't know what's going on there. Plays silky smooth with Delta timing off. |
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| @MCP: Thanks! Problems on a mac or PC? I should have a look at it. Anyone else experience problems? |
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| PC Windows 7 32bit 4Gig ram - NVidia 9600 GT 512Meg |
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| Ok, thanks. You are the first one who reported a problem:( Just tested it again but everything looks fine here. I see if I can find a cause. |
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| I've just tried it in both Fullscreen and windowed mode with Delta timing enabled and I get the same problem however I have noticed that the frame rate runs at full speed again after the player ship is destroyed and I get the Mission Failed message on screen. |
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| ok, maybe something to go on. Thnx! |
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| A setup program is fine, just call it Setup_Defenstar :-) |
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| BTW please... please dont call your game setup file "setup.exe", It needs to be called setup.exe to play nicely with the UAC in Vista/7 |
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| It needs to be called setup.exe to play nicely with the UAC in Vista/7 Not quite, I believe it just needs to detect the word 'setup' in the filename, like 'BlitzGameSetup.exe'. Using the filename 'setup.exe' is not a good idea, it's commonly used by malicious software installers. |
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| [quote[Not quite, I believe it just needs to detect the word 'setup' in the filename, like 'BlitzGameSetup.exe'.[/quote]I was giving a possible reason as to why he named it what he did. ;) If you are not using a manifest, to determine if it is a setup file UAC's heuristics look at the file name, the version fields and certain sequences of bytes within the exe. The latter two are only of a benefit if those are on file with MS to be recognized by the UAC. So, yes "setup", "install" or "update" does need to be in the file name if you are not using a manifest to request the necessary privileges. Having your setup program digitally signed does not hurt either. MSDN has detailed info on this. |
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| In this case I used a install creator that elevates the user rights on installation so it doesn't matter what it's called. |
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| Ignition 1.7 out now! Ignition is the framework used to create Defenstar! HOME PAGE! Last edited 2010 |
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| I just had a try at it and really liked the music but i was a little bit dissapointed that you couldn't steer with the mouse as well. Anyway felt really smooth. Last edited 2010 |
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| How would you steer with mouse with such a wide playfield that is wrapping around? I can see it would maybe help in close-quarters though. |
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| For instance you could use the relative offset to an origin as speed towards that direction using tolerance areas as well. Last edited 2010 |
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| How to play Defenstar! I show you how it's done:) Level 9 |
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| You rock! |
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| I do, don't I? ;-) |
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| Is it on any portals yet? |
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| Not yet! We are 'talking' to direct2drive and gamersgate. They are interested. Steam no answer yet:( Last edited 2010 |
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| I always like to see shooters get some attention, fingers are crossed for ya. ;) |
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| Me too! Thanks! |
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| I have noticed it doesn't save high scores after you exit the game. Is it ment to? If not it would be good. |
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| It should do that! I'm going to have a look at it. Thnx! |
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| Ta very much for the freebie. Really top notch ace game. Great work! I played it on my Macbook 2,1 and it was totally smooth framerate in 640 and 800 screens. I also tried delta timing on which was fine and the high score was still there after relaunching the game. Two tiny little niggles. The app logo is Bmx and the text in the Help section is nearly unreadable in 640. I find it tricky to turn the ship and shoot the tiny ufo enemies, I wish they were a bit bigger. I'm not really a shootemup guy as you can tell, but I like a blast now and then. Last edited 2010 |
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| Thank you. Defenstar is really designed for the higher resolutions but in order for people who have a slower machine to play the game we added the lower ones. The side effect of that is that picture quality is a lot less on a lower resolution hence the less readable in-game help text. Last edited 2010 |
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| Ah it's a picture scaled down, of course. I assume if it was real font text it would alias fine. Bitmap fonts are what all the pros use but I could never figure out why. Is it just to avoid depending on a font file? Anyway cheers, hope it sells well for you! |
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| Thank you! It's only help pictures that have this problem. all the other stuff and menu fonts scale and alias just fine. Maybe in an update I will improve it. |
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| The first versions of Defenstar included a simple html document with the instructions of how to play. Some portals asked us for a better instruction manual and in pdf format so we made something that turned out to be surprisingly nice. (I'm aware of the typo's, I will correct them) The Windows version of Defenstar has an update function in the options menu. The Mac version now also has this. For people who downloaded the mac version prior to 21-11-2010 here is a patch for the mac. Just download and unzip it and put it in the root folder of Defenstar. This will activate the update option in the option menu of Defenstar. Also I put a new sample of the Ignition framework docs online for download |
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