Star Conquest (HBGames)

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<center><font size="5">Play the game</font></center>

<center><font size="1">Official entry thread</font></center>

<center><font size="1">Project file (.capx) ~80mb</font></center>

Star Conquest is a space shooter game done for the HBGames competition, the goal is to conquer the entire 'galaxy' (reach and conquer the last star) which is generated at startup, each stars have a set of planets that the player have to 'conquer', on startup the player is limited to one star, for each planets conquered the territory will expand, the game have a shop, highscores, 4 levels of difficulty (with various degree of random).

This game is made using the free version of C2, the number of events used is 100.

Enemies/Player and some fx graphics are from the free sprite bundle included in C2, some sfx too, the rest is custom altough aided by some software like Space Engine, sfxr and cooltext.

<img src="http://hapshack.com/images/1s0d.png" border="0">

<img src="http://hapshack.com/images/3QBm.png" border="0">

Work best in Chrome/Chromium altough Firefox seem ok on most machines.

I played a couple rounds and it was pretty fun. I have a couple question/comments about the game.

1. If I fly to the top of the screen I end up back at the "universe" screen. Is that intentional? I found this out by accident while try to run away from some enemies.

2. I chose the easy setting and had trouble lasting more that 30 seconds. Maybe make easy mode a little easier.

3. This one may be a personal preference, but after letting go of the accelerate button it would be nice to have the ship gradually slow down.

Nice job!

3.

Thank you, i am going to polish it a bit after the contest is over.

1. Yes it is intentional, the area is small to keep the difficulty, it force the player to fight around the planet and encounter all enemies also enemies stats/types are a bit random so sometime if it is too difficult it can help to leave the area and come back so you don't lose lives, money/score isn't counted though when you leave and don't kill all enemies.

2. The game actually need more balancing but if you keep moving/use side thrusters and handle shields by rotating i think it is pretty easy as long as you don't hit any enemies especially thoses rotating around the planet, after 1 or 2 easy planets you should also have enough money to get better shields/armor, easy planets should be a piece of cake after. <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

3. You can slow down with Down arrow/S, the ship should also gradually slow down due to gravity of the planet but outside a certain radius the gravity is pretty weak so it do not affect much the ship speed

WOW. Your game looks so professional dude. Especially the title screen and the planet selection screen. I loved the animations and transitions. Good job! I was impressed. The game is really interesting too.

Nevertheless, I have a couple of suggestion and I agree with Mastasurf on some points. These suggestions are just for the next release of your game since the HB Contruct 2 competition is over.

OK. First, the easy setting is just...too difficult ;). I couldn't last more than 30 seconds.

Actually, the main reason I couldn't last longer is because of the controls or maybe the speed of the ship. I think the ship goes too fast. Maybe you should reduce its speed a little. I also have a lot of issues with the controls. I didn't really get how to move the ship.

I hope this helps. By the way, feel free to try also my game and leave me some comments. I will appreciate. You can play it through my signature.

Thanks, the game can be quite difficult if you don't grasp the controls, the key to defeat fighters is just to use side thrusters really (left/right keys) you can then rotate around them and hit them from far away without them hitting you, enemies AI is relatively weak so i am gonna work on that too, also once you beat a easy planet just buy a weapon upgrade/shield upgrade and it should be a lot easier.

Moving is just done by pointing the mouse cursor to the direction you want to go then press W or Up arrow to go forward, Down arrow and S to slow down the ship.

This is pretty awesome, i really like the whole presentation.

The sound effects line up with the animation perfectly, shooting and flying around looks really nice.

Its always good to see new takes on player movement but I found it hard to control the ship how i wanted to. The reason is, it feels like a jazzed up version of asteroids but it doesnt control that way (its hard to get the ship to move how you would expect - based on other similar space games).

Still i enjoyed it, good work afgho.

Yeah, i am in the process to ameliorate it a bit before putting it on the arcade, the truth about the game is that it was not intended as a multidirectional shooter at first but as a 4x Master of Orion style game however i didn't had enough time.

Also, how would you like the controls to be? is it because of the mouse?

Ah ok,

I would probably go with the original asteroids style of movement, or even potentially the same movement from the ghost tutorial - but with the added the gravity effect.

It wasnt really the mouse, it was more when you strafe it turns you in a circle pattern.

A 4x Orion game would have been awesome as well, no chance with your 100 events though :)

How did you get the enemy ship to do that AI? I can't seem to open the game event to look.

Wow you did this in 100 events? Crazy!

For those having difficulty, circle strafing is your friend! Most of the enemy's fire straight ahead so you can circle around them pretty easily.

How did you get the enemy ship to do that AI? I can't seem to open the game event to look.

The AI is very primitive, it follow and orbit the player at a random angle, the orbit angle change from time to time, the ship try to evitate the player if it go too near and that is all, basically.

Here is a simple sample:

dl.dropbox.com/u/64479453/SpaceShooterAI_Example.capx

And test (use UP arrow to go in the direction of the cursor, down to stop moving): dl.dropbox.com/u/64479453/C2SpaceShooter%20AI%20Example/index.html

I am still polishing the game right now (now 211 events) and will release it soon on the arcade, the "code" was (and still is) very crappy, it was made in less than 2 weeks on hurry, also got huge problems fixing the game each time a new update of C2 was released, the game broke down at each updates basically. <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />