Finally. Finally I have a lot of free time to work on my game.

I must admit I'm a lil' piece of shit because my game was supposed to be done a long time ago. Wasting almost 3 months on doing nothing in that direction makes me feel bad. Winter, xmas, modern warfare 2, exam session, skiing in Austria and finally a new semester. So let's get to work.

My upcoming game, temporarily named shade is a shooter set in space exploration age. It's a "rail shooter" , as you don't control the ship - only it's guns. You can say that you're defending it. The player takes control of the ship's guns - switching between stations on the fly, facing off varied enemy forces. The player can upgrade or build new guns, each with it's pros and cons.

The gameplay point is pure enjoyment of shooting enemies and being rewarded with great visuals and particle effects. The game will be a 30 min experience with 5-6 levels with many enemies. It has a simple story connecting the sections with in-game 'cinematics'.

Additional game modes are being considered.

It will be a fun ride, perfect for people who are sick of zombie games and tower defences, wanting to play and enjoy something not investing too much time into it.

The 'engine' running the game is around 60% done. It needs some fine-tuning here and there, but overall it runs nicely. The gameplay is at prototype stage which i'm using to balance weapons, ballistics, effects, and enemy movement. Once all that is ok i can start creating final content. I'm already having a lot of fun with it. (too much time wasted on shooting spaceships ;) )

As I mentioned earlier I'm putting a big effort into particle effects. They need a few improvements but for what I'm doing it's the best particle code out there. There are many libraries but they just can't do what I want so well. I may be a shit coder and the classes are in mess but it all works and looks great. I'm using a very early version for Shade but i'll be improving it all the time.

It's too early to talk about further plans but I'll be developing and cleaning up my particles heavily. I have a lot of great game ideas and as it grows it will be a perfect product. Once it's finished I would like to see it as a cheap package for all game developers. But that's far away. Now I focus on Shade.

TO-DO list:

particles :

- variable, realistic wind effects (changing every frame)
- 'black hole' effect (pulling all particles into a set point)
- particle trails
- area based spawing
- create randomised explosions, unique for each ship
- cleaning up the code and making room for LOD settings so it can look great and run well on all computers

ballistics:

- improved collision detection (integrate iterations, bullets fly through thin objects at some times)
- optimised collisions (checking for bounding box, then pixel-perfect)
- fix a bug when strong wind is stopping bullets that go against it
- clean up ricochet logic

enemies:

- fix a bug when enemy guns at their centre instead of their actual coordinates (fucking flash trigonometry - it works with hero ship :[)
- improve flying behaviour and shooting mechanics
- write unique dying patterns
- make all the enemies
gameplay , engine , game logic:

- final content(backgrounds and effects)
- health mechanics
- cinematic
- stereo sound system (considering)
- lightning effects (lens flares on explosions, have to find out if it works out)
- menus
-medal system
- scoring
-levels

..and more

Drop me a word what you think about it and look forward to the first playable level for selected users so I can fine tune the game. It's still open to all suggestions. See you in a week or so with another update!
Small screenies (all WiP) CLICK