Blastaway, a new game for AmigaOS 4 (?)

[klx300r]

for such a polished game that you've been working on so hard I personally believe you should charge a fee even a small fee which anyone can afford but something to help you out financially since you don't have full time employment right now and every little bit would help.

[saimo]

@TribbleSmasher @F1Lupo

Thanks, guys. I decided to make the game available for free (as considered since its inception) because of what I explained in the opening post: I hope to reach as many people as possible. Of course, donations will still be welcome

[saimo]

Stage-relative checkpoints added! When a new stage is reached, the whole game state gets saved so that it will be possible to resume the game anytime from the same state by means of a menu option.
Side note: I had considered giving the option to resume from any of the stages/arenas reached previously, but that would have made it way too easy to finish the game (and make big scores in the process) with repeated partial sessions, whereas the best way to enjoy the game is to play it from start to finish. Therefore, I went for an alternative that sits in between the two extremes.


(click to enlarge)

CHANGELOG
* Added option to resume from the last stage reached.
* Refined the fix to the handling of shadows.
* Made various other little improvements/fixes.
* Updated/improved/extended manual.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

[TribbleSmasher]

Usually, with a Continue the player gets stripped from his bonusses and score when restarting at a higher level.

[saimo]

Indeed, but here, score aside, it wouldn't be that good: checkpoints are only at the beginning of each stage, which means once every 10 arenas. I might still reset the score though (admittedly, I wasn't really sure about that).

[saimo]

1 wor to go! The Exxwor, the wor that appears at THE WAREHOUSE stage, has been added, so now only one wor remains to be done!
Additionally, this build comes with a major bugfix and other nice improvements.

Video preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2ziVeuufNI

CHANGELOG
* Added (new) Exxwor (the wor specific to THE WAREHOUSE stage).
* Made score restart from 0 when a game is resumed.
* Added 32nd (and last) color.
* Touched up some graphics.
* Changed (again) background of arenas title screen.
* Fixed major bug that made the software-based 5x scaler crash (a whole line of code had disappeared by accident).
* Updated/extended manual.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

[saimo]

More steps towards perfection (that is, the perfection I'm able to reach).


(click to enlarge)

CHANGELOG
* Made Exxwor shoot.
* Reworked arenas start screen (darkened background, changed heading, added wors list).
* Touched up a few arenas.
* Touched up some Exxwor frames.
* Replaced scrolltext with cycling strings.
* Extended menu navigation controls with:

= select,

= back.
* Updated manual.
* Made various other little changes.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

[saimo]

All wors are done!





(click to enlarge)

CHANGELOG
* Added Frowor.
* Changed Gjawor sound.
* Added points missing to milestone to HUD.
* Reworked HUD.
* Fixed Gjawor's AI (it could decide to turn when not allowed).
* Fixed/optimized trimming of most shadows.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

[motrucker]

I've been following this on Lemon64, but thought I would check this thread out. I really like Blastaway. I will spread the word to try to help. Great work!

[saimo]

I've been following this on Lemon64, but thought I would check this thread out. I really like Blastaway.

I will spread the word to try to help. Great work!

Much appreciated!

[saimo]

Maintenance release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4U02xatwAg

CHANGELOG
* Changed slightly darkening of arenas start screen background.
* Fixed (again) Gjawor's AI (it might get stuck due to a missing check).
* Fixed wor spawning delay calculation (it became negative on the last arena).
* Fixed layout of last arena.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

[saimo]

Another maintenance release. A complete playthrough and a revision of the code revealed a few things to fix/improve.



CHANGELOG
* Made WEAPON bonus less rare.
* Fixed an AI-related bug.
* Fixed milestone when resuming (it was restored instead of being reset, which made sense only when points used to be restored as well).
* Made various other minor changes/optimizations.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

[saimo]

One of my supporters found the menu item blinking a bit stressful, so I went for an old solution - check this video out. I'm not 100% sure yet: maybe I'll have to use a darker color for the unselected items.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

[saimo]

Video-related code improved.


(click to enlarge)

CHANGELOG
* Changed rendering of menu items.
* Added 6x zooming.
* Reworked/optimized CRT filters.
* Improved/fixed video initialization.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

[saimo]

Getting ready for release!
Development is complete (even the installers are done), so now Blastaway only needs to go through the final (and heavy) playtest. Then, if everything turns out to be OK, the game will be released - and for free


(click to enlarge)

CHANGELOG
* Made doors sounds of stages 1 and 4 louder.
* Assigned the menu "back" function also to [DELETE].
* Made some internal optimizations/improvements.
* Fixed bug that caused illegal memory reads at initialization (and might crash the game).
* Fixed/improved/updated manual.
* Written installers.

Demo download: https://www.retream.com/Blastaway

[klx300r]

@ saimo
awesome work