Metal Venture v1.03 [+Update] [+Youtube Previews]

There are two things that I think this game could really use:
-More things to blow up.  As in, not just enemies; boxes, computers, even doors.
-More variety in enemy attack patterns; most of the ones present currently either run straight up to you or move around semi-erratically while shooting at you.

There are two things that I think this game could really use:
-More things to blow up.  As in, not just enemies; boxes, computers, even doors.
-More variety in enemy attack patterns; most of the ones present currently either run straight up to you or move around semi-erratically while shooting at you.

Boxes and containers/explosives, as well as monster spawners will be added soon. Also, as you can see in the "visual/misc" folder, there are many unused "decoration" graphics.

About enemies:
Place the cursor over an empty area, then press Shift+2. An enemy with an "original" attack pattern will appear. More enemies with different move/attack patterns will be added. For example, a floating mechanical sphere which can only be damaged when its surrounding shield is open in order for it to attack.

It's good to receive feedback Today I discovered two bugs in my latest release. An "item exchange" inventory problem, and a teleporter problem. It's difficult to find all of this stuff on my own, so even bothering for 10 minutes to play and see if things go smoothly can really be helpful.

Well, 2 new things added: Crates and craters 

Crates usually drop random stuff when destroyed (or one can specify what they'll drop in the level editor) , and craters are actually "bomb stains" left under destroyed stuff. And craters *stay* there if one exits/reenters the room.





I am really excited about the progress of the game. Looking back almost 9 months ago, when all this was nothing more than a "hello world, I'm testing stuff" thing in Game Maker, I can now only sigh with relief that there is so much less to do compared to what has already been done.

What next? I always wanted to make a Ginormo Sword clone. Oh, and a roguelike.

Well, I booted it up, but I couldn't figure out how to start the game!

Progress report:

-Made several new enemies, including turrets, enemy spawners and a cool boss with a spinning shield and various deadly attacks!
-2 new weapons: Laser rifle and Dual Laser Cannon. The first one is a med-power weapon whose projectiles (red beams) bounce against solid objects (not enemies) a couple of times. The second is a very powerful weapon, firing laser green-blue beams (not bouncing), surpassed only by the Stein 9001 in terms of mass destruction .
-Various new tweaks to the code, bug fixes, and overall speed improvement (loading time is still a concern though, as it is already ~22 seconds WITHOUT audio so far).

GM's loading times are awful.  Horrible, intolerable.

Right now, the only way to get around that is to load almost everything externally (which you're already doing a lot of, it seems).  Ideally, you should load only whatever's necessary for playing the current stage/level/sector/map/whatever you want to call it, to conserve memory (something else that GM isn't too good at).

Well, the loading time is a bit harsh but the game is great. The graphics in paticular. It looks 3d. The game play is good, altough I kinda suck at it. This game looks very promising. (on a side note why do the number keys spawn enemies? Is it for testing purpose?)

Yes, it is for testing purposes, and since no released WIP so far reflects the actual game, I saw no reason to remove them

It is a pity that Louigi Verona hasn't come up with something "game-ish" yet. In our last conversation, he found it hard to compose something for a game, or he lacks the inspiration for it, or he is a bit too bored he sent me a couple of tracks however. They're good, byt I'm not quite sure if they fit in such a game.

I really hope that someone, be it Louigi Verona or anybody else,will write some music for the game...

Well, after thoroughly cleaning the interior of my pc (that was *a lot* of dust) I finally understood why everything was slowed down in my system, including the game's loading time. There was so much dust that my system suffered from super-heating. Thankfully, now everything is OK, and the game's load time is about 10 seconds! Weeee!

Say, minmay, ChaosWolf and the rest, how fast does the game load on your systems (and what systems do you own)? Can you give me an estimate in seconds?

It takes about 10 seconds total for the game to load on my system (about one second for the loading screen to pop up, three seconds for the game to start, and five~six seconds to get past the second loading screen).

My processor is dual-core; since GM doesn't support multithreading it runs on just the one core, which would be approximately 3 GHz.
I have 2 GB of RAM, but am currently using the Windows pagefile (which I have set to 8 GB) since I've been doing some extremely high-memory stuff recently.
My video card is the not-all-that-great NVIDIA GeForce 6600 LE, made even worse by its inclination to overheat, but since GM supports only minimal hardware acceleration, this doesn't mean much - and it certainly wouldn't affect the loading screen.

Finally, my disk transfer rate is rather slow, which is probably limiting the speed.  Unfortunatlely I don't know what it is exactly.

Video update: Some bosses

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkonyrjRz0s

Sorry for the delayed reply. On my computer it took about 43 seconds to load. Although I would consider my pc to be an artifact at this point.

Alright. PartySan is inside the game, tracking bytes, writing music. Here is the first track I just received.

Damn, it's good!

Due to Rusty Studio and PartySan, I now have a complete soundtrack for the game! Hooray!

Feel free to listen to these tracks and tell me your opinions:

Main Theme:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?o01wvyyjfcy

Invaders must die (boss music):
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?yjzt5yqwogu

Awesmoe.
Now I'm looking forward to this even more.