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

Greetings,

After a year and a half in development, Metal Venture is finally ready. It's the largest project I've worked on so far. This game is a top-down shooter, inspired from the Robokill flash game, but different in many ways. A world with a story, consisting of 9 levels is included. Documentation covering the basic aspects of the Level Editor is available. I hope that people will have fun and be creative, making their own worlds, stories and custom graphics. Visit http://metalventure.forumotion.net and become part of the Metal Venture community!

Features :

• Worlds split in levels, each level containing up to 196 rooms.
• Multitude of enemies,weapons and items, as well as rare items. Random enemy drops ensure game variety.
• Ambient lighting for greater world immersion.
• Inventory, as well as shops!
• A simple leveling up system, allowing to augment your max energy, health or weapon power.
• Complete objectives, ranging from destroying specific targets to reaching certain locations, in order to reach the next world level.
• Cutscenes between each level, and at the beginning/end of each world.
• Allocating your energy to either your health or your weapon power adds a great tactical feature!
• Conserve energy in order to throw Jolts, which deal great damage to enemies OR unlock jammed doors!
• A level editor, allowing players to create their own worlds, adding events and custom item drops (eg. drop a key when a specific enemy dies, or complete an objective) with merely editing properties in objects in a simple way!

Youtube Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G66wMAZfg5g

Screenshots:


Game link:

Version 1.03 (74.78 MB 7-zip compressed self-extracting .exe):
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?dxtyzy0hthn

Version 1.03 PATCH ONLY (3.96 MB .zip, updates any previous version to 1.3):
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?4xizzuo2kqx

YoYo games page:
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/115140-metal-venture

GameJolt page:
http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/action/...l-venture/1588/

ModDB page:
http://www.moddb.com/games/mental-venture

I know that the game size is repulsive, but in my book, 50 MB of original music from various artists (Rusty Studio,PartySan,ERH etc), instead of cheap ripoffs from other games, should compensate for the download size.


Technical Stuff:
The game starts in fullscreen mode. If you don't want this, open the options.ini file in the game directory, find the line:
fullscreen=1
and change it into:
fullscreen=0

Estimated Requirements:
Pentium 4 Processor or better
640 MB of RAM
Graphics card: NVIDIA 7600GT/ATI x1600XT or better with at least 256 MB of VRAM
Tested on Windows XP
100 MB free Hard Disk space

For nVidia fraphics card users: If graphics look glitchy, do the following:
Go to the nVidia display control panel, go to the Adjust Image Settings with Preview and move the slider to "Quality" preset. Alternatively, enable antialiasing in the nVidia display control panel. This is by no means a "Metal Venture" issue, but a "Game Maker 7" issue, I went through a lot of pain in order to determine the source of this graphical glitch, and then a few expert members at the Game Maker community told me what this was all about.


Credits:

Game design and programming - level editor:
vdweller - http://vdweller.awardspace.com

Music:
Voytek Pavlik - http://www.rustystudio.com
get the soundtrack: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/voytekpavlik

Additional ambiance and sound effects:
www.freesound.org - special thanks to erh

Testers:
fago - heretic - lithium - magma24 - maroutas
minmay - Pet Smil - Razzorman - salmoneous

Special thanks:
h0bbel - kaietnap - kyle solo - mark overmars
tsg1zzn - xot

Very nice, vdweller! I'll have to play a bit more later. On a slightly off topic note, do you still that that rpg you made? It was on the old forum, but link was dead. Anyway, good job on this. It's visuals are very pleasing, and the gameplay is pretty unique, as far as I've seen. 

Very nice, vdweller! I'll have to play a bit more later. On a slightly off topic note, do you still that that rpg you made? It was on the old forum, but link was dead. Anyway, good job on this. It's visuals are very pleasing, and the gameplay is pretty unique, as far as I've seen. 

Ahh...you mean the Grow and Decay RPG. Memories...
From my website:

"Note (21/9/2007) :
It's been some time since I last developed GADE. I am currently occupied with other projects, and further development of GADE (a large part of the game is already playable) is definitely not a priority right now. I have released a "playtesting" version for those who want to see the game so far (it's worth it, IMO). The characters begin at a high level, so that difficult battles won't prevent you from seeing the game so far. Who knows, maybe when I feel like I want to (and with enough support emails-motivation is always good!!), I will fully finish GADE."

Well the link is broken because both the playtesting version AND the uploaded file got deleted 


Anyway thanks for the comments!!

This is cool!

I can do ambient music. :3

Is it just me or does the second enemy type look rather daleky?

Is it just me or does the second enemy type look rather daleky?

Maybe, I downloaded these models from Vanishing Point website, they have a Doctor Who section, maybe it's from there

Looks incredible! Cant wait to try it out.
Its always cool to see emerging game artists.
Keep it up!

StaticRomantic, there is a link to download it. 

I uploaded another version (see 1st post) and i require your assistance.

Please download it, run it and select "test world 1" to play. When the world is loaded and the robot appears etc. use the F9 key to get a screenshot. Next, exit the game COMPLETELY (and the menu,too) and re-run. Repeat the screenshot when "test world 1" is loaded.

Please post your screens here as following (scale them 50% down, I don't mind):
Run #1 (screenshot)
Run #2 (screenshot)
etc.

In this way you are helping me verify if the ambient lighting appears the same on all systems,  in every game run.

EDIT:Issue solved. Not that anyone bothered  sorry for being evil

Video update!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwA5y5zfJac

Oh man this looks awesome and amazing.

Robots + RPG elements + destruction + level editor = a dream come true.

Cannot wait until it is done.

Heh, the top down view reminds me of The Legend of Zelda.

Just uploaded the latest WIP version! Play it and give me some feedback 

I am reminded of Smash TV from watching the video.

Made a lot of progress these days!

Added the feature of falling off ledges, for both the "Robot" hero and the enemies. Also, some weapons can knock back enemies, so in certain rooms one will be able to throw enemies into the void by firing at them.

Also, changed the way the "level-up" screen appears. Instead of the level up screen abruptly appearing every time enough XP are gained and the room is clean of enemies, a clickable "notification" effect appears at the bottom of the GUI. In this way I want to ensure that e.g. players are not hurt by enemy bullets still flying on the screen when the menu suddenly appears, making difficult to remember where is what after making your selection.

Also, saving/loading has been implemented!

Objectives have also been added. In the level editor, one can simply add the command addobjectivept(k) in the input box of an enemy instance. This adds an "objective point" in a specific objective (with an index of k). Typically, most objectives have 1 point because they need to be done only once. But for Objectives like "Destroy 3 power generators" we need multiple objective points. Objectives can be created by editing the objectives.txt file in the level folder of the world.

I'm gonna need some testers for all this stuff...