Ammunition > Heroics

So I've been getting Dilbert cartoons by email for over two years now. But suddenly, I stopped getting them. I wanted to log on to see what was up, but I signed up so long ago that I can't figure out what username/password I used. I tried resetting it, but it is "unable to reset password at this time" and asks me to "please try again later".
Maybe they're having technical problems... Anyway, it's sad. I really like the cartoon. It's not as great as Calvin and Hobbes, of course, but it's funny in its own way (which is great, because I think every cartoon should have its own unique sense of humor). It's ludicrously exaggerated, and yet at the same time... somehow eerily similar to real life.

I did some work on that post I've talked about before. It's kind of an essay.
It's going to take a while.


So I keep telling you about !°μ1.53, but you don't really know anything about it.
Well, you get to, now (a little)!
!°μ1.53 was envisioned a long time ago as a combination of a roguelike and a platform shooter. I set the idea aside, since it sounded way beyond me (I assumed random level generation would be far too difficult for me to pull off).
But later I came back to it. I was feeling adventurous, and I thought of an idea for generating platform terrain that might actually work. I gave it a shot, and sure enough, it did (though not very well). Somewhere along the line I ditched the shooter part. I was working on a platform shooter already at the time ("Heroics Won't Save You"; I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it here before); that was probably why.
Anyway, I did a little bit of work on it, but then I hit a wall. It came in the form of a game called "Spelunky". It did everything I was trying to do, and, frustratingly, did it well. I guess at that point I sort of lost my enthusiasm... but not for long. I decided I was going to rework my game to make it more unique. I went back to the original idea of a platform shooter, and I came up with a new setting and mood that will hopefully stand out pretty well...
Anyway, here are some screenshots:











































































































Some miscellaneous information:

-The quality kind of got wrecked when I uploaded the pictures. The game (particularly the beam effects) looks better than that.
-The characters there are in insulated robot suits.
-The game takes place in a government complex that houses an enormous machine of uncertain purpose.
-The levels are randomly generated, but the technique I ended up using is quite a bit different (and much more effective) than my original idea.
-You have to get to the door that's glowing (it has a light around the edge that fades in and out); it takes you to the next level. The other door is the one you come out of, but there's no going back! It forces you to play "ironman style" since there's little reason to turn back.
-There are thirty guns. I don't plan on making any more until much later (if at all) since I think that's plenty. There are some pretty unusual weapons, I think, so there's a decent level of variety (though many of the weapons are fairly basic).
-There are some items to help you move around better, such as ladders you can set up (either horizontally or vertically) to help you climb to new places.
-I was inspired by Warning Forever to make this game adapt as you play through it. I'm not sure of all of the ways I'm going to implement that, but I am going to, for example, make the robots get a little stronger every time you destroy one. (So each foe will be stronger than the next, even if it's something you've already seen.)
-There are only two robots and one trap currently. Right now I have plans for six more robots and three more traps.
-The game logs all of your deaths to a text file. Right now it gives your class, your score, and how you died. I'm going to make it show what floor you were on, too (that won't be very hard to add, I just haven't gotten to it yet).
-There's going to be more to this game, but this is all you get to know for now. Some of the other things I want to add are a bit farther down the road, and plus it would be boring if I told you absolutely everything. =P


:::Source expected
:::19.03.09
:::STOP