Drop! [Download Demo]

Game Engine Works in Progress and Game Demos
#1

Hello and welcome to Drop!

Description:
Drop is a small but fun and fast paced game where you play as a ball and avoid death by dropping between platforms and getting power-ups, if you hit the roof you die and as time goes on, the roof will start going faster to crush you so the longer you last, the harder it gets. You earn points based on how long you can stay alive, but you can also pick up bonus points for collecting power-ups.

BG info:
Drop is a small game I am making just for fun. I am making it alone but I may need some music towards the end.

New posts will contain development updates so scroll down to read.
If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to post them down below, I’m all ears! :wink:

#2

Things like motion blur - this will greatly beautify things like a speed power up. You could use glowing color changes to indicate invincibility. I think it would be awesome if you could get a power up that broke platforms.

#3

Thank you for the suggestions, I actually really like them! :slight_smile:

I think it would be awesome if you could get a power up that broke platforms.
Brilliant idea - it’s now a feature! For the power-up duration (4.5sec) you destroy all the platforms you touch. Should I make them end or should I replace them with shards so it ‘explodes’ itself?

You could use glowing color changes to indicate invincibility.
Good idea, I’ll use filters and colour change to indicate power-ups (not invincibility - or at least not yet!).

Things like motion blur - this will greatly beautify things like a speed power up.
I have yet to try out all of the filters, so I’ll get to it. My computer can’t handle GLSL but since this is a very small game I think I will make it GLSL so I can branch out on my graphics.

Again, suggestions from anyone are welcome. :slight_smile:

#4

Great project idea!
I was expecting a 3rd person top view with mountains and arrays of floating platforms, rocks and the kind! But hey, now that I see the screenshots… you didn’t mention it was 2D!
I also think that the platform destroyer is a great power-up!
Keep it up, I wanna play it!

#5

Thanks for the compliments!
Erm… an announcement,
Drop is 2D. :stuck_out_tongue:
In all seriousness I’m sorry for that - hopefully you’re not too disappointed!
Thank Angus for the power-up destroying platform idea, without him it wouldn’t be a thing. :slight_smile:

A little more info, I plan on uploading this to bGame for free of course and for now I am working on camera movement and resolution. The resolution is currently 800x1280. With a power-up you destroy platforms but not everyone of them, half of them. Also, I’m still not sure if I should use GLSL, will I have any advantage using it for this game?

As always, suggestions are very welcomed - it’s made for the community after all. :slight_smile:

#6

You can add plenty of effects, but not necessarily GLSL. I think you have a lot of room here for selection. I’m not really desapointed, although I think that it would have more adrenaline in 3D. Imagine this:
The ball has to fall in a safe platform, or sea, or something, during it’s fall, you need to avoid obstacles and as the fall lengthens so does the speed and the music rhythm, and the motion blur… add the natural fear of heights and yeah, could be cool! But then you’d have less freedom to design levels and it would require more graphics, like clouds hiding some obstacles, DOF, distant landscape, skydomes, etc.

#7

Small Update:
Ok so I just made the collision system a bit better and fixed some bugs. By ‘fixing’ the collision I made the random effect worse. I used to have different platforms with origion points on either side like this:
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=33348
but it messed with physics and collision felt wrong. I changed it by scaling in Object Mode instead of Edit Mode but as I said it makes the random effect less noticable. So yeah, there’s an update.

#8

If you’re using a simple Box collision type for the platforms, the collision mesh will automatically move to the center of the object. So, if you have your object centers positioned like the pic above, they’ll be invisibly off-center.

#9

I know - I fixed it by scaling in Obj mode instead but as I said it messes with random platform look. It’s not too bad though.

#10

Ok, so I’ve worked some more on the power-ups, there are currently five different power-ups.

One of them will slow down the roof for 5 seconds.
One of them scales the player down, so they can drop through smaller spaces.
One of them smashes all near platforms so the player can quickly get towards the bottom.
One of them adds points to the players score.
And finally one of them reduces the players mass so they can move faster for a limited time.

Does anyone have a power-up suggestion? :slight_smile:

#11

Devlog #1

#12

I think this game should have fake route

#13

I agree with bankbaa, there should be more of a frantic search for the correct route. Or you could add in some Bomberman mechanics (have a smartbomb that demolishes a wall, but you only have a small supply) plus Bomberman style enemies.

But I look forward to your next update!

#14

A fake route? Like this?
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=33590
I actually quite like that idea, thank you! :slight_smile:

Rubbernuke, while it is a good idea you have, I’m stuck between wether to add it or not - I want to keep the game relatively simple so I don’t think I can add that and keep simplicity, maybe I will add it in the future but for now I’d prefer to keep it simple. Thanks for the suggestions, I’d love to hear more.

#15

It was only a brainstorm type idea- in the end its your game!

Here is another:

Have walls that move, so you could have that vertical wall in the last picture move from side to side, blocking and unblocking routes according to its position. You could do the same for the holes the ball drops through, so as they move some paths become accessible whist others become unreachable.

#16

Great, thanks for the suggestion. I’ll add the moving wall but not the moving platforms as it could mess with movement and I don’t think I want to do that… yet. Maybe as you progress in score (like 100+) I could add more difficulty, but this already happens with the roofs speed increasing. I still have to think about how the game plays over-all, I’m aiming for a simple but hopefully addictive game.

#17

hey looks like my idea i posted on youtube was already here! :slight_smile: make it have a maze like theme where u must drop onto the side with a path…

anyways VERY NICELY done

#18

You have a good solid concept here and a lot of room to expand! Have you made a decision about using GLSL in this game? I think that your game-play mechanic is great as long as you keep it interesting and I think GLSL can really help with that.

Ex.

#19

Thanks for the support, for the majority of the summer I can’t work in this (away from a computer - on my phone now) but I will definatley finish this and I will add more features (suggestions!). About the GLSL, I completely agree with you, it would help the game a lot and to be honest I would love to be able to make great art effects and a visually appealing game, but visuals is my weakest point (including modeling), originally I was going to ask someone to do the texturing for me, but I would be prouder if I did it myself, so I will try. I want to include SolarLunes X-Emitter or ndee’s easyEmit but my Mac can’t handle them (1-2fps), so it’s very hard for me to make this game look appealing, but I’m confident I can do something decent looking with the help of the users here. So I’ll try GLSL when I feel I’m ready. Anyway, I’ll stop rambling, thanks for the support. :slight_smile:

#20

it would be cool if some of the planks had a pivot in the middle and would rotate a little.