hwd2002 [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

"Drydock" Screensaver

Sun, 21 Apr 2024 21:34:50 UTC

drydock_scsv

by hwd2002

[Click to Play]

Here's a screensaver I made using the 3d assets from my current project. Some of the ships are a bit scuffed if you look too closely.

"Dreams" wallpaper

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 16:06:27 UTC

"Dreams" wallpaper

by hwd2002

[Click to Play]

Here's a little wallpaper I made for my new Picotron system. There is a bit of irony to it, which I like.
This is intended to be used with the "moonlight" theme.

Pack Tactics, a Submarine party game

Thu, 11 Jan 2024 01:15:03 UTC

Pack Tactics 1.0.1

by hwd2002

[Click to Play]

Welcome to Pack Tactics!

Pack Tactics is a party game for 1-6 players* where you each captain a submarine and hunt your target, without them managing to track and hunt you! The game is sort of the inverse of battleship. You need to try and remember where your own ship is, even if you can see your enemies. You can ping to locate yourself and nearby subs, but then everyone knows where you are!
A 2 player campaign is included with 16 levels, but I recommend playing Custom Scenarios with more friends once you get the basics down. PVP is very entertaining.

* I haven't thoroughly tested 6 player games because my computer doesn't have 6 USB ports.

Queueing for play.

Once a level is chosen, the game will prompt all players to press the fire key 🅾️ and confirm they are active. All inactive players will be controlled by Ally AI, unless the game detects it is a PVP scenario. In which case uncontrolled players will become grey enemy AI.

Combat Basics

Helm controls

Each corner of the screen will show the helm controls of a player. As a submarine captain your helm controls are a bit complex. Use the left and right buttons to set your heading. Your new heading is represented by the white line on the circular compass, while your ship's current heading is represented by the red line. Your ship will automatically try to steer to your selected heading. Your speed is determined by the red lever to the side. Full forwards is all the way up, and stopped is the middle.
While you are submerged, reference the helm controls to understand which way you are moving, and how fast.

Sonar

Press 🅾️ to ping with your sonar. This will alert everyone of your position, but not necessarily of who you are. It will also cause ships near you to echo their own ping, potentially revealing submarines near you.
Pinging will attract torpedoes nearby, so be careful! If you are very keen-eared, you can distinguish every class of ship and player by the sound of their sonar.

Torpedoes

Hold ❎ to surface and fire a torpedo. Your torpedo will launch forwards and begin using its own sonar to locate targets. If it hears a return ping, it will home in on the sound. Torpedoes don't have the strongest sonar, so you can use your own to ping your targets up close. The red light on your control panel indicates if you have a torpedo ready to fire. Torpedoes have a arming fuze, meaning you can't fire them point-blank into your target.

Ramming

The alternative method of damage-dealing, ramming is rarely a good idea. Submarines cannot collide underwater, but all surfaced ships can collide and take damage.

Making a Custom Scenario

Custom scenarios are rather simple to make. On the main menu, use the left or right buttons to select a save slot. Then choose edit. From here you should have an empty ocean and a red cursor. Press 🅾️ to drop a ship on the map, or press ❎ to change the player the ship will be. Each player has their own color, and AI vehicles are gray. The colors are as follows:

Player 1: Red
Player 2: Green
Player 3: Yellow
Player 4: Pink
Player 5: Tan
Player 6: Blue
Gray: AI enemy

Once you have placed your ship, move the cursor to change its starting heading (angle). With a ship selected you can angle it or press ❎ to reposition the ship to your cursor. 🅾️ will confirm the placement of the ship.
Use the pause menu to change the class of the ship you are placing, save the level, or playtest. During playtesting, you can return to the editor using the pause menu. (This doesn't work on the BBS)

Ship Classes

Each ship class has different hitpoint amounts, speed, agility, sonar strength, and weapons. Ships with their HP displayed above them are considered "boss" ships and have a higher difficulty than normal.

The Cargo Ship has no offensive capability, but it can repair allies nearby. Be aware that these ships can dodge your torpedoes rather well.
The Frigate is a small ship that has unguided torpedoes. It doesn't pose much of a threat on its own, but it can locate submarines for larger ships to attack.
The Littoral Combat Ship is a fast and agile ship for fighting in shallow coasts. It is fast enough to hit its own torpedoes, so be careful if you are using one!
The Destroyer is closely equal a submarine, though it fires torpedoes more often and has a stronger sonar. This is a submarine's biggest threat most of the time.
The Submarine only surfaces and fires when it thinks it knows where you are. AI Subs are mostly passive and their positions are hidden at the start of each level. Don't let them catch you by surprise, not all sonar pings are your teammates! The Missile Submarine variant is also available for some variation.
The AEGIS has the ability to calculate very precise shots and remotely guide its torpedoes to their target. It can also self-destruct its torpedoes if it accidentally fires at an ally. AI AEGIS can aimbot, while player AEGIS can steer their torpedoes and detonate their own torps with the fire key. AEGIS are differentiated from Destroyers by their white radar dishes on the sides and front of the ship.
The Missile Cruiser fires missiles that do splash damage. These missiles can destroy your own torpedoes, giving the Cruiser a level of protection other ships do not have. AI MSL Cruisers will target torpedoes coming towards them instead of dodging.
The Chopper is technically not a ship class, but it does have its uses. Choppers cannot be shot down, but their weapons are very slow to reload. Choppers also have sonarbuoys to locate submarines, decoy enemy torpedoes, or guide their allies torpedoes to their target. Once a player is dead they are given a helicopter to control. Players 5 and 6 can press the 🅾️ key to join a custom game in a chopper at any time.

Project Echidna: a short skill-based RPG

Fri, 14 Jul 2023 23:10:02 UTC

project_echidna

by hwd2002

[Click to Play]

Summary

Project Echidna is a short skill based RPG(?) where you explore an abandoned laboratory to recover an old prototype. In this game multiple enemies can fight you at once, so plan your battles accordingly! Lure enemies into corners and fight them one on one, or avoid them altogether. If you are very skilled, you can fight them off all at the same time! There is no Leveling system, there is no output randomness, it is just your ability to fight with the tools you have.

Overworld Enemies

Enemies can see you if they have line-of-sight or you get too close. If they touch you they will engage in a battle! Multiple enemies can engage at a time, so be careful!

Battle!

Battle works similar to any other RPG: You get an action, then each of the enemies gets an action.
On your turn you will play a short minigame that represents your chosen action. How effective that action is will be determined by your ability to play the minigame effectively.

You have five choices of action, some having secondary effects:

Your Actions:

Pocket Knife

	[14x16]

O'l Reliable. This attack hits one target and if you do well enough it will stun your target and completely remove their action this turn! Quite useful if you are paying attention to what each enemy is going to do.

Tail Strike

	[14x16]

This attack hits every target at once, and it gets easier to use effectively the more enemies are in battle with you. Using it will also remove the Slowed condition from yourself.

Fire Bolt

	[14x16]

Harder to land a hit than the Pocket Knife, but this magic spell packs a punch! It can burn an enemy if you are very accurate. Burned enemies lose 10% of their HP every turn. This is very good against ones with a lot of armor.

Protect

	[14x16]

Use this to block all damage that you will take this turn. There is no minigame here, so use it to slow the battle down if you need to!

Heal Self

	[14x16]

Heals your own HP. Keep the red line aligned with the green line. This minigame has more luck than usual, so don't rely on it too often.

Enemy Actions:

Enemies get their own actions too! Next to their name is an icon indicator of what they will do on their turn:

	[8x8]

Attack you

	[8x8]

Heal and recover from Burned

	[8x8]

Raise their own Attack stat

	[8x8]

Apply Slowness to you

	[7x7]

Disable your most recently used action.

	[7x7]

They have no action left

Story

Caution! Contains sensitive subjects and mature themes!

About the Music

Well, I dislike chiptune music as a whole, and I don't have any compositional ability to speak of. Every song is a remix of the original Zelda dungeon theme. Each enemy has their own variation on this theme. I think this is the weakest part of the game.

About Development

I have worked on this game for over half a year now. Originally it was going to be a fangame where your character controlled an individual pokemon (a Houndoom) trying to get a message to your destination in time. Very little of that original game stuck, except for the minigames representing moves that your character knows. Bite, Ember, Overheat, Shadow Ball were the original four moves, with a fifth for not fainting after your HP dropped to 0. Your character still retains the Blaze ability from this stage of development. (Yes, Houndoom doesn't get Blaze, I don't care.)
I quickly trimmed the fat off of the RPG turn based system and decided against any leveling system for such a short game. I did want companion creatures that would help you fight in Double Battles, but alas the sprite space was too limited.
At some point I wanted to make a dungeon as a good learning exercise. Inspired by Outer Wilds, I made a little story that was spread out around the dungeon area and could be discovered piece-by-piece.
While working on the encounter system I realized that the overworld enemies going to battle mode could be a unique way of handling encounters (nobody likes random Zubats Game Freak!). I experimented with how enemies see and chase the player until I found something I liked. Controlling when and who you fought became part of the puzzle. Later on I played Earthbound and found that it has a similar style of encounter. Neat!
Overall I think my first RPG game came out pretty good. Combat feels clean and snappy, and there is a tiny story to discover. I couldn't add the midgame bossfight I wanted, but that is okay.

ver 1.1: Fixed a bug involving dying to the final encounter before winning. Same issue was causing a window to pop up twice.

Typing Demo Thing

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 21:13:08 UTC

typing_demo_1

by hwd2002

[Click to Play]

Here is a little something I wrote because I was bored. It doesn't really have a use, you just watch a simulated user type an (almost) functional program into the Pico-8 CLI and run it.

Galaxies Collide Screensaver

Wed, 10 May 2023 00:20:16 UTC

Galaxies Collide Screensaver

by hwd2002

[Click to Play]

So I wanted to recreate an old screensaver I liked to watch when I was younger. Here is a 2D Pico8 recreation of the galaxy.c screensaver written by Uli Siegmund.

For processing efficiency, each galaxy has one black hole in the center. These black holes are the only source of gravity. None of the stars affect the paths of others.

Proportional Navigation Missile demo

Sun, 07 May 2023 22:09:17 UTC

proportional_nav_demo

by hwd2002

[Click to Play]

Here is a quick demo I threw together to demonstrate Proportional Navigation missiles in 2D. Generally speaking you don't want to put your players against this type of missile unless you want missiles to be very threatening (e.g. Highfleet) or you are going for something more sim-like.

Feel free to reference or use my code. I did my best to make it readable.

The Devil's Chariot

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 16:33:58 UTC

thedevilschariot

by hwd2002

[Click to Play]

I'm getting back into making games after college, so this is a warm up of sorts. I revised the premise many times and unfortunately I think it shows. Nevertheless, I think some people might enjoy playing it.

Your goal is to survive to wave 10 without dying or letting your helipad get captured. Quickly tap the weapon fire button to change weapons, and hold it to release the selected weapon.
You also have a button to release flares. Use flares to trick missiles fired at you. You can also "pre-flare" by dropping flares before you are fired at. This greatly increases the chances of the enemy missile never tracking you at all.
You can land at any of the three helipads to get more weapons or flares. After each wave you can repair here as well.
Your helicopter can dive downwards faster than it can climb. You can use this to your advantage when evading fire.
The game allows a second player to control the helicopter's gun with infinite ammo, so your little brother can contribute as well.

Knighthawk

Tue, 17 Sep 2019 16:42:02 UTC

knighthawk

by hwd2002

[Click to Play]

This is an old cartridge my brother and I never quite finished because we hit the token limit. I am not very pleased about how it came out, as I don't have much skill in level design.

The name is a play on the Nighthawk, a version of the Blackhawk helicopter for the Navy. My dad flew them, so I went with that as the name.

Knighthawk's theme was inspired by a board game called Scythe. Scythe had great artwork, and I believe the game was based on the art. All the art in Scythe was painted by Jakub Rozalski. I loosely tried to follow the theme of the art. If anyone wants to know why I chose an orinthopter, it was because it seemed to fit this theme. I hadn't read the Dune books at the time, though I have started reading them last week.

About Gameplay:

The main mechanic of Knighthawk is to swap between weapons based on the situation at hand. Use X to do this.
Each weapon has strengths and weaknesses. No enemies have resistance or vulnerability to a certain type.

The boss at the end is a bit tough, and will follow you around to a certain extent. This boss really doesn't fit the rest of the game's theme, but was an attempt to make the player face a smarter enemy rather than a bigger one.

If you just want to goof around I left the invulnerability toggle in the pause menu.

Pzone, a Battlezone clone

Tue, 26 Feb 2019 22:24:20 UTC

pzone1_2

by hwd2002

[Click to Play]

My attempt at recreating a Battlezone(ish) game. Battlezone has always been one of my favorite games. If someone wants to do the sound effects that would be great. I just am terrible at that kind of thing, so I didn't want to butcher it.

Drive the most advanced and realistic tank simulator since the bulldozer. Hide behind various (two) creatively designed geometric shapes on the battlefield and battle numerous (three) types of enemies. Wonder why the lava on the volcano is green.

Controls:

Arrow keys to drive tank or select menu option
Z/X to fire
Optional:
Tab button to change to third person view
P2 left and right to turn turret
P2 Down to fire
P2 Up to turn tank body toward turret

P.S. You can swap the colors to the Gameboy color scheme from the menu.

Thanks to jdan for the demo I adapted to make this: https://lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=4126
Also the font is Pineapple's from: https://lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2783
And my brother Phin for some of the art.

Changelog v 1.2: Working on a little portfolio and needed to touch up this old project.
Added instructions at menu
Made HUD visible in 3rd person
Adjusted hitbox of normal tank to be closer to model

Changelog version 1.1 (3 years later):
Added SFX
Fixed Radar display
Adjusted title screen font
Increased player speed