Description
P= Pause
Space = fire
Z/X = a not working weapon select.
Arrow keys to move.
OK. So I suppose at this point, you've probably turned the sound down to read this. Don't blame you. I'm learning to create my own music on Audacity. I'm not a musician - but for some reason I think I can mix noises to make music, hmmm, we'll see. Drums were created by banging a pringles tin and recording through a mike onto minidisc.... Syth sound and 'noises' created on a £20 keyboard, again with minidisc plugged in to record.
Anyway. The mess that you are seeing is Dropship. An update to a game idea a friend and I were trying to create in the 90s for the Amiga. We were both big fans of the Elite series and Alien Breed. We couldn't do 3d (I still cannot, but plan to learn at some point). We thought it would be cool to have a kind of top down / side shooter like Rtype, or S.W.I.V where you went from planet to planet making money by trading and completing missions. You would get to explore a limited part of each planet in the ship and you get to travel in space. The original idea also had a top down walk about shooter like the aforementioned Alien Breed, but it was more as an RPG type section where you got to talk to alien and human character, find missions and buy and sell etc (you could also get into gun fights etc).
If there are two games I really want to see reach fruition at some point - it would be this one and Tame. I'm miles behind on either.
So the controls are a mess, it's very unresponsive and jerky - this can be tweaked, but I have been fixing bugs - only to create new ones. Things that should work - just don't seem to. I'm about ready to give up trying to code anything on it for a bit and do nicer graphics. The intention is there and it can certainly be used to show some eye candy, but it is not a game yet and there are tons of features I haven't even begun to put in. A lot of work to do.
Oh, and I couldn't resist adding this info. Some of the aliens are stand ins from completing the Space Invaders project. They will be removed at some point. I expanded on the idea a bit with my own ships, lovingly nicknamed Crushers because they are basically just space wreckers that destroy old ship clunkers in the atmosphere. Therefore they are not intended as good or bad, they serve a 'purpose' on each planet. However they can be hostile on enemy faction planets. Although this is not drawn or coded in yet, they will have a magnetic tail which collects the junk they chew through and er - well digest. Which I hope will give them the look of banshees. Anyway the idea is when you shoot them - they will give power ups from the junk in their trailing tail. It's just stuff like this that I want to put in that will give this game a unique flavour. I'm promoting these game ideas as part of a portfolio. I spend all my spare time working on my games and it's always a question of three steps forward -one back. I am not a coder, or a musician, sometimes I feel barely even a graphics artist - but I believe in the power of learning (usually self taught) and trying!
