Alien Attack

Alien Attack

par defdanny on 04-07-2020, 22:19
Sujet: Development
Étiquettes: cbsfox, shmup, Shooter
Langues:

Three months ago we reported about the development of the MSX1 game "Alien Attack" by Marcos Daniel Blanco (cbsfox).
In the meantime he has significantly improved the game. With the support of Daniel Simon (Def Danny) new sprites, tiles and intro graphics were created, and also the sound effects and background music were polished up. Not to forget: Improved gameplay with extras like laser and energy shield, shooting aliens, different levels...

The game is in constant development and we are proud to show you the current progress here.

The two developers have searched and found each other here on MRC, one lives in Brazil, the other in Germany.
International co-production thanks to Corona and the internet!

Relevant links:

Commentaires (44)

Par tfh

Prophet (3347)

Portrait de tfh

04-07-2020, 22:51

Par hamlet

Scribe (4106)

Portrait de hamlet

04-07-2020, 23:22

I'm so impressed by the music! Very nice!

Par Gloriou

Master (204)

Portrait de Gloriou

04-07-2020, 23:24

Excellent!
Thanks for the Work, Nice game & Great music btw Smile

Par ray2day

Paladin (743)

Portrait de ray2day

05-07-2020, 09:30

Wow! Amazing!

Par Briqunullus

Paladin (675)

Portrait de Briqunullus

05-07-2020, 11:46

Looking so good! Love it!

Par tfh

Prophet (3347)

Portrait de tfh

05-07-2020, 12:02

These are good times for SHMUP lovers like me!
We've got Freedom Fighter for MSXDev'20 and AlienAttack for MSXDev'21!

Par Uninteresting

Champion (352)

Portrait de Uninteresting

05-07-2020, 13:15

@tfh Would Subcommander then be sink'em-down? And santiontanon has their project still underway (or at least was on June 12th going by the post on the asm optimizer thread)...

Par tfh

Prophet (3347)

Portrait de tfh

05-07-2020, 13:47

Uninteresting wrote:

@tfh Would Subcommander then be sink'em-down? And santiontanon has their project still underway (or at least was on June 12th going by the post on the asm optimizer thread)...

LOL Smile Smile
And indeed I hope/expect some more releases for MSXDev'20 before the deadline end of this month...

Par defdanny

Scribe (391)

Portrait de defdanny

06-07-2020, 07:38

Hello tfh and all others,
thank you all for the positive feedback!
Yes, Freedom Fighter is a very strong "competitor", and technically it is miles ahead from our game. And it seems that it is nearly finished. But the more (MSX games), the better! Surely, MSXDev'21 would be a nice goal for "Alien Attack".

Par mzoran

Master (157)

Portrait de mzoran

06-07-2020, 09:17

This game really is a big project and the results show. Hopefully it will bring more people to use homebrew and MSXdev sections on filehunter site.
@Uninteresting How about adding some guns to the Jaasta? If Paula pulls a gun at some point not beeing happy with the gift? Then your gem could also be classified as shmup Smile

Par JGM

Master (140)

Portrait de JGM

06-07-2020, 10:49

Real beautiful shooter, pretty hard to.

Great job so far!

Par Parn

Paladin (837)

Portrait de Parn

06-07-2020, 13:20

Very nice graphics and music, congrats on the effort. I honestly found a little weird that it has two title screens and one of them has Doctor Who music, but it's a good excuse to showcase more music and graphics, of course.

Par tfh

Prophet (3347)

Portrait de tfh

06-07-2020, 14:56

The Dr Who tune kicks ass...

Par edoz

Prophet (2482)

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06-07-2020, 15:17

Very nice game!! Good work!

Par defdanny

Scribe (391)

Portrait de defdanny

06-07-2020, 15:36

@Parn: Thank you! you nailed it twice. Tongue
of course it is the first part of the Dr. Who Theme, I hope we do not get into copyright trouble.
Therefore, we created a second intro to be backed up. Cool

Par valkyre

Hero (662)

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06-07-2020, 20:59

Looking really good.

Par AnsiStar

Master (141)

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08-07-2020, 10:36

What about a cartridge version? Wink

Par defdanny

Scribe (391)

Portrait de defdanny

08-07-2020, 22:23

HI AnsiStar,
thank you for the wink. Yes sure, if the result is worth it, the repro factory could be an option!

Par hamlet

Scribe (4106)

Portrait de hamlet

08-07-2020, 22:45

Marcos has published a new video with a lot of improvements:

  • Initial spacecraft speed increased
  • Super "diagonal three bullet" weapon added
  • Super "Get Out of My Way" weapon added
  • Fixed the movement of the bullets. Now they move out of the screen smothly before the bullets were disapearing.
  • Enemies bullets now with SFX
  • Laser weapon now has three beams
  • Changed the fire number one pattern
  • Buildings now need five shots to be destroyed
  • Moving Power now has a better way to get the weapon.

Par tfh

Prophet (3347)

Portrait de tfh

08-07-2020, 23:06

Cool :-) The game is only getting better & better Smile

Par lintweaker

Champion (465)

Portrait de lintweaker

09-07-2020, 13:37

Wow, that really looks amazing!

Par Parn

Paladin (837)

Portrait de Parn

09-07-2020, 18:04

I have a couple suggestions for @cbsfox:

  1. Unless the game uses all 32 sprites, 4 sprites could be reserved to mask enemies at the bottom of the screen, so we don't see them overlapping the status bar. You only need to take these 4 sprites out of the sprite rotation.
  2. I don't know how many frames are counted between each scrolling, but I'd suggest to keep this number a power of 2 to make it easier to implement smooth scrolling in the future, if you wish.

Par MarMSX

Resident (40)

Portrait de MarMSX

13-07-2020, 05:18

Great job !!

Par tfh

Prophet (3347)

Portrait de tfh

13-07-2020, 20:34

Updated to v1.05:
https://homebrew.file-hunter.com/index.php?id=alienattack

List of improvements:
1 - Two new weapons added
2 - The enemy's shots now have sound
3 - Ground objects now shoot too
4 - Increased the initial speed of the ship
5 - Now it is much easier to shoot POWER to change the color of the weapon. Now the change is sequential, always in the same order.
6 - Various sounds arranged to not disappear among the other sounds.
7 - Some small bugs fixed

Par hamlet

Scribe (4106)

Portrait de hamlet

13-07-2020, 23:11

Marcos improved the demo with the advices, wishes and ideas he get from the users here. We've added the new Version ALIENMEGA105.ROM to the download section and are looking forward to the final release. :)

Par ARTRAG

Enlighted (6935)

Portrait de ARTRAG

14-07-2020, 00:32

Great musics and nice graphics
Greetings!

Par giuseve

Paladin (787)

Portrait de giuseve

18-07-2020, 20:07

Let me say: music is a piece of art, near to the levl of mr. Hubbard.
I wonder about scc version and a little bit more fluid scroll to have a masterpiece.
Great work

Par smart duck

Master (156)

Portrait de smart duck

25-07-2020, 15:55

Great music! I enjoyed the videos.

Par defdanny

Scribe (391)

Portrait de defdanny

07-08-2020, 18:01

Thank you all for the positive feedback, that really motivates us!
Here is a "sneak preview" of some "Alien Attack" ingame music. I use the fantastic tool "Arkos Tracker 2" and experiment with different techniques of sound generation.
And yes, these are not all my creations, I just ported them for the PSG. They will be all credited in the game and in the song files itself when finished.

LITTLE MUSICAL QUIZ:
The first person that posts all musical references (Title and composer/artist) here in this thread will win a copy of the final game "Alien Attack" (in case it will be finished next year AND is worth being released on cartridge... :-))

Par Manuel

Ascended (19470)

Portrait de Manuel

07-08-2020, 23:15

I think I recognize the 2nd tune from an old Synthesiser Greatest cd or so.... But I can't remember the title at the moment, darn.

Par tfh

Prophet (3347)

Portrait de tfh

07-08-2020, 23:22

It sounds like Jean Michelle Jarre... Oxygene (4 or 7 ??)

Par defdanny

Scribe (391)

Portrait de defdanny

08-08-2020, 17:37

Hi Manuel and tfh,
I am sorry to have double-posted the message.
you will find the solution of my little quizzie in this thread here
the 2nd tune is "Magic Fly" from "Space".
Here is the original

Par Manuel

Ascended (19470)

Portrait de Manuel

08-08-2020, 22:00

I knew it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkCAtFQ6MV8 (the cover on Synthesizer Greatest IV).

Par defdanny

Scribe (391)

Portrait de defdanny

08-08-2020, 22:46

manuel: TOP! nice memories, ehh? well, thats 0,5 points for you! ;-)

Par tfh

Prophet (3347)

Portrait de tfh

26-01-2021, 20:55

A new version has been released with an end-level boss: https://homebrew.file-hunter.com/index.php?id=alienattack

Par defdanny

Scribe (391)

Portrait de defdanny

28-01-2021, 11:01

@tfh: Thanks for updating to the latest preview release!
New features in this version ( Fully playable Level 1 )
- initial speed of player is faster
- ground obstacles that can be destroyed
- new weapon upgrade system: the weapons triple-shot and laser can be upgraded to stronger versions (by collecting the same power-up)
- Boss fight - can you beat him?

Par tfh

Prophet (3347)

Portrait de tfh

28-01-2021, 11:51

defdanny wrote:

@tfh: Thanks for updating to the latest preview release!
New features in this version ( Fully playable Level 1 )
- initial speed of player is faster
- ground obstacles that can be destroyed
- new weapon upgrade system: the weapons triple-shot and laser can be upgraded to stronger versions (by collecting the same power-up)
- Boss fight - can you beat him?

No, it's the other way around. Thank you guys for working on this game! I (& the rest of the MSX community) are just thankfull that people like you are keeping the MSX hobby alive and supplying us with new games to play (and SHMUP's are one of my favorite).

Par JGM

Master (140)

Portrait de JGM

29-01-2021, 10:33

This is a really cool game with great music! Nice and thanks tfh for playing it the easy way Cool

Par defdanny

Scribe (391)

Portrait de defdanny

16-02-2021, 21:22

Marcos and me were working hard on "Alien Attack" for the last weeks.
We did a lot of game-balancing, graphic and sound polishing.

Play it online on THE-FILE-HUNTER.COM
OR find the ROM of this promo-release in the download section (Version ALIENMEGA_LEVEL1B).

Some background on the story for Level 1 (to create the proper atmosphere, always very important for a shmup! LOL! )
Despite the game title "Alien Attack" and the obvious theme of an Alien invasion, level 1 takes place on planet Earth, were the player has to fight his way through human enemies. His first mission is to find the source of mutating plants is, that is spreading in the forests of South-America. There are reports of trees, that transform into big, sick-red, fleshy things, just like cocoons. During his scouting mission, the player is attacked by the military forces of the neighbor country, unexpectedly...

New Features of this version "L1B":
- Fully playable Level 1
- new enemy waves and improved enemy movements
- ground obstacles that can be destroyed, they also can shoot back
- new weapon upgrade system: the weapons triple-shot, Ice shot and laser shot can be upgraded (two times) to stronger versions by collecting the same power-up again.
- some game balancing
- graphic and sound improvements
- smoother gameplay

HAVE FUN!

Par JohnHassink

Ambassador (5672)

Portrait de JohnHassink

17-02-2021, 12:35

The general look, feel and sound is very pleasant.
Difficulty curve seems very well balanced (from what I've seen up to now).
I love the way the different weapons evolve with upgrades.
The little animals down on the ground made me remind "Raiden". Smile
This is going to be quite great. Thanks for sharing.

Par valkyre

Hero (662)

Portrait de valkyre

17-02-2021, 19:05

Really nice game. How many levels are planned?

Par defdanny

Scribe (391)

Portrait de defdanny

18-02-2021, 20:07

Hi valkyre, we concepted 5-6 levels, and level 2 is nearly finished.
But to be honest, time is running faster than we thought and we aim to Finish the game for MSXDev in August.
So to keep our self-proclaimed quality standards and deliver a good game, it might be only 3-4 in the end...

Par valkyre

Hero (662)

Portrait de valkyre

21-02-2021, 22:18

This will set the msx dev bar very high!

Par defdanny

Scribe (391)

Portrait de defdanny

09-05-2021, 01:11

Hi all, I recorded some of the game music (and others) made with Arkos Tracker 2 and put them on YouTube:
Listen to it here!