Ah, today was the term's final meeting of the gamedev club at my Uni. We used our otherwise untouched club funds to buy several pizzas for all of us, which I can say was quite delicious. I can't wait until we get all fired up for the next term! This time around (the first time around for me) we had a total of maybe 20 members, but we plan on doubling this number by the end of May next year, since we now have the administrative powers needed to get some more beefy marketing going on.
The goal of the Beginner section that I was leading was to have everyone complete their own game based off the 'Space Infiltrators' sourcecode that I incremently produced throughout the term, using C# and SDL.NET. Unfortunately, only one member finished a game, but he did such a fantastic job that I think it cancels out the fact it was the only one. I'll get a download up for it as soon as he gets the files to me. A reporter from the MathSoc (Math society) newspaper dropped by our meeting to offer placement of his game in their paper, too. Woot woot for free plugs. :D
More Membranes, More Massacre
Shocked as I am, Membrane Massacre got another official review, this time in Polish! Looks like MM caters towards the European audience more than I had planned. ;) I asked the administrator who contacted me if he could send me a translation, so I could see what was being said about the game. Hopefully all good things!
Development on the final release for Membrane Massacre is still steadily underway, with more visual additions in the works, since I felt the visual realm was a neglected one during the first release. Enemies now sport a transcluent membrane around their bodies, whereas the thickness of the membrane indicates their current health. Additionally, upon respawning (or entering a level) a cool stream of particles will collect where the player is to respawn before actually placing him, indicating much more clearly to the user where his ship has started.
Additionally, the Game Settings system is pretty much done. Nothing terribly special, but just a simple text file (settings.cfg) containing lines like "Fullscreen=1" and "ParticleBlending=0" and "AbsoluteControl=0" and the ilk. I've never actually written a setting system for a game before -- believe it or not -- so it was a fun little task to perform. This should also hopefully ensure that people with lower-end computers will be able to still play the game smoothly by disabling the (somewhat) expensive blending routines.
Next on the list is a revamp of the enemies, which will include: better AI, enemy evolution, pathfinding, and more species of enemies. Which will, of course, likely lead into the implementation of a fun Survival mode (kindly thefted from Ravuya's Glow [grin]). I can't wait!
EDIT: FRAPS won't record Allegro-based games (because it's not OGL/D3D) and I can't find any other movie recording software that doesn't absolutely stink. Looks like no movie. [crying]
But I present a screenshot that does totally not do the transcluent membranes justice. :)
(Run away!)
One thing that bugs me a little is the mini-map; the way it's superimposed like that makes it stick out a bit too much. However I can't think of a good way to mold it into the bar at the top of the screen. You could represent enemies with arrows or dots in the game itself showing the correct direction to fly in, but then you wouldn't be able to see where the walls are with that method.