Hello fellow GameDevers! I guess the other thread is so old now it'd get closed for necro if I bumped it. However, you can still check out the old thread here. ZMatrix is an on-going hobby project for me. It's a vertical scrolling space shooter similar to galaxian for the Ti86. The latest release has the latest and greatest special effects and chaotic gameplay that I've come up with to date. Download the .zip and let me know what you think! Keep in mind this that it is still in development and lacks any real story at this point. The goal right now is to beat all 4 levels without dying and rack up as many points as you can. Let me know of any high scores! :) You can grab the zip file here. Feedback greatly apprecaited! Enjoy! -Q

Yay! QA303!!! Nice to see you, downloading the new version of ZM now!

Hope all is well. I will reply with details later on once I have had a go. :)

Hey Qa303asmGuru,

Strong work! Your game is really coming along. I played a few times and I find the game mechanics very solid and no major or even minor bugs to report. I like the smart bombs and the missiles.

Here's my feedback:

I did notice that in the early stages (especially the stage in which the screen is filled with rows of baddies) that if you don't have a shield power-up, you're toast! This is the combination of the number of bullets and the lack of shields. This is fine, and I don't know if you've accomodated this, but it would be good if you made sure that a shield power-up shows up before that section.

I liked the enemy types and the attack patterns you used. I wished I spent more time on my game to do the attack patterns like you have. I especially liked the ones where they swept up from the sides and then to the center.

I noticed that after I died and had used up all of my lives, the game AI kept going and enemies kept appearing on the screen. I don't know if that is what you had intended, but I would suggest that once you're dead, don't let the player see whats coming up next (make the player earn that!).

I agree with the previous poster that the user needs to know how much life the bosses have left. Either a status bar or number of hit points would do.

Overall, I'd say nice job, and keep up the good work. It's great to see people working on side-scrollers, my favorite type of game!

Cheers,

roger_hq

I had a few goes on the game and I'm very impressed how its come along. Plays smooth and its feeling solid when things are destroyed.

The section with the large amount of baddies is pretty impossible without powerups.. (using the smartbomb in the middle is very satisfying though :) !)

When you esc to the title screen and start up again the smart-bomb remains used.

It would be very nice if the enemies which take damage before they are destroyed indicated when they were hit, especially the bosses.

Very cool, Its coming along great!

Thanks for the comments guys! I agree that the wave with tons of baddies is nearly impossible without some sort of powerup. There are a ton of gameplay tweaks/balances/features that I have listed in my 'TODO' list. I've mostly been working on graphics and special effects in the past months, hence all the gameplay issues.

It's definetly good to hear some suggestions for the game. This is just a hobby game that I do in my free time when I'm in the mood ;) Hearing suggestions definetly gives me the motivation to keep at it!

Genaside:
I know what you mean about using the smartbomb in the middle of the 'big wave'. I took a screenshot of that in action and show it to my friends that haven't played or seen the game. :)