Galactic Girls - The First Boss?!?

I started to work on a concept for the first possible boss.

Mainly it will fill the screen with lotsa bullets from the 2 centerguns, and maybe also in a crossway from the "arms".

Here is the concept and the tuntable:

Galactic Girls - Selector

I have recently added a selector grafic for the shop, so the player knows where he is actually located.

After showing the prototype to some friends, i got some interesting feedback. They'd like to see bosses in the game, also might get a possibilty to play from right to left too.

I just create a first scetch for a possible boss, but this will be another post.

Galactic Girls - latest dev diary video

Here is a video overview of all current features in the game so far.

Feel free to share it to the world :)

Galactic Girls - New Wave Spawn Manager

Yesterday i was reprogramming the wavemanager which handles all waves to spawn enemys.

The old system was working pretty fine, but the problem was, the enemys only got one path in a wave. With the new system i can handle unlimited different waves i predesign before and populate them in any way i want.

Here are some screenshots how it looks:

Galactic Girls - Next Coding Update

I have added some new features:

New tab with permanent ship upgrades in the shop

In here are the folowing new updates at the moment

• Lives - can be upgraded to max 5 Lives
• Coin Magnet - will drag coins to the ship max = 5 upgrades
• Shield - is like extra Lives, has it's own bar 

The collectable blue pills (may get later another shape) have a  Live/Shield heal effect now. Currently randomises shield or live, i may fix it to order live then shield, because sometimes it wouldn't have any effect.

I sorted a bit on in Game GUI and add health and shield. Also there is a typewriter effect on the start of the level to see what level the player entered.(bottom left)

Problems i had:
Fiddeling around with the savefile, to get updates on the save/load script working without the need of deleting the old savefile. Will become handy later on, when i decide to add more features. This way the player wouldn't lose any credits or upgrades when i do updates.

Another problem was getting all info into a class and read from it, to make my live easier. Took me an hour to deel with such weird problem. Why? I'm not a good programmer i think XD.

Did i missed anything? I don't know. If so i'll write stuff in the next update here :)

Next i believe will be the game/ round over & round won screen GUI.

Galactic Girls - Coding Update

Started to work on the ingame GUI, the problem is, where to place what, to not being in the way.
The maybe biggest problem will be, where to place the consumable on the screen.

I thought about using a slider, so the player can slide away the consumables bar, if it's in the way. Difficult is, if it's not present the player could forget to use them.

Next step i done is intergrating a health bar.The idea is to start with 1 health and you can upgrade it 4 times, so you would have max 5 health. Every hit will reduce health by 1. I could go higher with upgrades, like maybe 10. Depends on the hardness of the game i think. But 5 health in totoal seems to be valid for now.

A Game Over window showing the results is also important now. Show will be score, collected credits and cashcredits. Also i look up for a formular to get coins from score too. But this will only come in place, if the player has finished the round.

Changes i did:

• particle systems for the coins for better visibility
• magnet power starts at 0 so the coins will just go left (can be upgraded later in shop)
• Healthbar works, only the amount of health bought will be shown at gamestart. and will be deducted once got hit, and show an empty container.
• The GameOverScreen is there already but, need the score and coin stuff to be visible and calculate the coins into it from score.

That's it for today.

Galactic Girls - Dev Diary #2

I made some good progress so far.

Here is a short overview and first look into some graphics and gameplay.

Feel free to share, follow rate, subscribe and so on.

Galactic Girls - The way to the core - 3D conzept

This is going to be part 5 of the roadmap. Thinking about making in "wooble" a bit in terms of animating. But this might be distracting to much.

Screenshot of the day:
http://www.gamedev.net/page/showdown/view.html/_/octoman-r122316

Ingame look at the moment:

Galactic Girls - Main Menu Background Concept

This is my concept for the main menu and shop system background. The idea is to create a kind of hangar in a carrier of the fleet. The camera will move around abit, same with the ship, I will model the environment in 3D and implement it in the menu. I will kitbash the scene with some small stuff, trash and the elevators.

Galactic Girls - Fighter01 3D Model (No Name yet)

I just modeled the first Fighter which the Player can use. Not sure if this is going to be implemented, but it's one of the fighter i concepted already.

Galactic Girls - Ingame Shop Update

I  did some more programming on the shop system. Now the player can activly spend credits he/she collected while playing.

Overview:

• Basic shot can be upgraded up to Tier 5 Lv 5 (maxed)
• Homing missiles can be unlocked by buying the first upgrade
• Homing missles can be upgraded up to Tier 5 Lv 5 (maxed)
• All previous upgrades will be saved in the savefile
• All previous upgrades will effect the player (damage + amount of shots)
• Both currencys are integrated, so in higher tier upgrades rare credits are needed too 

Other updates:

• Rockets will retarget if the previous target was destroyed
• Rocket lifetime is currently 3seconds, maybe i decrease the time, 

Galactic Girls - Roadmap Conzept

Where do we go?

Story dependant this might be the roadmap, the ship has to travel. Each mappoint might contain 5-10 level which of cause getting harder over time.

Galactic Girls - Character and battlesuit design

Galactic Girls will need girls, so i started to scetch around.
Working on the characters and wearable spacelike battlesuits is fun. Here is the first scetch of how the suits will look. I don't think about creating 3D characters since it's just not needed. I just leave them 2D i will later on create vector graphics for a smooth and clean look.

Also i started to play around with basecolors of the battlesuit, Maybe the galactic girls will have different colors, depending on the girl.

Galactic Girls - Enemy Conzept: Mothership

This ship is a carrier for small drones and is designed to overwhelm the target with them. It will send out several small ships, but wont attack by itself, even if it has the possibility. It's hard hull will make sure it survives long, but because of the heavy hull it is very slow.

Type: Enemy
Attack: Overwhelm
Speed: Very Slow
Shots: 8 Drones
Health: Very High

Galactic Girls - Image of the Day Award for "The Larva Conzept"

Thanks alot for your interest in my work!
Link: http://www.gamedev.net/page/showdown/view.html/_/octoman-r121394

Galactic Girls - Enemy Conzept: The Larva

An 8-way bullet shooting AI. It is designed to fill the screen with bullets in all directions. Because of it's slow moving  it has high health to survive longer. It usually comes in lower numbers, but who knows.

• Type: Enemy
• Attack: Ring Bullet
• Speed: slow
• Shots: 8 bullets
• Health: High

Galactic Girls - Enemy Conzept: The Hummer

This is a basic AI fighter, shooting 2 bullets straight forward. Usually it moves sideways, to have a higher chance to hit something. Maybe later it is able to open or close the claws for more precise shots. The damage and health will be very low, so it usually comes in medium swarm sizes.

• Type: Enemy
• Attack: Double Shot
• Speed: medium
• Shots: 2 bullets
• Health: Low

Galactic Girls - Enemy Conzept: Kamikaze Glider

This suiciding enemy is designed for destroy through ramming. It may rotate later on to look more like a drill. It wont shoot, but will be deadly enough because of it's speed. It will come in masses since it's health is pretty low.

• Type: Enemy
• Attack: Suicide Ramming
• Speed: fast
• Shots: None
• Health: Low

Galactic Girls - The ingame shop system

• The shop system is saving and loading collected coins and already bought upgrades of the normal and homing missle shot
• The basic shot is already fully upgradeble

The problems

• saving and loading all data in a binary file was a bit tricky to handle

Screenshots

Galactic Girls - The first prototype

• The shop is already integrated and it is possible to spend credits already.
• The first prototype is ready.
• The AI's spawning in waves already and choose 1 of 7 currently predefined paths
• Some AI's can shoot, some don't

Problems i encountered

• The path creation was a bit tricky, but now i can create the paths directly in the scene to create even more.

Dev video

Welcome to the Galactic Girls Development Blog

Welcome to the comunity blog for Galactic Girls, an anime styled Shoot em up being developed by OctoMan. I will update this blog with all sorts of development news including artwork, programming and design issues. I want to share my discoveries and failures, so the community can help me to improve the game.

If you have any feedback or questions for me, please feel free to leave a comment on any given post.