Rapid Relapse Beta 5 - An Independent Game Pimp

commander_keen

Features:
-Fast paced top down shooting action.
-Simple yet appealing vector graphics.
-Score based gameplay. The longer you play the harder it gets.
-Many upgrades and bonus items, such as Drones, Wildcards, and weapon upgrades.

Music created Rich Douglas.

Latest Changes:
-More organic looking and moving visuals.
-Added sound and music.
-heavily optimized the particle system.
-Dynamic color changing background.
-Super Shot weapon upgrade. You get this every 200,000 points starting at 250,000. It lasts for 15 seconds.
-Added new "Wildcard" feature. Wildcards are items that are randomly spawned in the level. They may either give you an advantage or disadvantage. Currently the only wildcard is the Nuke.
-Various other small fixes and features.

Download Link:
Download Beta 5





Screenshots:

Nate Broach

Pretty cool. However, its really buggy on me and my brothers screens. When I move around, the ship is not in sync with the propulsion and the firing bullets.
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e117/SkepticalNate/Buggy.jpg

(I have duel monitors and he has one widescreen maybe thats why?)

Japhir

looks like fun, but when i play it the shooting/effects all come from a different place then my ship itself ... :S and the score / highscore thingies move along with my ship so something is wrong.
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/9048/afbeeldingco1.jpg

Heart Murmer

I tried it out and got it to run, just it seems to be having graphical problems. The main cursor "guy" is very faint, like you can barely see him, and his trail is in a totally seperate location than he is. Also the HUD moves around when I use WASD.

I have a Nvdia 7600GT if thats usefull.

Here is a screenshot.

commander_keen

Wow, this is strange. it seems to be happening with everyone except me could you guys post what processor/gpu/os you are running? Also try changing Fullscreen=1 to Fullscreen=0 in Settings.ini.

Japhir

AMD Sempron 3000+
Windows XP
(if that's what you mean)
i tried switching already but that didn't work.

EDIT:
oh and it doesn't stop shooting, don't know if it's intentionally but i expected to shoot with a mouse click or something.

Heart Murmer

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+
Nvidia Geforce 7600GT
Windows XP SP2

Fullscreen switch did not work.

commander_keen

Im pretty sure i fixed the rendering offset problem and have edited the first post with the link to the new version. Thanks for the help.

Japhir

damn that program made my pc crash... here is a screenshot of how my desktop looks right now:
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/4191/damnsz8.jpg
now i guess i'll restart my pc and get rid of the files

commander_keen

Japhir, thats strange. It looks like a problem when switching to and from fullscreen. The only thing i could suggest is disabling fullscreen before starting the game. What resolution are you running windows at when you started the game?

Japhir

My pc is set to work with 32 bit colourquality at 1024*786.
hope it helps man! looks like a fun game, the effects are cool!

notman

I also witnessed the bug where the vehicle and the thrust would suddenly seperate. I couldn't tell exactly what was triggering the change, but the collision resided in front of the thrust, not where my vehicle appeared. When I died, it would reset and be correct again... until it split again.

Smithy

Clicking the quit button causes the program to crash instead of cleanly exit. I'm also having the same problems with the vehicle and thrust separating.

commander_keen

Yeah, sorry about this strange bug, but this time I really think I got it. I updated the first post with new download link. It was tested to work properly on a PC that had the same issues with the older versions. Thanks for all the help.

Japhir: thats strange, the game runs at 1024x768x32 in fullscreen mode so i really dont know why that would happen. The latest release defaults to windowed mode so hopefully that works.

notman

NP... all part of beta testing

Japhir

yay! now it works!
i had the same crash as earlier when going over to full screen though, so fullscreen kinda sucks

thefatladysings

it's working like a charm on my pc, no errors at all
it does crash 3ds amx though, but that's my own fault

notman

Working much better. One thing I did discover though is if you go to options while playing, and choose full screen, it doesn't go to full screen. It tells me it's enabled, and it was, but not until after I closed the game and started it again.

commander_keen

notman: Yeah, thats normal. Switching between fullscreen ingame takes a bit of work and its not a priority. I do need to make a text that tells you you need to restart the game though.

commander_keen

A new beta has been released. It includes Bloom, Portals and Drones. Check first post for details and download.

Vailias

works with the xbox 360 controller just fine. Just need to change the ini a little to have stick2y to 4 and stick2x to 5. fun game

commander_keen

Vailias, thats good to hear. Were you not able to assign them through the in game option menu? Click on button matching the stick and axis you want, then press the desired stick in the desired drection.

I have implemented a sound system and have a nice music system set up. If anyone is a music composer and has a song or 2 that would work in the game and want to donate them that would be great. You would get proper credit of course.

Smirnoffka

Couldnt seem to get it to recognise the 360 controller. Fun little game though, good time waster

Keg

I know you said you think you can make it unique enough to not infringe on Bizarre Creations IP. My suggestion would be to not make it available until it is different. As it is now it's nearly identical to geometry wars including the art style.

I'm disappointed that no one else has brought this up. I'd rather see something more original or at least a different art style. As it stands it's a blatant clone of geometry wars.

Geezus

I'm more of an Everyday Shooter fan than I am Geometry Wars. Though, this was neat.

The problem I see right now is that you can sit in a corner and just move the mouse back and forth at enemies. You live for a very long time, and constantly rack up extra lives, making it impossible to ever fully lose. Maybe having some enemies have some sort of projectile that hones in on your location. Maybe the projectile can't be shot down, and you need to move before it 'asplodes in your grill. I think implementing something like that would get rid of the "corner campers".

That's my two cents, I'm looking forward to seeing more, with sounds! :]

Vailias

Keen: no. The in game option just got them stuck on input 6 anytime I tried to reconfig them and I actually had to manually reset the controls so I could keep using the gamepad.


and as for the similarities
um.. its robotron 2080 with vector graphics and continuous gameplay.
I've played a number of games with this same game play and similar art in one form or antother, the concept is far from original. Just because one studio happened to hit it big on xbox live doesn't make them owners or originators of the genre.

Robotron2080
SmashTV!
rayhound http://www18.big.or.jp/~hikoza/Prod/
(this one is somewhat different in mechanic but still in the same vein)
and I know theres a few more I've forgotten, but they're all the same basic mechanic with differing playfield layouts and enemy sizes. Heck, most 80s/90's top down shooters like heavy barrel could even count.

So anyway, make it visually different, but don't be scared of using the mechanics on case of "copyright".

rooster

why not make a unique looking game, but also that doesn't play the same as a bunch of other games?
edit: I'm not having a go, just if you've got the talent to code a game why make a clone?

notman

[ QUOTE ]
I think implementing something like that would get rid of the "corner campers".


[/ QUOTE ]

Or maybe an enemy that travels along the outer box and maybe has projectiles. That way, if you're hiding in the corner, he'll eventually get right behind you and fire something at you

I've never played geometry wars, so I don't know how this game compares/copies.

pior

it plays sooo well with a tablet! You don't even need to click, just hover on the surface, great feeling. Enjoyed the triple missiles too :P Never played geometry wars - yet I'm sure GW wont work with a wacom!

commander_keen

@Keg: Your right. I think as far as gameplay mechanics I will be able to make it different. Visual style on the other hand might be a little harder. The game was built so that each object has a Draw() function so each object draws the lines and points it needs every frame. I could change all of the renderable objects to look different, but because im rendering each of them uniquely it might be hard to do something like make everything hard vector shapes with thick black outlines or that sort of thing. That would require me to build a more mesh or vector shape based rendering system. Also I think that additive blending is the most visually appealing and if I go really vector style it might look too similar to "EveryDay Shooter"? Perhaps I could split the difference.

@Geezus: There are many ways to take care of corner camping. One method would be to add mass corner spawners. I will definitely figure something out.

@Pior: Neat, i will have to try it.

Another note about the visual style. I have come up with a dynamic background idea which will set it apart from geometry wars a little more.

commander_keen

I'm currently having problems with the bloom system im using. It sees that nvidia cards might be rendering the bloom incorrectly. If people running nvidia cards are having massively over bright bloom that doesnt look anything like the screenshots I posted above please tell me or if it works fine tell me too. I think that the the latest public build renders the bloom fine on all cards but a new version with a background seems to render incorrectly with nvidia.

notman

I finally got a chance to try beta4 and it's running extremely slow. I'm not sure what changed between the last version and this one, but I could barely get deal with moving around the menu. It wasn't a mouse scale thing because the buttons wouldn't click right away either. I AM using a nVidia 6200 on the machine I tested it with, so that may be the issue. I never got to the point of actually playing, since everything was reaction so slowly.

commander_keen

yeah, that is caused by crappy programming of interpolations. The cursor line width and dot size are based on a Pulse and if the program runs too long without updating a frame it will make the cursor really big or really small(really thick lines are hard for GL to render). Its an easy fix and I think I got all that sort of thing fixed already. It will run though if you let it sit there for 10 seconds or so. I really need to make a better cursor anyway, that one is really ugly.

I have decided to give everything an organic feel. I will get some screenshots up maybe later today.

Also I fixed the bloom issue on nvidia cards.

commander_keen

A new beta.

The music was created by Rich Douglas.

Latest Changes:
-More organic looking and moving visuals.
-Added sound and music.
-heavily optimized the particle system.
-Dynamic color changing background.
-Super Shot weapon upgrade. You get this every 200,000 points starting at 250,000. It lasts for 15 seconds.
-Added new "Wildcard" feature. Wildcards are items that are randomly spawned in the level. They may either give you an advantage or disadvantage. Currently the only wildcard is the Nuke.
-Various other small fixes and features.

Download Link:
Download Beta 5





Screenshots:

Japhir

looks really cool to me but:

the music plays, and all i see is this. luckily i can shut it down without my pc crashing by closing down the test-thingie.
might be because i don't have a graphics card? :P

commander_keen

you say your using an integrated graphics chip? thats probably it. Set UseBloom=0 in the ini and it should work.

notman

Much nicer/cleaner. The sound effects really added something to it. The only issue I seemed to have was when I first start, there's a circle attached to me. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be there or now. It follows me around for a while, and sometimes looks like a trail, but after a few seconds, it disappears.

Edit: ok, I just saw your updated images (didn't pay attention enough earlier). So, the circles are suppose to be there, but they didnt' remain there for me.

Slum

You should take this game a few steps further and make it an interactive, combat-oriented version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life

pior

I liked V4 better, felt more simple and looked nicer. And no sound, no music was nicer too...

Japhir

[ QUOTE ]
you say your using an integrated graphics chip? thats probably it. Set UseBloom=0 in the ini and it should work.

[/ QUOTE ]
jeah that's what i mean probably
it worked, but fullscreen still made it crash.

commander_keen

notman, i guess that can happen and low frame rates, will fix for next release.

pior, sorry i will be sure to add ingame audio options.

I am working on a new cellular grid thing. Details are still hazy even to me :P but it will be used to store "energy" which is dropped by enemys. You will then accumulate the energy as you fly over the cells. The energy will be used to charge a "super attack" and possibly other things.

Also trying to get most things rendered with vertex arrays to speed things up, as well as general code optimizations.