Okay everyone, so from now until Thursday at 9pm (Aside from Wednesday 12-4pm) I'll have quite a lot of free time, and in this time I intend to finish up Project GRID and have something that I can show off for judging etc.

So basically: Expect there to be a lot of updates and a new demo or two in this timeframe!

Time to get my work face on!

Dun Dun Dunnn! That's right, it's... A TANK!

These enemies will move slower than the regular cars, much slower, however, they have the advantage of a long range cannon, which can hit you even if the tank isn't on the screen with you! So you'll have to watch out for incoming attacks offscreen! The good thing is that they have a pretty long cooldown between shots, meaning you have time to get up close and unload a few round of lead at them... It may take a while though, since they have a whopping 120HP! (That's 6x more than cars), and if you are on the receiving end of a direct hit, it'll cost you 3HP, so you may want to take care of these as quick as you can!

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Another small note:

I'm thinking of tweaking player and enemy HP, but not until I hear feedback from people first, since at the moment, the player has 8HP max, I'm thinking that, for the next demo, to increase it up to 10HP, meaning you can take 3 direct hits from a tank and still have 1HP left... I want to make the game challenging, but giving too much health sort of defeats the purpose of a challenge, whereas too little health makes it TOO hard, here are the current damages and HP:

Player---
Max HP: 8
Max damage: 10 x Bullet(1)*

Enemy Car---
Max HP: 20
Max damage: 1

Tank---
Max HP: 120
Max damage: 3 (Direct Hit)

*Each bullet does 1 damage, and each burst fires 10 at a time.

Did you know that your car can currently start firing bullets while paused?

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕

Yeah lol, I just haven't got around to fixing it just yet, since it's nothing serious, but I'll try and have it fixed by the time the full game is released.

It's actually been done for a few days now, but I didn't want to show it off just yet, however, it's finally been implemented into the game so I felt it'd be good idea to show it to everyone.

I think it's just me, but I think that this is getting to be a serious game. You are doing a good job so far!
You can maybe decide whether to increase the player HP or not by making a demo to test if the new changes in HP are good or bad.
The tank idea overall is fair, it is difficult enough for you to be careful, and it sort of gives you confidence
to attack them because of their cooldown systems.

Basically, since he's been helping me along with this, we thought up some cool ideas last night for a new weapon, some new sound effects and other misc. agendas, and I didn't think we'd be implementing them until he logged on later today or something (Until then I'd be working on the menu(s) and sprites, but I've just opened the project through our dropbox, and like a boss he's added everything in already! That's some major progress right there!

Basically here's a list of what's been added overnight:

- Tanks are now fully functional, they will shoot the player from afar, and can also hit enemy cars with their attacks (If you've got a few cars on you it's a great idea to keep the tank alive to thin out their numbers and make it an easier approach)
- The health has been changed into a health bar depicted by an image
- Landmines have now been added into the game as power ups that spawn around the map(If a tank drives over one, it will disable it temporarily, allowing you to get a few bursts in, it's very handy!)
- The controls have changed slightly (It's S to shoot now, and A will be for secondary attack, D is still drift toggle)
- More sound effects have been added
- More particles have been added, we now have fire too

A big big big thankyou needs to go out to Tuna for the help he's given me, and I'd appreciate if you guys could thank him too!

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In other news: My decision on the demo - Survival only.

Due to constraints in events, sadly I won't be able to add a "story mode" (With levels etc.) into the contest build, so I've decided I WILL be sticking to just the survival mode, however, if I do receieve a key, I'll be working on the story mode too and have two options in the menu.

This doesn't mean that I'll be half-arsing the contest build, as you may know me and Tuna have actually been putting a ton of work into this, and I think you'll be able to see just how far the game has come once the next demo is released!

Thank you Tuna! These ideas sure look promising!

Okay, so I've realised at this point, that a lot of the information in the main post is outdated, and I've decided to update it to be in line with the current features of the game and such... I'll be starting on it right now, and I'll be working one section at a time, so if any information vanishes you'll know why.

Sorry I don't have anything more exciting to announce just yet, but the next demo will definitely be worth the wait!

It's finally here! You can now play the latest version of the game that I've been talking about over the last couple of days! You'll notice the following things during your playthrough (Taken straight from a few posts above):

- Tanks are now fully functional, they will shoot the player from afar, and can also hit enemy cars with their attacks (If you've got a few cars on you it's a great idea to keep the tank alive to thin out their numbers and make it an easier approach)
- The health has been changed into a health bar depicted by an image
- Landmines have now been added into the game as power ups that spawn around the map(If a tank drives over one, it will disable it temporarily, allowing you to get a few bursts in, it's very handy!)
- The controls have changed slightly (It's S to shoot now, and A will be for secondary attack, D is still drift toggle)
- More sound effects have been added
- More particles have been added, we now have fire too

Along with, what I think is more noticeable in the screenshots, the new sprites for the player and enemy cars, along with the newly added tank!

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I'm not going to be asking you to fill a form in since this is almost finished now anyway, however, I'd love your opinion on it again, what you liked, what you disliked etc. and if you think it's challenging enough and so on.

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You'll also notice that I've redone the main post, I've brought it up to date, and added a back story to the game, which acts as the introduction to the story mode that was/is/maybe planned (But later on ofcourse...), it's cheesy, but hey you can't say the game doesn't have a story!

Also, one last thing:



I thought it'd be cool if you guys gave me some screenshots, the best ones will be featured under a new section I'll be adding sometime tomorrow. You might think I'm being lazy, not adding my own, but I assure you I'll be adding them myself too, I just thought it'd be a change to show the rest of the community some of your most "Holy shit it's so hectic!" or "There's NO WAY I'm still alive!" screenshots... there may even be a prize in the final game for the person with the best screenshot(s)!

Try to be creative with your screenshots!

Here's mine. Hope it's good enough.

Oh, I noticed there's more delay for the background music to play. It may be because there's more audio files to process, but it only happened for the first time I played the new version, so that shouldn't be a big problem.

Thanks for the screenshot!

How long was the delay for you by the way? I know it'll be longer since there's more files like you've said... and also, after your first time playing it, does it load faster the second time? I mean, for me the sound plays straight away but that's because I've played it tons of times to check for any bugs in the released version(s), there's only a few that I doubt many of you will even notice unless you look really hard, and then there's some which are obvious, such as being able to shoot while the game is paused (Well, it doesn't shoot, but it spawns the bullets... and they shoot off when you unpause) that will hopefully be fixed in time (But again, nothing major...)

Has anyone else been playing the new demo? What are your opinions?

Pretty fast load there, nice minimalistic style, reminded me of lofi simple GTA, can see lots of potential, loved tricking the tank to shoot enemies cars, the tank seem invincible however, shoot it plenty of time both with landmines and bullets and it never died, max score was 321 so far

Thanks for playing! And the tank isn't invincible, it just has quite a lot of health, 120HP to be precise, and mines do 10HP, whereas bullets do 1HP each so it could take you a while to get it down, lol.

Also note (For everyone)---

In the demo, enemy cars or tanks don't respawn, this was a late decision that was actually made by Tuna after the demo was first uploaded (I changed it quickly before anyone would notice, lol), since we're still messing around with spawn times for the enemies, and tweaking the tank, although it should generally be around the 30-60 second mark for cars, and 60-90 seconds for tanks once all is said and done.

Don't forget too: Show us your screenshots!

yoho, you know what this needs?
screaming bonuses that fly through the screen.

like when you've hit marks: 20 people killed, 50 killed, etc.
words like KILLING SPREE that flash over the screen

A dude shouting that with a lot of echo on it

Haha yeah that's actually a pretty cool idea, we did discuss giving bonuses for milestone kills, like getting to 100, 250, 500, 1000 and so on, and now I can just hear the guy from Unreal Tournament shouting all the spree's, lol

Well, it delayed like 3-7 seconds, I guess? The second time though, it loaded almost instantly.
Glad you liked the screenshot!

The game look awesome! graphics are nice I enjoyed playing as the white bar more than the car tho for some reason..lol

anyways The graphics are quite nice the animations and the controls are real smooth the games pretty fun I enjoyed making the tank blow up the other cars lol

The Drift control was a very nice touch btw; keep it up the projects looking good :]]

Thanks for the feedback Black_Vamp!

To be honest with you, I quite liked the white bar more than an actual car too, not sure what it was, but it was always meant to be a placeholder for something else, maybe when I can get a full release after the contest I'll add an option to change the skin of the car, lol.

Also, if you liked the tank, you'll love the new enemy I have in development, hopefully I'll be able to add it either today or tomorrow, along with another two power ups, one of which will be a health pick up which I think will be really helpful, although they're going to be sparse, and I haven't decided how much health they'll heal just yet

I've updated the main post with a screenshot section, there aren't many, but if you'd like to add any of your own, post them here in the comments and they'll be added! I've also put up the userbar again, sadly I haven't worked on the userbar to bring it more up to date, but it serves its purpose and shows Tuna and me that you've taken an interest in our game and will be supporting us!

If you want to have a car design in the game, all you have to do is submit a series of screenshots in this thread, we're looking for people to be creative, but don't worry, there can be multiple winners! here's a checklist of what we want to see in your screenshots:

Happy Mines!
- Mines positioned to make a smiley face, the more mines the better.

Come at me, bro!
- You, facing towards a tank that has just shot a plasma blast (Take the screenshot just before it hits you, the tank must be visible and you MUST be facing towards it)

You guys need glasses!
- An enemy tank shooting at an enemy car that is chasing you.

Konga!
- You, and the two enemy cars lined up straight (Must be touching BOTH cars)

Another one bites the dust!
- An enemy car driving over a mine that you have deployed.

Stop bothering me!
- Kill over 500 enemies while both cars and the tank are still alive (Both cars and the tank must be on the screenshot, along with your 500+ kills)

It's over nine thou-hundred?!
- Kill over 900 enemies, simple!

If you feel up to the challenge and think you can take a screenshot of all these (One point per screenshot), then you'll win your very own car design for the player to drive around as!

It's about as straight as I could while steering and taking the screenshot. Come At Me Bro. It did turn into a "Do You Need Glasses" but I wanted to make sure I had something.

I humbly request the Craymobile which should look exactly like the Batmobile but be referred to as the Craymobile. If not possible due to legal issues, I request that deployed mines do not go over the car when you drive over them, as it is consistently ruining my smiley face. :)

CF

PS - That was in Firefox, which is amazing, because my game goes to complete ugly in Firefox. I just forgot to switch browsers. Nice.
PPS - The opening music brought back a strong sense of the Super Metroid opening for the Super Nintendo. Good stuff.

Yeah don't worry, the mine layer has been fixed (Or I think it has...), it's just a little simple thing I forgot to change, lol (All I have to do is right click the mine and set its Z order to the back, lol.

I'll happily make you a Craymobile, but first you need a screenshot for each of the points on the checklist

.....I have to do EACH of them?

Yep lol, that's where the challenge comes from

That's a bit much, getting all of them O_O

Maybe the person getting the highest number of points by the end of the Construct contest could win.

That was actually my original idea, but then I thought about letting multiple people win, so I was going to do something like: Get over 1000 kills to win something... it was actually my brother that suggested making the challenge harder, and to be honest, it should be, I don't want EVERYONE to be having a new car, otherwise it won't be anything special... maybe I'll lower the kills, but we'll see what others think first

I've lowered the requirement for one of the screenshot points, "It's over 9000!" has now been renamed to "It's over nine thou-hundred?!", you now have to kill 90% LESS enemies to be awarded a point for the screenshot, I hope this decision makes it easier for people to work towards gaining their own car in the game, I wanted it to be a challenge, but Tuna made me realise I should set it a little more realistically, 9000 is possible, but would take WAY too long that the game may get boring (Since in this demo build there's very few harmful enemies to keep you occupied), so yeah, it's now set at 900.

Now get playing the game and take those screenshots!

Testing is fun!