Bird Strike GameMaker Edition

[iainfm]

Hi,

Inspired by Mike Dailly (of Lemmings/GTA (and other)) fame, and his 'Game in a Day' videos, I've been itching to give GameMaker a try. So, what better way to learn it than to see if I can re-create my favourite 2d 8-bit game, Bird Strike.

So far it seems....fairly easy. I've got some basic gameplay working. The player moves and can fire bullets. Pigeons fly across the screen. Enemies descend, tracking the player (ish), and bombs fall.

Plenty still to be done, obviously. I've no idea how far I'll take this, but my hope is to recreate the original as closely as possible rather than re-imagine it (partly due to any lack of imagination in my part).

Screenshot below, short video clip here: https://youtu.be/wO_7JLQUjtg
Code in my github repo: https://github.com/iainfm/BSGM/

[jms2]

That's very interesting - would this be the product from Holly Software?

I always wondered how good (or bad) it was. Given that it seemed to disappear without trace I assumed it wasn't that useful. Looks like I was wrong!

That said, I suppose quite a few games might have been written using it, but we'd never know unless they were disassembled and compared.

[iainfm]

That's very interesting - would this be the product from Holly Software?

I always wondered how good (or bad) it was. Given that it seemed to disappear without trace I assumed it wasn't that useful. Looks like I was wrong!

That said, I suppose quite a few games might have been written using it, but we'd never know unless they were disassembled and compared.

Hmm, not sure but I suspect not. I think that was for the beeb/arch, if memory serves (which it seldom does).

I should have explained better, sorry - GameMaker is a modern development engine, and games built in it can be published so they run in a browser, on a mobile device or as a stand-alone game (depending on how much you spend on your subscription). Website is https://gamemaker.io/

Here's a link to one of the 'Game in a Day' videos...which I need to watch properly because I really have to figure out how to make my object things into arrays... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFD7jMhDGgk&t=11778s

[iainfm]

Bit more progress tonight. Think some collision detection may be next!

https://youtu.be/PcOh51H0pFY

[jms2]

Oh I see, it's a modern system. Yes you're right, the original was for the BBC and not very well known.

Nice work anyway, good luck with it!

[iainfm]

Day 3 update (approx 6 hours of 'coding', ie 3 hours coding, 3 hours googling )

Collision detection between bullets and enemy planes working. As per the original, a direct hit kills them (no explosion animation yet), an 'wing' hit release a carrier pigeon.

Scoreboard working as well, using the sprites from the original. I'm not sure if I've coded it the best way, but going by MD's GiaD videos, there's no one right way. Which is good news for me.

Have to say I'm finding it mostly fairly intuitive. Not sure what I'd liken the language to, but my smattering of knowledge of a range of different ones seems to be making sense of it.

Latest video here: https://youtu.be/aszvvaab1Fs

[iainfm]

Tonight's effort: Most of the gameplay mechanics are in place - collision detection for player shots hitting planes and pigeon, scoring based on what's been hit. Enemy bombs/aircraft kill the player and reduce the number of lives until none remain. Levels increment as per the original.

Quite bizarrely, because I've played the original so much, I keep 'seeing' the plane explosions and pigeon hits even though I've not coded them yet!

A few of the things still to do:

The musical bonus system (pigeons-win-prizes)
Sounds
Animations of hit player / pigeons / planes
Start/end screens
High-score table.

Once I figure out how to publish it so it can be played by anyone I will. For now, here's the latest video: https://youtu.be/xQhDabs9wp8

[iainfm]

Figured out the publishing aspect. It's private at the moment, but you can play it here: https://gx.games/games/qtgoj4/bird-stri ... 312c0544b8

[Kecske Bak]

It's really interesting to do something like this. I made Fruity Freddy in the Godot Engine...

https://github.com/DaveJeffery/FruityFreddy

[iainfm]

Nice! I don't think I'd heard of Fruity Freddy before, and I'm intrigued to know what the 'inappropriate intimacy' is

Those numbers look kinda familiar though...

Screenshot 2023-09-01 131817.png (853 Bytes) Viewed 2162 times

[iainfm]

Tonight's update: added enemy/player/pigeon death animations.

https://gx.games/games/qtgoj4/bird-stri ... 12c0544b8/

[iainfm]

Added loading/hi-score screen (it's not possible to enter your high score yet though).

TODO:
Award extra lives
The pigeon bonus system
Sounds (with quiet toggle)
Bonus tunes
Extra life ping
Hi-score entry
Fix enemy/player collision detection (I tried something, but it made it worse)
The graves!
"BONUS!" message when awarding bonus
"GAME OVER" message when out of lives
Final wave additional bonus staves
Various improvements in timings, for example when player hit and when new level begins
Randmise aircraft flying order
Pause

Same URL as above for anyone wanting to try it

[iainfm]

Got this knocked (mostly) into shape, and it plays pretty closely to the original game I think

I'll continue to make improvements when I have the time and energy, but I've really enjoyed doing it and learnt a lot along the way. I think I'd do it a bit differently if I was to do it again, given what I've discovered in GameMaker, but it was a really enjoyable platform to develop on.

Link to published game is: https://gx.games/games/qtgoj4/bird-strike
Source on github at: https://github.com/iainfm/BSGM

[SteveF]

Nice work! I find it incredibly hard, which I think is extremely faithful to the original.

Could you be persuaded to write a kind of retrospective dev blog post? I don't actually plan to do anything with GameMaker, but it would still be fascinating to read any stories you have to tell about the dev process - did anything go badly wrong, did you have any happy accidents, lessons learned, etc, etc...

[iainfm]

Thanks! Yes, I'll do a write-up sometime - probably just add it to the readme of the github repo. It needs an update anyway!

Re gameplay, my tactic is to head over to one side of the screen, which lures the enemy across. Wing it as it descends on your position, then duck out from under it to snag the pigeon - but after it's too low to be able to reach you at the other side of the screen.

Rinse and repeat, and you'll soon fill the stave and snag that juicy 1500-point pigeon bonus per level!

I think my version is actually slightly easier than the original at the moment. Destroying an enemy aircraft should perhaps be a /smidge/ harder than it is. But that actually makes it a bit harder to get the bonuses!

I'd quite like to do a reboot version as well that uses more of the features of gamemaker - particles, physics etc. And maybe some of the things that @friga was thinking about as well - night missions, multiple planes descending, better difficulty ramp-up etc.

One day...