Winterheart status

[Tsalop]

As you might remember - I was making shmup with Coolbasic named as "Winterheart".
Back then process game to a halt because I lost my interest due the lack of talent.

Now I have started to work on this again as I finally have the knowledge I need to finish this up.
Final spark to learn came when I made an upgraded version of Voile (Download here)
for my schools tradefair.

So for now on I will be updating my blog and this post weekly to inform  you about the process.
Download menu demo here.
---
Also some character art:

[Tsalop]

Here is a screenshot from test version. All game-mechanics (except the bosses) has been coded...
Oh, and I need to add Graze-meter.

I will post complete list of the features later tonight.

[Tsalop]

Here is a small, incomplete list of the current features:

//MENU:
- Start, Player-/Shot-select menus
- Game Over & Continue-screen
- Level intros
- Staff roll

//LEVEL:
- 4 difficulty settings (Easy, Normal, Hard, Lunatic & Extra)
- 7 different levels with unique bosses
- Continues, grazing & POC
- End level score-system:
  * Difficulty and level
  * Collected point items
  * Grazing total
- 6 different bonus items:
  * Score (small and large)
  * Power (small and large)
  * 1UP, BOMB & Full Power
  * Snow-items
- Temporary invulnerability if enough Snow-items.

//PLAYER:
- 3 different characters (Reimu, Marisa & Sakuya):
  * 2 shot-types each
  * different starting status (bomb / lives / speed)
- Ending depends on player

//ENEMY:
- 4 Different enemy types
  * 4 different shot-types each
  * Changing behavior patterns
  * controlled by level and difficulty

//MISC:
- Saving and loading score
- Fullscreen and windowed-mode

[Tsalop]

Okay, here is a small engine demo. Now we finally have something to play. Demo contains first 240 seconds of the game.

[Tsalop]

Time for the update... I have spend my time drawing different frames for the bosses and also made some
minor coding changes to make spawning enemies and bullets easier. Currently I am concentrating to the graphics. 

Here is a picture of Cirno and Letty.

[Tsalop]

Time for weekly update. All the level are now done (of course I will tweak them a bit) but there is still no boss fights
(I have been bit lazy and thus I still need to finish the boss-sprites). Most of the gamemechanics has been added
and nearly all necessary graphics has been done (need to do the endings though).

[Tsalop]

Time for weekly update. I have spend the last week making graphics for the bosses and planning
spellcards (not forgetting to code). Now I have potraits for the dialogue and all the necessary functions
for the bossfights (warping, moving, etc)...

Well, thats for all now.

[KuraiShoka]

I'm amazed to be the first person other than you to post :V

Anyways this looks really well made and I cna see this project has potential. Good luck with it!
Oh also, I downloaded the demo, and when I tried to run it, it said "Memory Access Violation" and it closes. Ideas?

[Chronojet ⚙ Dragon]

Heh... I was waiting for someone to post first...
Man, it must suck not being noticed until now.

Anyways, looking at that first screenshot. What's with Reimu?
... I like your character art.

[Tsalop]

I I tried to run it, it said "Memory Access Violation" and it closes. Ideas?

Well, if you are using Vista/7 then it is most likely caused by the fact that the game has no
rights  to write files and when it tries to create menu.dat or the score.ini the game bombs
out.

I will be updating the demo this week as the engine has gone through some changes.

What's with Reimu?

Bad animation...

[Tsalop]

Time for the weekly update. Last week I mostly focused on drawing the ending screens.
Now most of them are done so I can concentrate more crucial things.

[Tsalop]

Wow, it has been months when I last updated this project.

Currently I am porting this project from CoolBasic to C# with SDL-wrapper (SdlDotNet).

I made this decision because CoolBasic programs tends to slow down radically
when there is too much stuff in the screen at once.
Also SDL allows using alpha-channels in png-files for transparency and the
error-messages are more informative than CoolBasic MAVs (Memory Access Violation).

So now you know what is happening... I hope the next update contains playable demo
made with C#...

[Tsalop]

C# version of the engine is nearly done...
Even though I did have to write my own functions to load / draw images, handle text and files
and even to handle key input - I found them relatively easy to do.

I have also added a multiplayer support to the engine (players are members of instacelist)
as my secondary project "PatchuAli Justice" requires that.

[Tsalop]

The C# version of the engine is soon done...
Here is a preview of a new feature that I am currently developing:


Now we have some sort of area of sight...
Also I started using twitter for daily(?) updates...

[Tsalop]

After some serious brainstorming - I decided to change the area of sight bit different:

Otherwise there would have been no reason to make enemies as player wouldn't be able to see them.

[Chronojet ⚙ Dragon]

One who chases two rabbits catches neither.
Don't you find it hard to keep both projects alive? I mean, there's this Winterheart thing and then there's that PatchuAli thing you just suddenly brought up.

[Tsalop]

Don't you find it hard to keep both projects alive?

Nope as we are talking about the same engine that has support to both games.
All necessary functions for handling images, sound, files, etc... are excatly the same
in both games... This also goes with enemy, bullet and player handling (though PatchuAli
has multiple players).

In otherwords - I will make the engine as compatible as possible so I don't need to make
major changes when I switching projects.

Winterheart is my primary project as the original version has everything except the boss fights done.
After that I will start working on PatchuAli (As PatchuAli has only the player sprites and
possible game screen done - I am using it to demo all the "new" features that I couldn't add
to the CoolBasic version... e.g. Transparency via alpha-channel since CoolBasic has no support for that).