[GAME] Space Cadets

[neuronic]

Hi everyone!

I have just uploaded my latest game onto my website: Space Cadets. A two player game in which the two players must shoot at each other in order to get more points to win the match.

The game features 10 characters and their spacecraft to choose from, also selectable time intervals for the rounds, 3, 5, 7 or 9 rounds and multi-language support.

Making the game
After finishing my previous game in the summer I fired up a Commodore Plus 4 emulator just to have some fun. While I was browsing my collection of games I found one called Wildfire ( https://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Wildfire ). I liked the gameplay so I decided to create something similar. The core worked after 3 hours of design and code, but unfortunately it took me more time than I expected to finish and fine tune the game because of work.

Technical notes
My previous games all support different aspect ratios but when I tested this game with different aspect ratios I found that the gameplay is not what I had planned, so I decided to take a different approach. When you run the game, it checks your aspect ratio and if it is not 16:9, the game opens a windowed screen instead of going fullscreen or borderless. In this case you cannot change the screenmode in the Settings menu. May not be the best solution, but for now it works.

I would also appreciate any feedback on the Linux version as I ran into some difficulties I had never experienced before. When I start the game by clicking on the executable file, it works fine. But when I try to add the game to the menu, something I do with all my games, the game won’t start. It seems that it cannot find some files, but I am not sure.

How to install
The game is available as an install package or as a zip archive. You can find a DirectX 9 and a DirectX 11 version. If you choose to install the game using the installer, the icon/shortcut will start the DirectX 9 version. Of course this can easily be changed.

The Linux version is also available as a tar.gz package. I compiled it on Ubuntu 20.04.

Download
You can download it from my website: www.nightloversgamestudio.net


Have fun playing the game!

[#NULL]

Hi. Nice to see a finished game.
I tried it on linux. On Ubuntu 18.04 the glibc version present is too old, so it doesn't run.
But it starts fine on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS.
I didn't get to play it though. I explored the menu first. The font size seems to large so the text lines overlap or get cropped (I have 150% scaling activated in the Ubuntu settings, maybe that's why).
In the game settings, I tried to switch to windowed mode. The window/screen reopened but stays black (I can quit with esc). Even after restarting the binary. And even after deleting all files, downloading and starting again, the windowed setting seems to stick around, so I can't do any further testing.
Also the execution permission is not set for the binary, have to chmod first.

Hope that helps, thanks for sharing.

[BarryG]

Just tried it. Not bad! The whole presentation of the game and your website is very professional and impressive. Good stuff!

The only thing to report is that I did see the word "nighlovers" instead of "nightlovers" on page 16 of both PDF manuals.

[#NULL]

Just saw one more thing:
The title in the manual PDF is still set to another game of yours, Sweet Memories.

[neuronic]

Hi!

Thanks for downloading my game and providing some feedback.

@#NULL
I compiled the game on Ubuntu 20.04, I was unable to run it on Ubuntu 22.04, but it could be that my system is corrupted.

I have just tested the windowed mode. It seems to work fine as it should. Maybe it has something to do with a newer Ubuntu version. I will try to take a closer look.

The game saves the settings into a preferences file that you can find in your Home directory. There should be a directory called .nightlovers game studio and a subdirectory: Space Cadets. If you delete the .prefs file, the game should start using Fullscreen mode.

The font size could be large, because the game may not be able to load the font. It happens with one of my other games. The game also does not handle DPI settings other than 100%. This is something I still need to implement into the code.

@BarryG
Thanks for reporting the error in the manual! Now I have to correct the manuals of every single game I have made so far.


I have uploaded the game again with the modified manual files. As nothing else changed, there is no new version number.


Thank you, again!

[Janni]

Great work neuronic. Works fine on Linux Mint 20.3

[Fred]

Looks great, congratulation !

[neuronic]

@Janni
Thank you for your feedback on Linux Mint!

@Fred
Thanks! I am glad you like it!


neuronic