Re-Structured Deadline

On Yoyogames there are rumors of the fifth competition beginning soon. Because of this, I'm going to wait a small while to see what the theme is, and then I will finish the game. I am going to enter the game into the competition, and hopefully win some money in the progress (1st prize is $1000, 2nd prize is $500 and 3rd prize is $250). I'm currently looking around for music to fit the game, and so I created a topic on the GMC to find ambient loops.

This is mostly just an update to tell you I'm not dead, just waiting!

(Also, I created an all-purpose Game Maker Blog for myself, because this one is specialized to only Blast).

Beginning of the End

Well, I've started thinking about actually taking what I have with the game and only adding a little bit more (such as a final boss) that will allow me to actually begin focusing on finishing the game, rather than continuing to work without a deadline. I so far have 4 bosses, consisting of the Darkforms, Mystics, Spawn, and Norr which will be the four basic bosses of the game. I will add many more levels between them to try and extend the game, and add more attacks that will be added when you defeat them. So far, I have nearly finished programming the move gained from Spawn, and I have completed Norr's ability. The Mystics' gravity move will be added later on, and I don't think it will be hard to program. The Darkform's ability will be a bit tougher, and I will probably make it a grab move similar to the Mystic's arm that will sprout from Rage and grab a nearby enemy (except I will try to make it a dynamic arm that can reach any direction and looks cool).

After I have this all programmed, I will begin programming a final boss (Purity, who will transform into Death) and her bodyguard, who you will fight just beforehand (Vorc, who will be the previous "God Mode"). I will eliminate the Subconscious, as there will be no use for him, except maybe for adding small help comments and then having him disappear, which many of you may like.

To set a deadline, I'm going to say that Blast should be done by July 31, 2009. I will probably release 2-3 more updates in that time, and maybe add bug-fixes after that date, but look for a new blog post then with the final version!

v1.7

I finally managed to pull myself away from other video games long enough to finally finish up the inventory system. Press "I" in-game to open up this menu, which will show several icons displaying moves in slots divided by which player they belong to, and which key the are designated to act on. You can swap these around as you please, with one slight rule. You can not put a Rage attack in a Control slot, and vice-versa. You can tell which is which by looking at the icon, which will show either Rage or Control using the move. After beating Norr, Guardian of Chambers, you will obtain the freeze move, which will be put to use later on in the game.

Current bugs-list:

-Screen flashes after regaining health.

-Distortions sometimes not appearing full-screen.

-Infrequent random freezing.

-Bosses can be defeated by pushing them offscreen.

-Snow begins falling from the top of the screen at the beginning of the level; it isn't fluid at all.

-Snow level door problem.

-Killing Norr before fight.

-God Mode is too powerful

-Moving even with text showing.

Downloads:

WillHostForFood

MediaFire

v1.7 Delay

Hey everyone, I just wanted to give you a shoutout telling you that I'm not dead! I've done very little work on Blast recently for several reasons, those being that I'm rarely allowed on my laptop because of rules limitations by my parents, my relative disinterest in the content for the update and the difficulty I'm having making it, and last but not least, my beastly Sims 3 character whom I have become obsessed with. This should wear out soon enough, and updates should start picking up to be on a regular basis and fairly large, but this may take up to a week to happen. Sit tight and give me ability ideas for the bosses (moves you obtain for beating them)!

Pause Menu!

I've finally finished a pause menu, which was something that has been seriously lacking in this game for some time. I'm not going to make a release with it until I have more done, but I just wanted to post a screenshot of what it looks like, so if anyone wants, they can tell me what they would like changed. Also, just to give you an idea of what is coming, I'm going to make a sort of inventory of abilities that you will get throughout the game by beating bosses. For example, by beating Norr, you can get a freeze blast ability which will let you freeze enemies. Rather than include a new key for all the abilities and make things get way out of hand, I'll let you change which ability you wish to use with an inventory. There won't be too many abilities, so don't get your hopes up too much, but please put out your ideas! Post in the comments and it's likely your idea will appear!

Here's the wonderful new screenshot:

I should have an update out between now and Saturday night, so keep a look out!

v1.6

Alright, so I decided to do quite a bit of work on this today (really shouldn't have, with finals coming up, but I did) and I've created a new ice level with snow, and a pretty cool new boss. This guy was a lot of fun to make, because he moves fairly fluidly with his four rotating cannons. His name is "Norr, Guardian of Chambers" and he's definitely my favorite boss of the game thus far! He has two basic moves, the first being that he will spin and shoot large cannon-balls randomly out of his cannons. The second is that when you are a bit farther away, he will shoot homing-bullets out of one of his cannons, and it travels faster than the others. The one upside to these over the normal bullets are that they can be destroyed by Rage's blast move, and they can be pushed away by Control's push move, whereas the others can not. Here are some screenshots of my most recent bout with Norr:

This is Norr's secondary attack, where he aims one of his cannons at you and shoots out a homing-missile. These are quite deadly, but can be beaten using Rage's blast attack or Control's push move.

Here, I am using the ceiling spikes to hurt Norr (and weaken his shield)by knocking them off with Rage's blast move. Right here, you can seethat he is using his primary move, which involves him randomly blasting cannons.

Here is one shot I thought was particularly pretty as it showcased Control's push move and the resultantdistortions that look pretty awesome!
One important strength of Norr's that you may want to take notice of is his forcefield. Although the spikes on the ceiling are easily the best move to beat Norr, you first have to wear away his shield, which will eventually flicker and die out. He's a pretty tough boss, and still takes me a few tries to beat, so don't get too frustrated!

Downloads:

WillHostForFood

MediaFire

I hope you enjoy, and the next update will be a small one (very small one) on Monday and/or a larger one on Wednesday.

*Website Update!* Anyone can now post comments, so you don't have to have a registered account to tell me what you think!

In case anyone would like to see the websites that GM-Blast is currently on, here's a quick list:

GMC

YoyoGames

GameML

GameCog

TwilightPhantasm

v1.5

Effects getting too much for your computer?  With this update, you can make this run as fast as possible by pressing 'E' in-game, which will disable your effects.  This will restart the level! Also, I've begun some work on ice levels, with a basic one currently available.  I have made one new enemy for this region, which is similar to the Flame Fly enemy, but in a nice ice guise.  It will do what any basic enemy does, which is chase you down and hit you with its gigantic arm!  I'm currently taking my finals for the school year, so progress will be slow for about the next week, but after that I should be busting out maybe 2-3 updates a week, so look forward to some fun stuff and start giving me some ideas!  There's a comments section down there for a reason!

This is the newly created ice section of the game.  Seeing the particles together with this landscape makes me belive that I might start up a new particle stream of snow...

Also, I did a little work making a new distortion effect for when you are controlling an enemy.  This looks fairly nice in my opinion, and I hope you like it too:

As a whole, the game should run faster, as I spent some time updating the particle system.  Sadly, I had to eliminate the particle attractors (were not working for a mysterious reason...) but I really want to get them back in another way at some point.  All in all, I hope you enjoy the update, and please tell me what you think and what you want added!

Downloads:

WillHostForFood

MediaFire