Whoa, so I’ve been slacking off on progress again, haven’t I? Sorry, I’ve just been really busy with school and stuff, I’m sure you all will get over it. =]
My procrastination however, is not today’s update topic, it’s that the grenades in Spherack Reloaded just got some serious upgrading! Yeah, that’s right!
…So why shouldn’t they in Spherack? Grenades are meant to be used for blowing people up, but what means you can’t bash their skulls in with them? You can now peg grenades at your opponents to cause damage and knock them out more efficiently! Not to mention, we now have sounds for the flash bang detonations and stun durations.
Also, now when your character bleeds, rather than suddenly just disappearing, their blood will fall to the ground and pile up making up a lovely mess!
Oh, and lastly I’ve enforced spawn points for the two teams. Now you’ll spawn at the right location based on which team you’re on.
I did, however, begin to develop a 3D version of Spherack Online earlier on, however I abandoned the project shortly after to keep to 2D and begin development on Spherack Reloaded.
An image taken in-game while still debugging the physics engines and slowly beginning to create character models.
Bryan and I are taking a break from development and dancing around playing a funky tune in Spherack Reloaded while Sean drops by looking for his bourbon. He can’t find it and feels left out, so starts playing the “Dixie Air Horn” tune…
Everybody loves grenades! …At least that is, when you’re not getting blown up by them. Spherack Reloaded as stated offers two types of grenades: Frag grenades and flashbangs. Frag grenades will cause damage to you if you’re nearby when they explode, and flashbangs will temporarily distort your vision and deafen you. (Same with fragmentation grenades if you’re close enough)
A feature I’ve just recently completed is the ability to hide from grenades behind objects. I mean, it only makes sense, right? Our beta testing team had their hands full, throwing grenades and getting blown up by them even though they were behind ten tons of steel walls, and I don’t think they’d be too happy if it was still that way when the game releases later this year.
This is why, I’ve programmed a few functions in that will check to see if you’re behind an object (via x-axis only as of the moment) so this way you’ll be safe if you’re behind some boxes. As stated, it currently only checks on the x-axis, meaning if the grenade is on the roof above you, you’re still screwed, but I plan to get that worked out in the future as well.
…with all these spare arms floating around the screen.
I was working on getting the grenade system to work, and I programmed a few things a bit wrong and ended up with this:
Rather than just having one appear if the player was throwing a grenade, I forgot to throw in a line of code, and in result tons of arms kept being drawn onto the screen endlessly. Some were even moving! My feelings? I’m more disturbed than I am frustrated.
Hey guys, I’d like to proudly announce the development of a new “Spherack” game: “Spherack Reloaded”
The new game will break apart from the path of older Spherack games, by going a step higher with graphics and using stick-figures instead of circles.
Wait a second, Stick Figures?!
Yeah, well, you see, we could’ve always gone onto some highly detailed human-resembling sprites, but remember that we’re focusing more on the gameplay and entertainment value for Spherack rather than crazy, high-class 2D graphics. That’s what the Sega 32x is for.
What ever happened to “Spherack 3D?”
Spherack 3D indeed was originally the next step we had planned to take in the series, but had a little change of heart type thing I guess you could call it. Sure, a 3D version of Spherack would be pretty cool… I mean, running around, you’re a giant 3D circle with a pistol that looks like a square, but keeping things circular would keep us from getting into things like grenades, crouching behind walls, and so forth.
The new Spherack Reloaded offers a whole new turn on gameplay, by introducing new obstacles like fall damage, armor pick-ups, grenades, flashbangs and so many more. Objects on the field such as crates now actually have some sort of meaning to them, for you can crouch behind them, stand up, maybe shoot a few folks and toss a grenade, then crouch back down there again.
It’s a huge improvement on the Spehrack series we believe, and we hope that everyone will enjoy it as much as and maybe even more as the original Spherack Online 2. We’ll get maybe some previews and videos up in the near future demonstrating it.
Hey, I’d like to welcome you all to the new homepage of our 2D Online Shooter Game, Spherack Online. We hope you enjoy the game and feel free to drop by our online community at The D-PadNetwork. You can also use your D-Pad account to login and comment on articles throughout this website. For more information on Spherack Online, click here.
Enjoy!
Well I’ve spent my entire weekend doing nothing but work on some major updates to Spherack. Has my work paid off? Seems to have… got some amazing changes done here to the client AND server! There were two client updates for this just so you know. One being Build 110 which is rather large. Build 113 was released a few minutes later to fix a few bugs in 110, so don’t be confused when you get two patches.
Well I’ve finally got around to getting an update out for Spherack, and this time I’ve added a spiffy new map, as well as some cool new physics!
I’ve built a new map, “Triblassic” which is a remake of the original Spherack Online map as seen in v0.8.0. Though this may lack detailed tiles like the other maps have, this map certainly beats them all when it comes to game-play! Triblassic contains some new slanted tiles so you can climb up hills and the level looks a lot more rounded. Additionally, I’ve rebuilt the old “ice blocks” so when you walk on these you end up sliding.