Difference between revisions of "Raiden II"
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== Instructions == | == Instructions == | ||
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There are weapon upgrades which flash yellow and blue scattered around the map. Which weapon you get depends on what color the block is when you pick it up. Yellow weapons have a wider spread range, but require repeated button pressing. Blue weapons have a more narrow range but you can down the button for automatic firing. There are three level upgrades for each weapon. | There are weapon upgrades which flash yellow and blue scattered around the map. Which weapon you get depends on what color the block is when you pick it up. Yellow weapons have a wider spread range, but require repeated button pressing. Blue weapons have a more narrow range but you can down the button for automatic firing. There are three level upgrades for each weapon. | ||
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== Background == | == Background == | ||
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| + | [[File:RaidenShot.gif|thumb|320px|Exploring power-ups in an early version of ''Raiden II'']] | ||
Alan Caudel: | Alan Caudel: | ||
Revision as of 07:32, 19 August 2016
Release type: Incomplete
Release date: 1994
Levels: 1
Author: Alan Caudel
Website: DummyDuck.com
Related games: N/A
FULL ENTRY COMING SOON!
There's not much in life that comes perfect, right out of the box. Anything that is perfect tends to satisfy a narrow purpose, within narrow boundaries of use. And in time, it will break.
A successful life is about hacking the system; figuring out how to do things, using what limited resources are available to you and despite all arguments about what you are and are not meant to do.
Hacking, more than anything, is about probing; it's about feeling out the cracks in the system to see what falls through, testing out your whims and your theories, and building your own meta-language to slot on top of the system. The cinema staff only pay attention when you enter, so if you stay nonchalant you can wander from movie to movie all afternoon. The phone system uses sound to know when you've dialed or inserted change, so all you need is to input the right sound.
Game-Maker's system is made for top-down adventure games like The Legend of Zelda; if you try something else, you're going to meet resistance. Try to make a shooter, and the system will say to you, that's a strange way to design an adventure game. It will run what you plug in, but it won't know what you're trying to do.
So, most scrolling shooters on this engine are kind of a mess. What Raiden II does a little differently is that it takes a step back to think about what it's feeding into the engine, and how that will be understood.
If you're going to explore an unknown quantity, you might as well use a known frame of reference. This is why we copy things. It's why babies repeat what they hear, why skilled work used to rely on apprenticeship, and why starting musicians so often play cover songs. To know how to put things together, first you've got to take them apart; study how and why all the pieces fit. Think about how they might have fit differently. If you don't have the same tools, then find new uses for what you do have.
Having that concrete goal forces the brain through new and surprising contortions. Even if you never match the original work, an earnest effort at problem-solving tends to lead to its own revelations.
Study what actually works; figure out techniques to fake what doesn't work out of the box.
A tribute to Seibu Kaihatsu's long-running scrolling shooter series.
Peeling back to the most basic question. The big study here is in the shooting part of a shooter; the various multiple-shot patterns, including bomb and death animations. Finding a way for enemies to shoot back.
Shooting monster solution developed independently from Andy in Asunderland.
Main issues: Trouble with upgrade paths; firing while moving. In this experimemt enemy planes have no behavior to speak of, but games like Pipes and Ego Force ably fill in that blank.
Contents
Story
N/A
Instructions
There are weapon upgrades which flash yellow and blue scattered around the map. Which weapon you get depends on what color the block is when you pick it up. Yellow weapons have a wider spread range, but require repeated button pressing. Blue weapons have a more narrow range but you can down the button for automatic firing. There are three level upgrades for each weapon.
For best results, use the numerical keypad.
- Arrow keys: Move your ship.
- Q: Fire first level cannons.
- W: Fire second level cannons.
- E: Fire third level cannons.
- B: Drop a bomb.
Credits
Game designed by Alan Caudel.
Background
Alan Caudel:
- One of the hard parts about making this game was making tanks that shoot at you, and then stop shooting once you blow them up. It required a background block that generated a "bullet" monster block, which was covered by a tank monster block.
- If I remember correctly, the tank and the bullet had to be the same level or else one would kill the other upon contact. Then when the tank was destroyed, it was replaced with a "destroyed tank" monster block which was a higher level, and destroyed the bullets which kept generating from the background block underneath, so the destroyed tank would no longer fire bullets at you. This took a while to figure out how to get it working correctly, but I think the end result was good enough.
- Also, I think I had a problem where if you flew over the destroyed tanks, you could still die if a bullet block generated and you touched it in the split second before the "destroyed tank" block killed the bullet. So... I had to make the destroyed tank monster blocks solid. That was kind of a hassle, because it meant the jet couldn't fly over a destroyed tank without running into it. But I sacrificed realism for playability I guess.
Availability
This game is not known to have been distributed in any form, prior to its addition to the Archive.
Archive History
There are two known versions of Raiden II, both very incomplete but one more developed than the other.
On October 20th, 2010, Alan Caudel commented on a YouTube clip of Peach the Lobster, mentioning that he had used RSD Game-Maker. On December 7th the site contacted Caudel for further comment. At that time he was uncertain if his Game-Maker material still existed.
On June 29th 2011, Adam Tyner located and passed on to Caudel a selection of his, Caudel's, and Yurik Nestoly's old games, including the simpler version of Raiden II. That version was uploaded to the archive on July 5th.
Later on July 13th, Caudel found and offered up a further selection games, including the second and more advanced version of Raiden II. After some restoration, that version of the game was uploaded to the Archive on January 28th, 2012.
Links
Downloads
- Raiden II (89.1 kB)
- Raiden II (older version) (84 kB)
- Game map (older version) (11 kB)
