Working on pickups

Aside from trying to squash a bug with the new 'hunter' enemy type, we're currently working on some pick up designs. Earlier in development we had wanted to implement a smart bomb which would affect all enemies on screen. We're still investigating how this could work on the Spectrum ( as ideally we'd like each character to 'wiggle' when the bomb is set off ) but trying to come up with a method of moving all the enemies has proven a bit problematic.

If we move them on screen then there's a chance they'll overlap some of the background graphics and so over-write what was there. We're thinking about some ideas of swapping to a smaller 'stunned' graphic ( similar to the glooped animation ) so we'll see how that goes.

Next up we have a stop watch - this will pause all enemies on screen for a few seconds ( and stop the timer from ticking down ). This should help give the players enough time to get through a screen :-) One thing we're not sure on is whether enemies should still be deadly to touch when they are stunned?

The other pickup is a weapon upgrade. The regular shot will have a much smaller range in Gloop Troops 2 than it did in the original game. This means you won't be able to find a safe spot on screen and hide from enemies!

Still lots to do! Hopefully some more screens will be uploaded soon :-)

Gloop Troops 2 - Loading Screen

I thought it was time I uploaded some more artwork for GT2.
I`ve started the new year with the loading screen artwork.
It took, on and off, three days to complete.

Gloop Troops: The Lost Crown is now available on World of Spectrum!

Gloop Troops: The Lost Crown is now available to download and play on the World of Spectrum archive. We hope you enjoy our game!

Gloop Troops: The Lost Crown in nominations for 2011

Our Gloop Troops: The Lost Crown ( distributed on the iOS The ZX Spectaculator emulator is in the list of nominations for the 2011 best Spectrum game! Please vote if you've enjoyed playing our game!

Happy New Year!

Happy new year all! We've been working away on Gloop Troops 2 the last few months ( with a bit of a break for some festive fun ) and are hoping to not be too far off from releasing the game. Gloop Troops 2 has now been in development for quite a while! We never anticipated the game would have taken this long, but we've all been busy at one time or another, and re-writing the game to take full advantage of the 128k Spectrum has been quite a challenge.

State of play:

We have the main game structure for Gloop Troops 2 in place. You can start a new game, view the opening cinematic, then move around the world map to pick a level. Once you've chosen a level you'll be whisked off to that level to try and collect all the ingredients for Princess Amelia's cure. Once you've beaten all the levels in a world you'll unlock a boss level. Only after finishing the boss level will you be transported to the next world. Between worlds you'll have additional cinematic screens with a final cinematic when you finish the game!


To do:


- More enemy types! We have a few more enemy behaviours to go in.


- New feature!  We have an unannounced feature to go into the game. It shouldn't take very long to do and will add a lot to the level design.


- Keyboard support.


- Support for better sprite masking.


- Refine levels, pick the best ones and make them final.


- Music! There will be many more tracks of music in Gloop Troops 2 compared to Crimbo.

Match Em from Bongoboo Games!

Mike (my brother) and Immy Oakley (my sister-in-law) have just released their first i-Phone game!
I`ve had a sneak preview and can say it's a very playable game and well worth parting your hard-earned 69p for.

More details can be found at the following website; http://bongoboogames.wordpress.com/

And, finally, here's a video showing it in action;

Untitled from bongoboo games on Vimeo.

Work slowly continues

Whilst everyone has been outside enjoying the unusually warm October, we've been busily working on some level design ideas for Gloop Troops 2. At the moment we're playing around the idea of multi-screen levels. We wanted to expand a bit more on the levels of Gloop Troops but are unsure on what the best implementation for GT2 will be.

The ideas currently floating around are:

• Allow levels to be made up of multiple screens, with the player freely able to travel between them.
• Have multiple screens make up a level, but you only access the next screen once you've completed the current screen.
• Keep with the original design and only have single screen levels.

Each idea seems to have some interesting pros and cons. The first idea makes the game feel much more open and gives some interesting level design space as now each level is 3 or 4 screens in length. We could either have a selection of pickups that you need to collect in order to finish the level, or have a single pickup that you need to find in order to complete the level. The multiple screens and freedom of movement makes the game feel quite different to it's tighter arcade parent. You no longer feel as constrained in your movement and stunning enemies to run past them feels too powerful.

The second idea feels more like the original Gloop Troops, you have to deal with a screen before you can advance to the next screen. The disadvantage to this method is the screens don't feel part of a cohesive level  :-(

The third option of only have single screen levels is still a possibility, though it'll mean either adding more level markers to the world maps, or creating more world maps. As we're running out of memory pages on the 128k Spectrum, we'd need to put more level markers within a map, and that makes the map look busier and not as clean.

Wrk continues - it's possible that we might split the project off into a separate future project which can utilise some of these features!