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Program Announcements / Purple Complex: An Arcade Style First Person Tactical Shooter

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29 games
18
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Joined: 23rd Nov 2005
Location: not entirely sure
Posted: 22nd Dec 2013 06:19 Edited at: 29th Dec 2013 00:30
PURPLE COMPLEX: An Arcade Style First Person Tactical Shooter

The aim of Purple Complex is to find the exit point of each level and escape.

Evade the guards, drones and gun emplacements using a combination of stealth, shooting and close combat in order to reach the exit point of each level.



Features:
- 25 NPC types
- 15 maps
- open world / sand box level design, there is no right way of completing any particular level.
- random level selection, from a list of over 400 but you won't play the same map twice in any single game.
- random level order
- player can choose:
-- how much health they start with
-- how much ammo they start with
-- how many levels to play, including a random number




Edit: added the above video showing a play through of a single level. It's about eight minutes long and not much happens until about six minutes in but it does highlight some of the tactical / stealth aspects of the game. Until I did this myself I didn't think it was possible.

Purple Complex is a sequel / expansion of a game I wrote in DBC called Purple Simplex:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=176499&b=10

And is based on ideas that were discussed in a thread on the game design theory board, talking about a game not having any save points:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=187417&b=19

Let me know what you think of the game and I hope you enjoy playing it.

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Kezzla
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Joined: 21st Aug 2008
Location: Where beer does flow and men chunder
Posted: 22nd Dec 2013 10:04 Edited at: 22nd Dec 2013 10:06
The game seems nice and polished. It reminds me of quake or half-life puzzles.
Minimalist level design with very simple scenery props suite the game style well.

I like the ferocity with which the enemies attack once alerted, gives you a bit of a jolt.

The difficulty and lack of saving makes walking through every door a careful maneuver.
Fighting seems like a less preferable option to stealth in this game. every bullet hit rattles the players aim which is a nice touch.


one negative thing I found was that the alarm becomes super irritating really fast.
Maybe have an initial alarm and then back it off to a quiet background noise with some kind of symbol on the screen to signify high alert.

I still haven't made it far yet. I'll have a bit more of a play later.


one last thing, are you aware that your project files are still in the folder?

Good work mate.

Kezzla

Burn retina, burn!
gwheycs62egydws
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Location: The World
Posted: 22nd Dec 2013 19:55
@29 games

i grabbed a copy ;o)

played it for a bit

every thing run's good

to move side ways - is to move forward
Since a Strait line gets thin fast
gwheycs62egydws
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Posted: 22nd Dec 2013 23:42
@29 games

i like what you did

i was wondering

i wanted to up the amount of Health point
but it looks like that is coded into file

how did you in code the amount health with a different program ?

to move side ways - is to move forward
Since a Strait line gets thin fast
Nabz_32x
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Posted: 25th Dec 2013 12:37
Wow this game is superb!

I played it now for some time and it Plays very smooth.
I also like the tactical aspect, the left right leaning does a good Job adding to this Feeling.

The only thing i miss in this game is a crosshair.

Thanks for your hard work!

seppgirty
FPSC Developer
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Location: pittsburgh, pa.
Posted: 26th Dec 2013 18:00
Gave this a play yesterday and thought it was great! Really good job! Just a straight out run and gun game like the old days. I think i will keep this on my computer.

gamer, lover, filmmaker
29 games
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Posted: 29th Dec 2013 00:37
Thanks for the comments, I'm glad people are enjoying this.

Quote: "are you aware that your project files are still in the folder?"


Yes. I decided to do this a few months back as I thought it would be a good way of unburdening myself of the project.

Quote: "I like the ferocity with which the enemies attack once alerted, gives you a bit of a jolt.
The difficulty and lack of saving makes walking through every door a careful maneuver.
Fighting seems like a less preferable option to stealth in this game. every bullet hit rattles the players aim which is a nice touch."


The game was originally intended to be a stealth game and to down play the shooting. The stealth turned out to be a weaker aspect and the shooting became much stronger. It kind of morphed into a tactical shooter.

Quote: "one negative thing I found was that the alarm becomes super irritating really fast"


Really? With your signature? I think I might've got a bit too used to the alarm after repeated exposure to it. The alarm does serve a function, in that when it stops you know there aren't any more enemies about. I also think it adds to the sense of confusing and panic. There might've been a better way to do it. I was trying to keep the hud to a minimum so I wouldn't want a alarm icon, maybe an alarm reset/alarm over sound.

Quote: "i wanted to up the amount of Health point"


This is done in the options menu of the main game. The base level of 100 is hardcoded but this is modified by the multiplier the player sets in the options menu. This multiplier is saved to a file: data_files\hard_coded\player_profile.txt, which for some reason is the only data file I didn't make human readable (look at the first part of the _extract_player_and_level_list_data subroutine if you want to be able to read it)

Quote: "how did you in code the amount health with a different program ?"


The program that created the file initially simply wrote the data to the file in the same order as the game reads it.

Quote: "I also like the tactical aspect, the left right leaning does a good Job adding to this Feeling"


I realised early on that the game could only be tactical if the player had a chance of seeing what was in the level without being seen themselves. I initially thought about using a radar but thought that being able to lean around corners was more fun.

Quote: "The only thing i miss in this game is a crosshair"


Leaving the crosshair in made aiming down the gun sights pointless and I wanted the player to have to aim. I could've made the bullets less accurate when not aiming by adding some randomness in but that went against the arcade style philosophy, which should be more about the player's skill than the characters.

Quote: "I think i will keep this on my computer"


Thanks, I'm glad it's a keeper.

One last thing, I created a new video showing some tactical / stealth action. It's a full play through of a single level, I've added the link to my original post.

Thanks for your feedback and thanks for playing.

ShellfishGames
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Posted: 21st Feb 2014 18:24
Very nice, yet very hard.
Unfortunately I didn't manage to pass a single enemy or turret yet. They always spot me before I see them and their aiming is way better than mine.

By the way, I did like the FAQ section in the readme file.

29 games
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Posted: 24th Feb 2014 02:38
Thanks for playing, that's really cool. Glad it works on your setup.

I could never quite decide if the game was too difficult or too easy. I think it just depends on what levels you get.

If it makes you feel any better, the last video I did "the plan" took about twenty attempts. I did it off-the-cuff when I was playing the game and thought it would make a nice video but it took hours to do it again, and in a manner that I thought worked as walk-through.

However, it does show the main tactic of just watching and waiting. Some of the video footage I have is just of a static screen, looking around a corner or sitting in a duct, waiting for something to come into view. I mean literally two or three minutes of just no movement at all, like the game's locked up.

The only other bit of advice I can give is to just kill everything in the level, it's the only way to be sure.

Derek Darkly
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Location: Whats Our Vector, Victor?
Posted: 26th Feb 2014 23:02
I've actually been waiting for this to come out!
Only took me 2 months to notice this thread.

Not enough of us are turning out completed projects around here, myself included, so I'm stoked to see one.

Now I just have to try and not get in trouble at work while enjoying it.

Your video captures are very clean, what program are you using?
(I assume it's not FRAPS, but I could be wrong.)

666GO†O666
29 games
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Posted: 27th Feb 2014 17:17
I used FRAPS to do the video and Windows Movie Make to edit them together (which I need more practice at). The reason my earlier videos on the WIP thread were poor quality was that Youtube didn't like the resolution I'd used.

Quote: "Not enough of us are turning out completed projects"


It does seem to be rare for a game to make it off the WIP board and onto here. Projects can turn into a grind, I started this back 2010 and almost gave up. I think it's a case of just gritting your teeth, not letting yourself get sidetracked and being willing to make a few compromises to get something finished.

Anyway, thanks for playing. Hope you don't get into too much trouble at work.

29 games
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Posted: 31st Mar 2014 22:03
I never knew this appeared in the news letter, that's so cool!

http://www.thegamecreators.com/pages/newsletters/newsletter_issue_131.html

Wasp
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Posted: 10th Jun 2014 12:51
Wow, this is so cool! You made this all by yourself?

World's worst signature - ever!
TheComet
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Location: I`m under ur bridge eating ur goatz.
Posted: 12th Jun 2014 00:04
It feels a little sluggish. This comes from the low gravity and slow movement speed of the player. It'd be awesome if you could somehow speed that up a little so it doesn't feel like we're jumping around on the moon.

Otherwise great job, and nice mechanics!

29 games
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Posted: 26th Jun 2014 19:55
Quote: "You made this all by yourself?"


Yes. The only thing I didn't do 100% myself were the sound effects. About half of them are based on sounds that came with DBPro and DBC, although I did have to edited all of them to get them to work the way I wanted.

Quote: "feel like we're jumping around on the moon"


I know what you mean. I don't think I got the jumping and falling quite right. Originally there wasn't going to be as much plat forming but that aspect increased as I started making the levels more vertical and the distance and height the player had to jump got bigger.

I'm really glad I finished it and I'm happy with how the game turned out overall. It's had over 100 downloads on indieDB, which I'm quite pleased with.

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