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First of all, hello everyone! This is my first post on these forums, and I look forward to becoming a part of TGC community.

But on to the main point of this post, to tell you about a game I'm making with DarkBASIC Pro.

The title of the game is Spectre Swarm, as you may have guessed from the title of this thread. It is a top-down shooting game with a somewhat (in my opinion) arcade-like style to the way it's played.

I'm still playing with the story a bit, and how I plan on presenting it in the game, but here's what I have so far. You are a (so far) un-named character who is an explorer. When your team of explorers finds a hidden temple, you, well... explored it.
But in doing so, you have accidentally unlocked the gate that shuts a passage to the world of the dead, and now many Spectres are flooding the Earth. The gate shattered into many pieces, and the Spectres scattered the pieces, placing them in labyrinths hidden all around the world. Now it's up to you to find each gate piece. Now, dealing with ghosts can be dangerous, so how do you confront them? With a super anti-ghost pistol of course! Your gun is made for ghost combat by some crazy scientist guy, and shoots a particle blast with a large radius, for easy dispatching of pesky Spectres.

Each level is a maze and the point of each level is to find the gate piece in the maze. You will not have to stumble your way through the maze like a lost sheep.. There is an arrow on your screen indicating the general direction in which you must travel. Controls are simple. The up arrow moves you forward, the down arrow moves you backward, the left and right arrows turn your character. In addition, while the control key is held, your character will turn faster (in case you need to turn around quickly ). The space key will shoot your gun. Upon shooting your gun you will have to recharge it for a short period of time, indicated at the bottom of the screen. Each level has a certain number of enemies that you are required to kill before you can move on. I put that in there to discourage people from simply running away from the enemies. Both the number of kills needed to pass the level and the number of kills you have accumulated are displayed on the bottom of the screen.

And now for the part you actually care about... Screenies!


^^ A shot of the first level. See that white blob? That's the ghost zapping goodness of your gun.


^^ A shot of the second level


^^ A shot of the second level, with one of the gate pieces that you are searching for just in front of the player.

I also have a simple demo ready, but I have yet to decide how to upload it to the web. So that's coming soon.

Here's what I got so far:
Game Engine
2 Levels
Adjustable Difficulty level
A couple of sound effects

Here's what I'm planning on:
More Levels
Integrating the story in somehow
Music
A more pleasing visual presentation
More sound effects

Here's what I'm thinking about adding:
Split-screen Co-op and/or versus modes

I am open to suggestions or C+C, if anyone has them!

Looks nice but shouldn't it have a character not a arrow?

It does have a character, it's in the middle of the screen (kind of hard to see ).

I think there is a character.. he just has the same color like the ground. [Edit: Oh, you already posted it... strange, I didn't see the post, though I refreshed my browser]

@PizzaX82: Welcome to the forum. (Jey, I always wanted to say that!)
Looks promising. The story doesn't sound really innovative, but at least as it would let you enough freedom to make a funny and motivating game.

If you don't want to upload a demo right now, you could capture a video.

Nice job, keep up the work! Welcome to the forums. Its nice to have you. We need more people with first posts like yours

Thanks for the welcomes, I appreciate it.



Nah, I'll get the demo up soon, I just have to get around to hosting it. I'll probably use Filefront or something.

Edit: Here it is. It includes 2 levels.

http://files.filefront.com/Spectre+Swarm+Demozip/;8458503;/fileinfo.html

Sorry for the slapdash title and difficulty choosing screen. It's a pretty early demo. When it asks you to chose a difficulty setting, enter a number 1 to 5 and then press enter.

And yes, the enemies are supposed to be able to go through walls (they are ghosts after all). Don't forget to hold the control key if you need to turn quickly. It will be hard to win without it.

And now for a question for you guys: I've found a couple of bugs.

1) Sometimes, in the second level (for some reason it seems to happen a lot, only as you near the bottom part of the level), the player gets stuck on the wall. I'm using Sparky's Collision DLL with the help of RUCCUS' sliding collision function for my collision. (My apologies in advance if I could have found this somewhere on the forum, I did look).

2) Rarely, the gun shoots behind the player rather than in front. I'll dig up the code I used for that soon but I g2g for now.

Any other help, C+C, suggestions or questions are appreciated.

Its not that bad. The player turns a little to slow though.

Have you tried holding the control key? It makes the player turn faster, or was that still too slow?