Diamond Raiding, updates and much regurgitations

Well, as promised, I'm updating the Dev Lab blog and will be doing so regularly this time, honestly! (Assuming anyone cares in the first place)

Overview of the game:

Anyhow, my latest game in the laboratory cooking pot is Diamond Raider. Diamond Raider is based off the classic Atari 800 game Crystal Raider by Matthew Trimby. The aim of the game is to raid all the diamonds in a room without being hit by a foe or hazard. You also shouldn't linger in the same room for too long or your oxygen will run out (mostly due to foe's harsh odour!).

It's being developed in Flash with a premium feature set in mind (not a simple average 3 minute throwaway flash game as many are) with features such as save / loading, open-ended rooms (like the original), profile system, speed run mode and other fuller game features.

It was first announced on Flash Games License (if you have an account, you can try it here) and the mochi forums (both for the purposes sponsorship, so if you happen to be one, don't be shy). Because of this, this issue will be mostly a regurgitation of the aforementioned mochi post (ironically, most of the mochi post is a regurgitation of the FGL post, so I guess the majority of this post is one whole regurgitation of, well, other regurgitations).

It's still in development and I'll be charting it's development throughout, here's a list of the current features completed:

This version showcases the following features:

• Complete Classic gameplay mechanic
• 10 (open ended) Rooms
• Original levels as in the original game
• Day and Night time modes as the original
• Modern elements for the modern gamer
• 4-Slot local Profile system for saving of username, settings and hi-score (this of course can be replaced with custom valid API(s))
• Local hi-score for extra motivation and faithfulness to the original
• Pixel Perfect collision

In addition to thee above:

The finished game will include:

• 50 (open ended) rooms (10 are on display in this version)
• Speed Run game mode (Looking for a good solution / api to save username, time and score for each room)
• Token-based Save & Load system (awarded for each cleared room for challenge)
• Online-Hi score menu for Raider mode (That's featured here and is the default mode)
• (Maybe) A choice of characters (female etc)
• And obviously any fixes and improvements where valid

Known issues:

• May be a delay in sound due to error in flash cs4 compiler (I think)
• Exiting through west and east (left and right) pathways while jumping can result in misplacement of player's position in new room.

So why Crystal Raider:

Simple, I think it's the best way for me to knock out a quick game and make a some dollars (or pounds, I'm not fussy) quickly. In addition to this, I... No, no, just kidding. First and foremost, it's one of my all time favourite classic games as well as one I've had a lot of ideas for which makes the development process a lot easier. Secondly for me it's the right level of learning curve, challenge and ease. Thirdly, I think it fit's perfectly into my current focus and strategy for Eternal Syndrome, I'll guess we'll see on that one.

I've got a bigger plan for Diamond Raider then what's on current display (and this is perhaps where most of the premium part lies), but I need to do some proof of concept on the head / paper ideas in the lab and see where they fit (they don't necessarily fit with THIS iteration perhaps).

Anyway, I'll talk more about it tomorrow or something, this social networking stuff is tiring

Updates:

Other then that, I've put a new sexy flash rss news widget thingy on the site courtesy of springwidgets with the idea being pushing content via my forum's rss, so updating news should be a little easier and up to the minute. In addition to this I got a few things on the cooker which I'll blog about when and where valid.

Forgive me in advance if there's a bunch of spelling mistakes or grammatically errors etc, I figured (at least in this context) if I don't stress on these things too heavily as I use to, I might actually keep this up for once, for me (at the least) if not for anyone else, so later!