Upcoming: Spiders on a Starship

Community Showcases
1

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on a new game for about a month now called Spiders on a Starship.

It is still a work in progress, but I thought it would be good to get everyone’s opinions about it during this stage in the development process.

The basic story is that you are the sole survivor onboard a transport ship that has become overrun with spiders. Your goal is to collect fuel cells and power up the long range radio system to alert Earth of the impending invasion. In other words, it’s a survival/maze game. I’ve been focusing heavily on the gameplay aspect at this point, and I wanted something that was a little different than just having a gun that you shoot stuff with. So I looked at one of my favorite old time games, LodeRunner, and adopted the mechanics where you set traps for the bad guys to fall into. In this case, you can set up force fields to trap the spiders. But the catch is that you can wind up blocking yourself into a corner if you’re not careful.

The game has a few upgrade items, like X-Ray, where you can see through walls for a few seconds until your energy meter runs out, and Shockwave, where you get to blast everything in a given radius during a 15 second period.

One thing to note is that every level is generated on-the-fly, so you play the game a second time around and things are completely different. It helps keep the replay value up. Of course, you can save your game and reload it at a later time to pick up where you left off.

Right now the walls look a bit bland, but I’ll be adding some “decorations” like fans, windows, cables, etc to spice it up a bit. Again I’ve been focusing more on the mechanics than anything else.

Here’s a brief gameplay video:

My goal is to hopefully release it on Steam in a couple months. I’ve not done this before, so any feedback or advice would be appreciated.

Also, if you’re interested, check out my blog at http://www.spidersonastarship.com

Thanks,
Daniel

1 Like
2

Honestly this looks SO AMAZING I WANNA BUY IT

3

Shoot me a PM with your email and I’ll hook you up with a beta release if you want.

4

Anyone else with some feedback on what they see so far?

5

I’ve made a few changes since the last update here. In case anyone is interested:


And my blog: www.spidersonastarship.com

2 Likes
6

Really cool! Bookmarked your blog :slight_smile:

7

Recently improved the HUD and added windows:

3 Likes
8

This is outstanding. Reminds me of “old school” games and yet it has a strong modern vibe to it as well. It’s amazing as many games that are made around here how few seem to be “real” games like this one.

Great work! Looks like your old Assembly skills paid off in the end… only in C#.

I’d like to check out a beta version when ready.

1 Like
9

Spiders on a Starship is now up for vote on Greenlight!

Link:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=862121103

10

This weekend I took the time to work on an aspect of the game that has been sorely lacking, in my opinion, namely the heads-up display (HUD). I rearranged and redrew the icons in Photoshop and Illustrator, and I think the result is a pretty decent improvement from what it was originally:


1920×1080 315 KB


1920×1080 219 KB

Also, if you’re interested in trying out an alpha build drop me a line.

11

One integral part of most games is what is known as a Level Editor. This feature allows one to create customized levels that can also be shared with others.

As luck would have it, it turned out to be fairly easy for me to add this feature to Spiders on a Starship owing in large part to the modular framework that it is based upon. I started just a couple days ago and am almost finished with it:


1920×1080 493 KB


1920×1080 511 KB

The player can alter the size and shape of each maze, as well as add and remove spiders, place the fuel cell, and so forth. When finished, the mazes can be saved to file and loaded as an ordinary game. I am also thinking of adding a multiplayer component, and the custom maze levels could be part of that as well.

1 Like
12

It has been about a month since my last post, and that’s in large part because I’ve been experimenting with adding in multiplayer functionality. Believe me, it is no small task.

For starters, I decided to write my own custom game server. This allows me to add whatever features I might want with no restrictions. So it has the customary leaderboard, statistics, etc. I won’t go into too much technical detail on it, but I have written chat programs in the past and the logic here is not terribly different, just tedious to build from scratch, which is what I did. About 9000 lines of code in the course of 10 days. And it works, beautifully I might add. It also acts as the gateway for UDP hole punching, so that users behind somewhat strict NAT setups can still communicate.

Having developed the game server, I then proceeded to add in the multiplayer code into Spiders on a Starship. This too was not exactly trivial, but suffice to say it has started to move from “proof of concept” to a reality.

To demonstrate this, I have put together a short video clip of a multiplayer game comprised of three players. They are shown as yellow spheres. I have also added a new unit called the “Argos”, it is a mobile radar unit that displays the locations of the other players.



And here’s the video:

There is still a lot of work to be done. There will be more units like the Argos. The player models will be actual character models, etc. But much of the work in the past month was devoted to getting the core multiplayer functionality to work. And as it now appears to be feasible, I am optimistic about adding in other game units and mechanics.

2 Likes
13

It’s been a few months since my last update but I am still developing Spiders on a Starship.

Since my last post, I have added full multiplayer support, a leaderboard, and scorestreak system. I’ve also optimized the game to make it play better on lower-end systems.

Just to recap, each level is a randomly generated maze comprised of a number of spiders that you have to either eliminate or trap while seeking out the fuel cell for capture.

In multiplayer mode, you can play team vs team, and the first team to get X number of captures wins (I’m thinking 10 captures). You are also scored based on how quickly you complete the levels. You can also play a Solo run and your score shows up on the global leaderboard.



I’ve also been thinking about a name change. Here’s a few I’ve thought of, but I would certainly like to hear any suggestions you might have:

  1. Spiders on a Starship (existing name)
  2. Arachnid Arena
  3. Arachnid Playground
  4. Spider Runner
  5. …?

Thanks,
Daniel

1 Like
14

Solid progress! Would love to see a new gameplay video!

I would either stick to Spiders on a Starship or Arachnid Arena (or maybe Arachno Arena?)
Spider is more clear than Arachnid I’d say though.
Spider Runner sounds like an endless runner to me, I’d avoid that one.

1 Like
15

You already have #1 google ranking for “Starship Spiders” :slight_smile:

2 Likes
16

Thanks PhilippG - glad you like what you see so far :slight_smile:

One of the main considerations I have is trying to make sure I understand who my audience is, so that I can make the game more accessible to the kind of person who would play it.

If I were to position it as a “shooter” type game, I think people may be turned off if they were to compare it to other shooters that have hand-made levels with lots of decorations and that sort of thing.

On the other hand, if I position it as a more of a “maze” type game, people who like mazes would (hopefully) tend to rate it highly, since at its core it is a maze game with the levels being generated as such.

So I’ve been experimenting with reducing the emphasis on it being a shooter by lessening the number of opponents per level and leaving the player to focus more on capturing the fuel cell. I’ve also experimented with replacing the spiders with robots to make it (possibly) appeal to more people.

In any case, here are two current game play videos, one with the spider theme, and the other with a robot theme:

Spider Theme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esbqoD822UA

Robot Theme:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1aAVo7YQvM

With the emphasis on it being a maze game, it has two different game types: time trial and endurance. With time trial, it scores the player based on how quickly he/she is able to complete a round of 10 levels. With endurance, it scores the player based on how many levels he/she is able to complete.

Any feedback on this? Do you favor the spider theme, or would the robot theme appeal to more people?

2 Likes
17

For me the spider theme appeals more - it is just much more fresh and unique.
Watching the videos, it actually reminds me a lot of pac man.

There is an emphasis on overcoming the opponents with many tools to choose from. That said, did you try to limit the use of the gun or remove it altogether? It seems a bit overpowered with the fast cooldown and might keep players from using all the other cool things you have.

1 Like
18

Please tell me there’s a point where the player gets to shout: “Enough is enough! I have had it with these MF’ing spiders on this MF’ing ship!”

1 Like
19

But of course :slight_smile:

20

Pacman-type gameplay is pretty close to what I’m going for. I’m definitely going to stick with the spider theme now that I’ve thought about it some more, as I do think it is advantageous to have a sort of unique rather than generic maze environment.

I’m still trying to figure out how much to limit the gun. Truth be told, yes, it looks powerful when you are faced with just a small handful of spiders (they pop easily), but when you get a good number of them going at you it is overwhelming. So I’m going to have to make sure I balance out the number of spiders correctly and/or adjust the phaser power so as to encourage the player to use the scorestreak bonus items a bit more often.

Meanwhile, today I updated the room that the player starts in to make it a little less bland, by adding windows and a domed ceiling with a hole through which you can see the stars (when that skybox is used- the game cycles through skyboxes based on what level you are on):

1 Like