Rob C, Making FoxPro Misbehave

I originally added Pong to Galactic Gladiators simply because of its place in gaming history. It is one of the earliest and most recognisable video games ever made, so it felt like exactly the sort of thing BARF might have hidden away in the ship’s computer. At first, it was just going to be a … Read more

Every new sound effect added to Galactic Gladiators makes the battle feel more alive. The small fighters now have their own weapon sound. The medium ships fire with considerably more authority. Missiles hit the player with a proper impact, ships arrive with mechanical pulses, explosions have weight, and the appearance of an etheric hole is … Read more

Today’s work on Galactic Gladiators began with a simple sound effect for two medium-sized enemy ships entering the final battle. As usual, “add a sound” turned out not to be quite that simple. First, an ethereal sound was added for the dimensional opening. Then a heavier mechanical pulse was timed to begin when the ships … Read more

What sounded like a tiny improvement became one of the most stubborn problems in Galactic Gladiators so far. I had found a much better sound for the ship’s boost: a long, stuttering cinematic riser that made acceleration feel genuinely powerful. The plan seemed simple: The music obediently became quieter. The WAV, however, refused to cooperate. … Read more

The latest Galactic Gladiators encounter now features two medium support ships, each arriving with a pair of smaller craft attached beneath them. Three act as conventional escorts, adding staggered fire while protecting their carrier. The fourth behaves rather differently. Known internally as the Sneak, it hides behind the formation, briefly peeks out to fire, retreats … Read more

Tonight’s experiments were mostly about feedback and fairness. I finally added persistent high scores to the pilot profiles. If a player beats their previous best, the score is saved against that pilot and survives restarting the game. That deserved a little more ceremony than simply changing a number, so the Game Over sequence now announces: … Read more

Tonight I added something fairly conventional to Galactic Gladiators: health indicators for enemies that take more than one hit. The smaller fighters still explode with a single shot, so they don’t need one. The heavier support ship now reveals a small health bar after its first hit, which immediately makes it clear that this particular … Read more

There has been rather a lot of progress since my last update. What started as another experiment in seeing how far I could push Visual FoxPro is beginning to develop some actual game systems — and, more importantly, some decisions for the player to make. The asteroid field has had a lot of work. The … Read more

A few days ago, I was genuinely wondering whether I had pushed Visual FoxPro too far. I had created an enormous, highly detailed mothership that filled most of the screen. It looked impressive standing still, but the moment smaller ships flew across it, everything flickered horribly. For an arcade game, that was a fairly fundamental … Read more