I made big improvements in this new version of the DFS (Deep Space Forensics), sadly at a measurable hit to fps. This time I’m making it sized to its native size (640×480) though, so it should go faster without any need to resize your browser. I’m still looking into ways to make it go faster; hopefully I’ll find some. If I can’t, this project is not going any further.

There are plenty of changes between this version of the last. The most notable one is the lighting. If you weren’t impressed by the first prototype, this might do it. The light actually looks like it’s a light rather than a weird blob of washout. I also made it a cone for coolness (and secondarily performance). The controls were also substantially altered, now being a mouse+keyboard control scheme instead of all keyboard. With this change I also added a boost usable by pressing space while holding a movement key. This might be taken out (it’s a bit overpowered) but it’s in there now. Clicking is now the grapple function instead of the spacebar. I somewhat liked the keyboard scheme better because it gives the player more responsiveness when rotating the pod, but I think the mouse movement is more intuitive. I’m going to make them toggleable if this game is continued. On the gameplay side of things I redesigned the lower section of the first level to make it more linear and understandable, and added circles as physical objects.

In the spirit of my Platform engine prototype I made DSF an author-oriented design in mind (easily changeable objects and rapid creation of levels within Flash CS4), so it will more than likely be easy for me to get the levels together once I have all the different objects programmed and compatible. This also means that I’m able to adapt it to whatever other task. Maybe once I’m done with this project I could work on it and release it as an framework for eas(y|ier) game creation in Flash. I have a lot of stuff to implement before I’m able to do that though.

Link: DeepSpaceForensicsProto2.html