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weak · Joined: 13 Jan 2005 Posts: 114 Location: Vienna, Austria

we've just released Callisto 0.2, you can get it at http://fraglab.at/callisto

Changes include:

* new planet to raid
* online highscores
* improved audio and visuals
* new enemies and weapons
* new powerups
* map statistics
* new enemy and bullet patterns
* bugfixes

full resolution screenshots and online hiscores here

Readme:

AnonymousTipster · Joined: 01 Jul 2005 Posts: 197

Awesome stuff.
I know this has been in development for several months, and you've done a good job too.
Graphics are pretty nice, especially the boss. Did your team model it from scratch? It looks sort of familiar.
Two tiny little niggles: When you die and you lose your power-ups, it would be nice if they were the same colour as you picked them up (so if you picked up all red, they come out of you all red).
Also, the High score name system comes up a bit too fast, and I end up entering my name as AAAAA because i'm still holding down X.
Just tiny little improvements on a perfect game.
As for difficulty, I didn't find it too hard, but only if you can continue from the next level, and don't have to finish the first level again and again.

Great stuff, can't wait for the next version!

weak · Joined: 13 Jan 2005 Posts: 114 Location: Vienna, Austria

first of all, thx a lot for the feedback tipster!

rmedtx · Joined: 13 Sep 2005 Posts: 14 Location: USA

Thanks for your comments and feedback AnonymousTipster, ;)
To answer your question; Yes the boss was created from scratch by The Lead artist Pimpot.
Weak I see you beat me to answer this one ;)

AnonymousTipster · Joined: 01 Jul 2005 Posts: 197

Wow, the last boss really does look superb, it looks like it was inspired by the HL2 striders, am I right?
I think that pimpot should model the player's ship, because that would look pretty awesome.

Also, with the end of the game, it shows you some of the other levels. Are all these levels finished, and you're releasing them level by level, or are they just mock-ups of the artwork that is being worked on for the next version?

EDIT: One other thing, are the levels hard coded, or are they read from files? There seems to be some files in map0, but do these files dictate the whole level, or are they only related to a particular part (e.g. Background movement, image paths) and the rest of the level hard coded?

weak · Joined: 13 Jan 2005 Posts: 114 Location: Vienna, Austria

AnonymousTipster · Joined: 01 Jul 2005 Posts: 197

Like the concept, looks nice!
If you could get a full alpha channel working, some green fog would be cool. This could be acheived by a screen quad with an alpha channel, and wouldn't use up the RAM, wheras a bitmap would use up quite a bit.
I guessed that the maps would be hard coded, because some of the level features would need scripting, which would take ages unless you used LUA as the scripting language, but it's still very impressive.

Probably my favourite homebrew so far.
Keep up the good work!

sandberg · Joined: 05 Oct 2005 Posts: 90 Location: Denmark

Very nice work ..
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Wraggster · Joined: 26 Aug 2005 Posts: 121

you have done a great job, its a real awesome addition to the PSP scene :)
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mICrO · Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 25 Location: Madrid (Spain)

Damm, I'm on my parents, for xmas hollidays and cant check it , becouse I din't bring the USB cable :(, I hope to check it soon, but looks great.

Seens to be a nices work :)

Best Regards
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dot_blank · Joined: 28 Sep 2005 Posts: 498 Location: Brasil

very well designed game ;)
artwork, user controls, AI system
all flawless ....except for high score screen
this would be most impressive
display of psp hb full production game

much great work :)
and the boss models are excellent

background map artwork is terrific
and look forward to more excellent
interesting artwork by holger :)
and forward coming maps to continue
play

EDIT: tested on 2.0 psp (loader 8.5 using 222mhz)
works and looks great ....some problems
to take a special look at

1.ok at title screen everything under start
works properly....using default audio options

personal note: would like to see seperate
options inside options labeled like audio options
video options, difficulty options, etc...with music
volume and stuff underneath audio options

....nice shoutout ;D

2. start of game loader is partly not visible
could do nicely with a 1 pixel white outline
to show user that its there more clearly
and maybe alter loader bar color instead of dark
grey

3. and finally at end of loader progress
the game crash :P ....would be nice to fix
this for 2.0 so those who have can experience
the wonderful work put into this game :)

thats all the bugs for now ;P
cheers
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reakt · Joined: 06 May 2005 Posts: 22 Location: Basingstoke, UK

This is dope! Awesome music and graphics. A well-polished homebrew game!
Suggestions for improvement: have a difficulty setting. I found it very difficult - especially with that little turret at the bottom - he pops up and actually aims at me, or seems to! Perhaps the game should start off easy and get more difficult - like R-Type.

I really look forward to the next map.

Seek · Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 5 Location: San Diego, Ca

The game looks great, and the difficulty level seems right on.

The Theme and BG music .wav's combine for about 11MB. Removing either causes the game to freeze, and reencoding the music causes it to play very fast, and eventually freeze the game.

When I get the chance I'll try replacing the music files with short silent files to see if the game is still stable.

dr_watson · Joined: 28 Nov 2005 Posts: 42

Very nice indeed! Very impressive parallax scrolling.

I'm still stuck at the 1st level boss and the boss is really nice! Was it a 3D model?

Didn't see much (or no?) alpha blending (explosion etc...) in the game. Was it done on purpose?

Keep up the good works! Looking forward to the final version!

weak · Joined: 13 Jan 2005 Posts: 114 Location: Vienna, Austria

Arwin · Joined: 12 Jul 2005 Posts: 426

- i'm afraid it won't work on 2.0 even without soundfiles, won't free enough mem.

It could depend on what the loading bar means. It got really, really close to the end of the loading bar when I tried it.

Pushwall · Joined: 06 Jan 2006 Posts: 1

Very cool game! In fact, this is the first homebrew game I put on my PSP and was blown away with quality. Great stuff!!
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rmedtx · Joined: 13 Sep 2005 Posts: 14 Location: USA

weak · Joined: 13 Jan 2005 Posts: 114 Location: Vienna, Austria

update released. details at the top of the thread

AnonymousTipster · Joined: 01 Jul 2005 Posts: 197

Very nice work. I like the improvements you've made!
The style of the level is very good (I like the smog at the bottom), and it's cool how some of the enemies come out of the tree trunk.
Level seems longer than the last, but I can't quite be sure. The boss fight was awesome, like the last version.
As with Gradius, the game feels more exciting once you've got the speed up, and the game feels a bit like R-Type too, with the addition of the enemies that swirl around you.
Online Scoreboard is very cool (just uploaded a little score now) and i'm sure it will get some competition. Online scores is something i've been looking into for my next ThrottleX release, except the scores could be uploaded via WiFi.
Nothing in the way of bugs or annoyances that I've found yet.

Possible future improvements:
1. More levels (obviously ^_^ )
2. Multi-player co-op (online co-op would be even better!)
3. More 'Options'/Options upgrade to more powerful versions once max number is reached.
4. Game remembers last name you input, so you don't have to re-type it each time.

crowba · Joined: 15 Oct 2005 Posts: 13

Realy nice game.. i just played it the last couple of hours. You done a great job doing this from scratch. Its totally impressive and YES addictive even in this Version 0.2

My 3 cent on some improvements

-Maybe builtin a Heat System that heats up when shooting at high frequency for a long time

-a nice idea that you can change the powerups with shooting but it was anoying for me since they always flew around me exactly in the color that i dont need :D

-a shop system would be totally nice to waste your earned money on some powerups and goodies

-the invincible time after a crash is a bit short, i often directly flew into another bullet and died again

-MORE weapons and ship enhancements :)

I really cant wait for the next version.. the Online Highscore system is just a brilliant Idea, i hope more authors adopt this system (PSPtris)

weak · Joined: 13 Jan 2005 Posts: 114 Location: Vienna, Austria

AnonymousTipster · Joined: 01 Jul 2005 Posts: 197

Another thing you could do is have enemies come from the left. A couple of seconds before they arrive, some arrows would appear to warn you (like in Radio Zonde) then the enemies would fly in from behind and swoop around so you could shoot them. You could also have a powerup that allowed you to shoot behind you.
Other possible power ups:
1.Temporary or 1-hit shield protection
2.Extra bombs (maybe shop-only item)
3.Mega Beam (you could collect 4 power ups to 'charge' the weapon, then get X seconds of a really powerful beam, like in Heavy Weapon)
4.Mini-ship (makes your ship small for a period of time, meaning it's harder to hit, but your shots stay the same size)
5.Mega-ship (your ship becomes very large and invulnerable for a time, you stop shooting and have to run into enemies to kill them, like in Parodius)
6.Magnet-bomb (the bomb is thrown out in front of the ship, then activates, sucking nearby enemies into it, making them easier to dispatch). An alternative on this would be the black hole which would suck in and destroy them. I'm sure you could have some fun manipulating the display buffer to give a cool 'warp' effect for this one ^_^

Drakonite · Site Admin Joined: 17 Jan 2004 Posts: 989

Your website (specifically the screenshot new window code (BAAD!) ) does not work in firefox...

And I'm moving this to release announcements, since it seems to be the place for it?
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weak · Joined: 13 Jan 2005 Posts: 114 Location: Vienna, Austria

Drakonite · Site Admin Joined: 17 Jan 2004 Posts: 989

AnonymousTipster · Joined: 01 Jul 2005 Posts: 197

Er, website works perfect here too. If you haven't got 1.5.0.4, then try upgrading and see if it improves stability. You might need to configure JS or tab settings if it doesn't work.
In Tools-Options-Tabs you might have set it to Force into new tab. Check that.

crowba · Joined: 15 Oct 2005 Posts: 13

weak · Joined: 13 Jan 2005 Posts: 114 Location: Vienna, Austria

i love the 'award' idea. would be nice to get medals for destryoing 100% of the enemies, etc... and show that in the online scores.

and i like a lot of the other ideas too. definitely some good suggestions, thx again.

crowba · Joined: 15 Oct 2005 Posts: 13

if you need a beta tester who is able to speak german with a lot of free time in the next month just drop mail :D