Heli-Rescue

Dev diaries
#1

One of my favourite 8-bit budget games was Operation Gunship. This is a tribute, of sorts, to that game from 1989.

It’s pretty simple - you fly a helicopter through enemy territory blowing up stuff, picking up hostages and returning them safely to base. And staying alive while doing all that, obviously.

Once again, Defold has made the development process way easier than I’d imagined, some modules and game mechanics being done in minutes.

Not much more to say right now so here’s some gameplay footage.

26 Likes
#2

This looks awesome! Can’t wait to play it :smiley:

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#3

Congrats to your progress! Loved those games as well ( ah Desert Strike/Jungle Strike! )… wish you luck on this title.

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#4

Cool, looking forward to playing it! :slight_smile:

+1 for the audio as well

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#5

This is awesome man. CLASSIC retro stuff!!!

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#6

Hell yeah, those game were awesome. There was also a similar one (a bit more arcadish) where you sometimes drove a tank instead of playing a copter. All I remember is the word “OVERKILL!” across the screen when you really got into the destruction.

EDIT: The game in question is Seek and Destroy.

A bit of advice - one way to make a game like this awesome is to make everything destructible. Bridges, roads, people, vegetation. Have trees explode in a tiny mushroom cloud. Have soldiers explode in blood. Let the player leave craters everywhere and make everything explode. At least that has been my experience.

Games like this, each and every background detail you can’t blow up leaves a touch of sadness on my soul whenever I come across it.

4 Likes
#7

Looks really awesome, can’t wait to try it out! Is there a chance of multiplayer? :slight_smile:

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#8

One week of development on Heli-Rescue has elapsed and I’m very happy with the amount of progress so far.

Most of the core game mechanics are in and working well. One tileset is nearly complete as are most of the sound effects.

I’m posting up a demo on the commity page (link below) so anyone can have a go. The aim of the game is search and rescue. A number of hostages are located throughout each island, either out in the open or within buildings. Once said buildings have been destroyed the hostage can then be picked. The rescued hostages will then need returning to base - the little red arrow around your helicopter always points back to base. You may also need to return to base during a mission to refuel and rearm. Note that your armour is only replenished between levels.

Further plans for this game include.

  • New environment tileset
  • Different helicopters
  • Ability to choose armourments
  • Enemy soliders on the ground

No plans for multi-player - sorry! It’s a bit late in the day to be trying to implement that.

Play HTML5 demo in browser

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#9

I love it :slight_smile: Congrats to your progress!

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#10

Played the demo, and as I played it, a word rang and rang in my mind, a word called, AWESOME. Just like the classic 90s games, prefectly retro. It also reminded me of a failed game that I tried to make months ago, and failed miserably (:sob:),. Anyways, nice concept, nice gameplay, nice balance (I just died in the first level man!!). Best of luck for future development.

BTW if you ever need some quick assets for this kind and/or some other prototype, check him out . Man he has tons of sprites of everything required in a shmup, and 100% destructible. :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#11

Nice!

I wonder how is playing for others in the browser. For me Chrome is a little jerky in the scrolling, while Firefox and Safari are smooth.

I’m on a Macbook pro 13 2018 (integrated graphic)

#12

Runs smoothly on both Firefox and Chrome for Windows running on my Thinkpad E560.

#13

Played it a bit. Happy to report that the destructibility of the environment is acceptable and pretty satisfying when it come to the larger warehouses.

I’ll give you more in-depth feedback later, but I’ll be definitely following this closely. This looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun.

4 Likes
#14

btw, did you all notice how nice the forum discussion is now integrated into the game page on the portal?


(me = shameless topic stealer)

9 Likes
#15

A few minor additions this update!

  • Choice of 3 different helicopters, each with different characteristics
  • 4 completed levels to play through
  • Added a shadow to the player to give the impression of height
  • Mini-radar added for navigation
  • A few graphical and sound additions and improvments

Plus the usual tweaks and bug fixes.

HTML5 build has been updated on the community page

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#16

Looking great!!!

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#17

Looks good! It would be cool to have the chopper tilt a bit when you turn it :slight_smile: Have you thought about side-by-side strafing instead of the current rotation? Somehow I instinctively feel that a helicopter strafes but I might be wrong! Good job either way

1 Like
#18

Thanks @jhonny.goransson ! You can strafe already using the Q and E buttons. It takes a little while to get the hang of it but it can be quite useful for avoiding enemy fire.

1 Like
#19

Ah, didn’t know! Cool, I’ll test it as well.

Edit: Just noticed that the rotor blades aren’t showing in the shadow, any plans to add it? It would look nice!

2 Likes
#20

Development on Heli-Rescue draws to a close. The first ‘final’ release is available on itch.io here. These native builds provide the best player experience - lag free and fullscreen.

Also, the HTML5 build has been updated on the Community Page if you just want a quick blast.

Barring any serious bugs that pop up, I’m drawing a line under this project today. It’s been good fun to develop this game and it turned out better than I’d initially imagined.

Thanks again to everyone who played the pre-release demos and offered suggestions.

See you in the next devlog thread, whatever that may be!

7 Likes