Complete Balacera Brothers (run n' gun game) 1.0.5

[mersox]

UPDATE June 1 2020:

And the game is complete! I'm very happy with how it turned out

---

Following the steps of nsw25 and tontonMayonnaise , I'm now venturing into the maddening world of original games.

Balacera Brothers builds on Bloodbane 's "Contra: Locked and Loaded", and intends to have a similar tone as games like Sunset Riders and Mystic Warriors (run n' guns that are playful, colorful, energetic-but-not-too-chaotic).

My plan is to make it available on Gamejolt and (if approved) on Steam, this year.

You can read more about it at www.merso-x.com/balacera-brothers.

Check out some early in-progress videos below

 

[NED]

Great project!
I love so much the fact everything seems to have been sprited from scratch!
I'm hyped about it!

 

[mersox]

Great project!
I love so much the fact everything seems to have been sprited from scratch!
I'm hyped about it!

Thanks buddy!

congrats I love it. I get a Blues brothers vibe from it.

I have an idea id like to suggest: hire someone to make a small animated cartoon type of video to introduce characters and story, make it feel like a cartoon series. It will make people more invested in the new characters and story. (plus you never know if game is success etc then someone may like the clip and see it as a proof of concept and want to turn the game into a full fledged cartoon or movie - which would be great for cross promotion) I made a movie for Bad ass babes and it helped cross promote and build the world etc.

Great minds - I actually thought about doing something like that for the game's trailer, but I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to pull that off. In any case I'd do it myself (animation is expensive). I also thought about some adding live action clips. We'll see.

 

[NickyP]

This actually looks really cool! Congrats and good luck with your endeavor to put it out on Steam. If you plan on selling it, I hope it brings you success!

You may want to talk to DC about using Secure PAK. IIRC, he and some of the other admins have access to a tool that can make a special kind of Pak file that can't be paxploded. It was reserved in the event of someone making an original BOR mod for commercial purposes, but I don't know that it was ever actually utilized.

 

[msmalik681]

Great visuals on this good luck and I hope you will be taking this game to the android market too I will help you if you get stuck setting up the android port.

 

[darknior]

Excellent i love the idea of your game
So fun
Really wish you will sell it with a normal pak file we can use where we want, on PI or Android

 

[oldyz]

very good,  i like the idea of making a cartoon for it.
making it 4 player would be nice , since Sunset Riders seems to be the only game to feature such a thing...

 

[DCurrent]

...

There is no such thing and hasn't been for quite a few years. That was SX's baby, and as time went on he dropped support for updated engines (we're talking like 2012 at latest). These days there are ways to package up a module better than I could for you anyway.

DC

 

[mersox]

Thank you all for the kind words and good wishes!

live action would be good also- I can just really see this is an 80s style cartoon.

Man you have to spend money to make money ! Trust me it will all pay off (eventually). Make sure the release is as detailed and as big as possible.

heaps of people online you could hire for animation. Give them a budget of $200 or $300 and a length of time (2 minutes ?) and tell them what you want to see etc. If your lucky maybe even negotiate like cheaper rate and they get credit in game and shout out to their website or something. Or you could put their twitter handle or something on a billboard etc on a level.

Thanks for your input. You know that I value your opinion as a pioneer in commercial OpenBOR games.

Great visuals on this good luck and I hope you will be taking this game to the android market too I will help you if you get stuck setting up the android port.

I feel like and Android port would require heavy reworking and would be essentially a different game. Take for example the difference between Injustice for consoles vs its mobile port. So I'll focus on PC, and if by any miracle the game does well enough, I'll see about expanding to Switch.

...

There is no such and hasn't been for quite a few years. That was SX's baby, and as time went on he dropped support for updated engines (we're talking like 2012 at latest). These days there are better ways to package up a module better than I could for you anyway.

DC

I'll shoot you a PM regarding this

 

[mersox]

Thanks tontonMayonnaise !


New stage:

 

[Gurtag]

you draw all this by yourself? really stunning work man, your my hero, looking foward to see the final product.

 

[O Ilusionista]

Awesome work you done here.

 

[toviciao]

I can see a certain relationship to Bloodbane Contra Lock n louded. I will be glad to buy it on steam or Gamejolt instead.

 

[GaBoTiCo]

WOW! This game looks so good! How did you manage to make the characters "jump down" to a platform below the one they were standing on? I wanted that for my Masters of The Universe MOD.

 

[Bloodbane]

That's quite easy. You can use SLIDE animation for that and add script like this:

anim	slide
@script
    void self = getlocalvar("self"); //Get calling entity

    if(frame==1){
      changeentityproperty(self, "Subject_to_Platform", 0);
      changeentityproperty(self, "aiflag", "jumping", 1);
      changeentityproperty(self, "takeaction", "common_jump");
    }
    if(frame==2){
      changeentityproperty(self, "Subject_to_Platform", 1);
      changeentityproperty(self, "animation", openborconstant("ANI_JUMP"));
    }
@end_script
	delay	1
	offset	20 37
	bbox	2 2 36 36
	frame	data/chars/magito/jump1.png
	delay	10
	frame	data/chars/magito/jump1.png
	frame	data/chars/magito/jump2.png

The scripts simply allow character to pass platforms for 10 centisecond before disallowing

HTH

The one in Contra is more complex since there's another script to perform slide instead of drop off platform

 

[Toranks]

This is very useful for use any "subject_to"!
All these examples should be saved in the chronocrash wiki, instead of saving them one by one to my computer xD

 

[GaBoTiCo]

Bloodbane Thanks a lot! I can't wait to tey it 

Toranks Agreed!

 

[bWWd]

bloodbane i would remove bbox or disable dying when adjusting "subject to" because on respawn some stuff might stay disabled unless you took care of that on respawn or death anim and reset everything to default

Game looks great, i would derail from contra animations even more cause it deserves it, animation like jump and duck are too similar and theres noneed to, game is holding up on its own, im not sure if frontflips like that fit the characters in suits, duck animations like snipers too, i would made them more street less ninja and soldier like but thats just me.

 

[16-bit Fighter]

Congrats for this original game! It's pleasing to the eye and looks very fun!

 

[Bloodbane]

bloodbane i would remove bbox or disable dying when adjusting "subject to" because on respawn some stuff might stay disabled

I always think that on respawn everything is resetted so there's no need to disable those.
BTW bbox can't be disabled cause players by nature aren't invincible during drop off platform
Thanks for reminding though

Back to topic, mersoX, great work with the stage. I like the train at the 2nd half of the stage. The scared reaction is a good touch
My suggestion is to replace Cockatrice's (the stage boss) projectile with easier shot. The chasing projectile is really hard to dodge. A good replacement shot are:
1. medium sized shot fired at players
2. small sized shot fired forward and flies in sinusoid pattern