Bet you thought I'd forgotten or just couldn't do it this year. Well, the world tried hard, but I'm going to win here. How does that make you react?
I for one gladly welcome a belated Halloween hurrah! :D
Anything to push back Christmas taking over November...
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Thanks, y'all. I miss that guy terribly. I still have a link saved in my bookmarks to this crazy Google sheet we did together with a few other people where we used bizarre formatting and made colored-cell art in the spreadsheet, and then (of course) hid a bunch of game keys in it that were first-come-first-served for our little group. It was super fun, and it was his idea...he was always coming up with stuff like that.
I went to open it up, just for nostalgia, and it's been deleted...still can't bring myself to delete the bookmark.
I kind of figured it was time to bring some real fun back around here. It's what he would have wanted. So here we are. 🙂
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He died. We've confirmed this with his family. Appears to have been a pulmonary embolism. Everyone is very, very sad.
There's a community train going in his honor. Hop on board or add some carts of your own. It's the kind of thing he would've loved.
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Participate in the community train. Remember him well. That's what he'd want.
I wake up every day sad about this. I'll crest the wave soon, and working on this event helped, because it's done in the same spirit that he always embodied. But it just sucks to have lost him after he battled cancer and won. :(
We were basically the same age, too. Born within a few months of one another. That just makes me feel it extra...feels so very real. Miss that guy.
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mood music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ZSwdLt0jU
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No joke, I was clearing out my recycle bin not two months ago and saw bttdfwyc in there. That soundtrack will haunt my dreams...
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Humpty Bumpty, you fools!
The game and the trains are LIVE!
(well, after you read all of that text I took the time to write...seriously, there's stuff in there you'll want to know 😉)
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Ha, yeah, I think so. Whoops. I'll fix it, but no worries. I'm figuring most people are going to go way past that anyway. But thanks for the heads-up. 😎👍
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For sure, second try I managed to reach level 59 before dying so it's not that hard. I was a bit thrown off by the fact that lives don't stack beyond 3 so I basically assumed that I could tank more hits than what I actually could.
If anything the game is fun, but definitely the kinda thing I would play with a controller if given the chance. Also I can't help but think that the "eye" ammo sounds like forcefully squirting mayonnaise/ketchup from a plastic bottle.
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I know, I love that sound! I actually only trigger it for every 5 rounds fired...you should've heard what it sounded like when it was triggering for every one of them! LOLOLOL
Yeah, it would be nice to add controller support. I'll look into what that would take to accomplish in GameMaker. I haven't done it before, but it can't be but so terrible to code.
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death spawned under me twice.... was only able to get to wave 39
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Don't hug that wall too closely! They actually come from off-screen, but by the time they're on-screen, if you're up against a wall, it's already too late.
Nothing else should spawn on top of you...there's code that specifically creates a "safe zone" around your character and makes the RNG choose a new random location to spawn if it originally chooses something within that space.
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bump! i gotta check this out.
edit: finished one run, only got to level 61 since I got distracted. The amount of effort and creativity some members of the SG community put into giveaways blow me away.
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Yep, it's a shield. But if it activated because you got bumped first, then you already lost a life.
Invulnerability comes on automatically for 3 seconds if you lose a life (so you can get away). If you grab the power-up, it's on for 8 seconds. I run directly through entire hordes while it's on to get to open space, so it's been working correctly. You'll know it's on because your character will be glowing while it's active.
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Maybe you accidentally grabbed an extra life last time? It's also a pumpkin...just not the red color. It's a more muted orange color and has a little "+1" in the corner (but it's kind of hard to see on the background).
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Thanks for fun distraction :) Made it to level 154. I got tired/distracted near the end and things quickly snowballed out of control.
PS: I could swear the mini-boss didn't show up at levels 110 and 120. I thought I was done with him for good until he snuck up on me at level 130!
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It would, in theory, be possible to miss the spawn at high levels. This would only happen if you managed "skip" a level by getting enough points that the level was never divisible by 10. So, let's say that you were level 109, and really close to 110, and there were LOT of baddies spawned everywhere and you grabbed the purple bomb...that might give you enough points (because you'll get points for everything that just got cleared) to skip entirely past 110 and land on 111 or 112 or something. So it's theoretically possible. :)
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I think that's what happened :) I was grabbing purple bombs intentionally right before the mini-boss was set to appear in order to give myself some wiggle room if things were getting too hectic. So, I must have killed enough baddies in those two instances to skip over an entire stage!
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If you're a good shot and you park it near a corner (so the code that prevents unfairly close spawning basically will only spawn baddies across about 180 degrees for you rather than 360), that's entirely possible. Nice work!
Man, once you crack around level 100, things start to get pretty frantic. I keep meaning to try and spawn a demon, then not kill him and level up enough to spawn a second one at the same time. LOL
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One corner of a square is 90° not 180° ... and in theory you would still get the same number of enemies but they would be sort of "clumped" together which would make shooting them easier. But I tried it, and I died even faster. I think I got to level 14? The ones in the front were absorbing the bullets while the ones in the back continued to approach. Then again, I obviously suck at this game because I still haven't broken level 30 yet after an hour of trying.
edit: And then, immediately after posting that, I tried one more time and made it all the way to 51. I think the game took pity on me, though, because it spawned a shield next to me like 8 different times, but it certainly helped. Oh well, I made it, good enough. Even if I do suck at it, it's been fun, and a nice change of pace.
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Glad that you were able to finally make it past level 50! A little practice, and almost any game can be handled at an average level. I mean, I suck at platformers, but if I give a level enough goes, I eventually power through it. :)
Oh, and I understand what you're saying about the shooting area. I'm, uh...good...with geometry/trig/etc. I mean, I programmed the bat gun's ammo flight, and that involves continually recalculating wobble and acceleration relative to an initial vector. 😉
The reason that I say ~180 degrees is that you're highly unlikely to be 100% in the corner (unless you just enjoy having a reaper spawn just to the left of you and insta-kill you when it slides onto the screen). So, while you won't have things initially spawning across roughly 270 degrees, by the time the baddies move, there will be a percentage of them that will be a bit above (or below, depending upon where you're parked), or likewise to the left/right where you'll likely have to rotate your gun about an additional 45 degrees or so wider in both directions to handle those enemies. Add it all up, and that's roughly 180 degrees of shooting area.
Just realized that this is kinda hard to explain with just words. So, I made a quick diagram to illustrate what this looks like when you're using this tactic (which I've found to be the most effective). So, I'm assuming that the rectangle here is the top left visable corner of the arena. Your character is parked a bit away from the corner to avoid anything coming from directly off-screen, such as reapers. As such, based upon the "safe space" around the character for spawning, nothing should be coming from the area of the triangle at the upper left (other than reapers). But, based upon other baddies sliding along the top or the left, if you don't pick them off early, there's a high potential to rotate toward 45 and 225 (based upon 0 being "up"). This potential rotational arc to handle these baddies is represented by the half-ellipse, and is where we get the roughly 180 degrees of coverage needed. Anything past that, and you've let something get behind you. 😉
Anyway, hope that helps when thinking about tactics in the game and what you're likely to have to cover. 😎🤓
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Well, maybe that was why I lost so fast then. The one time I tried to hide in the corner, I must have gone too far in. I never did get hit by a reaper, though. It was just the giant pile of enemies were approaching faster than I could kill the ones in front, so by the time I started the next one in line it was a little closer than the one before it was when I started that one, and there were too many for me to run out and grab a power-up, so it was basically a war of attrition.
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Note: I know that this is a lot of text. Please read it. I didn't write it for my health. If you don't pay attention to instructions and can't prove you beat the game, even if you win a GA, it'll get re-rolled. I took the time to write a game and a detailed page of instructions...all you have to do is read them. 😉
Alrighty, folks! Welcome to the super late 2024 Halloween Event:
Back To The Darkness From Whence Ye Came!
This is another video game event (since everyone here should be a gamer!), similar to the previous couple of Halloween events! This event has 101 giveaways in it! There is some trash, but a whole lot of treasure! All of the games are horror/scary/extradimensional-evil-being/Halloween-themed.
I was out of town right before Halloween this year, so once again it has made me late for doing my Halloween event. I decided that since my game I wrote a couple of years ago was themed around that lateness, I would use it again, but add some upgrades (more on that later). So, welcome to version 1.2!
Alright, alright, that's super...tell me about the actual game, dude.
Ok, fine, fine...I'll get to the good part.
Totally made-up, conveniently-timed background story: Halloween is over, but somehow all of the ghosts and monsters haven't returned to their own purgatorial dimension of darkness! Nope, they've decided that it's way better to stay here and just continue to terrorize the creatures of this dimension all year long. You, the never-rotting jack o' lantern hero, have to step up and blast these baddies back where they belong. That's right, strap on your weapons and scream toward the evil creatures of the night, "Back to the darkness from whence ye came!!!!!"
Basics
Gameplay
So, the game is an endless arena shooter and completely uncomplicated. Shoot everything that moves, and get as high of a score/level as possible. You can grab powerups to make this easier (more on that in just a bit), but otherwise you just need to run around, keeping yourself from getting hit by the monsters and kill as many of them as possible. You start with 3 lives and lose one each time you get hit. Also, when you get hit, you'll turn red with a glowing ring around your jack o' lantern, and you'll be invincible for 3 seconds -- move away from other monsters fast!
Levels and Scoring
This is super easy. For the first 20 levels, you'll level up for every 30 points you earn by shooting monsters. After that, it'll take 50 points per level. There are eight different types of baddies, and they score as follows:
Enemy spawns are pretty well-paced up through level 50...and then the gloves are off. Expect a pretty continuous onslaught at that point, and it will get slightly worse every 10 levels above that. 😈
Enemy Movement
Weapons/Powerups
Controls
This is easy. Point the crosshair mouse cursor where you want to shoot and hold down that left mouse button. To move, you can use either WASD or the arrow keys (to support both lefties and righties). Nope, sorry, you can't redefine the keys. Didn't have time to code that. Oh, and you can pause the game by pressing the Pause key or the "P" key -- space will unpause the game.
That sounds good, but you still haven't told me how I can win games
Oh yeah, that's kind of important. So, there are four trains with increasingly higher requirements to enter, but the games get increasingly better as well. All of the trains require you to have given at least something on SG before, and thus require a measly level 1 to enter, but this should help filter out at least some of the bots and extra-bad leechers.
FYI, this is honestly pretty easy to do. First "real" playthrough of the finished game, I made it to level 104. Second playthrough, I made level 141. 50 should be a piece of cake.
Once you've achieved any/all of these things, the code to enter that train will be available on the game over screen, clearly labeled along with your score.
In case you're not familiar with it, every giveaway on Steamgifts has a five-character code, and that's what's listed as the start of each train. All you need to do is write down your train codes, and insert them into the URL in your browser as follows:
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/ABCDE/
All you have to do is replace "ABCDE" in the string above with your five-character code from the game, and POOF! MAGIC! You'll be looking at the first cart in that train. There is a sample graphic of what this looks like at the end of this description with obviously fake codes in it.
Unfortunately necessary note about cheating and proof that you actually played
Don't do it. Play the game. It's not that hard, doesn't take that long, and should be at least some degree of fun. Anyone caught cheating, whether giving or receiving codes from the game without playing it, will get added to my blacklist. My blacklist is short...but once you're on it, you're probably never coming off. So, just resist being a douche canoe and play the game that I worked hard to bring you, ok? And yes, I know about some of your groups where you exchange invite-only entry codes. I have eyes in there. Resist the temptation. Alrighty. Enough about that.
Get a screen shot of your qualifying game over screen with your profile in the background
The game doesn't save the high score to a file or anything (another thing that I ran out of time to do), so you'll need to get a screen shot. Please get a screen shot of the game over screen that shows all of the trains for which you're qualified, and have your profile up in Steamgifts in the background (I've provided a sample of what that should look like at the end of the instructions here). Please do not post it in this thread and show other people the train codes! Just keep it handy or go ahead and upload it to Imgur or something. I'll be spot-checking wins and all of the most valuable ones, including the grand prize. So be prepared to prove that you played or be ready for a re-roll.
New Stuff That I Added To This Upgrade!!!
For those of you who care, I made some modifications to this version that I think make it a better freebie game than the last version. Here's the short list:
Ok, let's get going!
First things first: Download the game!
Install the game (on Windows...sorry, no time to attempt multi-OS support here) and fire it up! Now, your browser and probably your anti-virus may complain that they don't know this file, that it's unsigned (or whatever other malarkey they come up with), and start panicking and tell you not to install it. It does not contain any trojans. The game does not communicate with any external servers or attempt to contact anything over the internet. It just runs on your machine. It's safe, I promise.
FYI...if you want to make the game full-screen, just hit alt-Enter to switch between that and windowed mode. You can also drag the corner of the window with your mouse to resize it manually.
Other stuff
The trains end at 11:00 pm on November 19th - Central Time, US, so you have time to finish up. And this year you have no excuse that Halloween got in the way since I delivered this so late. 🤣
A couple of these keys (especially in the lower-level trains) are pretty freakin' old. So, please be cool and agree to a delete if they don't work for some reason. Being the swell guy that I am, I'll find some kind of replacement game for you of roughly equal value, so you won't go home empty-handed if you were supposed to win something.
If for some reason you're physically handicapped and can't play schmups (no, "I suck at these kind of games" doesn't count 😆), please reach out to me and we'll talk about another way for you to get to participate in the trains.
Good luck, and get to blasting those evil baddies!
Grez
Original post for posterity:
Yep, for real. I couldn't get to a Halloween event near the big day, because I was out of state for over a week right before the 31st. But I'd already saved up a bunch of keys and picked up a few more, and I'll be gosh-darned if I'm not going to get a chance to give this stuff away! So, I've taken the game I coded a couple of years ago, Back To The Darkness From Whence Ye Came! (which was based upon being set a bit after Halloween, anyway), and I've updated it for this year. This includes one important bit of gameplay feedback I got as well as...well, I'll save the surprise for when we're ready to go here.
I've been coding all day and it's almost ready to go. I'll get the trains created tonight, most likely, then I'll make final code tweaks and we're going to be off to the races early this week!
Quick update: well, it's 3 AM, but I have all of the trains and the grand prize GA created (last train took a while since ESGST decided to crap out on me during that one, so I joined all of those carts manually). Anyway, I'm going to get some sleep. Tomorrow, I'll tweak up the code to generate the new codes for this year's trains, get everything compiled and hosted somewhere, and then I'll update this thread with instructions and links...I'll be giving y'all a little over a week to do this, so there is plenty of time to get good enough to enter all of the trains. Until tomorrow!
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