Feb 24
#3: ThunderStorm
Released 24th February, 2008
Updated 25th February, 2008
Screenshots:
Download:
- Win32: ThunderStorm-1.0.2-Win32.zip
- Mac OSX: ThunderStorm-1.0.2-OSX.dmg (Universal Binary, requires OSX 10.4 or later)
Source Code:
- Live Subversion repository: http://www.vectorstorm.org/svn/repos/VectorStorm/branches/GAW-003-Cloud
Instructions:
Be an angry storm cloud amongst cheerful, happy clouds. Spread dissent by shooting the happy clouds with lightning, to turn them into more storm clouds. Control all the storm clouds simultaneously, and try to keep them from being cheered back into happy clouds!
Controls:
Like all VectorStorm games, ThunderStorm attempts to use a gamepad if you have one connected, and this configuration is highly recommended for this game. (Use the ‘Gamepad’ option menu to configure your controller, if it is not automatically recognised)
If you have no gamepad, you can control the game using the arrow keys, the space bar as your “A” button, and the mouse to aim and shoot.
You may quit the game at any time by pressing ‘Q’ or ‘Esc’.
Credits:
Game Design, Code & Gfx: Trevor Powell ( trevor (at) vectorstorm.org )
Physics Engine: Box2D, by Erin Catto
Music: Kenta Cho - tt4.ogg, Ehren Starks - Leaving the Theatre
ThunderStorm uses OpenGL, SDL, SDL_Mixer, and GLEW.
ChangeLog:
- 25th February, 2008, Version 1.0.2: Updated gamepad preferences screen to allow remapping the right analog stick.
- 25th February, 2008, Version 1.0.1 (Win32 only): Updated Win32 SDL_Mixer.dll used by ThunderStorm, to not require MSVCR80.dll.
- 24th February, 2008: Initial release.
February 25th, 2008 at 6:08 am
Fun game! I was able to last for a really long time by just not moving around, holding down left click, and drawing circles in the center of the screen. There are just a ton of lightning bolts everywhere, and it seems to make you storm clouds at about the same rate that you kill your own storm clouds or get bumped in to. It still didn’t last forever though =P
Also, the link to the source code is prompting me for a password.
February 25th, 2008 at 7:42 am
I’m not sure how much strategy is involved in this game; I really only got to play it three or four times before releasing it, due to the self-set time limit. I suspect that there’s likely to be a very simple “best strategy” which would let you play forever (maybe sitting in a corner and firing like mad, for example); I didn’t really have time to do proper play balancing on this one. But I still really like the game, especially the rapid context shifts you have to do when the cloud you’ve been focusing on is bumped by a happy cloud, and you need to rapidly find another angry cloud to center your attention on.
I’ve now removed the password protection from the svn repository. But I very strongly recommend not looking at the game code for this one except for the purposes of compiling; being written in seven hours (and going through no fewer than five complete game design changes) means that there’s a lot of messy, unorganised code, and a lot of dead code that’s no longer used at all. Just as advance warning.
March 29th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Having trouble running this. I get a Game Over as soon as I start- no Angry Cloud ever spawns.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
When you start, one of the existing clouds will switch from happy to angry; that’s the cloud you control. The cloud that will switch will be the one that’s furthest away from all the other clouds.. but if all the clouds are bunched up together, it’s possible that you might have very little time to work out which cloud is the angry one. (It takes about a second for the graphic to finish converting from ‘happy’ to ‘angry’, and you’re not invulnerable during that time)
Not the kindest gameplay mechanic, I’ll grant. Maybe I’ll return to this game someday and make it a little kinder, when the game starts up.