FireMadness game: top-down shooter, bullet hell in Castle Game Engine / Lazarus

[Eugene Loza]

Sometimes it's so hard to find motivation... OpenFire is a simple game I've written in 5 hours (one night) in Castle Game Engine (Lazarus/Free Pascal) + 1 hour for graphics and 3 more hours of testing, playing and having fun Still no sound&music, no menu (as usually ) It's a game inspired by an ancient CrossFire (1981 by Jay Sullivan) game.

The goal of the game is to eliminate all enemy bots. Use arrow keys to move and WASD to fire at 4 directions (hold down the button for rapid fire). Player has 200 HP until death... and that's not much...
You can move only vertical or horizontal direction at the same time, and movement automatically stops at crossroads (you can invert the movement direction).
Enemies come in groups of 3+ starting from lazy easy form, after destroyed they transform in more healthy and powerful medium form and finally into tough, quick and rapid-firing hard form.  Occasionaly hard form after being destroyed transforms into boss form (the name says it all).

video:

FireMadness walkthrough: Part 1 - Bedroom (hard)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmmAjvgzKJ4

FireMadness walkthrough: Part 2 - Living room (hard)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7ISGE4USbA

FireMadness walkthrough: Part 3 - Cellar (hard)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD1BE2xEmlY

FireMadness walkthrough: Part 4 - Kitchen (hard)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgSkMY-CcjM

FireMadness walkthrough: Part 5 - Attic (hard)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7kDvQ7R2sY

Code: https://github.com/eugeneloza/FireMadness
Release: https://github.com/eugeneloza/FireMadness/releases (Windows, Linux)

[skalogryz]

nice one!

[AnthonyTekatch]

Good game-play and nice example of the Castle engine!
Thanks for sharing.

[Eugene Loza]

New betta release: Music, sound and explosions!
Updated video.

[Eugene Loza]

Lot's of improvements in new release Code and release links in the first post. Video updated.

P.S. There is a small problem with the game name, as OpenFire already exists as a jabber client. I've been advised GridFire, but it's also exists as Crossfire-clone WildFire? FireMania? Any other ideas?

P.P.S. I've found a very strange bug. The game runs slower on Linux and slows down on frameskip. Why I sync all actions to SysUtils.now timer... it should work as expected dependlessly FPS and OS...

[serbod]

Try GetTickCount64() instead of Now()

[Eugene Loza]

Try GetTickCount64() instead of Now()

I don't think it's problem of 'now' function. I've never ever had any problems with it before. There was something buggy in my code at frameskips (but what??? It was as simple as it could ever be). It seems that I've fixed that a few hours ago, but that required... to add personal time to each actor and brought some problems with implementing pause mode. But now most bugs relative to frameskips seem to have been fixed.

[Eugene Loza]

Name changed to FireMadness (It awesomly fits the story as the main antagonist is SoftMadness Doors OS )

Huge overhaul. Almost release
Many new bot types + 3 more bosses.
Map manager + unfinished story mode
Hot-seat player co-op mode
Difficulty level
And many much much more

Updated video and screenshots.

[Eugene Loza]

I've made a full game walk-through - video is in the first post.

P.S. Still struggling with Android cross-compillation.

[Eugene Loza]

Today Android - tomorrow the World!

Finally I've made an Android release. Still very buggy and huge in size (some problems with audiolibrary require uncompressed music storage... I hope it'll be fixed soon )

Practically after successfully setting up FPC cross-compillation to Android (that was the hardest part), Castle Game Engine compiles Android apps like a charm without any need to make some platform-specific code!

Android overhaul.
Joystick / gamepad support thanks to Tomasz Wojtyś
Interface improvements
Speed improvements
And more!