Another one of my gameprojects.
Started off as a Ludum Dare entry,

Hit objects and protect your shield, gain bonuses
from multihits.

Engine: Custom
Language: FreeBasic

V1.1 fixes.
Fixed crash when waiting on Upgrade screen.
Score multiplier now gives 10% of score instead of 100%.
Lives lost per object now scales dramatically after wave 100.
Removed a debugger check that could potentially crash the game if it lost focus for 2 seconds.
Objects speed scaling is now increased with wave counter.
Maximum laser now is 3000.
Truncated the status bar to avoid stats going out of screen.
Killing a boss no longer gives multihit regain and life regain bonuses, but gives 30% of total score.

Latest update: v1.1
http://lmao.rotfl.at/upload/Strobe/SkyPongv11.zip

Windows only.

I got 562,455. This is such a pretty game!

1.5 million points, is that good or noob? Those balls and qubes are everywhere!

I have no idea what is good or bad at the moment, its not balanced or tested well enough yet ;)
Feel free to spam bug reports or suggestions for possibly enhancing gameplay, thank you for testing!

I made it to phase 85. Did you make it easier?

Yes , the difficulty curve is changed.
i just made it to wave 121 with 5.6 million.
An idea that will be implemented is an end phase boss every 30 Waves that you can only kill with lasers, and it will shoot bullets. so if you have no laser left when that happens you are screwed.

Wow this is easy :D
OH THIS IS HARD!!!

would love to see the source

yeah it is very pretty. :)

way to go!

The balance between too easy and too tricky is a bit odd, but I have to admit atm I am not in a very competitive mood. I like that the waves have different dynamics! And that you can block two waves at the same spot.
The upgrade concept isn't really clear to me. Do you need to press keys to activate lasers?

And I guess tricky to implement: would be fun if the back of the board is touchy too, so in case you get into a cloud of objects that are bouncing back, you might accidentally kick them in your own goal sorta speak. Well plenty of things to think up, the gameplay is very nice!

Well hello there n00b, the upgrade concept is not very clear yet, there will be more explanation what stuff does later.
You shoot laser with left mouse, this will desintegrate objects.
The balance is still way off between too easy and too hard, this
will be changed.

Accidently kicking stuff in your direction is easy to implement, but not sure how appreciated that would be for most players ;)

only complaint (so far) is that it closes right after finishing, i wasnt able to see my score like twice
besides, its pretty fun! my high score was like 2,4m or something around that

Next update will contain highscore saving and possibility to restart.
also possibly a new game mode.

Also, does it close exactly when you die? (that is in that case a bug),
enemies should explode, your remaining Shields should drop to the ground, and score should be visible for about 5 seconds Before it Closes.

Hot fix out now with preliminary highscore saving.

haha neat! thx
my highscore was 3171531 btw

5242382
found a bug, if you 'die' while a boss is on-screen the boss will not stop shooting, which means you're still able to increase your score on the 5 secs on which you're just supposed to be looking at the score

edit: 6766915 wow
edit 2: 8063714 wow

oh woops, those damn bosses are so strong they dont care.
not sure how much it impacts the score though since hiscores should be saved right when you die (so your increase after that shouldnt really Count), however it is a bug and will be fixed.

botb should have its own ludum-esque coding events! My current hiscore is 4.02M.
also!
* Maybe the game should have a hexagon-mode where once you unlock a stage you can start right from there!
* Greying of defeated gems! Hard mode where the defeated gems stay the same color!

There will be considerations for game modes for sure!
My current highscore is 160 million , so im going to make some Changes and additions to level design and events.

new hiscore, 16.549.802 =o
lasted till wave 155!
edit: 58.679.407, wave 150, did this on college with crappy mouse
found out i could kill bosses w/ laser =o thx readme.txt!

ok, my highscore right now is 4.527.910.181
wow
edit 2: haha 8.542.478.140
i promise i'll stop spamming this someday!

jajajaja, thats well above what i thought should be possible at the moment, i need to tweak the later gameplay a bit, since all you end up doing is lasering the whole screen until something finally slips through

well strobe, laser is not the problem :p
first, a bug - in the select powerup screen, if you dont select anything it'll close after a few seconds (i think its intended but i personally dont like it since i often "pause" stuff to chat with ppl)
also a suggestion - pause plz :p
well now for the balancing tips
i was able to get 1.683.602.634.625.662 points WITHOUT using laser (except to kill bosses) and by only picking life regain
and that wasnt even the end - i didnt pick a powerup and the game closed itself. i could have gone much further, even endlessly further i'd say.
so i guess you should make boss powerups less powerful, like
- instead of rank up for everything every 1 boss killed, make it every 2 bosses killed
- or if u kill a boss you get to pick 2 powerups at the 40th wave, not a single one
also making the powerups (specially life regain) weaker might help
for life regain i suggest +1 at every 2 powerups picked instead of 1
i had over 2k/3k life (didnt rly see it) and a huge lot of laser (the score occupied so much of the screen the laser counter was sorta hidden haha)
so i guess the laser should be weakened as well
OH YEAH ANOTHER THING and maybe the most important one
getting a 200x multiplier doubles your score
its actually cool but latter in the game (specially with the boss powerups) it gets really easy to get a 200x multiplier so i just kept doubling my score after a while
and life powerups are sporadical after that so it discourages getting multipliers above that

i didnt see the update so i played a bit more with the previous version to see the highest score i could achieve
turns out after a point it gets negative, probably because it hits the character limit or the variable limit
did i beat the gaem???? =o
negative score: http://puu.sh/gTkQM/aeabf58491.jpg
positive score: http://puu.sh/gTlom/dff32f15ec.jpg
score.bin: http://puu.sh/gTl0U/bab929d37e.bin
this has probably been fixed already, but i'm posting because it's fun to do these things (break stuff etc)
gonna test the new version as soon as possible
edit: i didnt test it but according to the changelog i still can break the score counter i THINK
also take a look at my laser amount haha
edit 2: about the update
1. i love the sounds haha
2. it seems like you did balance stuff... what did you do exactly? =o (my new hiscore is 23.766.539)

oh i was able to break the score counter again on this update, it was just a bit harder (i believe i had less lives in this one as well)
negative score: http://puu.sh/gTqp3/ecc38c48af.jpg
positive score: http://puu.sh/gTqAg/dece4bb3ee.jpg
score.bin: http://puu.sh/gTqDi/17b712519a.bin
suggestion: with time (preferably after the 200th wave or something), enemies's damage should increase (like a piece should take 2 lives instead of 1, and on the 240th wave 3, and 280th wave 4 and so on)
also i guess the wave counter not going over 200 is a bug

edit: assuming score is a long variable (i think its very likely it is) the max score is 9.223.372.036.854.775.807 (or something like that). going over that makes the score negative.

wtf

While i knew it surely was possible to get negative scores with certain gameplays i didn't Think it would be that easy, considering around wave 200 the Engine should spit out a massive amount of enemies at silly speeds, so now im wondering if the game runs at full speed for you (aka 60 FPS). the reason the wave stops at 200 was a precaution to not let the Waves come too fast, since how fast the timer is is dependent on the wavecounter. the score is actually a 64-bit long, i knew i couldnt use 32-bit in this game ;)

These are all good balance testing, i will likely release a new test soon which makes the game way more aggressive over wave 200, and then 2x multiplier will probably be set at 10-20% multiplier.

The Upgrade screen closing after a few seconds is not intended, i need to check why this is happening, since i never noticed it.

actually the engine spitting a lot of enemies at silly speed is the reason i got this so easily
i chose life regain on every powerup so i got a lot of extra life
and since i could get combos very easily thanks for the lots of enemies in silly speeds i'd get a lot of life, accumulating it very easily

Massive rebalance build and fixing.
http://lmao.rotfl.at/upload/Strobe/SkyPongv11.zip