Good to see some cool stuff coming from CA homies.

As you may perhaps know, I write Flash games for a hobby (albeit I almost have no time to do much nowadays)... so maybe I can make some suggestions.

Do you use DirectX8 directly? I've heard it can be frustrating, and that it's best to use a wrapper. Or even another graphics library. Personally in C++ I've used Allegro, but SDL is very famous as well (just google for the links). A side benefit is that your code will be more portable as you don't depend on code from MS.

Check out Paint.Net for a great alternative to MS Paint... If you are after a retro style, you could use a limited resolution and zoom by 2x or 3x to get a pixellated look.

The bullets are a bit monotonous... they all fall at the same speed and direction.
I don't know what kind of animation code you're using... if it's object-oriented it will be easy to change. For example you could have a "spread" gun by shooting three bullets, and have the movement code move them like this:

1) y-=2, x-=1
2) y-=2
3) y-=2, x+=1

Or for more fancy effects, a bit of math can go a long way. For a wiggly bullet you can add a counter, then apply a formula like:

counter++;
x = Math.sin(counter/1000)*50

where "50" is the amplitude (how many pixel the bullet will wobble between), and /1000 is just to make the input counter have decimals (otherwise the animation won't be smooth).

Oh well I could go on an on... I will stop here bc I don't want to bore you with details as I don't know what direction you want to take the game. Just ask if you have a question and I may be able to help.

Myself, I mostly concentrate on programming, I need to team up with somebody to have nice graphics, otherwise I end up with horror graphics such as this: http://newsdee.com/swf/babeball.php :-)

My upcoming game is nicer than that (real graphics, Babeball is drawn by code) but I don't want to link here yet as it's a W.I.P. and it's not just my game. But if you or anybody wants to take a peek let me know and I'll PM you a link.



[download a life]