Dtoider GoS-CPT-Stewart had to create a game for a school project at his VideoGame Programming class over in Full Sail. The project tasked students to make a game like Pong, have AI and allow players to save their game. GoS-CPT could have just made a simple Pong clone, but instead, he went above and beyond the requirements of the project.
So he created Pong-Karuga, a game that still plays like Pong but has Ikaruga elements thrown into the mix. Players control a paddle that can change polarities at will. The ball can also change polarity by either hitting one of five different ships in the middle of the field or at random. The paddle must be the same polarity the ball is, otherwise the player will lose a life if the polarities don’t match when they connect. Players can miss the ball without dying, but if a ball is missed, the opposing player will earn the energy that is used for the charged shot.
When a player has earned enough energy, they can launch the ball as a charged shot. The ball will shoot out much faster than normal and as a random polarity. If the opposing player misses the ball, they will lose a life.
It’s a very simple game but pretty addictive. Pong-Karuga supports the Xbox 360 controller and has two-player local play as well. Download the game here, and if you like it, leave a comment bugging GoS-CPT to make a online flash version! Be sure to check out GoS's dev diary on the project too.
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Contest:
12:00 PM on 02.10.2009
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Also, unless he wants some "unwanted" attention, he should strip away the Ikaruga stuff right away.
Fail Sail
Full Fail
Hmm... What other names can I come up with for that wretched POS school?
Did they expel you or something?
Also, the game didn't kill the process when I closed it so it left the music playing in the background while consuming 30MB of RAM, a fair trade as I love the music of Ikaruga.
Yeah, I was in a class with him.
Also, for those complaining about the gameplay: I know. Yes there are some bugs (like the process sometimes continuing to run in the background), and the enemy ships pull off a ridiculously long series of passes sometimes. This class was the first time we ever made any games outside of straight-up DOS stuff so obviously it's not a very advanced class. With the stuff I've learned since this, make my future projects should be a little more stable.
Sorry if you didn't like it much. Hopefully my next project (working on it outside of class so there's no deadline this time :P ) will be something more worthy of your attention.
And again, Dtoid, you guys/gals are amazing. I was just happy to see people commenting on it in the c-blogs, but the front page? Amazing. I love you all.
I do hope that you realize this was a school project, hence not for profit. I believe that he should be able to leave in the Ikaruga references all that he wants to. If I were Treasure, SEGA, and Atari, I would love to see that somebody still loves their game enough to make a tribute to it.
Their actual courses suck, and the fact that they are offering bachelor's degrees for only 2 years of attendance should be a red flag if you have any sense of objectivity. It's a school for rich kids who dropped out of every other school, and decide they want to go to "video game college." The graduates from the school go no-where in the business though.
My brother works at a video game company where his job actually involves hiring artists to work on games. He receives a lot of portfolios from Fail Sail graduates, and he has yet to hire any of them because the work the school trains them to put out sucks.
If you want to get into the industry, your best bet is to go to a reputable 4-year design school or art college, or get a programming degree at a tech school. The only reason Fail Sail exists is to prey on people who like playing video games but aren't particularly good at anything practical.