Burstin' Bubbles v1.0 (downloadable)

After a while without posting ( I was busy coding and playing Far Cry 3 ( best game ever! ) ), I am happy to tell you that version 1.0 of Burstin' Bubbles is done! It's a playable game, downloadable here (~5MB via Dropbox).
It works on Windows 7, not sure about other Windows versions, but should work as well.
It features a simple Shoot 'm Up in which the player has a machine gun and Medipacks laying around the city (currently filled in with parks). Here are some screenshots of the ingame-situation, menu and instructions:

The main menu

 Now loading...

 In-game chaos, guns, medipacks, etc.

 Game over. Pretty low score there.

How to play the game

The game improved so much since the last post, not only code-wise, but graphically as well. Since the last update I've made major improvements to the code and added the following things:

• Generated roads (using 4 images; an intersection, horizontal road, vertical road and grass).
• Level edges (when you're at the boundaries of the level, the player moves freely and the camera stays still)
• Survival mode (kill as many enemies as possible), replaced the "xx Enemies left"
• Enemy spawn timers with increasing speeds for higher difficulty.
• Portability (the game works on other locations and other computers than the development computer!)
• Completely functioning menu with buttons, button states (hover, down, normal)
• Pause-function. Quite useful if you need to check the controls or anything.
• End game score display (used to be instant replay)
• Clear instructions and a "story"

I will think of things to add to this game, because I still have some days left. The deadline is the 7th of January, so that gives me some room for more stuff! Suggestions are welcome!

Download (~5MB via Dropbox)

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Coding the Bubble (Part 5 - Major additions!)

It's been 4 days since I've posted anything, but I've done loads of work in the meantime. I've added sounds, HUD, replaying of level, loading screen, graphical update of the character, spawning enemies that will follow you, feedback on the enemies indicating health, added Medipacks(which heal 50%), a brand new environment with some graphics, added a MathHelper class with functions as Random(), Normalize(), etc., 2 types of collision (rectangular(somewhat buggy) & circular(works like a charm.))

As you can see, that's quite some stuff. Because I am making the art myself, I am having difficulty keeping myself to my art style, because making a loading screen gives you much more freedom than a 50x50 sprite of a player. I made a loading screen with a $100 bill, with the "Economic bubble" theme in my mind. This is the result:

I'm still figuring out how I'm going to incorporate the mandatory "Bubbles" theme more obvious in the game, since it's essentially nothing more than a shoot 'm up right now. I might incorporate a mission for the player
to "exterminate the bankers, because they are responsible for the bubbles and their burstings".

For the technical part, I want to add randomized levels. The level I'm using right now is over 10mb at the moment, so I want to make some parts of a level (parks, buildings/houses, water) to make big levels varying quickly. I also want to add a menu to choose the scene/mode and to return to after finishing the level. If I have time left by then, I also want to add blood.

Here's a screenshot of how the game looks at the moment:

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Coding the Bubble (Part 4 - Shooting the enemies)

I've made some major improvements to the functionality (and the graphics!). I've implemented mouse-aiming,  shooting of enemies (they die after 10 shots), enemies looking at the player, bullets with an owner, major improvements to the organization of code.

I got the polymorphism to work and now I update all objects with one Vector. I also implemented a GetType() function in the GameObject (and deriving classes) to easily check what types are colliding. Also fixed some bugs which made all the objects update twice and give Acces Violation errors.

I noticed that I needed to load every sprite from file every time I made an object, so I made a TextureManager which loads textures/sprites into a hashmap for easy access. "player" will give me the fancy new blue person sprite as seen below. Also using dynamic memory allocation in various situations now.

Next up will be enemies that will shoot back! Perhaps even a life-bar for the player and a fancier environment.

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