As I browsed through my traffic stats today I noticed that a lot of people were coming over here from 1UP. This is a little odd, because I wasn't aware of any recent links from there. Well, it would appear I was wrong. During the weeks when my connection was down, I seem to have gotten a little nod from Scott Sharkey and Darren Gladstone for my mediocre and weird little demo called Copic Fighter.

The 2008 iteration of 1UP's 101 Free Games lists Copic Fighter in the shooter category. No screenie, but it does get one awesome little description:

The pen is mightier than--what the hell is this game even about? You're a sharpie shooting irate eyeballs? Man, don't ask. Just shoot. Kind of a work in progress, though. At present you'll probably play through it in about two minutes. Just long enough to draw weird looks and impossible questions from anyone looking on.

Seriously, that is probably the best paragraph that's ever been written about Copic Fighter. Those guys are awesome! What's even weirder, or interesting perhaps, is that it's in the list twice. A little editing mistake to be sure, but I'm not complaining. Now maybe I'll put some effort into finishing the game off a bit. So yeah, I'll just keep telling myself that.

Over the last week I have made a number of changes to Copic Fighter. Even though many of the graphics were pretty good already, there were still a few which I wasn't entirely happy with. Here is a list of the new sprites that were created, and old ones that were changed...

• Fixed kana error in title animation.
• New ship sprite.
• New player bullet sprite.
• New life sprite.
• New bullet impact animation.
• New weapons upgrade animation.
• New enemy explosion animation.
• New player explosion animation.
• New sprite for boss' big tear.
• Created an Ink meter graphic.

That's right, I did finally fix the title by adding the "chuon." I know at least one person that's going to be happy about that, besides myself of course. As per some other suggestions, I made some changes to the gameplay mechanics. Among those, an important difference is that the green eyes no longer drop Ink. Since they are easy to destroy, because bullets go through them, I decided it was a good idea to remove that particular reward.

In addition, I have adjusted the speed of several objects, which should provide a slight change in the pace of the game. The unfortunate part is that the speed of the game is as much influenced by what I dictate as it is by the speed of the computer that it's run on. That's not a particularly good thing, so I will try and research the possibility of capping the frame rate.

Last but not least, I have fixed the irritating menu cursor bug. So no more getting the cursor stuck in odd places on the title screen.

This version has been primarily about tweaks and improvements, and not so much about content addition. I'd like to get some of the gameplay aspects ironed out before I add additional stages to the game. I figured that as long as I have a solid core, adding content is going to be relatively easy. With that said, have a download and I hope you enjoy it.

Make sure to check the Readme file for instructions.

Download: Copic Fighter 0.3.0 (6.25 MB .rar file)

(I have changed the filehost to a more reliable source.  Please let me know if the link is breaks in the future.)

After about a month's worth of work, I am happy to announce that the first demo of Copic Fighter is now available. It features one stage, with enemy formations, and a boss fight.

New additions since the last update include animations for various aspects of the boss battle. Things like an immune hit animation, updated tears animation, a new destructible tear object, and an animation for destroying the boss. To go along with these, I added new sounds for each effect, as well as finally putting in the boss battle music.

This did bring to the foreground some of the audio limitations of Game Maker. Because of my desire for more complex audio effects, I found that performance was being noticeable taxed. In the end, I had to scale down my audio files a bit, but managed to retain the feel I was going for. Having to use .wav format is the primary reason for the game's increasingly large file size.

In any case, most issues have been ironed out on my end. So I hope that you will not experience any problems on your end either. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about my debut to the indy gaming scene. Enjoy!

Please check the included Readme file for instructions.

Download: Copic Fighter 0.2.6 (6.23 MB .rar file) | Mirror (via MediaFire)

Update: Thanks go out to The2Bears for picking up on this. They even said something nice about it!

After spending days upon days of troubleshooting random enemy generation, I realized just how flawed this method was. It was fine for an endless single level game, but presented big problems for what I wanted to accomplish. And what I wanted, and still do, were timed events and enemy formations.

I scrapped the whole method, and researched using Time Lines. It's so simple. Why didn't I do this earlier? Well, whatever the excuses, I'm glad I made the switch. Time Lines have none of the issues that my previous method did. I was thus able to add all the enemy formations for the first level, and the boss fight, all in one day. Hurray for me!

Next I'll be finishing off the boss attack patterns, and then the first demo can be released! Stay tuned.

Current work on Copic Fighter has been centered on creating the boss battle for the first stage. I ran into more than a few snags of course. For the life of me I could not get the movement of the object right, and then it was the timing of its actions.

After creating the animation for it and adding them, I ran into even more problems with weird graphical glitches. My solution was of course unnecessarily complicated. But after some research I found a simpler way, and now it works quite nicely. It all basically boiled down to my ignorance of GM's built in variables.

After I got the behavior resolved, I set out to add the boss to the first stage. This would involve destroying all other enemy objects before the boss battle. But finding a way to do this so it looks like they only went off-screen has been tricker than I anticipated. Now I must once again research a method of doing this without creating additional problems, i.e. huge lag in the controls. I have yet to succeed in this.

If anyone wants to be bored with the details of the whole process, please be my guest.

My current game project has at last received a name: Copic Fighter. I suppose this also means that now I have to explain it. Very well. The term Copic is a brand of markers made for illustration. They have fantastic colors, and allow you to blend well. Copic markers are made by the Japanese company Too, and have been used extensively in the anime and manga industry.


As you might have discerned from the screenshots, your "ship" is actually the top part of a Copic marker. You "bullets" are in fact short strokes of ink. So the basic idea is that you are eliminating parts of anime faces using a Copic marker, with a limited ink supply. Each part that you eliminate, in this case eyes, leaves behind a little ink which you can pick up to replenish your supply.

The gameplay is that of a basic shooter, which should be familiar to most gamers. I am not aiming to create some masterpiece of a shmup. I'm not even aiming at creating particularly original gameplay, as there are hundreds, if not thousands, of shmups out there which will probably play better. Instead, I am trying to create a game which plays well enough, but is more interesting in terms of context and visual style. So you might even say that it's an art game more than it is just another arcade style shooting game.

During moments of lucidness I have been working on an unnamed super top secret project. Well, it's unnamed at any rate. So here's a little screenie or two that gives you a basic idea of what it looks like and how it might play.


Initial focus has been on the visual style of the game rather than mechanics. I am creating this game as much for the artwork as I am creating the artwork for the game (not dissimilar from Nifflas' approach). Be advised these are very early screens, and I imagine the finished product will be somewhat different. Perhaps even a lot different. Who knows.

In the meantime, I'll also be finishing off a few items for Thruster. I expect it will be released any day now.