Preamble

This release is the first release in a very long time. Fasteroids was my first attempt at game development. This game began as Sara Spalding's "Your First GameMaker Game" using GameMaker 1.4. A HUGE thank you to Sara! (You'll notice on my itch.io page I supported one of Sara's project as a way of saying thanks for getting me into gamedev).

As I started to learn more about GameMaker, and pixel art, I started adding more "features." While I listened to a lot of videos that specifically said "finish your first game, then put it down and don't allow it to get scope creep" - that's exactly what happened with Fasteroids. I started adding more things that I really didn't understand. Friendly Cosmonaut's menu tutorials were really fascinating, and I loved how she structured everything, but I really didn't get things... it took awhile. I also just tried to add too much. In a game like this setting separate Asteroid, UFO difficulty, and player speed is a bit overkill.

I also shrank the original resolution for the game, which botched a bunch of the larger graphics I created for the game, and made things look off. This is still an issue I'm working on. My original purpose was thinking about scaling for different resolution monitors. Fasteroids never got resolution scaling, but the intention was there. It still is, but I'm planning on phasing out some of the other "features."

There was also a time where the top 10 scores were stored locally. I might implement this again, but not for a few releases. The plan going forward is mostly menu simplification, fixing screen issues, adding 2 or 3 resolution options, and maybe fixing the laser perk. I coded some controller support ages ago, but I haven't tested this recently, and I've found a better method since. At some point I will implement that method but I want to fix the other issues first.

Fixes

This release fixes a 2 year old bug caused by a poorly implemented fog system. It's difficult to notice on some monitors but there's actually a bit of fog during the game. At the end of the game the fog was suppose to be destroyed. Instead it ended up crashing the game. This should be fixed in all versions now.

The game now starts in windowed mode, rather than full screen. Full screen switching was kind of funky. In the last version you could press F for full screen and it would sometimes work, sometimes not. This release switches the key to the standard F11 full screen key and it works in both the menus and the game itself.

New Things

Ubuntu/Linux - in the past I've posted compiled Ubuntu binary versions of the game, Debian packages of the game (with binary blobs). GameMaker Studio added support for AppImages - which is awesome because this means the game isn't just limited to Debian/Ubuntu-based systems, but any Linux system that can run AppImages. When you download the AppImage you might need to set the "execute" bit. 

Once you've downloaded Fasteroids-2.40.AppImage right click on the file and click Properties. When the Properties dialog box opens up switch to the Permissions tab. At the bottom of the tab click Allow this file to run as a program. Note: these are instructions for Xubuntu Linux, it might vary slightly on your distribution.

You can also do this from the command line within the directory Fasteroids-2.40.AppImage is stored in:

chmod ugo+x Fasteroids-2.40.AppImage

I have also updated the icon file for Fasteroids on all platforms. I haven't tested on Ubuntu 24.04.1, but Xubuntu 24.04.1 displays a standard AppImage gear icon - this is not the icon for the game, but an issue with Xubuntu not displaying embedded AppImage icons. Linux Mint XFCE does display the icon correctly. I'm not sure about other Linux distributions as I've just tested with the two I use the most at home and work.

HTML - This is an exciting addition, an HTML version that works on the itch,io website. I wanted to have an HTML edition long ago, but bugs in the beta of GameMaker I was using at the time prevented it (my fault for not sticking with it - the Yoyo Games team are pretty phenomenal/fast at crushing bugs). There is a somewhat buggy version now on the site.

Windows

Really the only changes to the Windows version are the general bug fixes I mentioned earlier that apply to all versions. For the past few years I've been using Windows less and less, but I plan to continue to port and test the game on Windows.