Duality ZF (Xbox LIVE Indie Games) coming soon...

[Kollision]

So....
With the imminent death of XBLIG / XBLA altogether, what's of this old promising project?
Any news on new probable platforms?

[DJ Incompetent]

Well, I read that the new "self-publish" option is expanding to 360 according to the Pinball Arcade Farsight people. Sooooo, ....game on?

[Xonatron]

(I should totally change the title to this thread, but eventually it will become true.)

We are exploring every avenue in which to take Duality ZF. We are looking at bringing the source code to MonoGame that will open the doors to bring it cross-platform (PC, Xbox's, PlayStations, OUYA, even the mobile phones).

Right now we are starting this job with our Decimation X3 and Score Rush games, and then we'll apply what we learn to Duality ZF... which may be split into a few games to make the release more likely. Start smaller, kind of thing.

I'm hoping the indie support of Xbox One and PS4 is great. They need to have good tools or have support for industry 'standards' (like MonoGame), allow us to develop on their consoles without needing to purchase $5..10k dev kits, and have proper support on their digital storefront. That last one was the only thing that failed XBLIG, which we tried to rectify with our Xona Proposal: http://xona.com/proposal/ XBLIG could have used leaderboard and achievement support too, but it was secondary to the failure of the storefront.

Anyways, long story short, we are still moving ahead with Duality ZF, but we learned long ago to never make promises! We appreciate the continued interest!

It's funny, but as time goes on, nobody really steps in and fills the hole we are trying to fill. Very few studios really do 'retro' right. I know you guys hate calling shmups retro, but you know what I mean! I guess my point is, Xona Games still has its place in the industry.

[emphatic]

Please make a vertical 1-player Danmaku version with TATE support for XBLIG.

[Weak Boson]

Love Score Rush. In fact I was just playing it now on turbulenz. Legitimately excited for Duality! I really hope you guys can work something out.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Score Rush is so much damn fun. And frustrating, so painful to come so close to clearing Godlike...

[Xonatron]

Score Rush is so much damn fun. And frustrating, so painful to come so close to clearing Godlike...

We never intended anyone even to unlock Godlike, for what it's worth. I got to the final boss in INSANE mode once and died a cheap death. It wears you down by the time you get to the end. I believe the relentless nature of the game is its only flaw. I don't know if we'll do an endless cascade of difficulty modes like this ever again!

Score Rush's Difficulty Modes:
- Normal
- Hard
- Expert
- Crazy
- Insane
- Godlike

[BareKnuckleRoo]

We never intended anyone even to unlock Godlike, for what it's worth.

Godlike actually feels fine difficulty wise and isn't really any harder than your average arcade game if you're playing with a couple people. The bullet patterns aren't impossible to get through even with the density, the issue is that if you're playing with someone else, the extra firepower helps immensely. In solo, the enemies have so much health that every single boss is like fighting Queen Larsa. Even the final enemy rush before the final boss is flatout impossible without bombing or using lives because you simply can't kill them in a timely fashion. Normal stage segments that would have been easy become a pain because killing that one bigger enemy for the screen shake invuln takes too long to do safely without getting overwhelmed by all the new enemies popping up.

If the solo mode increased health only marginally for popcorn/weak enemies as difficulty goes up, you wouldn't have the problem in Godlike where soloing means the enemies overwhelm you. Boss health is fine to increase because you don't need to worry about being interrupted by popcorn filling the screen (well, normally, your game does have enemies come in occasionally during bosses and they get seriously annoying if you're making micrododges in a dense pattern).

With two+ people Godlike feels quite balanced. Hard, but fun. Alone, it's brutal, as you're too weak relative to the enemies. Some kind of dynamic health system where enemy health is scaled when more players join, or player shots get scaled back in strength the more that join would make it a bit better. That, or cap off the health increases for normal enemies at a more reasonable point and just increase bullet density with difficulty levels, dunno.

[Xonatron]

BareknuckleRoo,

Interesting points.

You jogged my memory. We designed difficulties up to Godlike specifically in case of multiplayer dominance and wanted to see how far a group of amazing players could push it. So it was never intended to be taken solely. That's more accurate than what I posted earlier. So we did intend someone to get to Godlike, just not alone.

Godlike and further difficulties need work because the game moves on if the boss hasn't been killed. It should escape or stop progressing until it was killed. So, really, that's bug you've discovered being such a great player. Kudos!

We've considered not increasing the enemy health at all in later difficulty modes, which might be how we do Duality ZF to avoid the problems you mentioned above. I like your analysis very much. It's very well thought out. Exactly the type of thinking you need to not only make a shmup but make it scalable.

Currently in Score Rush, the enemy health (and shot pattern speed) scale with extra players joining. It does so on the fly, but never settles back to a lower level when extra players die off. So if two players play, or if one player plays and another one joins, the difficulty is bumped up a bit (no where near a bump in difficulty level from the main menu though), and then it stays no matter who dies.

So, we agree with the capping of health, I guess. We might just do it for all enemies in the future.

[Weak Boson]

Just beat crazy on solo

I think godlike with two players is really tough but it should be just about doable. That's a pretty good place for it to be.

Also I just looked at the the grand total score rankings on turbulenz and our godlike runs have pushed Roo and I to 61 and 53 billion points respectively! That's a lot of points.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I think godlike with two players is really tough but it is definitely doable.

=D

lol now all we need is a run where I don't die at the final boss, boson had to solo it most of the way like a pro

[Weak Boson]

Breakdown:



Yes we did it! Suddenly the pain of all those close calls seems worth it!

[spadgy]

I'm so glad to hear DZF is still on the cards.

Apart from the fact that Xona guys are lovely people who put a lot of thought into making a shmup that will please shmup players, it's a great game. I'm sure Matthew and Jason won;t mind me saying a played a preview version of DZF a fair while back, and it was bloody brilliant. I love a bit of (poorly played) Double Play on the Raiden games, and DZF gave me just what I wanted as a fan of Double Play.

Good luck with it guys!

[Xonatron]

Haha, nice!!!