What's missing?

cigsthecat · Post by **cigsthecat** » Sat May 17, 2008 6:09 am

In your mind what are the elements missing from most homebrew/doujin shooters that stop them from being as good as professional arcade releases?

Generally speaking of course, as there will always be exceptions in one category or another.

Zebra Airforce · Post by **Zebra Airforce** » Sat May 17, 2008 6:30 am

I think Arcade shooters tend to have a much quicker pace that makes them feel alot more lively and exciting. There are other things, like simple, effective controls and an intuitive interface (stuff like ship selection and hud), but most of all it's the quick pacing.

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Sat May 17, 2008 6:37 am

Zebra Airforce wrote:I think Arcade shooters tend to have a much quicker pace that makes them feel alot more lively and exciting. There are other things, like simple, effective controls and an intuitive interface (stuff like ship selection and hud), but most of all it's the quick pacing.

Don't think this is nessecarily true, there are alot of older arcade shmups with a much slower, deliberate pace.

I would say the biggest thing missing is artwork. Not as much of an issue with Japanese doujin games, though.

orange · Post by **orange** » Sat May 17, 2008 7:07 am

i for one wish people would make their shmups in 320x240 and not higher resolutions that are unneccesary given the detail that ends up in them

also i hate 99% of patterns that are in doujin games, most of them seem unprofessional to me and there's not much aimed stuff overlapping with static patterns

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Sat May 17, 2008 7:27 am

They're usually way easier than arcade games.
There are long periods of nothing happening.
They don't look as good.
And often there's one or two braindead ideas that puts otherwise great doujins below arcade quality.

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Sat May 17, 2008 7:27 am

Difficulty and art.

Most doujins aren't exactly the hardest games on the block. Most also tend to be rather bland.

Then again, I think Ikaruga is downright ugly.

nimitz · Post by **nimitz** » Sat May 17, 2008 7:35 am

Then again, I think Ikaruga is downright ugly.

Your post just lost any sort of credibility.

As for the doujins, they lack the "production value" of arcade games. it may be in artwork, pace, patterns, music, scoring. Theres always something missing if you dig deeper.

320x240 · Post by **320x240** » Sat May 17, 2008 7:40 am

Presentation. Overall quality.

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Sat May 17, 2008 10:05 am

chokepoints

also proper game and stage design

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Sat May 17, 2008 2:12 pm

Marketing.

RHE · Post by **RHE** » Sat May 17, 2008 2:36 pm

Budget.

lgb · Post by **lgb** » Sat May 17, 2008 5:11 pm

People.

mice · Post by **mice** » Sat May 17, 2008 7:44 pm

Where X is "Most homebrewed"

- Death Smiles vs X: just gfx
- Ikaruga vs X: gfx/sfx/music/game-design/story/presentation

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Sat May 17, 2008 7:53 pm

mice wrote:Where X is "Most homebrewed"

- Death Smiles vs X: just gfx

Um no. Have you even played Death smiles? Its gameplay is far deeper than any homebrew out there.

skink · Post by **skink** » Sat May 17, 2008 8:42 pm

mice wrote:Where X is "Most homebrewed"
- Death Smiles vs X: gfx/sfx/music/gameplay design/stage-design/character design

fixed that for you.

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Sat May 17, 2008 9:00 pm

cigsthecat · Post by **cigsthecat** » Sat May 17, 2008 9:34 pm

I have my own ideas about this but I didn't want to influence the replies.

Basically we've mentioned just about everything that makes up a game as being missing/subpar when thinking about homebrew games, but the main issues seem to be:

difficulty (lack thereof)

art

simplicity of design regarding interface and controls

stage design

marketing
budget
people

Budget and people are important, but these can be overcome by trading time. I think this is really one of the main reasons why few homebrew games end up feeling like a solid, whole game. It just takes an inordinate amount of time to create that if you are working alone. Marketing is an important part of the process, but doesn't impact the actual quality of the game.

Art is a huge one- the simple fact is that very few people have talent. And it takes a lot of talent, time and skill to create something on the level of a professional game.

Difficulty is interesting because most homebrew creators don't know how to add difficulty in a fair way that can be learned and overcome as you play. It's weird to see them having the same problems professional developers encountered 20-30 years ago. I think that comes down to playing experience and not understanding the history of the genre and where it's currently at.

Stage design requires some of the same things as difficulty, but really requires a decent player to come up with something that is fun to play. Also needed is someone so interested in the genre that they will play a stage thousands of times to get it right, and fucking love it.

Simplicity/appeal of interface and controls is a good one. This is very important.

I see several issues with most homebrew projects.

First the scoring element. Either it is so bland/worthless that it doesn't exactly ruin the game, but it certainly doesn't add anything. Or the idea is so bizarre and clunky that it does ruin the game and makes it annoying to play. I'd rather see the latter because at least that shows that the creator racked their brains to come up with something new.

Regarding art, yeah most people just suck. So then we just get a bunch of stupid glowing abstractions. This isn't style, this is lack of talent you're looking at. Sprites are difficult and time consuming to do right, even with talent.

Finally you have skilled programmers making fifteen little "idea" projects instead of spending the time invested in a single project. Any of these concepts might be interesting if developed into a full game with real stage design.

And yes, stage design is one of the biggest problems with homebrew games. Hardly anyone is even creating whole stages, let alone poorly designed ones.

Finally, the single greatest obstacle facing homebrew creators: ATTITUDE. When you don't know what you're doing, and everyone is constantly complaining about flaws in your game- you say they just don't get it. You throw a tantrum and wonder why the bad people don't like you. Instead of taking reasonable criticism to heart and fixing the errors, you pout and whine and get offended. This applies to most any artform, and there are so many people that you can see will simply never be any good because of it.

Now that we have the general, what are some very specific things homebrew games need to have in order to compete with professional games?

elfhentaifan · Post by **elfhentaifan** » Sat May 17, 2008 9:51 pm

-art (not only girls)
-a smooth and understandable chain system
-an engine/graphic that doesnt make you laugh or cry
-good ship control
-Variety
-a well ballanced difficulty ( = differend mode's preferred)

and not at last, good music

EDIT: sorry i read the post above too late

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Sat May 17, 2008 9:57 pm

cigsthecat wrote:Finally, the single greatest obstacle facing homebrew creators: ATTITUDE. When you don't know what you're doing, and everyone is constantly complaining about flaws in your game- you say they just don't get it. You throw a tantrum and wonder why the bad people don't like you. Instead of taking reasonable criticism to heart and fixing the errors, you pout and whine and get offended. This applies to most any artform, and there are so many people that you can see will simply never be any good because of it.

I'd really like to think this is the exception rather than the rule. Of course when you do run into them it is pretty annoying .. :/

RHE · Post by **RHE** » Sat May 17, 2008 10:17 pm

My question to this discussion is: Do we talk about people with talent only and why there games lacking of something or why there's a lack of talent? Or is this purely a gameplay discussion?

I mean it's obvoius that most homebrew games don't reach professional game quality but in most cases they don't even try. When they reaching an professional level, then theres no reason for being homebrew anymore. So, when you try to be on a professional level and have some talent, but don't reach it, then it has mostly something to do with a lack of budget.

Personally I would exlude not so talented homebrew makers from this discussion, because it would make a thread of it's own.

cigsthecat wrote:Budget and people are important, but these can be overcome by trading time. I think this is really one of the main reasons why few homebrew games end up feeling like a solid, whole game. It just takes an inordinate amount of time to create that if you are working alone. Marketing is an important part of the process, but doesn't impact the actual quality of the game.

Yes, it's about time and budget. I mean talent is an important factor as everyone knows but time can hardly compensate a complete lack of budget also. I just think that with budget Blue Wish Resurrection could look and play like ESPGaluda as even gameplay needs budget.

Finally, the single greatest obstacle facing homebrew creators: ATTITUDE. When you don't know what you're doing, and everyone is constantly complaining about flaws in your game- you say they just don't get it. You throw a tantrum and wonder why the bad people don't like you. Instead of taking reasonable criticism to heart and fixing the errors, you pout and whine and get offended. This applies to most any artform, and there are so many people that you can see will simply never be any good because of it.

Now that we have the general, what are some very specific things homebrew games need to have in order to compete with professional games?

Are you talking to me?

I was only abused by poeple who don't play the games they're critizising. Normally those people are diligent enough to avoid this but with Last hope somehow they felt free to do that. So, I'm not sure if you can say that most independet devs lack of right attitude per se.

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Sat May 17, 2008 10:22 pm

you lost already gtfo

we don't need round 2

LIBEL BAN

MX7 · Post by **MX7** » Sat May 17, 2008 10:24 pm

orange wrote:
also i hate 99% of patterns that are in doujin games, most of them seem unprofessional to me and there's not much aimed stuff overlapping with static patterns

You really hit the nail on the head with that last one. The patterns just are not maleable enough in doujin games, in that they generally don't respond well enough to your actions. The fact that the bosses are so much better than the stages in Touhou really confirms this: Zun can't can't do aimed shots for shit, which lead to his stages just looking and playing a mess. Cheers for that

szycag · Post by **szycag** » Sat May 17, 2008 10:49 pm

"you don't understand the game's concept" wouldn't fly with arcade vendors

elfhentaifan · Post by **elfhentaifan** » Sat May 17, 2008 10:54 pm

shoe-sama wrote:you lost already gtfo

we don't need round 2

LIBEL BAN

http://z0r.de/?id=63

monkeyman · Post by **monkeyman** » Sat May 17, 2008 11:17 pm

I'd say a lack of playtesters.

You can do all the individual elements right but it won't necessarily come together to make something fun.

I think proffessional games get playtested a lot all through the process of development so the things that need tweaking or scrapping all together can be dealt with early on.

A great game is defined as much by what ideas / features were not included as by the ones that were.

CIT · Post by **CIT** » Sat May 17, 2008 11:18 pm

What's missing?

Scanlines!

320x240 · Post by **320x240** » Sat May 17, 2008 11:30 pm

cigsthecat wrote:The best post in ages.

CITt wrote:Scanlines!

Already implemented in my game

lgb · Post by **lgb** » Sun May 18, 2008 12:50 am

To be even more of clones than some already are.

To be honest I really don't see what's missing. Actually imo there's some things in "professional" games that are missing.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Sun May 18, 2008 12:57 am

Like long parts with relatively little in them

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Sun May 18, 2008 1:05 am

cigsthecat wrote:Marketing is an important part of the process, but doesn't impact the actual quality of the game.

Putting aside for a moment the fact that "quality" means different things to different people, while you're obviously right that how something's marketed doesn't affect what's actually in it, it can and often does affect the reception the product gets, which, from the creator's standpoint especially, is really all that matters - you can create Objectively The Best Game Ever, but if no one bothers to buy/play it, your work's been wasted, regardless. In any event, people can frequently be made to overlook a title's faults if it's presented to them in a certain way - sometimes you're not even aware you're doing it, but in some cases you'll openly say to yourself and others, "yeah, A, B, and C suck about this game, but it has X, Y, and Z, which I really like, so I put up with it." So yeah, marketing doesn't actually change anything about what's "right" or "wrong" with a game, but it can make it a good deal more difficult for many to see the aforementioned clearly, and thus have far-reaching effects on a game's reputation and ultimate success, which, again, are all that truly ends up mattering, from a purely "practical" point of view at least. And of course the producer of a game isn't the only one who can "market" it in this way (peers, reviewers, etc. can also contribute to this effect), but it still happens, even to "niche/hardcore" types, a la the "stereotypical shmupper."

Off to the side, I sometimes wonder if subconsciously shmuppers in particular are often more hesitant to heavily criticize commercial releases than doujin stuff (especially before the game is even released) simply because there are far fewer of the former these days - sort of the "we should be grateful to get much of anything" mindset when it comes to commercial shmup releases, versus a "dime a dozen" mentality towards doujins.