shmups.system11.org

Wanted to share the 2d shooter we are working on:

[APPENDED 2009-Apr-29:]

Duality ZF April 2009 Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TkG6J2CWvU


[APPENDED 2009-Apr-11:]

Duality ZF March 2009 Tech Demo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClxTi__1F0s


[APPENDED 2009-Mar-31:]



















screenshots from:
New Duality ZF Screenshots
http://xona.com/2009/03/31.html


[APPENDED 2009-Mar-16:]



screenshot from:
Duality ZF (official site)
http://xona.com/dualityzf/







screenshots from:
First Duality ZF Screenshots
http://xona.com/2008/11/17.html


[APPENDED:]

Duality ZF October 2008 Tech Demo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h46y0N9nUec


[ORIGINAL POST:]

Duality ZF Dream-Build-Play 2008 Entry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMpTJg5daa4

Looks like it has potential. Keep us updated!

Thank you! We are very excited to bring you the shooter we always desired to play! And that's our goal!

this game looks amazing and my sister has a 360. how cool is that? I love the art style of this game.

Thanks, lilmanjs! We are hoping that Duality: ZF will give a chance for 360 owners to play shooters again! It's been so long. I feel like the last time I played fun shooters was on the Sega Genesis. As for the 360, I have downloaded and played Ikaruga and 1942, the only choices available to me that I know of. Ikaruga is awesome and innovative, but still lacks the "power up" aspect I love so much in shooters. Not a flaw, just a design choice. Just means there's room for our game. And 1942 is basically boring. I was disappointed.

whenever its available for purchase, i think im gonna buy it... i like the concept of controlling 2 ships at once. nice work there m8.

Thank you.

I'm not sure of the pricing, but it will be very inexpensive. I want everyone to play it.

Whatever we cannot fit into this game, extra game modes, boss rush modes, etc., will be in the sequel. We play to make it the most fun 2d shooter ever. We want to see just how good 2d shooter fans are, and present them the most amazing shoot'em up experience imaginable. For that, we kept it in 2d on purpose.

The game should be available on Xbox LIVE on or soon after November 19th. On November 19th, the New Xbox Experience (NXE) is being released to most Xbox LIVE users for free: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/nxe/ It will contain many sections, one of which is the Community Games section (XBLCG), which is where our game will be.

We have released a new video:

Duality: ZF October 2008 Tech Demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h46y0N9nUec

This video showcases the intensity of gameplay, but it is an unfinished engine. The shot patterns, especially the big boss attacks, will be completely reworked, but the gameplay action will remain.

If anyone knows why the quality of this video is so much lower than our previous video, let me know. The quality completely sucks. Please click "watch in high quality" below the video to watch it as intended. "normal quality" should have been good enough, but, for some reason, it isn't. Perhaps it is the length of the video (almost 4 minutes long) that degraded the quality?

It looks very nice, although, isn't the visible area enough without the scrolling to the sides? I think the gameplay would benefit from not scrolling to the sides (i.e. instead use "fixed" scrolling) If the game had a vertical alignment, I would understand this desicion, but now it's super-wide...

Is it digital or analogue control for the ships?
Emph

Emph,



We scroll because we want the player to feel as though she's a part of a larger world, as it makes the game more immersive. You don't feel as though you're just pasted images on top of an irrelevant scrolling backdrop. Games like Raiden and Thunder Force II have scrolling perpendicular to the motion of the level, and it makes it them more immersive, since the camera responds to the player. We want this feeling conveyed in our game.



Both. The diagonals go full speed in both x,y (i.e. you move faster than just moving in x or just moving in y) so that you don't feel a slow down when trying to avoid bullets by rolling around them. With analog control, you can go in any direction, not just 8, and these are mapped to a square, not a sphere, so you still get full speed in the diagonals. And, you can move half speed, if required, or any proportion between 0 and full speed.

What do you mean by "vertical alignment"?

Uh oh.

Uh oh?

Vertical:


Horisontal:


Only a handful shumps (that aren't made by western/amatuer devs) make use of the horisontal layout for their games. No offence.

Emph

Incidentally, we tried scrolling like Thunder Force II does, where the camera is positioned based on the ship -- that is, it moves up and down immediately to the motion of the ship, which really makes it immersive. And it's great. We even added it in the 2nd dimension, as well, to make it even more immersive.

Unfortunately, it only works when the world is slightly larger than the visible screen, since otherwise, it takes forever to see the edges of the world. Our world is significantly larger than the visible screen for 4:3 TV modes, which we have to support.

Furthermore, it completely falls apart in multi-player mode, since, what do you use for the reference point with 2+ players? Average? Middle of the extremes? Nothing works. Either it makes the camera sluggish or chaotic, both robbing the player of the immersiveness.

My solution was to use the Thunder Force II camera, with the reference point being the middle of the extremities, but with smoothing code added in, maintaining this even for when there's only 1 player remaining. This way, the camera is responsive, no matter how larger the world is compared to the visible screen.

Emph,

Thanks for the explanation, I wasn't sure what you meant by vertical alignment, either. I thought you were referring to an attribute of the camera's motion.

Basically... we want our game to be like a vertical scroller. But, with 16:9 wide-screen TVs, we have 3x the width, which is nice to place another two players there, and get a total kick-ass experience, since each of the 3 players has his 'own' little vertical scroller at the same time -- i.e. they each have their own real estate. That's our goal. We are interested in your thoughts on how to achieve that, or if we're close at all.

Please keep in mind if there were no side-to-side scrolling, the game starts to look aged like Galaga. As soon as there is scrolling, the game feels like it comes alive with immersiveness. This is a very quick change in the code for us to test, so we've looked at it both ways. But, feeling as you do, we don't want too much scrolling, since it may ruin the experience, so we made the world only slightly larger than a 16:9 TV screen, to minimize it.

All comments welcome.

What do you mean? Galaga is aged? It's fresh as hell compared to most euroshmups. I played Galaga 88 last night and really enjoyed it. But the original is just as fun.



If the code change is that easy to do, you should include an "old school" or "arcade" version of the game (edit: without the scrolling) as well as your immersed game.

Emph

Emph,

Galaga lacks the immersiveness the newer games have. I still think Thunder Force II (the side scrolling levels) was the most immersive 2D shmup of all. Please take a look at it; you'll love it.

Two problems with providing different modes of play:

1. The game itself changes with each mode. If the world size differs, then the placement of enemies on the ground must differ.

2. Many people won't even be aware what the different modes are for. We're trying to keep things as simple as possible, to stick to the roots of the classic 2D shmups that made them kick ass.

Thanks for your feedback!

It has nothing to do with Galaga not being fresh or fun. Lots of old school games are fun. It's about the feeling of immersion. I am not sure how else to explain it. When you separate the camera from the background, and allow the background to move, it helps achieve the feeling we want. A great example of this is our TI-99/4A's version of Pole Position, where the road is static, and the player car moves across the screen instead. This was much less immersive than most Pole Position ports and the original arcade, where the road scrolls and moves across the screen. With a 2d shooter, we want something in between. The point is, when the background is STUCK to the screen, unmoving, it gives a pasted on feeling. I still remember playing Thunder Force II, level 2, for the first time. The game FELT amazing. And we want that feeling in our game. As Jason has explained, the exact Thunder Force II style scroll was impossible to achieve witih 2 or more players, but we came up with a nice compromise.

It is hard to describe such decisions because they are based on feelings, not technical reasons (although we required scrolling for our 4:3 users).

The amount of space or real estate was not the factor in deciding to implement left-right scrolling. Now I see why I could not derive your meaning of "vertical alignment" in the context. You are right, a vertically aligned game that uses left-right scrolling benefits from additional space, where as we have a 16:9 aspect ratio with tons of space already, but we still want to scroll anyway, based on the feeling I explained in my previous post.

This is the most unexpected idea we have heard, so far, that the game may benefit from NO scrolling. I am interested to hear more of your thoughts... and I appreciate them all.

I know we are new here, but I am not understanding a lot of these posts!

Thanks! Just so we're clear, I DO want the game to scroll "upwards" but not controlled by the players movement. The moving of the camera/screen from side to side as to where the players' ships are on the screen, I'm all for. It's aimed at a widescreen audience after all.

I understand now what you mean by "immersed" into the game. And since I (the more I read your posts) come to understand that you're doing this out of love for the feeling you did get from a specific game (TF2), so be it. Do it the way you love it, and I'm sure others will "get" it as well.

If I myself had the skills you have I'd remake my all time favourite game "Rygar" but using a 3D camera view (still, a static camera from the side only) just to be able to have nice lightning and perhaps zoom effects.

Emph

As TF2 is from 1988 it's hardly new. Perphaps it's as simple as that. I haven't played it myself since I'm more into arcade titles than console ones.

So perhaps you should tell the kind people here more about your gaming experience and such. What are your favourite games? Are you familiar with modern game makers such as CAVE, Psikyo and Raizing? If not, you're missing out on some good stuff.

Emph

Galaga = 1981 = no background (attempted emulation with stars).
Thunder Force II = 1988 = two parallax backgrounds.

The games are at least two generations apart.
Thunder Force II is newer than Galaga.

Right now we do the typical auto-scroll upwards, but also allow it to scroll up-down slightly due to player movements. You cannot prevent the auto-scroll, nor can you speed it up. You can see this in our videos. I am not 100% sure about it, as it has pros and cons.

Cons:
- nobody has done it before
- players may not be used to it, therefore may not like it
- average players tend to stay at the bottom in play testing

Pros:
- immersion feeling (as described earlier in this thread)
- in play testing, nobody minds it
- gives more up-down space
- allows a bit more backing up room from enemy attacks
- gives a general feeling of freedom not found in other shooters
- expert players make use of it, with the "get them as soon as they come on the screen" strategy



Well, we want to ensure we are not blinded by our love! Ultimately, the hard decisions in a game design are those that are never completely right or wrong, but instead compromises. Finding the right balance is what's hard.

He's just poking fun, because he's missing the point, and believes I'm saying Thunder Force II is a new game. What I actually said was that Galaga (while a fun game) didn't have the immersiveness that most newer games had, making it appear aged. Thunder Force II, while not the newest game, but being at least two generations newer than Galaga with its parallax scrolling background, is still one of the most immersive games. Even newer games like the remake of 1942 are not as immersive as Thunder Force II, which shows that the date of the game is actually irrelevant.

True. I was disappointed when Thunder Force III did not have the immersion Thunder Force II had... and most new games do not. I can not think of any off hand.

When I first played TF2, it was amazing. People were commenting that it looked 3D, and it was just 2D. It was just that immersive. It really felt like I was playing an arcade board, even though it was just the Sega Genesis. (Keep in mind only the side-scrolling levels are decent, the overheard multi-direction ones are horrid.)

I have seen some of Cave's games, but not the other two. I'll check them out. Thanks! Keep in mind, we're not trying to make a bullet hell shooter. We want something like an enhanced Raiden. Perhaps it could be considered bullet hell, but we don't want a 1x1 pixel hit box. We have 8x8 pixel hit box and that's good enough. We don't want defenses for when you can't traverse the bullet field. We want all enemy bullet patterns to be navigatable. This is what we are shooting for.