Sine Mora(Suda 51 shmup)

[Deca]

Oh nice, I forgot all about this. Definitely looking forward to hearing more.

[psoslayer]

I wont care about this until they show some screens. Advertising the game as Battle Garrega and Einhänder just to get the fanboys attention wont do it for me.

@Reiker
Just show us some screens man.

[Udderdude]

As far as "popular" shmups are concerned, those are both obscure. If they were really trying to attention whore they'd say it's Raiden mixed with Ikaruga or some such nonsense.

[Reiker]

@Reiker
Just show us some screens man.

Debut Teaser:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6f1Ey7YQzM

[Sumez]

Style looks awesome, but releasing a teaser without any gameplay for a game in a genre which is ALL about gameplay is brutal >__<

Looks more like Progear than Garegga in the visuals, by the way.

[denpanosekai]

I'm hoping for 2P mode

[Van_Artic]

i'm looking forward to this

[Udderdude]

Whar's the gameplayyyyyyyyyy D:

[psoslayer]

Yeah looks good. Thanks Reiker. I expected a more dark-ish theme though going by the cover art posted earlier. Well I'm a litte bit dissapointed because I expected Garregga and Last Resport style but I can live with that. Overall its looking very good. Like FarCry meets Progear.

Now its all about the gameplay.

[Skykid]

"Every genocide has a philosophy"

Nice.

[Zeron]

"Every genocide has a philosophy"

Nice.

Haha I just noticed that though come on we could atleast have gotten 1 pattern or a huge laser...

[Deca]

Ship design is pretty sweet, I dunno about that big guy at the end though. Can't wait to see gameplay.

[harlequ1n]

From the teaser I'm loving the art style already. Can't wait to see gameplay.

[mesh control]

fingers crossed for no cutscenes.

[Weak Boson]

I'm definitely interested in this. It certainly looks pretty - I'm looking forward to seeing more glimpses of its darkness/weirdness. It all depends on how it plays, of course. Please don't keep us in suspense for too long.

[nem]

It's purdy, but it's really lacking in the style department, especially since it's being pimped as a Suda 51 title. I watched the SkyDrift trailer after the Sine Mora teaser, and they might as well be the same game.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

fingers crossed for no cutscenes.

Cutscenes are fine but MUST be skippable, dev please take note, if you are making a shmup that is ment to be replayed over a hundred times anything that takes us away from the actual gameplay quickly becomes really annoying, that includes slow and clunky menus. Its common for shooters to have restart in the pause options menu.

That said im really intrested in this game, I have no idea what experience in STGs the devs have but im not expecting it to be on the same level of perfection as a Cave shmup, as long as it gets the basics right and doenst play like some shitty euroshmup with inertia or undodgable bullets with a healthbar to compensate.

[kid aphex]

I'm disappointed in the aesthetics, relative to the original promo art.

[BPzeBanshee]

I'm disappointed in the aesthetics, relative to the original promo art.

Me too, but I'm more concerned about the gameplay which has yet to be revealed.

Having said that it does currently look nice though. I imagine that possibly the happy happy joy joy graphics are for that particular area only (ie other levels with more Garegga-like environments)?

[Sumez]

I love the visuals from the teaser really, very ghibli'esque.

[chempop]

Agree that cutscenes should be skippable, goes without saying really. Drove me nuts in Ikaruga.

I enjoyed the teaser, looks very stylish although perhaps a tad too shiny. This is for XBLA, right?

[Sumez]

Well I admit that stage with the bright green islands WOULD look better with the saturation turned down just a notch.

[Udderdude]

Actually things start to look pretty dark and gritty when the boss emerges and fires it's LAZOR.

[ZOM]

It does look a tad shiny... but for now I'm positive it'll be less noticeable once the gameplay perspective kicks in.
And yeah, some sort of "demo off" setting in the options menu would be very welcome if you're gonna use cutscenes (additional to being skippable). Options are always good.

[Reiker]

...releasing a teaser without any gameplay for a game in a genre which is ALL about gameplay is brutal

Yes, it is. However, gameplay footage will follow soon - as mentioned earlier, we would like to reach both "casual" players AND the hardcore STG fans, like you - so we have two strictly separate game modes: Story and Arcade.

…and here we immediately face our greatest challenge regarding the promotion - if we show Arcade footage, the casual crowd will immediately run away, as in its best places the game has almost danmaku-quantity of bullets on the screen, while the Story mode would probably scare away you.

Our goal is to reach the wider audience. The less scary (read: hardcore) the game looks, the better. That's why I'm here, talking to you guys: "damage control".

Looks more like Progear than Garegga in the visuals, by the way.

You're 100% right. Grasshopper Manufacture's original idea for the style was a _lot_ crazier, while my vision was to resurrect Garegga visually. The consensus was that Sine Mora should resemble "The Wings of Honneamise" and "Porco Rosso" - thus it's more like Progear (in places).

fingers crossed for no cutscenes

We do have cutscenes. A _lot_ of them. Good news is, most of them are in the Story mode - and yes, you're able to skip them.

anything that takes us away from the actual gameplay quickly becomes really annoying, that includes slow and clunky menus. Its common for shooters to have restart in the pause options menu.

There is a restart option in the pause menu. It's instant.

doenst play like some shitty euroshmup with inertia or undodgable bullets with a healthbar to compensate.

No health bar. No euroshooting - that was a promise.

possibly the happy happy joy joy graphics are for that particular area only (ie other levels with more Garegga-like environments)

Exactly.

[Sumez]

This all sounds positive, you know what people want to hear.

[Deca]

It honestly really means a lot to see you in here answering questions directly (and it helps that you're able to tell us what we want to hear ). I really appreciate the outreach and interest in your audience.

The more I hear the better. Really you pretty much had a confirmed sale from me at the first mention of Suda as he's one of my favorite people in the gaming industry, but from the outset I was worried the game might be somewhat lacking as a proper shooter. Seems like you have a pretty good grasp on what you're doing here though, so I'm going to allow myself to be somewhat optimistic

Also if there are some sketches floating around of the original, crazier design concepts I would really love to see them. I'm definitely digging the visual style you have going and am a fan of the influences, just curious about what other designs were tossed around.

[kid aphex]

Well then, hopefully the gameplay footage is dropped right here, in these forums, first

[BPzeBanshee]

It honestly really means a lot to see you in here answering questions directly (and it helps that you're able to tell us what we want to hear ). I really appreciate the outreach and interest in your audience.

...

Also if there are some sketches floating around of the original, crazier design concepts I would really love to see them. I'm definitely digging the visual style you have going and am a fan of the influences, just curious about what other designs were tossed around.

This, minus the completely convinced sale, is my views entirely. I'm glad you're making sure you're getting appropriate feedback from the community.

The whole Story vs Arcade thing sounds uncannily like Tyrian and I can imagine some of Tyrian's graphics rerendered in 3D looking a lot like what you've got there, so I suppose the impression you'll be giving out in terms of balancing between the audiences is going to be controversial somewhat anyway. So long as the gameplay is good and the backgrounds are excellent you should certainly have a winner.

Not sure about the cutscenes though. I don't think they're nearly as bad as they seem but making them skippable easily is key to making them as least annoying as possible. I have a game project that's on hold and if I put any kind of dialog process in that it would absolutely have to be skippable somehow. The amount of shmup failures stacks up and as a result you're on a relatively tight line of convention you've got to follow there, for that I kinda feel bad for you guys.

Over all I do wish your project well. It looks nice regardless of whether it may be fitting in Progear or Sonic 4 or Avatar as opposed to Battle Garegga, and providing you play your cards right in regards to the actual gameplay it should be at worst moderately successful, if not a huge hit.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

As the others have said its good when devs communicates with the fanbase in such a frank way, which helps to manage ppls expectations of the game so they arnt instantly turned off when the game doenst look and play exactly like a Cave shooter. Tbh I personally wouldnt want a dev trying to copy Cave verbatim and probably failing like 5pB did with Bullet soul. We have Cave for our danmaku fun, I want other devs to do their own thing.

About your trailers might I suggest that you fully drive home to the player which difficulty level each segment you are showing. While some modern shmups include novice / easy difficulties that have a low bullet density, this is probably totally lost to those watching the trailer since they tend to just show the hardest difficulties or mix in easy parts. It doesnt help that many of the trailers on You Tube are in Japanese as well.

While I have no idea how you intend to handle casual players and market your game, but might I suggest that you make an effort into informing the mainstream into just whats so good about the genre and give them the tools to become better players. This genre has a habit of just dumping arcade ports (with infinite continues) and expecting noobs to fully understand how to play them. While sites like this place are there to inform players (It was when I found this site when I got into the genre) with things like the hitbox,1CC, scoreplay but also bullet dodging techniques (like bullet herding / tap dodging) all this info should be ingame in bite size tutorials. Maybe then we can start to move away from this silly notion that scoreplay / 1CC (or 3CC / 5CC like 16bit console STGs used) is something that only "fans" of the genre will enjoy.

Shmups should be just like other genres like fighters, RTS or FPS games, where casuals and hardcore play by the same rules, rather than the schizophrenic method thats in vogue atm