Don't you appreciate new good shmups?

[mastermx]

I honestly think you are a cool dev. I think the reason people have reacted like this is because of misunderstanding and badly expressed english. I would recommend a proof reader.

[Obscura]

I think you'll find that users on this forum tend to be quite apprehensive of games made by Westerners in general because of a very long history of them not understanding what people actually like about the genre due in part to the general death of arcades.

The real reason western devs can't make 2D action games that are any good has nothing to do with the death of arcades (arcades were doing well over here until the mid '90s -- witness the success of SF2 -- and western devs couldn't make 2D action games to compete with the Japanese then, either). The reason western devs can't make 2D action games is because the crash of '83 meant that they sat out the period during the mid-to-late eighties when the biggest strides were being made.

[qmish]

Oh come on stop overhyping that 1983 thing. It only related to North America. It has nothing on C64 and others. And stop making glance that fall of Atari was real death of gaming. Goddamn hipsters and their praisings like NES was the only saviour.

when the biggest strides were being made.

Can you expand a bit more this, though?

[system11]

So....

Just the US = Western devs.
Atari crash = industry crash.

Do you make documentaries?

[Obscura]

Oh come on stop overhyping that 1983 thing. It only related to North America. It has nothing on C64 and others. And stop making glance that fall of Atari was real death of gaming. Goddamn hipsters and their praisings like NES was the only saviour.

when the biggest strides were being made.

Can you expand a bit more this, though?

European developers were mostly working on PCs, which in the '80s did action games fairly poorly.

Videogaming didn't stop after '83, even in North America, but the hardware divide that resulted from the crash and persisted for 20 years (western devs on PCs, Japanese devs on consoles) is the reason why western developers wipe the floor with Japanese developers in genres that are best done with a mouse + keyboard interface (FPS, RPG, Strategy) while Japanese devs wipe the floor with western developers in genres that are best done with a controller (any 3rd person action, whether 2D or 3D).

As far as the mid-to-late '80s being when the biggest strides in 2D design were made, think of it like this -- it's the period when we went from single-screen games where the levels looped ridiculous numbers of times over a single play session (think Donkey Kong, Galaga, Burger Time, or Mappy) to the era of scrolling games with multiple distinct levels where a single play session was expected to see each level once or twice (Toaplan's shmups, Super Mario Bros., Ghosts 'n Goblins, etc.).

[nasty_wolverine]

...crash of '83...

war was beginning

i came out of retirement for this one

[Van_Artic]

You could start by showing you respect your potential customers and ditching the Steam DRM. Whether or not a game has DRM is my baseline before I even think about considering if a game is worth my time or money

i actually picture a man waking up, reading the newspaper about more steam games announced

"DAMN YOU GABE NEWELL *shakes fist in the air*"

[system11]

European developers were mostly working on PCs, which in the '80s did action games fairly poorly.

Videogaming didn't stop after '83, even in North America, but the hardware divide that resulted from the crash and persisted for 20 years (western devs on PCs, Japanese devs on consoles) is the reason why western developers wipe the floor with Japanese developers in genres that are best done with a mouse + keyboard interface (FPS, RPG, Strategy) while Japanese devs wipe the floor with western developers in genres that are best done with a controller (any 3rd person action, whether 2D or 3D).

As far as the mid-to-late '80s being when the biggest strides in 2D design were made, think of it like this -- it's the period when we went from single-screen games where the levels looped ridiculous numbers of times over a single play session (think Donkey Kong, Galaga, Burger Time, or Mappy) to the era of scrolling games with multiple distinct levels where a single play session was expected to see each level once or twice (Toaplan's shmups, Super Mario Bros., Ghosts 'n Goblins, etc.).

Your blinkered view of what was going on at the time is leading to some pretty bizarre statements.

It's like the whole European and microcomputer scene didn't exist. In fact the US too was pumping out games during this period, including some very good ones.

[Blinge]

remember this guy?

Haha never saw this, it's gold.

Edit: no it isn't, it's fast becoming painful.

[BIL]

Codergames believes in suffering for his art. Your suffering. ;3

[Kollision]

remember this guy?

Haha never saw this, it's gold.

Edit: no it isn't, it's fast becoming painful.

Probably the biggest troll I've seen around here, like, ever.

[Furry Fox Jet Pilot]

remember this guy?

Haha never saw this, it's gold.

Edit: no it isn't, it's fast becoming painful.

FWAHAHAAHAHAHAHA I just read that whole thread out of boredom. What a fuckhead, little shit

[Giest118]

You could start by showing you respect your potential customers and ditching the Steam DRM. Whether or not a game has DRM is my baseline before I even think about considering if a game is worth my time or money.

Exactly one lost sale here, then. That accounts for 100% of the perceived lack of interest in this game.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Tetris and Boulder Dash came out in 1984 (according to Wikipedia). I can think of some 8-bit computer Japanese games that hold up, too.

[cul]

I identify 4 main groups of issues with "new/western/indie" shmups.

1. A lack of understanding of shmups gameplay.

It usually lies around a complete lack of scoring system and/or terrible understanding of the relation between space and time in a shmup. To clarify, it means having a coherence between the speed of the game, and the amount of space you can actually cover. There is no point of having a huge 16:9 pc screen if you can't move fast enough from the left to the right corner to get a bonus, an enemy, or whatever. There is also the issue with level design, which plenty of "new shmups" devs are totally oblivious to the idea, thinking that shmup are simple games, when rythm, pacing and enemies placing is crucial to this genre.

The best example of this is Jamestown, game is a pixel art orgy, but the gameplay is so boringly uninteresting you want to quit after 10 minutes if you don't want to sleep: game is 16:9 but your ship is slower than a snail, I mean, did they even test it or did they actually had fun playing this high on Ambian? I'm sure this game has been made by people who saw some Mushihime Futari "HARDEST BOSS IN A VIDEOGAME EVER XXXXXXXXXXD" video on youtube and thought "Woah look guys, look this is it, this nipp arcade games are so fucking simple to do, all we need to do is hire the best pixel art guy we can find and paste it on top of it and we'll sell truckloads of it!".

2. A lack of budget/vision/originality in design

I am sorry but I am almost 30, I don't have that many hours to play video games anymore, and when I can actually play something, I wanna play something that I like, and I have no interest in playing some obscure freeware with generic assets used for every in-game graphical elements. Maybe OP's gameplay is stellar (although no offense but that looked generic as hell in term of gameplay), but the graphics are just nope, nope nope nope. And I really don't think this is mostly a budget thing, you can achieve very original graphics if you go the abstract route, I mean look at all the Kenta cho/aba games shmups, they have very basic graphics and yet they have an identity. Or even better: space invader extreme... Space invader extreme is actually a textbook example of how simple but solid gameplay, and very simple but original graphics can turn into an instant modern classic.

3. Generic shitty music

Yep. I mean with the millions of amateur music makers you can find today with the internets, there is no fucking excuse to not have an original soundtrack that FITS the game.

4. Marketing / PR reasons

To play your game we must first know it exists, and what is sure is that between a niche genre and broke devs out of touch with reality, it's quiet hard to play your game if we don't even know it exist.

[To Far Away Times]

I'm writing because I made a good shmup, I spent over a whole year polishing it for people like you. But when I post something interesting about it is like It doesn't exist. Is Cave or Treasure the onle ones making good shmups? I don't think so.

Please have a go, it's really good, If you like Galaga , then you will really enjoy this one.

This is gameplay from today for the tournament. CLick to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYQj33oT6fo

Cheers!

I appreciate your enthusiam in your product but your tone is all wrong. Comparing your game with genre heavyweights like CAVE and Treasure is a one way ticket to a lot of scorn on this forum.

I play guitar, I make music and I like some of the things I've come up with, but I don't run around comparing myself to The Beatles, you know?

[Squire Grooktook]

The best example of this is Jamestown, game is a pixel art orgy, but the gameplay is so boringly uninteresting you want to quit after 10 minutes if you don't want to sleep: game is 16:9 but your ship is slower than a snail, I mean, did they even test it or did they actually had fun playing this high on Ambian? I'm sure this game has been made by people who saw some Mushihime Futari "HARDEST BOSS IN A VIDEOGAME EVER XXXXXXXXXXD" video on youtube and thought "Woah look guys, look this is it, this nipp arcade games are so fucking simple to do, all we need to do is hire the best pixel art guy we can find and paste it on top of it and we'll sell truckloads of it!".

I don't even like Jamestown but I disagree. The are 4 ships, the faster of which is fast enough to get around, and there is enough thought put into level design/enemy placement/patterns to make it feel like an arcade shmup. The huge screen space is generally not an issue because enemies spawn within your range.

More the reason I don't like Jamestown is because the patterns, while technically solid, just aren't that amazing. It feels like any number of "solid but not spectacular" doujin shmups that are floating around. And I don't really have time for that sort of thing.

[ProjectAKo]

Your game is missing some key elements I want in a shmup.

- Good progression of elements
- Good pixel art
- Good music
- Giant mechanical bosses

Actually it's lacking all of them, so I have to say I've got no interest in it.

[Emuser]

From what I have seen, I think one major issue is simply that the game is brutally slow at the start before you realize there are tons of ships to unlock and the game does eventually get pretty insane. You look to be stuck with almost a pea shooter until you unlock other things. Another thing is contrast with some backgrounds and bullets, I imagine you have to pay extra attention to make sure you don't get a life stolen from something dumb. I'm baffled that you didn't at least link to the steam trailer or the steam store for your own game, there was more to show in that video than the first one posted. You came in with the wrong impression on us, thanks to codergames last year if someone sets themselves on their own pedestal from the unknown, it's gonna turn into a shitstorm real quick. I for one had to actually take the time to check the stuff out, which gave me a better impression of the game compared to when I thought there was a guy trolling/begging. Regardless, I for one am willing to buy this and try it out soon to give it my honest feedback. I play around with a bunch of obscure stuff so it's usually interesting to dive into the dark void of the unknown.

Someone already linked to the ridiculous codergames fiasco last summer, but believe it or not that piece shit actually rose the price of his Invader Attack 2 from $19.99 to $29.99. Fucking horrible.

[Kaleidogames]

Hello guys.
Yup, I totally understand your position after that troll guy. SO you have the right to think I was him (or like him) to start very defensive, it's understandable.

@Emuser
Game starts slow, kind of slow, true. It used to start a bit harder and people really struggled to pass those first levels. Specially with the collection twist, almost everybody couldn't even pass first level, it sounds silly, it is not that hard, i know but that's what we got in all fairs we exposed the game. We used also to have 2 tutorial levels that were skippable but with a massive screen on top saying press DOWN to skip, nobody noticed. We removed it and we made first 3 stagers very very easily, you can pass them in a few seconds each. But new players can take up to one minute.
Last week we were in Spain in Madrid Games Week, we had 4 days, first day we placed the arcade version, which starts hard and fast, and guess how many made to stage 2? They looked to me like I made a shitty unplayable game and nobody left the arcade game happy. I had to quickly put the steam version into the machine and players started loving the game again. There could be a better way to execute first stages but I haven't found it yet.

@ProjectAKo
I'm sorry but you might be wrong in a couple of points:
- It has good ships power and enemies progression, you can just compare first stage with latest levels.
- It has something that is not pixel art that blends well with the game, it could be better , much better i know, but users are happy with this, there is a hidden retro mode to compare the new and the old plain graphics.
- Music was made by a sucessful musician.
- Gigant mechanical bosses, thats something I really miss. I will definetly put them on the following shmup I will create.

@Giest118
@MathU
DRM, okey . Have you ever made ANY videogame that took more than a whole year from your life, put it on Desura DRM FREE, sell 2 on launch and have over 1200 people playing the game? Well, I did. I sold 2 copies of BEEKYR, and thousands have it, it was also put in Torrents. You can imagine how I felt.
Good: as the game went popular. But also bad: as nobody said thank you and took the game for free when I spent so long working on it and I was hoping to fund me following game with that money.

So again, why DRM?
Because I learnt from the past. If you want me to show respect towards you, I should have been respected too. But I was ***** hard instead. Sorry I am not a fool and I will not fall into that again. You can download cracked versions of my games very easily but it would make you an hypocrite.
DRM sucks, I know, but it is necessary sometimes. But who cares when the game costs 5 bucks?

But good news for you. Arcade version is DRM free, but it lacks (obviously) all Steam features like: world championships with prizes, friend's hi-scores table or your own customized private tournaments among others.
But the good side of it is that Arcade version is a lot harder and it doesnt need any buttons, it all works without mouse, just like any other arcade game. But I will release it when I'm 100% sure that the game is 100% completed as updating is not as easy as with Steam client and then it gets messy.

[Bananamatic]

Last week we were in Spain in Madrid Games Week, we had 4 days, first day we placed the arcade version, which starts hard and fast, and guess how many made to stage 2? They looked to me like I made a shitty unplayable game and nobody left the arcade game happy. I had to quickly put the steam version into the machine and players started loving the game again. There could be a better way to execute first stages but I haven't found it yet.

"Fuck casuals"
-Mahatma Gandhi

[Kaiser]

http://www.desura.com/games/beekyr-eco-shootem-up

Beekyr does exist, it is an actual game, just leaving it here so people can see it. However I will restrain from sharing my personal opinion on it.

[BrianC]

Oh come on stop overhyping that 1983 thing. It only related to North America. It has nothing on C64 and others. And stop making glance that fall of Atari was real death of gaming. Goddamn hipsters and their praisings like NES was the only saviour.

The crash also only applied to consoles, not computers or arcades. Western developers like Atari Games and Midway were still going strong in arcades at that time.

[Austin]

The game looks stupid.

[phase3]

remember this guy?

Haha never saw this, it's gold.

Edit: no it isn't, it's fast becoming painful.

Probably the biggest troll I've seen around here, like, ever.

Reminds me a of a similarly egocentric and insufferable banned poster here, who shall remain nameless (only because I sincerely feel if I named him, he would sense someone was talking about him and make another alias and raise hell. Let's just say, he was very non-"chill").

As for the game, it looks a lot like an ancient freeware game I have on my Mac called Titanion. And that, in my opinion, isn't necessarily a bad thing. I liked that game.

[chum]

- Music was made by a sucessful musician.

What does this even mean? Is it supposed to be in the games favor even though the music sucks? To be fair, I can't even hear any BGM in the video, so I'm not saying it sucks, but you get the point. Success is not relevant. If someone doesn't like your music, mentioning your success just makes you look silly.

When it comes down to it this game just seems boring as fuck, completely devoid of personality or style, nothing to reel you in just a generic space game. I wouldn't even bring that up if the game looked fun but it doesn't. There's no level design, seriously, it's always just the same thoughtless spam with the repetitive shooting noise going on. Either make it much harder, or make it much shorter, or make it more varied, just do something about it.

I saw a boss in there that mindlessly rotated around the screen, and the player just absorbed everything. That brings me to my question: what do you even do in this game, how does it work? Can you get invulnerability? If you have something like that in your game you need to put a lot of care into how you implement it.

It's nice that your game is so successful and liked but since you asked for our attention and feedback I'm giving you my honest opinion

[Despatche]

since art is mostly taste, people can be fooled by the status and success of the artist. this combines with Randomly Generated Bandwagons to create monstrosities such as the otherwise abnormal success of cave story.

[Kaleidogames]

- Music was made by a sucessful musician.

What does this even mean? Is it supposed to be in the games favor even though the music sucks? To be fair, I can't even hear any BGM in the video, so I'm not saying it sucks, but you get the point. Success is not relevant. If someone doesn't like your music, mentioning your success just makes you look silly.

When it comes down to it this game just seems boring as fuck, completely devoid of personality or style, nothing to reel you in just a generic space game. I wouldn't even bring that up if the game looked fun but it doesn't. There's no level design, seriously, it's always just the same thoughtless spam with the repetitive shooting noise going on. Either make it much harder, or make it much shorter, or make it more varied, just do something about it.

I saw a boss in there that mindlessly rotated around the screen, and the player just absorbed everything. That brings me to my question: what do you even do in this game, how does it work? Can you get invulnerability? If you have something like that in your game you need to put a lot of care into how you implement it.

It's nice that your game is so successful and liked but since you asked for our attention and feedback I'm giving you my honest opinion

I can't take your feedback seriously: you judged game the game by just looking to one video that someone recorded. Basically you don't know much about but you are saying it's boring as fuck. But later then you ask how is it played? It really feels like you are attacking the game, not giving real feedback it.

But also, the music was made by a successful musician, but he is not happy with my EQ. He has been pretty busy since release but now since that video was posted I see more clearly what he meant when he told me the sounds were not EQ properly. So he is currently working on that, EQ all sounds of the game to make them blend better.

In the other side, I have been to another fair this weekend and I'm very happy with response of people in all recent fairs since February: people love the whole thing, they have no suggestions for the game like they did before February, basically because I implemented most of them. I take that very seriously and I consider everyone of them. Even the ones that would help color-blind people. Nowadays most people that tries it, loves it and plays more than once. Not only that,then they go home and buys it in Steam,. I can see that and if add the amazing emails I get from them, for me that is some real feedback, not someone ranting about a game that haven't played it. Again, please take sometime to read the whole thread, it's not that long. I am not begging you to buy it, I don't need you to buy it. I was asking you to take a real look playing this or any new shmup game as this is a good and serious shmup forum. Not the kiddy's room.


@Despatche
I played it when It was mostly unknown by most people in a GP2X almost 10 years ago. I thought it was great as the game play was well polished, the history was pretty bad, but I didn't care as it was hard enough to keep me playing till the end.

[bVork]

I can't take your feedback seriously: you judged game the game by just looking to one video that someone recorded. Basically you don't know much about but you are saying it's boring as fuck. But later then you ask how is it played? It really feels like you are attacking the game, not giving real feedback it.

There's no demo. The only way we have to judge your game is by the video you posted. If you don't think this is representative of the game, then do something about it.

[Kaleidogames]

@bVork

You can get more impressions here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93wK01C ... Eh&index=1

I uploaded most of the videos very recently.