shmups.system11.org

Hi!
For some years I have been posting news of the dev of the SHMUP Creator in the Development of this forum.
We will soon release the tool, so it's a good time to also post here.



The SHMUP Creator is a tool that allows you to create your own shoot 'em up.
This tool is easy to use and powerful enough for more experienced users. Thanks to the included assets you can start right away to create your own game, but later on, you can import your own sprites, 3D models, sounds, pictures...

The trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzFe_yundMY

The steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1289 ... P_Creator/


You can make : 2D or 3D games, vertical, horizontal, multi-scrolling levels, bullet hell, R-type games...






The SHMUP Creator contains a lot of editors: bullet patterns, explosions, particles, menu, gameplay (scoring, chains, medals, power-ups). You can add gameplay and cinematic effects, without any coding : customize everything with the mouse.
Then you can export your game as a stand-alone executable on Windows and freely distribute it.





More informations:
Steam (wishlist !!!) : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1289520/SHMUP_Creator/
Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/user/bulostudio/videos
Twitter : https://twitter.com/bulostudio
Nanofroce, a game made with this tool : https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=67411

Don't hesitate if you have any questions!
S.

Been following the development of this for a long time. I am really rooting for your release.

Interesting stuff!

What kind of flexibility is it scoring wise, can you give some examples of what one can do there in terms of scoring system?
Dynamic rank? Can it be affected by things like picking up power ups.
Suicide bullets.

Can I make a truly sadistic game please?

No rank system (actually, no difficulty settings either): that's quite difficult to implement with an easy-to-use UI. I'm thinking about it, but it will not be for the V1.

You can still go sadistic:
.you can create really complex bullet patterns, with quite a lot of bullets
-you can use chaining, medals (with different gameplay systems), bullet canceling, gauges, power-ups, smart bombs, crazy multipliers...
If you really want to make a true sadistic game, you can enable inertia for the player. But I'm not encouraging that



S.

Thanks for the info! Yeah, I understand there needs to be a trade-off between easy ui and flexibility.

Yes, rank for future version would be great. I guess most commercial shmups have some rank, even as far back as Zanac. It is a quite convenient way to make the game challening for both beginners and veterans.

I see lot of Cave influences, which makes sense, and I would think the target audience would like to make their own DDP maybe. One weapon system, however, that I think is really fun and has not been explored that much is the lock-on web. Such as Layer Section, Soukyugurentai, Thunder Force V Free Range weapon. Adding some multiplier to the number of enemies you lock on to (as Soukyugurentai does, e.g., you get x4 times enemy value if you lock on to 6 enemies) could make it fun to design the stages (because you can cluster enemies together so that they become easy or difficult to tie together). I think Soukyugurentai had a genious move by letting the player also lock on to the power up carrier, because it made each run quite unique because the power up carrier comes in somewhat random intervals. Just some random thought.

Good luck!

We have homing missiles, but no lock-on. I love this mechanic, and I'll add this to the "future" to-do list.

We are trying to please several target audiences (maybe too many...), and we have a beta tester making a really complex and well-made old-school shmup:
This is a work in progress level, and I'm amazed at all the level design ideas and stuffs he was able to make with the SHMUP Creator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY_n-S9OXls

S.

^^^^
That was made buy a consumer game creator?

That's... very impressive.

Inspiring stuff. This looks really neat. Will the games launch from their own stand alone .exe?

Thanks!


Yes, you can export your game as a stand-alone Windows .exe and freely distribute it.
S.

You have my interest. I'll be monitoring this closely. Best of luck!

Thanks!

Some more videos :

I spent less than one hour and tried to remake part of a Gradius level (using riped sprites):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoHmqFtnJ9Y

The 2D example level and assets, included in the SHMUP Creator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N29aLpEevL4

The 3D example level and assets, also included in the SHMUP Creator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwvomQOh0Mg

Right now we are still fixing bugs and polishing, still trying to release the tool in a few weeks.
S.

Looks really good. I've checked in on the dev thread every now and then, it's great you're almost ready for release.

I've been following this for a while - I think it looks fascinating. Good luck with the pre-release polish, and I can't wait to give it a try!

This looks really cool, I'm looking forward to having a go

Thanks

Some in-game tutorials examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYA_0f658as

We will announce the release date in the next few days.
See you!
S.

This looks very promising. I've been hoping to see more of the type of shmups I love for fifteen years now, but without luck, so I've been wondering just how much programming I would have to learn to perhaps just tweak noiz2sa, rrootage, or parsec47, instead of making something from scratch, to basically revamp those games to my liking. Perhaps shmup creator would be the way to go, oh my god that would be so cool.

Looks great! The 3D example reminds me of Under Defeat, which I also like.

This looks a lot more flexible than that mid 90s/windows 95 era program called shmupmaker.

This is it at last...
SHMUP Creator release date!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYb_NYVMnw

S.

Beware, the Almost Ides of March!

Finally, we added a 3rd free asset pack to the SHMUP Creator: 2D geometry assets.
And we also added a new example game: Electro Loco, a small bullet hell level.

I created this level incredibly quickly, and we will share a video tutorial about the process in a few days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TStrblA0sX8



Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1289520/SHMUP_Creator/
S.

D-3!
(we are in Panic mode, but it will be okay)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQZ0YH5dqfw
S.

Seventy US dollars?

It's a bit more than I expected but it's not unusual for "maker" kind of programs.
Consider that RPG Maker is like $85 for the newest version (despite being barely different from the previous one and idk if they even offer upgrade discounts).
Visual Novel Maker is also over $60, which sounds kinda nuts when you think about what a visual novel is lol
The provided sample assets can also be considered to factor into the price, however, since you could legally use them in your own game that you can then sell, presuming I've been reading all these EULAs correctly, including this one's.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to trying this out when I get some free time. :3

I expected this to be around $40ish or so. Exceeding the AAA $59.99 MSRP barrier is just such a totally different direction I would have never expected.

I didn't quite expect my last car to exceed the AAA barrier, somehow it did
I'm joking obviously, I'm not seriously comparing a motor vehicle to a game engine. But it would be interesting to learn what makes you compare the price of megacorp consumption products to a game middleware by a tiny team. They seem to have nothing in common, really. And I'm asking this out of real interest, because finding the right price for something like that is probably very valuable info for some devs reading these forums.

"If nobody is complaining about the price of your game/software then you priced it too low."

When I first saw this I thought of Dazaemon. I guess I see these types as no coding game maker programs as kinda being like games in and of themselves.

For those well versed in game makers maybe this much more like Unity or UE and totally normal, but I was suprised anyway.

Even going back to the c64 days "Adventure Construction Set," "Shoot 'em Up Construction Set," Unlimted Adventures," et al were always like $10 more than regular games.

No, it's definitely closer to Dezaemon than Unity. I wonder what the Dezaemons sold for back in the day?
I would again compare it to RPG Maker, but only if you ignore the scripting capabilities of that series since XP. Some level of "programming" is possible here via drag-and-drop connectable "triggers" and such but for the most part you're only going to be laying out the bullet patterns (player & enemy), enemy waves, and background scrolling and such. To that end my initial impression is that this part of the process is indeed as quick and approachable as you can make it to a non-programmer, so if that's all you really want then it seems you'll get what you paid for here.

That said...

the bundled assets are quite sparse. What you see in those 3 single-stage example game demos is the entirety of it. I suppose they did say that those 3 things would be the asset bundles and thus I had no real reason to expect more. So I guess if I'm really going to test this engine with any thoroughness I'll need to cobble together some assets; sprite rips or just scribble some stuff, whatever. Especially since the engine seems to enforce a "one sprite, one object-type" rule, so you can't reuse the same enemy sprite (or any other sprite, really) for different purposes aside from varying their individual flight paths or item drops, aside from the rather silly option of just making copies of the image file but with different names.

Suny clearly seems to still have a roadmap laid out for things to continue adding to the engine, and in it's current state does seem to be missing some critical things (how it handles and assigns sprites and animations is incredibly bare), so for now my initial impression is that it does feel a little bit on the "Early Access" side of things.