HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

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Lobo
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HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Lobo »

Hello

I'm working on a 12 level vertical, slow moving shmup called Hellcat Zero, somewhat inspired by the likes of Don Pachi (at least control/weapon wise). It is still a heavy wip (just 3 maps so far) but it will have a 'story mode' (extra score/continue/etc) and 'wave mode' (more lives/no extra/no continue/etc) with a bunch of different enemies and locations (from South Pole all the way to Alien planet of a sorts).
I only have some really short videos of it in action on my twitter but not much representative of current build so here's instead a few screenshots instead.
Updated pictures, not in cpc palette anymore. :D

(also..keyboard redefine keys or gamepad action as a choice, Windows so far, linux maybe)

Cheers!

Image

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Image

Image

Image
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Lobo »

[quote="Lobo"]
Updated pictures, not in cpc palette anymore. :D

Well, the palette is reverted back to default and reloaded old pixels (tho some color changed) due to not much variety found in later levels construction. Anyway, the top post will reflect these changes (see pics) and more importantly the worlds will look..well, more varied. ;)
Time to go back to actual levels and patterns, etc.

Cheers!
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by mamboFoxtrot »

:shock: :shock: :shock:
holy shit thems some boss sprites

as you said, not a lot else to go on atm, but hot damn this is a project that I hope ends up playing as good as it looks! :D
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by n0rtygames »

Okay look, we need to talk here...

TANKS WITH GIANT SKULLS ON THEM.

TANKS WITH GIANT SKULLS ON THEM

Keep up the good work. <3
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Lobo »

mamboFoxtrot wrote::shock: :shock: :shock:
holy shit thems some boss sprites

as you said, not a lot else to go on atm, but hot damn this is a project that I hope ends up playing as good as it looks! :D
Thanks, gonna work on it then till it plays as good or to trash it goes. :D

n0rtygames wrote:Okay look, we need to talk here...

TANKS WITH GIANT SKULLS ON THEM.

TANKS WITH GIANT SKULLS ON THEM

Keep up the good work. <3
Hah, yes, I discovered that if you attach a skull on top of any vehicle, it seems to add some *character* to it. :D

Cheers!
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Sai'ke »

Looks very cool! Love the art!

Wanna see where this goes :)
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Lobo »

Sai'ke wrote:Looks very cool! Love the art!

Wanna see where this goes :)
Thanks, hopefully as a vertical shmup it goes all the way up. :)
Your game looks great, quite a fancy tech you have going on in there.
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Lobo »

OK, a little preview of level1 so you can see how the gameplay goes, the quality of video/audio turned out a bit muddy on youtube but it should do. Will upload sometimes pieces from other levels as it goes.

Cheers!

https://youtu.be/hOaJtNbS1z4
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by M.Knight »

A few comments on the gameplay video :

-The shots looked nice on the screenshots but seem a bit lacking in motion. The blue shot is mostly fine but the green one looks like a placeholder. They look off because the background graphics have a lot more detail in them and look much more polished, so it clashes a bit. Are the shot graphics planned to be improved?

-The bullets should always be on top of everything else because they are the main danger the player has to face. For example, the blue shot's impact hides the bullets so when a boss fires a pattern and you shoot at it, the bullets seem to appear out of thin air instead of from the boss' turret

-The music isn't easily audible while the sound effects are pretty loud. While good SFX with a punchy feeling are important (see Danmaku Unlimited's almost SFX-less boss fights for an example of why there should be good SFX), you should be able to properly hear the music. Also, will there be a way to tweak the sound balance in the game options?

-The way the "S" icons move downwards is kinda weird. They move in a strictly diagonal motion and don't seem to be attracted to the player if he is near them, unless he is directly underneath them. Usually, collectible items move strictly vertically (or horizontally for a hori game), but some of them can also move towards the player and the effect would look like the player ship sucks them in. In many CAVE games for example, you've got this motion. I personally like MMP's way of sucking the medals towards the player but Mushihimesama's gems are a also good inspiration I think. In that case, you can have some less linear looking movements, with easings and stuff to make the item movement more dynamic.

-Why not have the "F" and "S" icons bear different colors, to help differentiate them even more?

-With every dead enemy cancelling their bullets into items, you may have a weird difficulty balance where you mostly get sniped by a bullet you thought was cancelled but wasn't, and only the bosses seem to pose any direct threat because every other enemy dies before the bullets reach you. See Bullet Soul for a reference on how it can be boring if badly implemented.
Having some big or medium enemies cancel their shots when dying is fine, but try to see how it plays when the popcorn enemies don't cancel anything.
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Lobo »

Thanks for comments, much appreciated, here's then a few answers~
M.Knight wrote:A few comments on the gameplay video :

-The shots looked nice on the screenshots but seem a bit lacking in motion. The blue shot is mostly fine but the green one looks like a placeholder. They look off because the background graphics have a lot more detail in them and look much more polished, so it clashes a bit. Are the shot graphics planned to be improved?

For the green bullets, you mean those of enemies or the players' 'turbo gun' bullet?
Most of the bullets are simple in design as I want them to be visible but not entirely sure if any shades of more colors in them would do much details wise tho there's always room for improvement, of course.
M.Knight wrote: -The bullets should always be on top of everything else because they are the main danger the player has to face. For example, the blue shot's impact hides the bullets so when a boss fires a pattern and you shoot at it, the bullets seem to appear out of thin air instead of from the boss' turret
Bullets are always drawn in front of everything, tho you noticed well the blue 'connecting streak' from the beam takes over the top before, that will be fixed. ;)
M.Knight wrote: -The music isn't easily audible while the sound effects are pretty loud. While good SFX with a punchy feeling are important (see Danmaku Unlimited's almost SFX-less boss fights for an example of why there should be good SFX), you should be able to properly hear the music. Also, will there be a way to tweak the sound balance in the game options?
Music sfx..I like loud sfx frankly and music although normalized falls under so I must work to somehow balance it out, don't want too quiet sfx either cause to me they are even more important for feedback than the music is, I've noticed in cave games that the music always falls in background and sfx takes over in priority and I like that approach but yes, must work out the loudest sfx ones somewhat.
M.Knight wrote: -The way the "S" icons move downwards is kinda weird. They move in a strictly diagonal motion and don't seem to be attracted to the player if he is near them, unless he is directly underneath them. Usually, collectible items move strictly vertically (or horizontally for a hori game), but some of them can also move towards the player and the effect would look like the player ship sucks them in. In many CAVE games for example, you've got this motion. I personally like MMP's way of sucking the medals towards the player but Mushihimesama's gems are a also good inspiration I think. In that case, you can have some less linear looking movements, with easings and stuff to make the item movement more dynamic.
The score pickup, well..I had 'diagonal only' movement so you had to chase them, then changed into 'suck into player' but didn't like that as it was too easy, now they move downwards but attempt to move horizontally toward the player to help you out a bit to collect them which means you will miss some-hit some. I want them to clear the screen as fast as possible so they don't clutter, that is the main thing but I think maybe speeding up their horizontal movement toward the player can make it look less weird perhaps.
The other pickups always move straight down but are slower as they are more important (bomb, extra, powerup) but no 'sucking' here, you have to get them.
M.Knight wrote: -Why not have the "F" and "S" icons bear different colors, to help differentiate them even more?
Good idea, bomb, extra and powerup could be different than score pickup, will check it out. :D
M.Knight wrote: -With every dead enemy cancelling their bullets into items, you may have a weird difficulty balance where you mostly get sniped by a bullet you thought was cancelled but wasn't, and only the bosses seem to pose any direct threat because every other enemy dies before the bullets reach you. See Bullet Soul for a reference on how it can be boring if badly implemented.
Having some big or medium enemies cancel their shots when dying is fine, but try to see how it plays when the popcorn enemies don't cancel anything.
Dead enemies are not cancelling their bullets at all, the video makes it looks so because I am using the 'turbo gun' which destroys bullets (the only weapon that can do so) and because I kept racking on power bar which at every 100% fill destroys bullets (look at the top gui and you'll see they are cancelled when X1, X2, etc is reached).

So, to try to explain this - the only time the bullets are cancelled is when your 'power up' bar has reached 100% (not easy but not hard either if you keep shooting them enemies down), in that moment, you get 'X1' and bullets are destroyed, if you repeat this again in less than 2 seconds, you get X2 and bullets are destroyed until X3 which cancels bullets again (or the whole process is cancelled if you're too slow), gives you extra score and if you repeat all this 3 times you get Turbo gun and the bullets are cancelled.

Now that you mentioned it, I could actually remove cancelling bullets at stages X1, X2, and only use it when you reach X3 stage so that cancelling occurs only at the max powerbar, but all said and done, bullets do stay on screen otherwise even when medium and big enemies are destroyed they do not get cancelled.

Again, thanks for the comments, must really work on a better video next time. ;)

Cheers!
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by M.Knight »

-Green bullets : I was talking about the player shots you can see right at the beginning of the video. That said, now that you mention it, the circular bullets' white outlines make them look a bit flat IMO. Have you tried other outline colors? If not the outlines, it may be due to the flat coloring on some of those bullets. Flat colors for bullets may not be a bad thing but I feel they also lack of bit of detail compared to the backgrounds.

-SFX level : Oh yeah, good SFX you can clearly hear is important and I agree. It's mostly a question of balance so that the music can still heard underneath them.

-Item pickups: What you can have if you don't want all the items to automatically move towards the player as soon as they are spawned is to have them move vertically downwards without any diagonal movement but if the player is near, then the items start being sucked into the player ship. The latest Touhou games do that for example.
Another technique that comes up from time to time in shmups is to have the items move downwards and be collected on contact but if the player stops shooting for a second, then they are all being sucked into his ship. That means there's a little bit of risk involved in this manoeuver.

-Bullet cancels : Ah yes, the bullet cancels are indeed tied to the power bar. I didn't notice it but the indication is defintely there in the top of the screen. If I thought the cancels were tied to enemy destruction, wouldn't it be because the only thing that can increase the power bar is the destruction of enemies? I am not sure tying bullet cancels to the power bar makes that much sense, given how easily abusable it seems due to the power bar recharge speed, and also because you have the turbo gun which is already used to cancel bullets.

If increasing the power bar to LV3 gives you a bullet-cancelling turbo gun, why not simply remove the bullet cancelling on the power bar increases and let the turbo gun have this individual role of cancelling bullets? That way, the bullet-cancelling coud feel more engaging because it is only instantly triggered by the player and less disconnected and indirect.

Seeing the cancelled bullets converted into items makes me think of a scoring system flow idea : If you have the power bar increase that gives you bullet-cancelling turbo guns, then you can have a scoring system where you would initially rush to destroy enemies to charge up the turbo gun and then let the next ones fire as much as possible before cancelling the bullets into score items with the turbo gun. You would do that until you are out of turbo guns, at which point you start increasing the power bar again the get some turbo guns again to repeat the whole process.

I don't know if you intended the game to be played like this, but with the turbo gun cancelling bullets into score tems, I can see it going this way.
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Lobo »

First the latest changes I did was to differentiate bomb, extra score and laser upgrade icons from score coin icon and also that 'bullet covering' beam effect has been fixed and now bullets are in front of everything as usual. :)

That Touhou idea sounds good, gonna try that. :D

Now bullets, the enemy bullets are about 3-4 and bigger ones 5-7 or more colors actually, the outline on some is due to darker backgrounds on later maps for visibility sake (tho all of them animate in some way, blinking or such + animation just to be sure that they are visible at all times). Perhaps more grey rather than white is doable for outline, must check it out first.
The player green turbo bullet is actually 8 color gradient with two frames of animation and is mimicking in shape the level4 upgrade main player bullet (which is yellowish but same looking otherwise). Now, the thing is, this bullet, just like higher upgrade bullets, moves so fast its really hard to see or even figure out whether it animates or what colors it has (besides obvious greenish) so its tricky to do some fancy stuff with it, tbh. Tho, if something comes to mind, it can always be changed visually and such, I'm not against it.


As for power bar and such, here's how that works now (I'm kinda bad at explaining this even tho its quite simple :D). Before, all bullets on screen would be converted into score coins when you reached X1, X2 and X3 respectively. Power bar, as usual, fills more as you destroy enemies and actually drains quite fast, I've spent a lot of time making it balanced time wise. If you're good and fast and depending on density of enemies on screen, you can still only get 1 -2 max turbo gun per stage, I can currently get 1 at most and on some stages hardly even that so its definitely up to the skill and player response to get a turbo gun as it is not easy (I know it looks easier on video but yea, I really have to make a better one to show the actual flow of things).
So, the change is that now the only time the bullets are converted into score coins is when you reach X3 only, this is a reward to player, it doesn't just destroy bullets but turns them into score as many games have done before.
That means that this behavior is not tied to turbo gun at all, as turbo gun is simply activated when you do X3 3 times in a row but if it happens that you fail at it, say you only reached X3 twice and then the power bar depleted, you still get these bullets converted into coins as a reward at least but no turbo gun. Because of that chance, which is high, the 'bullet to score conversion' is there but, as I said, only at X3 now so its skill depending really.

Also, Turbo gun only destroys bullets but does not convert them into score coins so its not useful for that purpose. It is basically one time reward with gratuitous laser destruction for filling the bar 3 times and destroying quite a bunch of enemies while doing so. The idea you mentioned sounds good and I have actually tried something like that before but..turned out quite super powerful and unbalanced at the end.
Currently as it is, the Turbo gun lasts 10 seconds and due to its destructive power it is better to have it less times activated to avoid some really really easy cleaning up of the stage. Instead, the focus is more on player getting the enemies down with regular weapons/dodging as usual and trying to keep the laser upgrade to highest while collecting as much score as possible (heck, I might say, the pretty basic system when you look at it :P).


Again, your comments are much appreciated, thanks!

Cheers!
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by M.Knight »

I am no pixel-art expert but I think the reason why some of the bullets look flat despite all the gradient effects is that the gradients are rather subtle and there isn't much contrast within the bullet itself. For example, the purple bullets that the mid boss fires seem to only have two colors to me : purple, and the white/yellowish outline.
In contrast, the blue player shot looks a lot more detailed and you can easily see the difference between the light blue "core" of the laser and the shades of dark blue that surround it. It really sells you on the believability of the laser. The green turbo gun does not have this strong contrast that gives some volume to the shape. The gradient effect is subtle and purely vertical, with the bottom of the shots being light and the top being slightly darker, whereas having a lighter "core" of the shot and a darker color surrounding that color would IMO work better. I suggest taking a look at the DDP helicopter shot for reference since both are green.

Does the power bar influence the ship's actual power? If not, why not rename it a chain/combo bar or something? That would fit its purpose much better because it behaves exactly like a DDP chain meter if I understand your explanations, except it maxes out at a certain point and can give you turbo guns rather than acting as a score multiplier.

Another suggestion is to tweak the thresholds so that instead of having a chain bar with three steps that you have to fill thrice in a row for a turbo gun, you would instead have three steps that each take as long to fill as an entire X3 bar right now and each cancel bullets when reached. Instead of having to fill the bar thrice to get a turbo gune, you would only have to fill it once but in the end it takes the same time to do so. The difference is that it is less arbitrary to fill the bar once and get a turbo gun than having to fill it thrice in a row.

I can see how it can be difficult to balance a bullet-cancel based scoring system and prevent the game from becoming too easy. If you have a different vision and scoring system in mind, it's all good too!
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

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I did that 'Touhou approach' for coins running into you only when close enough to the ship and the rest falls gracefully downward, works so far, must test more so no unpredictable stuff happens but looks good so thanks for that one. ;)

I'll go through the bullets and check them out, most of the colors are subtle as you noticed but there could be enough space to add some here and there.

Turbo gun is kinda inspired with DDP chopper just didn't wanted to go with exactly the same style. The idea behind this one is to be *sharp* looking instead of usually rounded ones and to look like a bunch of razor blades once they form themselves, if you look at the video, especially when the ship is not moving (well, for a moment at least :D) , they form letter 'W' as to suggest a pitchfork kind of a shape. Yes, so far the top is darker-bottom lighter, I'll try reversing it and see how that looks.
Tho, for this bullet I didn't want to go the usual route of shading it horizontally with darker edges and lighter colors inside, but just to vertically shade it top to bottom without outlines of sorts.

The power bar does work exactly like DDP chain, at first there was no text up there but I ended up writing 'power' as there was no space to write 'chain combo' or such (just 'chain' would not look good). Maybe 'combo' can do instead, I wish there was some word, as short as possible to somewhat better describe this. :D

The reason for 3 steps instead of long one is twofold.
1 - It gives extra score every time X3 is reached, so even if you fail to get a turbo gun, every time you get X3 - 5000 Xpoints awaits as a reward. Like you mentioned DDP using power to multiply scoring at time, since I'm not doing that my approach is to give Xtra score in a bulk at each X3 reached and if you happen to do it 3 times - - it is 15K + turbo gun. Kinda simplified xtra scoring mechanism really.

2 - Sense of urgency, if the bar filled once and at slower 'fill/drain' rate, the chances are that you may not care much about filling it at all, but seeing that you reached X1 and in no time X2 and managed first X3 round gives you the boost to 'do it again' and increases your mobility around the screen and danger in overall and forces you to be focused in order to get X3 again and then one more time and Boom!- The climax for your painful chasing and sniping of the enemies and a few broken fingers comes down in a shape of a turbo gun + a neat XP.

So, it was not a random choice to have 3 (it was a pain to time it up proper, especially considering density of enemies/draining speed of power bar and the laser upgrade level you might be on) and I think it really adds to the dynamics of the whole even when you fail to reach all 3 X3 rounds, there's still some satisfaction that you got as far and earned some XP so it wasn't all for nothing. :)

Again, your comments are valid and appreciated, even if they can't be worked into this game but always good to have 12 pair of eyes instead of 6. ;)

Cheers!
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by pmp »

Game looks sick, especially the bosses. The guy who pops out of the sub seems a bit too big though, unless you are fighting giants or something :lol: .
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Lobo »

Thanks! :)

And yep, they are giants, engineered cultist with the help of alien technology. When I did the submarine, I wanted a pilot to come out but figured that he would be minuscule if scaled to player ship and no details would be possible so I added to the story that not only the giant skulls are manufactured by this duo but also some cultists are 'modified' as well into giant creatures.

For example -

You can see on stage 3 one of the zombified giants experiments giving navigation to mid boss

Image


On stage 4, the giant cultist pilot escaping the burning Panzer

Image


On stage 5 a whole group of giant cultists trying to protect their boss

Image

And midboss on stage 5 comes out of broken tank, also heavily gigantic. :D

Image


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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Lobo »

OK, hopefully a better video to show some levels (no Bosses this time tho :D), levels 1-6, quite a rough cut and sound fx are off just to let music go.

https://youtu.be/82m28h83yto

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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by M.Knight »

Thanks for that new video.

-The way the items move downwards and are picked up by a nearby player looks better now!

-I noticed at 1:15 that your blue player shot is drawn on top of the yellow enemy lasers. As with bullets, the lasers shouldn't be obscured by anything. I imagine it's a simple oversight.

-The music's chiptune style works with those visuals but I think the melody itself is a bit lacking in energy and dynamism. Might also be its repetitive nature.

-The boss attack at 1:50 is bound to catch any new player off-guard, given how low the bullets spawn. Even you got hit actually lol. Having that boss laugh as he spits bullets at you is a pretty funny idea, but I think you should really move it higher so that the player can reasonable anticipate the attack and have soom room between the bullets to dodge them instead of having to macro-dodge the entire thing.
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Lobo »

Hello, thanks again for more feedback, that yellow thing is a warning effect that the enemy is preparing the beam, there is this specific sound that follows it as well so to warn you in 2 ways that the beam is coming up. Must check how it looks above the players blue beam, just afraid that it might look dismembered and floating due to the fact that player is above both 'laser base' which make the beam and naturally the beam fx as well. Have fixed that low Boss attack yesterday as it was bugging me as well due to attack being very sudden, so now he goes up first to give player a chance to anticipate that first attack and run away. :D

Cheers!

EDIT: Wait, I think I misunderstood, you meant the whole enemy beam being obscured by player's beam? OK, must check that out.
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by M.Knight »

Yes, the beam, once fired, is obscured by the player shot.
Speaking of the warning, only having some flashes on top of the laser spawners is not good enough telegraphing IMO, even with the sound. You should also draw the lasers during that time but with a much darker shade and without any hitboxes to indicate their future position.
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Lobo »

Yep, the enemy beam is now above player's beam. :D

The 'beam warning' looks like this, animates for a long second with a sound and then on finishing it is removed and the beam appears on the spot where the 'warning beam' was and always in the same direction downwards as only this static 'cannon like thing' and mid/Bosses are using the beam (the exception is a 'skull enemy' who does horizontal beam on one level, visible somewhere in the last video, but the beam is always created with this enemy before they even arrive to visible area of the screen from the top, so its easily spotted). So, unless I understood wrong what you meant, the beam warning is actually indicating where the beam will appear even if player misses to see the 'mouth of the cannon' which produces the beam.

Image

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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by M.Knight »

What I am getting at is that it should be more like this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiWPgzF79iE&t=21m23s
The warning spot is on top of the screen so players may not even realize it is there, but if you see a long straight line across the screen with the future trajectory of the laser, then it is much easier to notice it and properly dodge it. ;)
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Re: HellCat Zero - shmup in progress

Post by Lobo »

I think delaying the cannon thing to spawn beam is possible so its not close to top when it activates 'warning beam fx' but rather to the middle and hard to miss that way. I would rather go that path as I foresee problems with creating vertical line as it can't be 'dark to light' as the background is fairly dark nor growing in size when the area is filled with bullets, much easier to miss than one big chunky 'beam fx'.

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