Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

M.Knight wrote:-Animation : I understand not animating every single ship if it costs you money. Just the player ship is more than enough if you have financial constraints as it is the ship who benefits the most by being animated. I am not too well-versed in pixel animation but I don't think you'll need tons of keyframes. Two per direction should be enough.

-Enemies coming from behind : Yes, a warning is a good way to alleviate the frustration, plus it can look cool and stylish! I can't really tell how your indicator looks in-game, but from a glance at the sprite, I would say it should be a bit bigger. Maybe you can simply apply some scaling animations to it in-game to avoid redrawing it and to help catch the player's attention?

-Enemy armor : Ah, I see! I would suggest tweaking the damage multipliers to less extreme values, because the difference between using an ineffective weapon and a super effective one is fourfold, which is a lot.
How does the armor system work, by the way?
Missile is super effective against armor but half-effective against shield, Energy Weapon is super effective against shield but half-effective against armor, while everything does regular damage against normal enemies? If it's that, it sounds easy to understand, as long as the visual aspect of enemies makes it easy to know whether they are armored, shielded or not. I wonder if it wouldn't make more sense to invert the weaknesses though, as I can see an energy shield being weak to missiles precisely because it was mostly made to absorb energy-based shots and an armored ship take more damage from energy shots because they bypass the physical armor while the missiles can't as they also are physical.

-Euroshmup feeling : It's good that you don't want to make a euroshmup and are aware of their flaws! Besides, you are pretty early in the level design process so you won't have to re-tweak an entire game's worth of waves. In your case, boosting the general pacing and tweaking the weapons can help a lot and it's easier than having to retweak an entire euroshmuppy game system with shops, lifebars, inertia and stuff.
Besides, euroshmup and bullet hell are not mutually exclusive shmup types that would be on a linear scale. You can theoretically have a euroshmup bullet hell with inertia and lifebars. That also means you don't necessarily have to increase the bullet count to avoid making a euroshmup. Tighten up the pacing, don't draw out small enemy encounters, don't repeat your enemy waves to the point where it feels like artificial padding (some repetition is good though if well-balanced and spread out), build a good variation of small, mid-sized and big enemies that work together and don't behave the exact same way, and you should have a decent level.

-Enemy wave creation : I agree that it can be a bit tricky to make it easy to do with Unity's default tools. That said, it is not impossible. Kinda tooting my own horn, but I spent some time and several revisions before coming up with a system and architecture that allows me to create waves quickly and i would say the investment was worth it.

What I have in my game is a system where every enemy type has its own script and behavior, and a wave is not much more than an array which cells contain the following information :
-Enemy type (enum)
-Frame spawn (int)
-Spawn position (Vector2)
For each wave, the game controller simply checks each frame if enemies should be spawned, and if they do, they will be spawned at the given location. Then the enemies just do their own thing until they die or leave the screen.

As a result, I can use the default Unity array interface to create a wave in seconds, as all I have to do is select the enemy type from the enum dropdown and fill a few boxes with the other data. This works in my case because every enemy type will have the same behavior and movement. I don't have to input the enemy's full path and animations and bullet patterns because they are not unique to an enemy instance, but common to all instances of an enemy. If I really want to have variations in behavior, I can create variations of a same enemy object and give its script slight tweaks, but they will be treated as two different enemy types by the enemy spawning system.

At first, I had a system where I had to provide the path on which an enemy would move but I thought it was odd to have the same enemy potentially move in widly different ways depending on the wave it is in, not to mention it took me ages to create waves.

See if decoupling the enemy spawning from the enemy behavior can work out for your game. In any case, you'll want to create some sort of editor to create waves and to arrange them in the order you want in a level. That may sound kinda tedious at first and you'll have to think of an architecture that fits your game (mine does not take into account fixed ground enemies for example as I don't have any and the game is purely wave-based) but I can guarantee that once you have one that is efficient, you'll make some quick progress.
Hi, sorry for late response, i was busy.

As for enemies from behind, great idea for scaling, i'll try it out, it definitely draws more attention than just blinking.

Armor: Here's the breakdown of weapon/armor interactions.

WPN/ARM Normal Armored Shielded
Bullet Normal Damage Half Damage No Damage (1+0.5+0=1.5)
Missile Double Damage Normal Damage Double Damage (2+1+2=5)
Energy Normal Damage Double Damage Half Damage (1+2+0.5=3.5)

Now, when you look at it, you are probably wondering why isn't it set more logically. For me, this is kinda logical. Bullets real regular damage to regular enemies, half damage to armored (small caliber versus thick armors) and no damage against shields. Missiles deal double damage to unarmored enemies, normal to armored since it's not that effective and double damage to shielded. Energy weapons deal normal damage to normal armors, but they cut through armor like butter, and only half damage to shields since they are tuned to energy weapons and small caliber fire which basically disintegrates. Hence the decision to make the missiles deal double damage to shields since there's nothing they can do against heavy body of the missile.

As for the total damage outout, when you look at missiles, you will probably think "WOW, DOUBLE AGAINST ALMOST EVERYTHING, I'LL USE ONLY MISSILES!1". Sure, but missiles are slow, with slow rate of fire, and thus overkill for popcorns and such, so you need to have something else. However, there is a thing that's probably not likeable, and that's bullets dealing no damage whatsoever to shields, which is unfair. But, that, besides other weapon types, encourages the player to always look for two weapon combinations that work well considering his skill set. Besides, video game bro science confirms that shields are very unstable and they won't be turned on during the whole duration of the enemy presence on the screen, thus lowering the impact of disability of dealing damage to shields. Also, shielded enemies appear much later, player will probably have some other weapon beside bullet one, and you start a game with basic missile weapon too, so i hope that aleviates it. Of course, if you make a decision of accidentally equipping two of the same weapon typer during the game, well, sorry :D

Euroshmup feeling: Well said, nothing more to add. If it's well paced, not repetitive, challenging and enjoyable, it doesn't really matter how you call it.

Enemy wave creation:

Ah, yes it's a bit tricky in unity. I have few modes of operation for enemies:

1) Single enemies (whether small or big ones) that have their own default speed and movement pattern depending on the side of the screen they appear on.
2) Waypoint enemies. They, uh, follow the path of course, number of enemies following the path and their speed scales with progress.
3) Squadron enemies. A big chunk waves, usually consisting of grouped number of enemies which all follow the same speed and movement rule (for example, carrier with a speed of 1 followed by fighters which have a default speed of 3, but since they're part of carrier+fighters squadron, they inherit the speed set for that squadron, i.e. 1).

Logically, the waves in the game are a combination of those three. It seems easy when you look at it, simply define enemy spawn points and drag and drop everything where you imagine it. But there's a lot of movement speed tweaking, being careful for the enemies not to overlap (it's usually impossible, but at least the enemies from the same wave) and making things interesting, so it all takes a lot of time.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by M.Knight »

No need to apologize! It's fine. ;)

I can see missiles being used at point blank range for devastating damage à la Dangun Feveron. As long as the weapon types all have their uses and all relatively balanced, I don't think it is a problem. Just make sure they aren't any that are so useless you'll always want to dodge them as soon as you see them.

Why not have the player always equipped with one weapon of each type, and a weapon pick up will change the associated weapon type instead of the currently used weapon? That way, you won't be SoL against enemies requiring a specific weapon type if you don't have it. Downside is that you can only get one weapon of each type simultaneously.

I also noticed the mention of a weapon overheat mechanic in the OP. Is it still there? That's the kind of mechanic you usually find in euroshmups that can't properly balance their player's firepower and cripple it as a result or want more realism at the expense of arcade-y fun. I would recommend removing that mechanic from the game.
There are variants that could work such as secondary weapons with jauges (most Psikyo games for example) or limited ammo (as in Einhänder) but the latter wouldn't work as well with the three weapon type system here unless the drops are very frequent.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

I was inspired by Jets 'n' Guns overheating mechanic so i wanted to implement something similar. In the end, like every newbie dev, i had to cut it out since i realized it was a nusiance and it would demand too much time to get it right for every weapon. Also, i noticed it kills the dynamic of the game, after all, Jets 'n' Guns is a pretty slow game (by shmup standards).

Hm, so you mean the possibility to switch between three weapons? Limited ammo is also a nusiance and i don't think it would work very well with random generation mechanic. I mean it could, but it would be hell to tune it properly.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by M.Knight »

Glad you realized through playtesting that the overheat mechanic damages the pacing! That's a good sign if you, as a dev, can notice these flaws and fix them.

What I am suggesting is that the game could be played with three buttons : one uses your current bullet weapon, one uses your current missile weapon, and one uses your current energy weapon.
So yes, you can thus have three weapons with you at all times, but always with one of each type. If you grab a weapon pickup, it will replace the weapon that belongs to the same type, so you'll always have a bullet, energy and a missile weapon available to you.

The limited ammo mechanic is difficult to get right, I agree. I mentionned it because there is an example of a shmup that does it right, but it's probably much easier not to implement one and not have to balance it.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

What a simple and great idea! That would definitely push up the pacing without the need to switch between the weapons. Plus it would give more variety to weapon combinations on ship and eliminate the possibility of having a bad weapons combination.

I should redo the ui for that and the firing control scheme. But one of the harder thing will be the input for the three firing buttons.

One thing puzzles me about that, if weapon 1 fires when i press button A and weapon 2 fires when i press button B, and weapon 1 is currently shooting, should the weapon 2 fire as soon as i press button B, or when i press button B AND release button A? I don't know what's some general consensus is some more advanced shooters, especially considering three weapons.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by M.Knight »

Ah yes, that's an interesting question!
I am not too sure but I think games with multiple weapons usually have a priority system. When multiple weapon buttons are pressed, the one that is fired is the one with the higher priority.

In any case, there's one thing you should balance and that's the speed at which you fire the other weapon. If you can instantly fire a second or even a third weapon when pressing the other button, it can become possible to increase your DPS by keeping one button pressed and mashing the other(s). In Judgement Silversword for example, you can stack the straight shot on top of the wide shot by holding the wide shot button and repeatedly tapping the straight shot button, even if you aren't supposed to use both shots at the same time. Imperishable Night also has some team combinations where tapping the focus button while holding shot gives you the regular and the focused shots at the same time, greatly increasing the damage output.

Adding a slight delay when using another weapon type could counter this I suppose, but the delay shouldn't be too long otherwise it can be a source of frustration when you want to shoot but nothing comes out, like DFK's buggy tap shot.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

Oh yes, i already have a small delay when switching weapons during which the switch animation plays (one weapon retracts into hull and the other one comes out) so that'll serve well as a visual indicator, eliminate abuse and i won't have to do much restructuring. All i really need to do is some rebinding and disabling the switching function and that's it, all the weapons already have their cooldown/rate of fire independant of their active/inactive status so it should be good.

Thanks a lot for the advices, these few days were really helpful, i hope i will be able to push out a small demo for all of you to play (i already could but i want it to be a bit better :))
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

Wow, it's been some time. I've been waiting for some time for Unity to finally release nested prefabs, and then i had to rework the whole project, so i'm kinda back to where i was, but with a better platform to build upon. I used the opportunity to strip everything unnecessary if i ever plan to get this project to an end. Here's the latest devlog.

When starting out with a game in a powerful engine like Unity it seems like everything is possible and that you can make a game in a finger snap. While everything is possible and you can make something playable in a relatively short time span, making a complete game usually takes a fair share of time, especially if you are a newbie to game design, engine itself and programming.

As far as i can tell, illusions of grandeur are quite common when you begin developing a game (turns out i was not immune to it too). Enthusiasm doesn’t seem to whiff away quite easily as it is fueled by actual things getting done, but after a while you get to realize it will take too much time to make it like you want it to be, or you simply don’t know of a way that is fast and simple enough. If you want to complete the game, you will need to strip it of layers and keep it simple. It hurts and feels like taking away the originality and personality from it. Not only will you have to cut it in half, but you will probably need to cut that half in half too, reducing it to meager ¼ of the game you meant to make.

One of the things i had to cut again and again was the weapon system i was quite proud of. You can read about it here and here’s the short version:

30+ weapons in game;
5 levels of each weapon;
3 weapon types (bullet, energy, missile, each having a corresponding multiplier against normal, armored and shielded enemies);
Player can hold two weapons at the same time, but fire only one;
You can’t have two same weapons of different levels equipped;
You can’t have two weapons of same type equipped;

You have Bullet Weapon X Level 1 equipped as active weapon and Energy Weapon X Level 1 equipped as inactive. After blasting the enemy transport you come across Missile Weapon X Level 1 and pick it up. Since you don’t have it equipped in any of slots, it will replace the active weapon and eject Bullet Weapon X Level 1.

If you wanted to replace the Energy Weapon X Level 1, you could simply switch weapons to make Energy Weapon X Level 1 active and replace it. This would be a common occurence for adapting to the enemy types because of their vulnerability or resistance to certain type of damage.

I could make things simpler in design and coding by simply omitting the part where the replaced weapon is ejected since there’s a small chance of picking it up by accident since it involves pressing a key while you hover over the weapon. However, two player mode requires that feature for the weapons to be interchangeable between players and that is a great way to improve cooperation, gameplay and combined firepower.

Reality check!

Due to design limitations (limitations as in 150 weapon variants) i had to make a hard choice that can affect the future gameplay on upgrading the equipped weapon and few solutions came to my mind.

1. You can only upgrade the weapon if you pick up the exact weapon

That way, either equipped or not, the weapon in players posession is upgraded to the next level without any ejection which only happens when you are picking up a weapon you don’t have equipped. While challenging with high long-term impact on decision-making, you only have 6% chance of getting the same weapon from the transport which is slim to none. Needles to say, a bad option.

2. Equipped weapon level transfers to pickups

Whenever you equip a weapon that is not equipped it is always at level 1, but when you upgrade any of the weapons on ship to level 2, the weapon you replace the level 2 weapon will also be level 2. Basically, it would be a kind of cheating, since by dropping and re-equipping active and inactive weapons, you could get all equipped weapons to a higher level.

3. Weapons upgradeable only by picking up the same weapon

To make it more viable, one should increase the chance of spawning a weapon you already have.

The maths on this one are simple, though a bit hard to code. You have 25% of transport spawning active weapon, 25% of spawning inactive weapon and 50% chance of spawning a new weapon. This comes with a different kind of trade-of. Though 25% is a lot ot may happen that you rarely run into a weapon you want to upgrade. On the other hand, you may always run into a weapon you already maxed out. This discourages experimentation since you will always want to hold on to your maxed out weapons, no matter how good or bad they are. There are no bad weapons per se, but holding on to weapons of the same type greatly decreases success.

4. Weapon upgrade pickups

Though not originally meant to be implemented, this could pose a good solution combined with approach 1 or 2. It is simply a kind of a joker card which levels up your active weapon without worrying if it’s the same one. You pick it up, the active weapon gets upgraded and you just keep on blasting.

The basic idea was for the player to drop the currently equipped weapon when he picks up the new one, so if a mistake is made (though hardly possible, since only hovering over it won’t do – you have to press a pickup key too) player can simply pickup the ejected weapon again.

Resolution

I don’t know about you, but i got a headache just by reading this. You see how easy it is for things to get out of hand for every single layer of stuff you intend to add? Amount of work increases exponentially for every feature added. Not only did it get overly complicated, but it got to the point where it would depend on chances of picking up weapons that would be extremely hard to tweak properly. And all that doesn’t guarantee that you won’t end up in situation to have no proper weapon to amswer the challenge on the screen, which is unacceptable.

On top of that, i wanted to implement weapon overheating mechanics, but to be honest, i haven’t played any game except Jets ‘n’ Guns that has it, and that game has a completely different concept.

In the end, the whole system got stripped down to bare essentials, and an easy to understand concept:

You start with all 3 weapon types on ship (basic weapons);
No switching – you have a button for firing every weapon (with a small delay between firing a different weapon, something like auto-switching);
Automatic picking up, you don’t need to press a key while hovering over a weapon to pick it up;
When you pick up a weapon, it replaces the one with the corresponding type on the ship and the old weapon does not get ejected;
No weapon levels, which brings number of weapons to a manageable number (maybe i’ll put SOME levels in the future, but i doubt it);
No overheat mechanics, it would add another layer of tweaking which would require enormous amount of time of testing;

Much better and easier to grasp.

After a while you don’t look at the striping like something that made your game bland and simple, but as a salvation from meaningless work that would probably be too complicated for you and not turn out well. Obviously, perfection is not a thing to strive for, especially if you are a solo developer. Much bigger games suffered for trying to achieve it. So, keep it simple, and cut, then cut again.

I can make a longer gameplay video, but i need some sound first, so for now, here's some eye candy. Check out my twitter (twitter.com/fatpugstudio) for 60 fps glory.

Image
Image
Image
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by M.Knight »

Yeah, it has been a few months already. Welcome back!

It's nice to hear that the idea of always having one of each of the three weapon types ended up being more simple for you and the player. Shmups are a genre where simple mechanics can still create lots of depth and fun so it seems logical that it ended up being a good match for you.

After watching the few gifs, I have a question : can the screnshake be disabled? Some players like them, but for high level play in a genre that's about accurate movement, it can be disorienting and a focus breaker. Providing an option to have them or not (with potentially varying degrees of shaking) seems like a good compromise to satisfy both kind of players IMO.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

Hi!

Of course, screenshakes and background flashing when hit can be disabled. Furthermore, that a bit overaccentuated glow/bloom will be possible to adjust with slider or disable completely. For fun sakes, i will probably put a crt filter too, i believe some people dig that. Colorblind mode is already implemented.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

We all know how important are boss warning screens to set the tone, so i made a really cool one that will overlay over the screen. Hope you dig it.

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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by M.Knight »

I like the "information overload" aspect of that screen, but to me it looks a bit more like a status screen than a boss introduction. The reason for that is that the "WARNING" part should be a lot more prominent instead of being relegated to the sides like it is the case here.

There are a few compilations here to give you a general idea of what warnings usually look like if you need some more inspiration :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr-OLZmKZ_I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tly-yvSNoEg
You'll notice that many of them have "WARNING" written in big letters and put in the center of the screen, as it's the most important element of that type of screen/sequence.
RegalSin wrote: I think I have downloaded so much I am bored with downloading. No really I bored with downloading stuff I might consider moving to Canada or the pacific.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

Hello M. Knight,

you are right, it needs to be more punctual, i will probably try introducing the element one by one with a huge warning at the end of the clip or something like that :)

Anyway, i'll be starting the indiegogo campaign soon, here's a small teaser :)

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

And the link for the pre-launch page: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/rick ... oming_soon
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by M.Knight »

The fact that the scresn is overloading you with information is not something I would take away from the animation because it is actually pretty cool.
But yeah, it is missing a big WARNING somewhere in the middle.

Good luck on the campaign! Do you have a demo release planned by the way?
RegalSin wrote: I think I have downloaded so much I am bored with downloading. No really I bored with downloading stuff I might consider moving to Canada or the pacific.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

Thanks! Not really, but if i want the campaign to be a success - i should. I'll get cracking during holidays and maybe put out something when the campaign starts.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

I present you Rick Henderson Steam page!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1023 ... Henderson/

Wishlisting is appreciated as it helps me cut throught the shovelware :)
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

Hi guys, demo is now available, and IndieGoGo campaign starts on monday, wish me luck!

Steam - https://bit.ly/2FayeNc
Itch - https://bit.ly/2Y5Miz0
GameJolt - https://bit.ly/2XWncCr
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by M.Knight »

Hi!
I've played the demo and have a few comments to make about it.

First of all, the presentation looks quite good, though I haven't played Steredenn to know how different Rick Henderson looks from it. In any case, the pixel art has a coherent look to it that reminds me a bit more of PC games than console titles (not that it's a negative)

The concept of having three weapon types and new random weapons is good but I think the concept can be pushed a lot more because right now, you only get one new weapon drop per stage. That doesn't really give you enough opportunities to try out stuff each run, and on top of that if you get a bad weapon you're stuck with it a lot longer.

Some other notes :
-The ship movement doesn't feel responsive. There is a bit of acceleration going on at first and then you slide around the place. This is not good for a shmup, and you need to have very precise control over your ship. One unique and constant speed (or several speeds that you can switch between for example with a focus button if you need a slower speed for micro-dodges) and zero mandatory acceleration/braking whatsoever. That would make the game feel a lot less clunky to play.
-Speaking of ship movement, the weapons with recoil are not enjoyable to use. If you really want to have a few weapons with recoil, i would suggest making it so that they are very powerful (instead of being a simple minigun) so that there's some sort of trade-off instead of being penalized for using a basic weapon, and also making only a few weapons (or even just one whose whole gimmick could be that?) feature this behavior. If you also give more frequent item drops, picking this one up might be much less frustrating.
-Sometimes when I let some enemies escape, no other enemies spawn anymore
-The asteroids blend with the background a bit too much
-There is a bug where using a weapon type, then using another one while the first one is also activated can lead to one of the weapon types to keep firing even after you let go of the fire buttons. You have to press the fire button for the specific weapon again to make it stop.
-Stage numbers don't always properly reset when restarting, so you start at "Stage 3" for example.
-The small enemies in general have too much HP given their small sprite. You would expect them to go down in a shot or two but they are a bit beefier than what their appearance suggests.
-The boss laser and flamethrower attacks requires more telegraphing. Warning signals on the beam's path, stuff like that.
-One enemy ship has a long blue laser attack without hitbox.
-If you collide with an enemy or asteroid, you become immune to collision damage as long as you stay stuck inside said enemy. It's only after you leave its hitbox and then hit it again that you can get damaged by it again.
-The score is pretty low. Beating a stage and having around 300 points is not the best feeling in the world. Without going full-Gigawing, you could simply add 2 or 3 zeroes to give some more weight to the scores. I know it's very artificial but 300 points is more or less how many points you get for just one enemy in most shmups.
-The left and right buttons don't cycle properly through the resolutions in the option menu
-I haven't found a restart option in the pause menu. That can really come in handy
-The initial loading is a bit long
-Enemies can fire at you even when they are slightly off-screen or on the very left side of the screen, where you can't do much about them

And good luck for your campaign!
RegalSin wrote: I think I have downloaded so much I am bored with downloading. No really I bored with downloading stuff I might consider moving to Canada or the pacific.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

M.Knight wrote:Hi!
I've played the demo and have a few comments to make about it.

First of all, the presentation looks quite good, though I haven't played Steredenn to know how different Rick Henderson looks from it. In any case, the pixel art has a coherent look to it that reminds me a bit more of PC games than console titles (not that it's a negative)

The concept of having three weapon types and new random weapons is good but I think the concept can be pushed a lot more because right now, you only get one new weapon drop per stage. That doesn't really give you enough opportunities to try out stuff each run, and on top of that if you get a bad weapon you're stuck with it a lot longer.

Some other notes :
-The ship movement doesn't feel responsive. There is a bit of acceleration going on at first and then you slide around the place. This is not good for a shmup, and you need to have very precise control over your ship. One unique and constant speed (or several speeds that you can switch between for example with a focus button if you need a slower speed for micro-dodges) and zero mandatory acceleration/braking whatsoever. That would make the game feel a lot less clunky to play.
-Speaking of ship movement, the weapons with recoil are not enjoyable to use. If you really want to have a few weapons with recoil, i would suggest making it so that they are very powerful (instead of being a simple minigun) so that there's some sort of trade-off instead of being penalized for using a basic weapon, and also making only a few weapons (or even just one whose whole gimmick could be that?) feature this behavior. If you also give more frequent item drops, picking this one up might be much less frustrating.
-Sometimes when I let some enemies escape, no other enemies spawn anymore
-The asteroids blend with the background a bit too much
-There is a bug where using a weapon type, then using another one while the first one is also activated can lead to one of the weapon types to keep firing even after you let go of the fire buttons. You have to press the fire button for the specific weapon again to make it stop.
-Stage numbers don't always properly reset when restarting, so you start at "Stage 3" for example.
-The small enemies in general have too much HP given their small sprite. You would expect them to go down in a shot or two but they are a bit beefier than what their appearance suggests.
-The boss laser and flamethrower attacks requires more telegraphing. Warning signals on the beam's path, stuff like that.
-One enemy ship has a long blue laser attack without hitbox.
-If you collide with an enemy or asteroid, you become immune to collision damage as long as you stay stuck inside said enemy. It's only after you leave its hitbox and then hit it again that you can get damaged by it again.
-The score is pretty low. Beating a stage and having around 300 points is not the best feeling in the world. Without going full-Gigawing, you could simply add 2 or 3 zeroes to give some more weight to the scores. I know it's very artificial but 300 points is more or less how many points you get for just one enemy in most shmups.
-The left and right buttons don't cycle properly through the resolutions in the option menu
-I haven't found a restart option in the pause menu. That can really come in handy
-The initial loading is a bit long
-Enemies can fire at you even when they are slightly off-screen or on the very left side of the screen, where you can't do much about them

And good luck for your campaign!
Hi! First of all, thanks for playing, there's a lot of bugs, but that's what the demos are for :)
-The ship movement doesn't feel responsive. There is a bit of acceleration going on at first and then you slide around the place. This is not good for a shmup, and you need to have very precise control over your ship. One unique and constant speed (or several speeds that you can switch between for example with a focus button if you need a slower speed for micro-dodges) and zero mandatory acceleration/braking whatsoever. That would make the game feel a lot less clunky to play.
Yes, i've had some complaints about this, so i set the inertia to absolute zero. What version does it say you're playing? It can be seen in the lower right part of the title screen. There should be no inertia at all with both keyboard and gamepad input.
-Speaking of ship movement, the weapons with recoil are not enjoyable to use. If you really want to have a few weapons with recoil, i would suggest making it so that they are very powerful (instead of being a simple minigun) so that there's some sort of trade-off instead of being penalized for using a basic weapon, and also making only a few weapons (or even just one whose whole gimmick could be that?) feature this behavior. If you also give more frequent item drops, picking this one up might be much less frustrating.
Well, the recoil is a drawback for bullet weapons. They deal 1x damage to all enemies (normal, armored and shielded) but they have recoil. Missile and energy weapons deal 2x more damage to armored and shielded enemies, respectively, but they don't have recoil. That said, basic bullet weapon does not have recoil, i should look into that since it's confusing for some to have and some not. I get you for some to have that gimmick, it goes well with Boomer (weapon that shoots three big bullets), but yeah, not so much for minigun, so minigun should probably only slow you down when firing.
-Sometimes when I let some enemies escape, no other enemies spawn anymore
Yeah i have that problem that i already think i solved numerous times, but it keeps popping up, i really need to see what will i do about that.
-The asteroids blend with the background a bit too much
Some other folks actually complained that the background asteroids are too prominent, maybe making the background ones a bit more dark will solve the problem of hittable asteroids being more visible.
-There is a bug where using a weapon type, then using another one while the first one is also activated can lead to one of the weapon types to keep firing even after you let go of the fire buttons. You have to press the fire button for the specific weapon again to make it stop.
Wait, i really need you to check the version again, this was supposed to be solved ages ago.
-Stage numbers don't always properly reset when restarting, so you start at "Stage 3" for example.
This one too.
-The small enemies in general have too much HP given their small sprite. You would expect them to go down in a shot or two but they are a bit beefier than what their appearance suggests.
It's a design decision, which would be hard to change now as it would need a lot of things changed. But we'll see how it fares in the future. It certainly slows down tempo a lot, but i wanted a generally slower game than the usual shmup.
-The boss laser and flamethrower attacks requires more telegraphing. Warning signals on the beam's path, stuff like that.
You're right about that, i'll put a warning for laser, and as for flamethrower, i guess opening mouth is not prominent enough, i'll think of something.
-One enemy ship has a long blue laser attack without hitbox.
That's fixed.
-If you collide with an enemy or asteroid, you become immune to collision damage as long as you stay stuck inside said enemy. It's only after you leave its hitbox and then hit it again that you can get damaged by it again.
Good catch! I'll fix it.
-The score is pretty low. Beating a stage and having around 300 points is not the best feeling in the world. Without going full-Gigawing, you could simply add 2 or 3 zeroes to give some more weight to the scores. I know it's very artificial but 300 points is more or less how many points you get for just one enemy in most shmups.
I plan on that being a bit beefier, yeah. I'll put some zeros :)
-The left and right buttons don't cycle properly through the resolutions in the option menu
Yup, got some issues with an array, will be fixed.
-I haven't found a restart option in the pause menu. That can really come in handy
True! I'll put it in.
-The initial loading is a bit long
That should be fixed in the latest version as far as i know (it lasts maybe 5-6 seconds), but i'll work on making it even shorter.
-Enemies can fire at you even when they are slightly off-screen or on the very left side of the screen, where you can't do much about them
Got it, i'll fix it.

Thanks a lot for insights, they mean a lot to me!
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

Oh, the gravity was set to 0.1 instead of 0.0, so that's why there's inertia. One less thing to do.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by M.Knight »

I played on one of the first versions of the demo (V0.21), so I can check again on a newer version to see if the bugs are still there.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

I'll upload the latest patch tonight, with 0 inertia and some more bug fixes.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by tiaoferreira »

WWWOOWWW! Impressive! Nice work!
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

Thanks ^-^

Testing out boss #3

Check out @FatPugStudio’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/FatPugStudio/status ... 46560?s=09

And meteor storm!

Check out @FatPugStudio’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/FatPugStudio/status ... 53057?s=09
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

Beta testers wanted!

As the early access draws near, i need some people for testing the game and giving me their opinions and bug reports.

All testers will get access to latest version in the dev branch and a steam key when it gets to early access.

You can apply here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1023790/ ... 042511185/
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by bobasaurus »

I gave the demo a try. It looks like there are a few bugs with the controls. While holding a fire key, if you press another key to change weapons it just stops firing. Releasing all keys then pressing the other fire key works. Also sometimes firing would get stuck on/off.

I liked the enemy sprites and backgrounds. Wish it had controller support.
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

It does, only not in menu yet. Which controller did you use?

As for weapons, would you prefer to hold one weapon fire button and while holding it, you press the second one and the second one starts firing?

The way it is now is by design.

Can you give me some more info on how it got stuck? You release all buttons and ome of the buttons keeps on firing?
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

Sorted out the issue, thanks for letting me know :)
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

Lastest demo version will be on Steam Summer Festival from 06.09.2020. - 06.14.2020. but you can play it now - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1023 ... Henderson/

On 06.15.2020., we go early access :mrgreen:
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Re: Rick Henderson and the Artifact Of Gods

Post by Fat Pug Studio »

I'm glad to announce that Rick Henderson is goin Early Access on Steam on 23rd December 2020.!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1023 ... Henderson/

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