Jigoku Kisetsukan (Released + Steam)

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Emad
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Jigoku Kisetsukan (Released + Steam)

Post by Emad »

Hello guys!
I'm a new user but I've been lurking the development section for quite some time.
In the past few years I've been developing a bullet hell shmup and now I'm at a point I can show you something. :D

You can download it here: (Updated May 2015)
Steam
Itch.io

Here's a clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHTgv7f9G84

Some screenshots:
Screen #1
Screen #2
Screen #3
Screen #4
Screen #5

And some assets:
All the characters together
The characters in pixel art

Feedback appreciated!
Thanks and have fun! :wink:
Last edited by Emad on Tue May 12, 2015 6:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Pteriforever »

Fun!

From the screenshots I thought it'd be a bit like Laserreimu or Librasphere, but it was actually pretty different. I like the variety of characters, and all the bullet patterns seem fairly well-designed ^.^The artstyle is really cute, too~ Only complaint is that the hitboxes are a little wonky and take some time to get used to.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Lord Satori »

The girl with the chain on her neck reminds me of Bernkastel. I'm digging the characters.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Blackbird »

Yeah, the character designs are pretty cute! I'll give this a try later.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Kuroonehalf »

Hey dude!

First impression I get is this looks remarkably slick. The menus look good, the UI looks good, and the ingame movement and bullets flow well. Seems like you've built a solid framework to work with.

Some of the things I particularly enjoy:
- The use of the ingame menu sidebars to display incoming enemies and bullets (or even just for visual flair).
- I really appreciate being able to directly type my name in the scoreboard.
- Having the shooting entity on a leash from the player character when playing as Dev is actually a really neat idea that I'm not sure I've seen implemented in this specific fashion before. But*
- A lot of things felt natural or unnoticeable, like SFX, which is actually a great thing. Usually when something sticks out it's often a bad sign (I'm looking at you, EXseed games, and your terrible ear-piercing SFX).

Here's some issues/suggestions/remarks I felt I should point out:
- I think assigning Esc to the button for skipping dialogue is not very intuitive at all. Assigning it to X and/or doing like the Touhou games do where ctrl fast-forwards the text would be appreciated. Related: being able to choose text speed also appreciated.
- The music announcement popups take a significant portion of screen real estate. I think making them more compact would look better and less intrusive.
- Having all the bullets be light bullets (as in their inner color is white) looks good at first glance but is very tiring on the eye after a while, like you're looking at little shards of sunlight. There's a good reason why they're used so little. I'd highly recommend looking into diversifying those inner colors. I personally suggest looking into Hellsinker's bullets for inspiration (in addition to games you probably already take inspiration from), as I feel that game has the best bullets out there by a gigantic margin.
- Is this resolution the intended resolution for the final product? I ask because the bullets and entities look a bit pixelated and I wonder if this is intentional. Personally I'm not fond of pixelated bullets and would much rather play a lower resolution where the sprites are more crisp.
- Some sort of SFX indicator for when your bullets are hitting an enemy is severely lacking. With characters like Nebiiro I feel constantly disoriented and unsure if I'm hitting a boss.
- Menu transition animations feel a bit too long. The snappier they are the better. I want to be able to just pow pow pow through the menus and get the game rolling instead of sitting around for fades ins/outs.
- Ability to remember the last scoreboard name input and default to it whenever we get to that screen again, so that we don't have to write our name every time.
- Is there no Boss health bar? I'm not sure if I'm blind or it's really not there. Related to this, it's always nice to be able to see this sort of information without having to look at the very top part of the screen. An indicator on the sides (vertically) or on the bottom, or even an SFX indicator where the sound gets slightly different depending on how much % of HP the boss has left (I believe ZUN uses this when bosses have like 10% HP left, but having it vary for more HP percentages would be cool too), would be great.
- Lacking descriptions for what these characters play like on character select. It'd be nice to know what you're signing up for before you commit, especially when dealing with a roster of 7 playable characters.
- * A lot of these characters feel too simplistic and alike each other. Even characters with slight quirks like Fumin who is able to set her dragon on a fixed position on the screen as she moves, or Dev, feel like they're missing tools. I totally understand if that doesn't bother you, as I know plenty of folks are fine with simplistic controls as well, but personally it's something that bothers me a lot. I love complexity - having constant material to learn and skills to juggle makes a game feel a lot more fresh for longer - which is why I adore Hellsinker and have been playing it for over a year, and why I couldn't play games like Danmaku Unlimited 2 for more than 2 hours. I feel like at the very least every character here should have (significantly) different shots depending on whether they're focused or not.

Overall this looks exciting and I'll be following the development of the game for sure. Hope you don't take the big list of remarks I made as a negative thing, as it's not intended to be. Let us know when you need more playtesting or feedback on something. :>
Last edited by Kuroonehalf on Thu Nov 20, 2014 2:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Emad »

Thanks guys for the feedback. It's much appreciated! :wink:
Pteriforever wrote:Fun!

From the screenshots I thought it'd be a bit like Laserreimu or Librasphere, but it was actually pretty different. I like the variety of characters, and all the bullet patterns seem fairly well-designed ^.^The artstyle is really cute, too~ Only complaint is that the hitboxes are a little wonky and take some time to get used to.
I didn't know those two games. Laserreimu is graphically awesome and the other one is very good too.
Regarding the hitboxes I can relate, sometimes I get hit and I'm like "what?"
The hitboxes however are correct but maybe I need to make some a bit smaller. I'm currently tweaking them.
Lord Satori wrote:The girl with the chain on her neck reminds me of Bernkastel. I'm digging the characters.
Blackbird wrote:Yeah, the character designs are pretty cute! I'll give this a try later.
Glad you like the characters. I lost many months and HP drawing them all!
I didn't know that character, I have yet to play/watch umineko. Shame on me! :P
Kuroonehalf wrote:Hope you don't take the big list of remarks I made as a negative thing, as it's not intended to be.
Not at all. I appreciate your very long feedback and I agree on many points you raised! :wink:
Kuroonehalf wrote: - I think assigning Esc to the button for skipping dialogue is not very intuitive at all. Assigning it to X and/or doing like the Touhou games do where ctrl fast-forwards the text would be appreciated. Related: being able to choose text speed also appreciated.
Yep, it's also not very comfortable. Added this today.
Kuroonehalf wrote:- Having all the bullets be light bullets (as in their inner color is white) looks good at first glance but is very tiring on the eye after a while, like you're looking at little shards of sunlight. There's a good reason why they're used so little. I'd highly recommend looking into diversifying those inner colors. I personally suggest looking into Hellsinker's bullets for inspiration (in addition to games you probably already take inspiration from), as I feel that game has the best bullets out there by a gigantic margin.
I see that hellsinker's bullets are more shaded and also come in many interesting shapes. I'll look into it!
Kuroonehalf wrote: - Is this resolution the intended resolution for the final product? I ask because the bullets and entities look a bit pixelated and I wonder if this is intentional. Personally I'm not fond of pixelated bullets and would much rather play a lower resolution where the sprites are more crisp.
As a rule of thumb I'm making entities you can interact with pixelated while decorative elements are not.
I agree that crips bullets look way better however they would be odd along with pixelated characters, monsters and drops.
Kuroonehalf wrote:- Some sort of SFX indicator for when your bullets are hitting an enemy is severely lacking.
An impact sound is played when you hit bosses but it doesn't stand much. I'll have to tweak it, maybe making it more high-pitched.
Kuroonehalf wrote:- Ability to remember the last scoreboard name input and default to it whenever we get to that screen again, so that we don't have to write our name every time.
This could be a nice addition that I would have never thought of by myself.
Kuroonehalf wrote:- Is there no Boss health bar? I'm not sure if I'm blind or it's really not there. Related to this, it's always nice to be able to see this sort of information without having to look at the very top part of the screen. An indicator on the sides (vertically) or on the bottom, or even an SFX indicator where the sound gets slightly different depending on how much % of HP the boss has left (I believe ZUN uses this when bosses have like 10% HP left, but having it vary for more HP percentages would be cool too), would be great.
Oh yes, there is however it was getting rendered behind the boss' bullets making it not visible half of the time. Fixed.

Image

Adding a % indicator of the boss' health on the lower part of the screen would be nice. I started working on it today.

Kuroonehalf wrote:- * A lot of these characters feel too simplistic and alike each other. Even characters with slight quirks like Fumin who is able to set her dragon on a fixed position on the screen as she moves, or Dev, feel like they're missing tools. I totally understand if that doesn't bother you, as I know plenty of folks are fine with simplistic controls as well, but personally it's something that bothers me a lot. I love complexity - having constant material to learn and skills to juggle makes a game feel a lot more fresh for longer - which is why I adore Hellsinker and have been playing it for over a year, and why I couldn't play games like Danmaku Unlimited 2 for more than 2 hours. I feel like at the very least every character here should have (significantly) different shots depending on whether they're focused or not.
Yeah, I can understand the need for complexity. Making a comparison to a genre I know better it's like Final Fantasy Tactics to Disgaea or Tactics Ogre. The latter are way more complex than the first one but they are also more rewarding for this very reason.
In this case I'm not confident in making a more complex game since I'm quite inexperienced with shmups, I'm trying to make an overall simple game that I would enjoy playing with.
(Why have I decided to make a shmup then? Because it seemed an easy and not too demanding genre to start programming games back then. Hahaha, how naive. :lol: )


Thanks again for the feedback, I'll surely let you try another build in the future!
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Blackbird »

I decided to just go all in and thoroughly playtest this game. Check your email, I sent you a huge feedback document. Cheers!
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Ebbo »

You obviously put a lot of effort into this demo, even though it's pretty short. Somewhat sluggish menus aside, I do like the slick presentation and overall everything feels and looks rather pleasant.

The character sprites look nice but the sparse animations left me wanting something more. Maybe a little idle (edit: scratch that, on closer inspection characters actually do have idle animations) or banking animation for each character would keep them from feeling too stiff.

I second Pteriforever's notion about bullet hitboxes, those feel almost uncharacteristically big compared to other bullet hell games. I'm not too fond of the grazing mechanic either. I think there could be more interesting ways to go with the scoring system... It doesn't quite mix with the level design which seems a bit too samey and uneventful for my tastes. It lacks energy, for the lack of a better word. I'd say the foundation is there, it just needs some adjusting.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Emad »

Ebbo wrote:You obviously put a lot of effort into this demo, even though it's pretty short. Somewhat sluggish menus aside, I do like the slick presentation and overall everything feels and looks rather pleasant.

The character sprites look nice but the sparse animations left me wanting something more. Maybe a little idle (edit: scratch that, on closer inspection characters actually do have idle animations) or banking animation for each character would keep them from feeling too stiff.

I second Pteriforever's notion about bullet hitboxes, those feel almost uncharacteristically big compared to other bullet hell games. I'm not too fond of the grazing mechanic either. I think there could be more interesting ways to go with the scoring system... It doesn't quite mix with the level design which seems a bit too samey and uneventful for my tastes. It lacks energy, for the lack of a better word. I'd say the foundation is there, it just needs some adjusting.
Thanks for the feedback, all fair points!
I sped up the menu and improved a lot the precision issues related to the hitboxes.
I'm also reviewing completely the scoring system as I understand that keeping enemies alive to achieve a better score is not fun for most players.
You said that the level in the demo was quite uneventful. Could you make some examples of what makes a level more eventful?
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Lord Satori »

Played this earlier. I have some mixed feelings about the self insert thing you've got going on there. As an end of demo message I found it amusing, but as a playable character I was wondering if its a permanent fixture in the game?

Also, I too am having hitbox troubles. Though what I have to say has already been said by others.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Blackbird »

^ Emad's aware of the hitbox issue and has made some adjustments for the next version.

Regarding an "eventful level", here are some ideas:

- A mix of larger and smaller enemies to create varying levels of tension throughout the level. Think about creating a "narrative" with the difficulty curve of the level.
- Integrate enemies into the feel of the level, make them feel like they belong there. If you have a forest level, add some treants or some birds that fly out from the trees. If you have a water level, get some giant crabs going. It gives the game some more character. (Not specifically a recommendation for your game, but just the general idea).
- You can could think about having non-bullet threats like stage hazards. Not everyone likes to have them in vertical scrollers, but it is something to consider.
- Scoring opportunities. These can take different forms depending on what the final form of your scoring system is, but common examples from other games include enemies that drop points items/medals when shot, clusters of high-value targets that are difficult to attack, enemies that turn all the bullets into points when destroyed, and so on.

Help me out here shmups forum, I'm rubbish at brainstorming for this stuff =P.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by tiaoferreira »

Emad, what tool did you used for build the game?
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Emad »

Blackbird wrote:^ Emad's aware of the hitbox issue and has made some adjustments for the next version.

Regarding an "eventful level", here are some ideas:

- A mix of larger and smaller enemies to create varying levels of tension throughout the level. Think about creating a "narrative" with the difficulty curve of the level.
- Integrate enemies into the feel of the level, make them feel like they belong there. If you have a forest level, add some treants or some birds that fly out from the trees. If you have a water level, get some giant crabs going. It gives the game some more character. (Not specifically a recommendation for your game, but just the general idea).
- You can could think about having non-bullet threats like stage hazards. Not everyone likes to have them in vertical scrollers, but it is something to consider.
- Scoring opportunities. These can take different forms depending on what the final form of your scoring system is, but common examples from other games include enemies that drop points items/medals when shot, clusters of high-value targets that are difficult to attack, enemies that turn all the bullets into points when destroyed, and so on.

Help me out here shmups forum, I'm rubbish at brainstorming for this stuff =P.
Thanks a lot for all the ideas! Much appreciated!
tiaoferreira wrote:Emad, what tool did you used for build the game?
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Emad »

New video with the second boss fight. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLK5_vf5sCw
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Stompp »

From watching the two vids your game looks quite enjoyable. Come X-mas I will give it a go :D Also, your character designs are ace :!:
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

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Stompp wrote:From watching the two vids your game looks quite enjoyable. Come X-mas I will give it a go :D Also, your character designs are ace :!:
It makes me very happy to hear that the characters are liked by many of you. :)
The demo is slightly outdated now but feel free to give it a try and report any feedback you may have ;)
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Stevens »

Just saw the demo on Siliconera. Looks great! I dig the art style and music.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

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Stevens wrote:Just saw the demo on Siliconera. Looks great! I dig the art style and music.
Oh gosh, they wrote an article on my game. :shock:
I'm sorry for the author, he had to guess the plot from the few screenshots since I barely wrote anything about it.
Thanks for letting me know about it, I probably would never have found it otherwise. And glad you liked it! :wink:
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Emad »

New video with another boss fight!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuFiKUS7q4A
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo Nov2014)

Post by Emad »

After 4 months of development a new demo is ready for you to play!
The game now features 4 levels, customizable controls, joypad support, achievements, training section and multilanguage support (english, italian, japanese).

Download: Version 0.3

Let me know your thought, you feedback was very helpful last time!
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo March 2015)

Post by RipperRoo »

Dont forget to credit Lada Laika... awesome song
i like the characters, but im not a fan of those touhou style things :)
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo March 2015)

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RipperRoo wrote:but im not a fan of those touhou style things
So girls shooting at each other is automatically labeled "touhou style" nowadays?
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo March 2015)

Post by Shepardus »

Well it does bear quite a few other similarities to Touhou, such as the spellcard format of the boss fights, the emphasis on grazing for scoring purposes, enemies releasing blue point items and red powerup items to collect, the PoC line, and the inclusion of deathbombing (I can't think of many games with deathbombing that aren't either Touhou or Touhou fangames) so I don't think the comparison to Touhou is much of a stretch.

That said, I liked what I played. Played with the first character (Tenshi) on Normal and Hard, Normal felt kind of sluggishly paced, probably because it was too easy for me, but Hard felt a lot better.

I like that there's a timer for the deathbomb, though in my opinion the timing should be made a little tighter as right now I feel like it's hard to miss a deathbomb unless you're actually trying to die or if you didn't notice that you hit a bullet. I think it would also give the hit more impact if the character were frozen during the deathbomb window rather than able to freely move around. This way newer players would be better able to connect the timer mechanic and their subsequent death to getting hit, and more experienced players would be less likely to miss the fact that they got hit while passing through a dense bullet cluster. A more noticeable sound to getting hit would also help.

The dark background in stage 3 made it sometimes hard to judge where the playable area ends and the border area begins since the border's marked off by dark shading. It wasn't really an issue when I was playing it since I was focusing on that area whenever my character was close enough for the border to be relevant, but I could see it becoming an issue in more frantic situations where the player isn't specifically paying attention to the border area.

Also the menu animations and fade-ins/fade-outs could stand to be faster.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo March 2015)

Post by Emad »

RipperRoo wrote:Dont forget to credit Lada Laika... awesome song
The guy is awesome! Yes, there are plenty of credits both in and outside the game!
Shepardus wrote:I like that there's a timer for the deathbomb, though in my opinion the timing should be made a little tighter as right now I feel like it's hard to miss a deathbomb unless you're actually trying to die or if you didn't notice that you hit a bullet. I think it would also give the hit more impact if the character were frozen during the deathbomb window rather than able to freely move around. This way newer players would be better able to connect the timer mechanic and their subsequent death to getting hit, and more experienced players would be less likely to miss the fact that they got hit while passing through a dense bullet cluster. A more noticeable sound to getting hit would also help.
Totally agree. The deathbomb is the main thing that needs to be tweaked, thanks for giving me some specific directions. Much appreciated! ;)
Shepardus wrote:The dark background in stage 3 made it sometimes hard to judge where the playable area ends and the border area begins since the border's marked off by dark shading. It wasn't really an issue when I was playing it since I was focusing on that area whenever my character was close enough for the border to be relevant, but I could see it becoming an issue in more frantic situations where the player isn't specifically paying attention to the border area.
Noted down. I'll give it a look when I get to try the game on a better monitor.
Shepardus wrote:Also the menu animations and fade-ins/fade-outs could stand to be faster.
Yes, definitely.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo March 2015)

Post by Stevens »

I just tried the new demo.

Thoughts:

- I still like the art style and music, especially the first boss theme.

- I really like the bullet patterns. My experience is limited but they are unlike anything I have encountered before.

The bad - just an opinion - please please please tell me it won't be analog stick only for control. I feel it is much less precise than using the d-pad.

Keep up the great work! I look forward to your next build. Good luck!
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo March 2015)

Post by Emad »

Stevens wrote:I just tried the new demo.

Thoughts:

- I still like the art style and music, especially the first boss theme.

- I really like the bullet patterns. My experience is limited but they are unlike anything I have encountered before.

The bad - just an opinion - please please please tell me it won't be analog stick only for control. I feel it is much less precise than using the d-pad.

Keep up the great work! I look forward to your next build. Good luck!
Happy to hear that you liked it!

The pad issue is something that bugs me too, with the built-in functions of game maker I couldn't detect the d-pad buttons.
I'll investigate the matter a bit more before releasing the final version.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo March 2015)

Post by BPzeBanshee »

Shameless plug, but if you're having trouble with joystick/gamepad functions in GM have a look at the way GMOSSE does it in Scripts -> Core -> scr_input(). Main issue with analog sticks is if you don't have your own deadzone control and have a joystick that's even slightly off-center it'll cause issues. D-Pads shouldn't be an issue either.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo March 2015)

Post by Cagar »

Feedback:

-Remove grazing
-Replace tap-dodge patterns with something that you actually have to dodge
-HELL was way too easy

+This pattern was super cool:
Image
Stevens wrote: - I really like the bullet patterns. My experience is limited but they are unlike anything I have encountered before.
Play Touhou.
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Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo March 2015)

Post by Emad »

BPzeBanshee wrote:Shameless plug, but if you're having trouble with joystick/gamepad functions in GM have a look at the way GMOSSE does it in Scripts -> Core -> scr_input(). Main issue with analog sticks is if you don't have your own deadzone control and have a joystick that's even slightly off-center it'll cause issues. D-Pads shouldn't be an issue either.
At first I was like "what the hell is he talking about?"
Turns out I was using the legacy joystick functions. I converted everything to the new set of functions and now it works just fine (deadzone set too!)
Thanks for your input! ;)
Cagar wrote:Feedback:
-Remove grazing
-Replace tap-dodge patterns with something that you actually have to dodge
-HELL was way too easy
Grazing gives very little points. It's always way more convenient to kill enemies and bosses as fast as possible.
I left it more for fun but if it upsets so many people I'll consider removing it.

Regarding the difficulty I'm aware that the deathbomb is way too overpowered, the time window is impossible to miss and the aura gauge recharges too quickly. I need to change it drastically. This alone should increase the difficulty to a certain extend.
I'll try to review the difficulty of some patterns too, especially on hell.
The main problem is that I don't know how much difficult I can make them, I'm not good enough at shmups to judge what is "hard" and what is "unfair".
Emanuele Franceschini | Blog | DeviantArt | Facebook | Twitter |
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BPzeBanshee
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Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2009 3:59 am

Re: Jigoku Kisetsukan (Demo March 2015)

Post by BPzeBanshee »

I'm actually still using the legacy functions as I'm not running Studio for my day-to-day stuff and for the most part it works fine, but yeah, Studio's new functions for gamepads is apparently an order of magnitude better to deal with and cross-platform compatible should you choose to export to other OS/devices. Glad to hear you worked out the kinks there.
I'll try to review the difficulty of some patterns too, especially on hell.
The main problem is that I don't know how much difficult I can make them, I'm not good enough at shmups to judge what is "hard" and what is "unfair".
This is precisely why we're here and you're posting here and not on somewhere like Yoyo's GMC where most folks aren't accustomed to this genre. Make it as hard as what *you* can handle first and adjust (or choose not to depending on quality of said feedback) based on feedback from here later. Make the most out of your willing game testers to perfect the game.
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