GUNVIXEN

[rtw]

I think it looks fantastic and I can't wait to see more!

[n0rtygames]

Also the whole compensated direction thing?? Yes, I'm an idiot, my scrolling camera and character positioning relative to the camera was reducing the Y movement so I was stupidly compensating for it, and made my assumptions from there.. sorry..

That's what feedback is for! More importantly:-

This is awesome. Very reminiscent of looking up cave stage layouts for inspiration. How are you handling the camera movement on this? Assuming you have some sort of track in your editor that the thing follows. I would've loved to do this but y'know.

Something that may be of use, for file and image sizes:

My stages are pretty much linear in that they scroll vertically. This sucks, but it made life easier. I would like to have some nice horizontal scrolling sections. Maybe I'll add this some day.



Split in to multiple sections and stay within 4096x4096 (take powers of whatever in to consideration if using compression) and you can get more out of single textures. You could probably do similar once you're done no doubt and just align accordingly in your editor

One day I may finish this game >.<

Anyway, keep posting cool stuff. This is looking good as ever

[pixelcorps]

Yeah I am doing that kinda thing with my backgrounds via a waypoint system, which will be gradually tweaked to get things moving silky smooth (nice rounded path movements etc), it works fine right now, but I can see a few areas where it could be polished.. One thing to notice, what cave does on diagonal sections is they disable the x panning during these sections so that there's no need the compensate the x speed of the player in the direction its scrolling in, not only that's but they gradually center the camera before the diagonal scroll starts.. Espgaluda 2 is a good example to watch.. It's most obvious if you stay on one side of the screen before the midboss..

I also learned the hard way about the tile maps, my 1st version was made up of tons of tiny tiles, when I shoulda gone with larger chunks as you did, so I paid the penance of ditching a weeks worth of work..

[trap15]

One thing to notice, what cave does on diagonal sections is they disable the x panning during these sections so that there's no need the compensate the x speed of the player in the direction its scrolling in, not only that's but they gradually center the camera before the diagonal scroll starts.. Espgaluda 2 is a good example to watch.. It's most obvious if you stay on one side of the screen before the midboss..

It's important to notice that CAVE isn't the only company that's done this sort of thing, and in my opinion they're far from the best at it. Particularly see the Raiden Fighters series for games with incredibly interesting and engaging multi-directional scroll. I believe CAVE probably locks horizontal scroll for reasons related to their implementation details of scrolling more than anything. Seibu still lets the player perform the horizontal pan during multi-directional scroll in Raiden Fighters series.

[Squire Grooktook]

I also learned the hard way about the tile maps, my 1st version was made up of tons of tiny tiles, when I shoulda gone with larger chunks as you did, so I paid the penance of ditching a weeks worth of work..

Curious, but why big chunks over tiles? I'm not familiar with background options.

[pixelcorps]

One thing to notice, what cave does on diagonal sections is they disable the x panning during these sections so that there's no need the compensate the x speed of the player in the direction its scrolling in, not only that's but they gradually center the camera before the diagonal scroll starts.. Espgaluda 2 is a good example to watch.. It's most obvious if you stay on one side of the screen before the midboss..

It's important to notice that CAVE isn't the only company that's done this sort of thing, and in my opinion they're far from the best at it. Particularly see the Raiden Fighters series for games with incredibly interesting and engaging multi-directional scroll. I believe CAVE probably locks horizontal scroll for reasons related to their implementation details of scrolling more than anything. Seibu still lets the player perform the horizontal pan during multi-directional scroll in Raiden Fighters series.

they`ll be halfing the x speed of the camera pan direction to prevent one side scrolling faster than the other then I guess...

..then again I dont recall any multidirectional scrolling maps in any raiden games.. am I missing any??

[pixelcorps]

I also learned the hard way about the tile maps, my 1st version was made up of tons of tiny tiles, when I shoulda gone with larger chunks as you did, so I paid the penance of ditching a weeks worth of work..

Curious, but why big chunks over tiles? I'm not familiar with background options.

may be different depending on your graphics implementation and how your engine does instanced graphics

[trap15]

Raiden Fighters, not mainline Raiden. Go play RF2.

[pixelcorps]

are you talking about the big boss ships that move about?

[BPzeBanshee]

Not just the bosses (although I believe the giant train makes for an interesting example of this in motion too) but RF2's ocean stage comes to mind. RF1 stage 3 also has diagonal scrolling in some parts - you can tell because they forgot to synchronise the player shots with the movement speed even though they're doing it with the player so if you use something like the Judge Spear you can see your shots have a slight arc when sitting still while shooting.

[pixelcorps]

Will take a look.. I am still considering how to approach this!

[pixelcorps]

interesting, in the part where they scroll over the beach leftwards, they don`t even bother to compensate, the background scrolls faster when you move left than it does when you scroll right, although its no very noticable as the x scroll speed is pretty slow..

[pixelcorps]

I'mma launchin' mah dropship! pewpew!

[rtw]

I'mma launchin' mah dropship! pewpew!

one word, beautiful!

[emphatic]

Nice is another word.

[Xyga]

Sexy ! <3

It could use a badass logo on its back.

[pixelcorps]

YES!! Looks like I have got myself a pro Japanese character illustrator to work with, managed to agree on a small amount of illustrations, but have to wait on a quote..　
Stand by for armored battle babe pics!

[Cagar]

What a talented person you are.

[pixelcorps]

*sigh*

Well, it seems I broke the engine i was using.

As I wasn't a programmer I was using the open source construct classic in order to be able to do everything myself as it could handle 60FPS + with lots of nice direct X fx

Sadly I didnt know that the thing was buggy as hell and issues compund on top of each other until an app starts bombing out with "runtime errors" which are just a cover all for unknown engine bugs.

The remaining ppl doing support on construct classic were of little help, and basically told me there's not much that can be done once the "runtime errors" start occuring.

I can't even get an engineer to look at the engine as it needs a runtime DLL from a library that costs several hundred dollars.

So, as a solo dev, with only art, design and music skills, It seems there's no way of me getting any further with this project.

[GSK]

If you'd mentioned Construct earlier people probably would have warned you about it, honestly. The "easiest" solution is to suck it up and switch to Game Maker or Unity, like, now.

Barring that, I'm sure there are a few programmers lurking around who'd love to collaborate with you. Your art is unreal.

[Squire Grooktook]

Yeah. I could probably do it even, though my plate is a little full ATM (I am working on my own game in between classes, and I was going to help a friend with his brawler project afterwards too), but I could contribute if you want and don't mind me being a little slow. I have experience in both GM and Unity

As said, you could probably find several programmers here who could do it for you.

Also correct me if I'm wrong, but Construct doesn't really let you code, right? It's like drag and drop or something?

[rtw]

What about Construct 2 is that any good ?

https://www.scirra.com/

[pixelcorps]

HTML5 only no direct X, not exactly high performance STG material.

[rtw]

HTML5 only no direct X, not exactly high performance STG material.

So not good hope the Squire can assist you, this project just looks to lovely to abandon!

[eebrozgi]

Man, sucks to hear that.

If you happen to decide that GameMaker: Studio is fit to carry the project to life, I would be glad to share some knowledge I've gotten from working with GM over the years if you need help.

[emphatic]

[Biggu Bossu]

This is absolutely sad. I know how it feels to lose all that hard work for a project you love, and I know I have little to say on the matter as a spectator, but please consider the difficult task of switching to a new but trusted engine.
What you have built so far promises something really special. Losing that would be a tragedy, and I'm choosing that word carefully.

[pixelcorps]

My options are pretty slim, Unity could probably handle it, but as it`S a lot more script based, I doubt I could pull it off on my own, UE4 is total overkill.. Anything else, means I`m building the whole thing again on top of learning the engine..

I`m wallowing in self pity right now, I know, but am also considering what I can do.

The evenings and weekends sure are boring now..

[Squire Grooktook]

Just get a coder and focus on your roll as an artist. You could even still be the pattern/gameplay designer (your contributions as artist give you a right to it), as long as you work closely with the programmer. I could code a basic shmup in Unity or Game Maker in my sleep.

[pixelcorps]

Gonna ask around, my circle of dev friends are all pros and finding one that would be interested in a 2D STG might be hard..

My life would be a lot easier if I could just concentrate on the creative side of it that`s for sure..