A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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SolDirix
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A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

Post by SolDirix »

You can play the game here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1910490/A2_Zygon/

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NEW SCREENSHOTS (Since 4/2/2022)
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It's being developed in UE4 as a solo project, so you could call it my 'dream game'. It's less of an arcade shooter and more adventure-esque with minor rpg mechanics. You get coins instead of points and can use them to purchase upgrades and other cool stuff outside of the story mode ;)

Here is some older gameplay footage from the Python version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUNwelj3TQQ

And some showcasing of the main menu and an option to change the music type:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOY9IM96TwI

I will keep you all posted with new updates as they come along ^^
Cheers!
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Last edited by SolDirix on Thu Dec 01, 2022 8:10 am, edited 17 times in total.
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Verticen
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Re: Anthro 8-Bit Style SHMUP

Post by Verticen »

Your art direction here rules. The color pallet is unique and eyecatching and I like you spritework. Enemy bullets are easy to identify at a glance. Also props to your good menu style; those gui window borders and font detail really enhance this game’s vibe.
Antro/Furstuff isn’t really my thing, but I like the animal characters. They’re well designed and fit right into the aesthetic style of the rest of the game.
Also since I’ve seen this before pls don’t have sidebar art that deter average players from playing your game in public. https://jackdarx.itch.io/jet-buster
(Sidebar art should never feature any kind of characters by default imo)

I'd suggest seeing if you can make the player shot appear a little brighter. Player bullets use the same blues and purples as the background making it hard to see. Player fire should stand out less than enemy bullets, but should be easy to see, as experienced players will want to watch their own stream of fire to assist aiming and dodging. It’s also generally best practice to make the player’s shot appear below all enemy bullets, so as not to obscure them.

I’d also offer caution for using RPG elements in shmups. It’s a common pitfall for shmup devs. If you have one, keep it simple. 1943 (nes version) and Carrier Air Wing do some basic shops or upgrade systems that work well.

For technical side, UE4 seems overkill for what this game is, but if UE's 2D tools are robust and to your liking and the engine doesn't have a huge sysReqs overhead for simple 2d games then stick with it if you think you should.

If you’re new to deving shmups, don’t forget to check out the pinned Developer-friendly Topics post; there’s lots of good info there.
Keep up your good work.
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Re: Anthro 8-Bit Style SHMUP

Post by SolDirix »

Don't worry, I do not have any plans to place artwork on the sides of the game screen (I personally don't like that concept either and also find it distracting).

I will definitely change to brighter player bullets for that level. I have different player bullet sprites for different backgrounds that vary in brightness and I can switch them around.

I didn't notice the player bullets were over top the enemy ones. The enemy bullets actually consist of 2 sprites, the back colors and the white circle. The player bullets actually get obscured by the white circle, but not the background color, but I can still place them below both. I'm just worried it will make it harder for the player to see their own bullets if there are a lot of enemy bullets on the screen.

I assure you that the RPG elements are very simplistic and it isn't required to get all upgrades to beat the game.

Thank you for your input!
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Re: Anthro 8-Bit Style SHMUP

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

The colour palette is really snazzy. I dig games that use a limited palette to their full potential like Downwell or ZeroRanger. I would caution that the player sprite's brightness is very similar to the background elements, which could cause visibility issues for players with vision issues like colourblindness (consider a high contrast player sprite option or colour palette options). Most 8 bit shmups deliberately make the player ship either bright, or highlighted with white elements, or will use a colour that is reserved entirely for the player and the player's own shots to maximize visibility.

Agreed with the sidebar art. Jet Buster is a lot of fun to play but I would not say its art is a highlight of the game. In your case I think the art style very slick, and the "furry" elements shouldn't immediately deter anyone, but generally sidebars that feature anime characters and whatnot are not as appealing as more minimalist, lest distracting ones. At least don't make the sidebar art default to them and you should be fine.

Don't feel bad about making an RPG shmup hybrid. It is possible to make them work; Guardic Gaiden/The Guardian Legend does a decent job of it, Tyrian 2000 does too. However, both those games also feature pure shmup/arcade modes that drop the RPG elements (in Guardic Gaiden's case as a password you get for beating the game normally) so consider that as an idea for satisfying both a more casual audience as well as appealing for more hardcore shmuppers. It depends on who you're wanting to play the game.

Not sure how much screen shake there is, if any, but screen shake is horrible and has shown up in a number of recent games I can think of without the option to disable it. This is quite unfortunate, so consider having the option to disable screen shaking if it's a thing (Downwell would be infinitely more fun without screen shake, Monolith certainly is better with it turned off since most of its weapon cause shake every time you fire them, ick, Score Rush Extended is a rare exception that's fine because you're invulnerable during screen shake so the shaking is actually more of an indicator rather than a hindrance).
I'm just worried it will make it harder for the player to see their own bullets if there are a lot of enemy bullets on the screen.
The thing that always, always needs to be visible at all times are enemy bullets. If you're firing a constant stream of shots, the player shots will be visible enough, but the priority on visibility should always be on enemy bullets. It's far less of an issue if player shots are obscured slightly by enemy shots because you can use your position onscreen to know where you're firing, but if enemy shots get obscured then you're getting hit by things you can't see, and that is Extremely Bad in a shmup. For an example of this, look at the windows-era Touhou games like Imperishable Night; the players shots appear to be partially transparent, and are much less bright compared to enemy shots. The focus is entirely on maximizing enemy attack visibility, but because the player's shots move so rapidly and fire so quickly, they contrast well and you can still see them just fine distinct from other elements.

Generally speaking, the order you want to layer things is:

Enemy Bullets
Player Bullets
Enemy Sprites
Player Sprites

This way if the player has a small hitbox relative to their sprite (something like Battle Traverse is an exaggerated example), the enemy bullets won't be covered up by the sprite and hidden while they're still far enough from the hitbox to dodge. Judgement Silversword is an example of a game that is fantastic, but has the unfortunate design flaw of having the player sprite be ABOVE enemy bullets. The hitbox is just small enough that it's possible for a bullet to go under your sprite but still be in a position you can dodge, resulting in some visibility issues during dense, slow attacks (Mirror Shield boss in particular).
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Re: Anthro 8-Bit Style SHMUP

Post by SolDirix »

Thanks for the tips! I will not be adding any screen shaking, so no need to worry about that. I will look into making the player's sprite stand out more.

My game does have a challenge mode that gives the player harder levels to play that start you off with max rpg stats. No high scores are recorded, as there is no scoring mechanic, but I could keep track of the largest amount of coins collected per level. There is some RNG that is meant to keep things fresh, so I don't know if that will be a big scoring issue as that may vary the difficulty a little.
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Re: Anthro 8-Bit Style SHMUP

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Added the training mode and card menu. Also fixed up the player sprites.
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Re: Anthro 8-Bit Style SHMUP

Post by SolDirix »

Added 2 new bosses. More to come!
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Re: Anthro 8-Bit Style SHMUP

Post by SolDirix »

Working on my game poster. And yes, this project is alive and thriving. More coming soon!
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Re: Anthro 8-Bit Style SHMUP

Post by Ark »

I like this art style
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

Post by SolDirix »

The Steam page is finally here! You can play the demo and wishlist here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1910490/A2_Zygon/
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

Post by Ark »

Loving the music, nice presentation.

Question will the character have a walk animation?
All the enemy sprites have a nice little animation to them.
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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Ark wrote:Loving the music, nice presentation.

Question will the character have a walk animation?
All the enemy sprites have a nice little animation to them.
Thanks! The player floats above the ground, similar to Touhou.
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

Post by Verticen »

This is looking really good. Presentation continues to be unique & top-notch. U should see about asking to show a trailer for this in slam if you haven’t already.
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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Verticen wrote:This is looking really good. Presentation continues to be unique & top-notch. U should see about asking to show a trailer for this in slam if you haven’t already.
Thanks! What is Slam may I ask?
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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SolDirix wrote:Thanks! What is Slam may I ask?
slam is Mark_MSX's shooting game expo. There's not much docs on the farm about it, but I've dm'd you some details.
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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Verticen wrote:
SolDirix wrote:Thanks! What is Slam may I ask?
slam is Mark_MSX's shooting game expo. There's not much docs on the farm about it, but I've dm'd you some details.
Oh him! I've watched some of his videos. Really cool guy.
I'll look into the expo thing. Thanks!
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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I significantly reduced the flashing effects to make the game less.. flashy.
This did come at a small sacrifice of the game's retro aesthetic but it was necessary.

Function over form as they say.
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Nintendo reduced the flashing on subsequent digital releases of Mother 1 and 2, so it's pretty normal to cut down on how much full screen flashing there is. Worse comes to worse, make it a toggle option so you can have full flashing if you want or reduced flashing.
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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Update: I decided to add saving to the demo version. I originally planned not to, but decided to add the saving anyway to showcase the fact that you can retry levels and bosses if you lose. You do lose coins collected from previous levels though. The first two level backgrounds have been updated as well.

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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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I Updated the player attacks.

Now the player strike region is much larger. I was reluctant to change this at first, because I thought it would make things too easy, but I realized how frustrating it is to accidentally run into enemies while striking (and despite playtesting thousands of time, I still end up doing it).

To compensate for this, I lowered the maximum MP from 16 to 10.

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Another upgrade I added was the ability to focus attack shots while shift was held down. I don't know why I didn't add this earlier. I probably just wanted there to be more distinction between the two characters. Well, I added it anyway and it makes things much more interesting. Don't get me wrong, the attacks still differ in angle, but now it is easier to kill enemies quicker when lined up with them with shift held down.

The update should be added later tonight as of this post.

Cheers!
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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Added voices to the boss characters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqMK96n1P9k
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

Post by BulletMagnet »

Had a quick go at the demo, a couple brief thoughts, apologies if I overlooked anything:

- Do you plan on adding controller support? My usually-reliable wired 360 pad didn't work.

- Do you intend to include any in-depth scoring mechanics? Off the top of my head I think more liberal use of the sword might be a place to start.

Best of luck with the game!
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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BulletMagnet wrote: - Do you plan on adding controller support? My usually-reliable wired 360 pad didn't work.
I've had a few requests to add controller and joystick support. I'll definitely add it at some point.
BulletMagnet wrote: - Do you intend to include any in-depth scoring mechanics? Off the top of my head I think more liberal use of the sword might be a place to start.
This game is more rpg/adventure focused, so there is no scoring mechanic, however I do plan on having a 'totals' section where you can view the highest number of coins collected on a completed playthrough of story mode, challenge levels, and other modes of gameplay.
BulletMagnet wrote: Best of luck with the game!
Thank you!
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

I've had a few requests to add controller and joystick support. I'll definitely add it at some point.
Robust remapping options are also the hallmark of good development, don't forget to add an interface to allow control over the button mappings, even if it looks basic as long as it's functional that's what counts. You can suggest something like JoyToKey until then though, that should work too.
This game is more rpg/adventure focused, so there is no scoring mechanic
While this will affect longevity and appeal for arcade-oriented players, it's by no means a death sentence for a shmup. There's a lot of enjoyable shmups with fairly minimal scoring elements where score is more or less tied to survival time.
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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BareKnuckleRoo wrote: Robust remapping options are also the hallmark of good development, don't forget to add an interface to allow control over the button mappings, even if it looks basic as long as it's functional that's what counts. You can suggest something like JoyToKey until then though, that should work too.
Oof, I originally planned on not having one for this game since the controls are so simple. I'd have to upend a lot of the UI and the help and training text to implement it, and I don't think it would be worth the effort. And now with the controller input added, it will be even more complicated now. I would recommend JoyToKey.

I did however just add controller support and the ability to skip boss dialog in the demo.
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Simplicity isn't an excuse for lacking control mapping. What you may think works for your control setup will, eventually, be utter chaos for someone else. Especially if they're using an input device that isn't setup how you expect it to be. Couple quick examples that popped up at the top of a Youtube search.

Recent shmups Sine Mora and the Vasara Collection both got widely mocked for not bothering to implement such a rudimentary option for example.

Remapping doesn't have to be complicated. Look at something like REDPULSE (pay what you want, so you can grab it free to check it out) which has a very simply "Press a button to map to X" thing.
I'd have to upend a lot of the UI and the help and training text to implement it
This is why you plan for it in advance, and don't hardcode button icons into your game text. Instead, make the tutorials refer to generic button names. You don't even need the tutorial to dynamically show the remapped button, you could have a message that just says what the expected default is like "Press the SHOOT BUTTON to fire! (Default: X)". Shadow of the Colossus for example does this (at least on the PS2 version). A player who goes and remaps the buttons will know how to figure out the controls based on what they've remapped. The important thing is offering the choice to remap the controls, which is a hallmark of a good modern shmup release.

There's even some later arcade shmups (namely by CAVE) that offered the ability to remap some of the controls (the location of the rapid fire button can be remapped in Espgaluda, Espgaluda 2, Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu, Akai Katana, you can actually remap the controls freely in Rolling Gunner's arcade release).

For emphasis: What you may think works for your control setup will, eventually, be utter chaos for someone else. Someone is eventually going to try playing your game with a controller that differs from what you expect and at best they will have to use a utility like JoyToKey to work around it (which is not an ideal option if the game refuses to stop detecting a plugged in controller, ChoRenSha68k has this problem for instance, you can't remap anything to one of the two buttons it detects as Shot and Bomb on a controller).

The only real excuse is if you can't be arsed to it, in which case, that's fine I guess. ;)
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Re: A2 Zygon - an anthro-style retro-themed SHMUP!

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BareKnuckleRoo wrote:Recent shmups Sine Mora and the Vasara Collection both got widely mocked for not bothering to implement such a rudimentary option for example.
Damn, well guess I really don't have a choice. I never knew there was so much demand for that these days.

Good news though, I already did it in my earlier cancelled project A2 Rosen, so I have the code I can just copy over and make slight revisions. But like you said, I definitely should have planned this in advance. It's gonna take a while. I'll try out some of the options you've suggested.

Thanks!
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HOLY BEANSAUCE!

I actually got the control configuration settings finished within the weekend. I honestly didn't think I'd finish it this quickly.

You now have the option to set keyboard or gamepad/mouse controls.

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