Laxa88's SHMUP (Codename ProjectTate)

[laxa88]

I wrote a lot of stuff in my tumblr blog, so I figured it's much better than clogging up the thread here.

You can find the web player link HERE.

You can read my blag post HERE.

In a nutshell (if you're gonna TL;DR the links): I made a prototype that's not really much, but it took too long so I figured I'm better off putting it out, analysing what I've done wrong, and start from scratch again but with a more structured approach. I'd very much appreciate comments, feedback, advice and everything else! Thank you for checking out my stuff.

[Stilghar]

Hi Laxa88,

I tried you demo, you are right that there are many things that need fixing, but in my opinion you should NOT start from scratch. Read this and pay attention to point 11:

http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/113662 ... ing-a-game

You've got many things working right (player movement, enemy movement, scroll, firing, controls...), do not throw them away! Just add whatever else is needed and fix the bugs. Also, my suggestion would also be to try to keep it really simple. Do not bother with bullet patterns and all that fancy stuff. You can always add that later.

On to more technical things:

- Do you have the screen size problem also in your standalone builds?
- What is the issue you are having with the camera scroll? Again, does this happen in standalone builds?
- If you plan to create a menu, HUD, end level screen and so on... for the love of god, please do not use Unity GUI! Take a look at some of the plugins in the asset store for GUIs they will save you tons of time and money in the long run. I can personally recommend NGUI, but there are other good ones besides it.
- Also if you are developing in 2D as I see, I would recommend you 2D toolkit. We have used it in other projects and the advantages over just using Unity sprites are massive.
- Feel free to ask any question. We develop in Unity and I will be happy to help whenever I have some time.

Keep up the good work and remember to KISS!

[laxa88]

Updates:
- Created menu screen
- Created weapon select screen
- Created game stage screen
- Created results screen (shows the name of current stage completed)

Link HERE

Ahh!! I wish I saw your message sooner! I've read that blog post about a year ago, and had totally forgotten about it... Guess I fell right into the "trap" I dug for myself. Anyway thanks for the reminder.

Fortunately, I don't plan to "throw away" all of my existing code. I'm going to reuse most of my stuff from v0.0.2, such as button bindings, player manager code, enemy layout editor...

I'll heed your advice, and I agree too -- I shouldn't bother with fancy stuff like bullet patterns yet. I always thought the purpose of a prototype is to showcase a key mechanic of the game that's supposed to be the "fun factor" of the game... but I guess that's useless if I can't get anything done in time.

1) The screen size problem was my own fault. I couldn't figure out how to make the screen show pixel-perfect resolution, so I spent a lot of time writing code to fix that. I was being silly! I didn't realize there's the "Build Settings" options that allow me to set the screen size for my exported webplayer/standalones. I learned that today while working on v0.0.3.

2) The camera scroll was a "fancy" thing I tried to do. Shmups usually have a little map side-scrolling when the player moves left/right, I tried to make that effect. It was working in editor, but somehow the boundaries were wrong in the webplayer/standalone version. I'll ignore this until later on.

3) Oh yes I did have difficulty with the HUDs... I used 3d TextMesh for now. I checked out NGUI, I'm considering using it later when I want to beautify the GUI.

4) I also checked out 2D toolkit. The tutorial videos were very impressive but I don't know how I can use it for now. I think the time will come when I want to manage sprites and animation later on.

5) I'll definitely ask questions here if I run into any difficult problems. Thank you!

[laxa88]

Updates:
- Created continue screen
- Created gameover screen
- Created timer for continue screen
- Plugged in previous project's code for PlayerManager, PlayerControllers, PlayerData
- Initialized players lives and credits

Link HERE

[laxa88]

Updates:
- Plugged in BulletML
- Plugged in Player code (with cleanup) from previous project
- Updated player bullet sprite
- Player can now shoot

Link HERE

[eatfrog]

Soo.. no enemies?

Starting over from scratch again and again is usually a bad idea.. just keep working at what you have!

[laxa88]

Updates:
- Plugged in enemy level editor from previous project (with bug fixes and tweaks)
- Added explosions
- Added hitbox on enemies, player bullets can kill enemies
- Added animation
- Added sample bulletML patterns (single aimed shots)

Link HERE

@eatfrog I was working on re-plugging in the level editor before I added the enemies. So now that it's done, I'm moving on to the boss battle code.

And yes, starting from scratch (again) is a bad idea... I won't do it anymore, this will be the build that I'll continue working on. However, one good thing from starting from scratch (this being the 3rd time), is I've figured out a decent workflow on how to write code without making things too messy.

[laxa88]

Updates:
- Boss fight editor completed
- Boss has two states (healthy @ 100% HP, angry @ 50% HP)
- Boss moves differently between states
- Tweaked player death state (you cannot force-kill the player when he's dead or invincible)
- Can now trigger stage results after boss is defeated

Link HERE

Expected in next update:
- Add one or two bullet patterns to boss fight
- Build demo level

[laxa88]

v0.0.8 Updates:
- Added a bullet pattern for each boss states:
--- Introduction
--- Healthy
--- Hurt (transition from healthy to angry)
--- Angry
- Added in a little enemy patterns for the demo level
- Player can now die from enemy bullets
- Quick-fixed BulletML unable to pause when the game is paused.

Link HERE

Expected in next update
- HUD for player(s)
--- Score
--- Lives

[laxa88]

v0.0.9 Updates:
- Added HUD for player (sample avatar, power bar, score)
- Linked player score to HUD
- Killing enemies will add score (but boss doesn't yet, because reasons)
- Score is linked to result/final results screen now

Link HERE

Expected in next update:
- Multiplayer support
- Player lives shown on HUD
- Any player that runs out of lives can consume the global credit to revive



(Just so I don't annoy people with thread bumping... I'll just edit the latest post here)

v0.0.10 Updates (2014-04-22):
- Added 2nd player support (for testing only, no button bind yet) using gamepad. Shoot doesn't work on xbox controller but the directions work.
- Scores linked to each player, adds up in result screen
- Each player has 2 lives. When lives are gone, they won't revive.
- When all player dies, continue/gameover is triggered.

Link HERE

Expected next update:
- Reimplement button bindings screen before starting stage
- Allow testing up to 4 players



v0.0.11 Updates (2014-04-22):
- Reimplement button bindings from previous project
- Menu screens now support input from any joystick movement and buttons
- Known bug: Joystick players have to press a button two times for it to register, at the beginning of each screen... Not sure if it's Unity or my coding flaw.

Link HERE

Expected next update:
- Design demo level
- Flesh out demo boss

[laxa88]

This is the "level editor" I have on Unity right now.

The left are triggers. The Main Trigger is static-positioned. The other triggers scroll at the same speed as the background, downwards. When the other triggers touches the green main trigger, it will execute whatever code is within itself, e.g. activate enemy spawn.

On the right are WYSIWYG-ish enemy placements.

There are two layers:
- one for ground enemies (they move relative the map scrolling).
- one for sky enemies (they move along with the player's camera, independent of the scrolling background).

The paths and boxes are drawn using Unity's Gizmos.DrawLine() method. It's a laggy process so I usually only turn it on during editing.

The curvature of the line was not done using any fancy techniques like Catmull-splines or Bezier curves... It's just manual keyframing. It's a pain, I know, but I wrote an inspector script that helped make it easier. The only weakness is that it's not easy to tweak existing curves.

[laxa88]

v0.0.12 Updates:
- Added a few bullet patterns
- Designed a quick level with said patterns.
- Implemented boss at end of level.

Link HERE

Expected next update:
- More player weapon types (1 or 2 more)
- Sound

Ok I think this game is playable now. The bullet patterns and enemy choreography are done impromptu. I wrote the patterns in BulletML myself so it's not as "pretty" or "balanced" as other game's.

Somehow I'm feeling that the game isn't as "fun" as I thought it should be. Perhaps I was too ambitious. Perhaps I should focus on 1-player experience before bumping it up to multiplayer. Perhaps the player's weapon isn't good enough. Perhaps the game needs more mechanics (bombs, secondary weapon). I'm still contemplating what exactly is "necessary" and what is "fancy to have".

Could anyone spare some feedback on what I'm missing right now?

[eatfrog]

Perhaps I should focus on 1-player experience before bumping it up to multiplayer. Perhaps the player's weapon isn't good enough. Perhaps the game needs more mechanics (bombs, secondary weapon). I'm still contemplating what exactly is "necessary" and what is "fancy to have".

Make it fun first, then think about stuff like multiplayer etc.

I'd say the game feels really slow.. the movement is slow, the background scrolling is slow, enemy movement is slow. And while its a good feature, when doing short demos like this, id say skip the button config stuff, just gimme the game, and tell me what buttons to use.

Just changing a few variables, tweaking a few patterns, adding some sounds, it can make a world of difference at this early stage.

[laxa88]

v0.0.13 Update:
- Redesign level
- Removed button binds screen temporarily

Link HERE

@eatfrog: When I first saw your comment about everything being too slow, I thought you were wrong, but I went ahead and redesigned the level anyway and made things move faster. Now that I compare both versions, I think you're right after all. However, I still think it doesn't feel as "fun" as it should be.

[eatfrog]

this is much better!

are you clamping diagonal movement so that it isnt faster than just going one axis? feels like diagonal is faster.

maybe try playing some shmups games that you like, watch some replays, and try to analyze what makes the game good and fun. maybe some tweaking of patterns and enemies, some sounds, some graphics. the core elements are in place now at least.

edit:

stuff like huds, fonts, score displays, number of lives, multiplayer support - skip it for now, it is not that important. i would also experiment a bit with the player shot, the "balls" feel wussy and not awesome. especially when there is no sound.

[laxa88]

v0.0.14 Updates:
- Re-added sounds for player bullet shots, explosions
- Clamped player's diagonal movement
- Tweaked player's default bullet pattern / sprite

Link HERE

@eatfrog Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.

Over the past weeks, I played Sengoku Ace, Dodonpachi (and some of its sequels), Jamestown, and watched Youtube replays of Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, Deathsmiles. Here are a list of things I personally think are fun about shmups in general, which makes me "want to play" them:

- Beautiful overall graphics (player, enemy, background)
- Powerful / satisfying effect from player weapons
- Beautiful enemy bullet patterns
- Satisfying explosion effects
- Collectible items (jamestown, dodonpachi, deathsmiles)
- Evading bullets

For now I think I'll start with improving the graphics a little before proceeding. I hope that's a good direction!

[eatfrog]

great stuff! based on your things i would say that working on the graphics for now seems like a good direction.

[laxa88]

(was away figuratively for 5 days to tinker in 3D modelling)

I return with some more concept for the characters... I'm leaning toward characters on hoverboards a la Back To The Future.

[Doctor Butler]

All them ostriches.

[laxa88]

I suppose they're "primitive" ostriches! The enemies in the game I'm working are all organic -- it's difficult to determine the angle and animation for them since I rarely did spritesheets all my life. A new version with updated graphics and a new demo level will be out in the next few days!