Space Moth DX Thread (Now on Steam!)

[JDE]

Space Moth DX Thread (£3.99 on Steam!)

• Space Moth DX is now available on Steam! There's a new DX Mode with suicide bullets and scoring tweaks, improved controller support, new HD border artwork and more for only £3.99! Check out the Update Log below for all the details.
  Steam Store Page
  
  Get a sneak preview with the free demo, which has been updated to feature Stage 1 and 2 of DX Mode and Arcade Mode:
  Free Demo

Screenshots



Key Features

• Intuitive colour-based scoring system
  Use rapid shot to make enemies turn neon, then finish them off with laser for bonus points. Warning: neon enemies will use much more aggressive attacks!
  
  Full Xbox 360 & Xbox One Controller Support
  Plug and play without having to fiddle with Xpadder! Most Generic USB Pads are supported as well.
  
  100% Configurable Buttons & Keys
  Custom arcade sticks can have your favourite layout, and WASD warriors won't have to use the arrow keys.
  
  Full Tate Support
  Enough said. Also, optional scanlines (and HD borders if you prefer Yoko).
  
  Innovative Progression System
  Instead of letting new players credit feed past their depth and “complete” the game in no time, Space Moth DX saves your current condition (position, bomb and life stock) at the start of each stage and boss fight. Then if you lose all your lives, you will be given the option to return to the condition recorded in the most recent save, at the expense of your score being wiped.

System Requirements

• OS: Windows 7, 8 or 10
  CPU: 2.5 GHz Dual Core or more
  RAM: 2GB or more
  GPU: 1GB VRAM or more (Intel HD 3000, AMD HD 5450, NVIDIA 9400 GT)
  HDD: 65MB available space
  
  Controller: Xbox 360 & Xbox One Controllers fully supported, as well as most Generic USB Pads.
  Additional Notes: Works great on Boot Camp with OS X 10.6.8 and above!

Update Log

• Spoiler

  Space Moth DX v1.01 (Full & Demo)
  
  New menu tips showing the difficulty of Arcade Mode (Normal) and DX Mode (Hard).
  Default game type is now Arcade Mode instead of DX Mode.
  Issue where Shot would cancel Laser if both were held with some button configs fixed.
  More blood when bosses explode.
  
  Space Moth DX v1.00 (Full & Demo)
  
  Xbox One controller support added.
  Legacy controller compatibility improved.
  Steam trading cards and badges added to full version.
  
  Space Moth DX v0.99 (Full & Demo)
  
  Improved performance.
  Demo now features Stage 1 and Stage 2.
  Black Shell Media (marketing partner) logo added to intro.
  New title logo and clearer menus.
  New HD borders.
  
  Optional auto bomb.
  Sound effect plays when boss timer is under 2 seconds.
  Sound effect plays when boss bonus collected.
  Graze bonus reduced.
  HP and attack tweaks on some bosses and large enemies.
  Bonus items have more noticeable glow effect.
  
  Arrange Mode has been changed to DX Mode.
  All enemies have aimed suicide bullets in DX Mode.
  Rapid shot gives a small hit bonus in DX Mode.
  
  Space Moth v1.50 (Full & Demo)
  
  Better performance.
  Optional borders added.
  New Arrange Mode added.
  Demo changed to feature Stage 2 only.
  New title menu with extra options to customise HUD and effects.
  Numerals and more special characters added to name entry screen.
  
  More noticeable hit-flash effect on bosses and large enemies.
  Some bosses and large enemies have stronger attacks.
  Spider boss' laser web can now be grazed.
  Boss skill shot bonus increased by 500 points.
  Boss destruction bonus increased by 500 points.
  Boss timer reduced on some bosses.
  
  Hanging bat enemies is Stage 4 can now be soul-drained.
  Extra popcorn enemies added to Stage 2 and Stage 4.
  Consecutive stages can now be practised in Stage Select Mode.
  New boss music for all normal bosses.
  Title screen now has music.
  
  Space Moth v1.14 (Full & Demo)
  
  New bullet grazing bonus to raise score and skill ceiling.
  Hotkeys to rotate screen and toggle speed display at any time.
  
  Space Moth v1.10 (Full & Demo)
  
  Improved controller support.
  Menu and HUD font tweaks for visibility.
  Screen mode changes now applied instantly.
  New optional secondary timer during boss fights.
  New mini boss bar at bottom of screen during boss fights.
  
  Space Moth v1.03 (Demo)
  
  Fixed a high score board bug.
  Disabled view scrolling when the player is dead.
  Fixed a keyboard configuration bug that blocked some keys from being remapped.
  Fixed a bug in fullscreen mode that made the image squashed before starting the game.
  
  Space Moth v1.00 (Demo)
  
  Demo featuring Stage 1 of Space Moth released.

[CStarFlare]

This sounds great. Will give the demo a whirl!

[ACSeraph]

Innovative Progression System
Instead of letting new players credit feed past their depth and “complete” the game in no time, Space Moth saves your current condition (position, bomb and life stock) at the start of each stage and boss fight. Then if you lose all your lives, you will be given the option to return to the condition recorded in the most recent save, at the expense of your score being wiped.

This is genius, please marry me

[Aleksei]

Just finished trying it out, I like this game. It was a great level one, and I liked the fact that its still replayable after my first attempt. Now I'm going to make a second attempt to find all six hidden items and try to get the 2X boss mulitplier.

[BulletMagnet]

Some good stuff happening here, it seems most of the important stuff is pretty much good to go - off the cuff there are only two things I'd suggest.

- Maybe I'm just too used to Cave-style popcorn enemies that go down in a flash, but the wide shot in particular felt just a touch underpowered to me here...more of a preference/conditioning thing, I'd wager, but still figured I'd mention it.

- More importantly IMO, you might want to offer the option to change the location of the boss life bar and timer: most of my deaths were due to having to glance up at the both of them in pursuit of the "skill shot" bonus. Maybe you could have a "secondary" boss life meter displayed as a diminishing circle around the player character, sort of like the Hyper meter in the later DDP games? Something like that...

Overall looking forward to it, though keeping an eye out for those tiny bonus items is going to drive me nuts, heh.

[Aleksei]

I agree with bulletmagnet on the fact that the most difficult thing in this game is dodging while looking at the timer and the lifebar. The attack wasn't very difficult to dodge, but I can't imagine several levels later where getting the bonus would be possible in a sane manner.

[JDE]

This is genius, please marry me

I'm glad you like the progression system ACSeraph! This was definitely the hardest thing to design in the game, we spent a long time experimenting with different ideas before settling on the current one.

You might want to offer the option to change the location of the boss life bar and timer: most of my deaths were due to having to glance up at the both of them in pursuit of the "skill shot" bonus.

This is a fair point BulletMagnet, I'll try out some different solutions and then release an updated demo with a fix as soon as possible. Perhaps a mini boss bar at the bottom of the screen like in Futari?

[Special World]

Hey, this is awesome! It's really immediately clear that you guys put a ton of work in here; this demo feels really polished. Thoughts:

- The art style really shines. It's clean-clear pixel art without looking like a me-too retro throwback, and it looks really good with or without scanlines. The color palette is pretty much perfect, and I enjoy seeing the enemies shift to neon. That's just cool! I especially like what I've seen of the bosses — I can't wait to fight that frog! Is there some way that you can maybe apply that neon effect to the bosses? Maybe for the last few seconds they can go into neon death mode, or something. I'd really love to see the frog turn into a poison dart frog at the last second
- The music is really cool, too. It's really calming, which I can see having its own sort of effect on pushing players into zen-mode.
- I'm not so keen on the scoring. This game seems definitely Futari-inspired to the point that the scoring system even suffers from the same things that Futari did! I certainly like it in concept, but in practice the game is basically choosing how you shoot.
- As things stand, I think it's a really cool game for a 1CC survival clear. I'd definitely like to play it when it comes out, as long as it's priced reasonably. Some fan-made shooters that get posted on these boards are easy for me to ignore, but this game was immediately interesting to me just from screenshots alone. I think that's a really good sign when you're trying to get people playing and talking about your game. Keep us updated, and I'll make sure to watch out for Space Moth!

[BIL]

Killer name, love it.

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

Woooo! Any idea when we might see the full release? Me and that scarab beetle boss have got some unfinished business...

[Stompp]

Wow! That looks really great Will absolutely give it a try.

Did you build everything from scratch or is it based on any framework?

[To Far Away Times]

Looks great. I think you guys are on to something.

[JDE]

The art style really shines. It's clean-clear pixel art without looking like a me-too retro throwback... The music is really cool, too.

Thanks for your feedback Special World, dan76 did all the pixel art and music so he gets the credit for those! And you're right that Space Moth feels very Futari inspired: Futari Black Label is one of my favourite shmups, so that's not a coincidence! If you didn't enjoy scoring in Futari then playing Space Moth for score might not be for you, but there's a lot of variety in later levels and plenty of unusual bosses, so I hope you'll find it to be a fun game to 1CC regardless of the scoring.

Woooo! Any idea when we might see the full release?

The Good Old Games release should be ready as soon as we've finished making a few final tweaks, and the Steam Greenlight release of course relies on getting enough votes. We don't have any firm dates yet, but I'll update the OP as soon as we do!

Did you build everything from scratch or is it based on any framework?

Built from scratch in GameMaker: Studio for Steam, all the code is original.

[supergrafx77]

Fantastic! Love the music and game, everything!

The insect bosses remind me of Legendary AXE on pc engine.

Love where this is going as well.

[CStarFlare]

Is it just me, or is the high score board not including your boss score? I swear I keep getting in the 14,000s, but all my high scores are in the 12,000 range.

I'm having a lot of fun with it regardless. I keep missing one enemy and one hidden item - I won't give up until I've got a flawless stage. Need more.

[Gaia]

I'm getting a serious Mushi vibe from the screenshot.

[JDE]

Is it just me, or is the high score board not including your boss score?

You're right CStarFlare, good catch. I'm working on an updated demo with boss bar and timer visibility tweaks right now, and I'll make sure the boss bonus is fixed too. Glad you're enjoying going for a flawless run of the demo stage though, sounds like you're nearly there!

[Blackbird]

This looks slick! Feeling that Mushi Futari vibe, haha. Enjoying the music in the trailer, too. Will pick this up when I have the time to play it.

[Stompp]

Did you build everything from scratch or is it based on any framework?

Built from scratch in GameMaker: Studio for Steam, all the code is original.

Cool! I tilt my hat for your effort and salute the result. I'll be skipping my regular Mushi-lunch-credit today and play some Space Moth instead

[Special World]

Nah, I love Futari Black; despite my small gripes with it, it's my favorite shmup as well. So I'm actually really looking forward to playing the rest of Space Moth — best of luck to you guys!

[Stompp]

I'm not a good enough player to comment the mechanics of the game but I like the visuals and the soundtrack is superb! I love that it's downtempo. Just gives me a good vibe Definitely a game I'd like to play more.

Great work guys!!

[BPzeBanshee]

Bug reports:
Currently experiencing a glitch with the demo regarding the fullscreen settings. To trigger it I run the game on Windowed, switch the setting in the main menu to fullscreen, then exit. Upon starting it up again it initially stays windowed, then on the main menu it's a grossly squashed black box somewhere around the top-left corner of the screen, but upon starting a game and then exiting to Main Menu it goes back to normal expected fullscreen. (Why do I even have to restart the game to enforce fullscreen when GM normally has no issue switching on-the-fly anyway?)

View and player position is still controllable when the player is dead. Looks like you're just making the player not visible, but its view-adjusting and movement functions are still in place, generally this is considered buggy I suppose it could be personal preference too.

In addition, the control rebinder will not let me redefine movement onto the arrow keys. It's on there by default but I can't use buttons like the Enter key and if I change the direction buttons to anything else I can't change them back to arrow keys without resetting the whole configuration.

Here's hoping once the issues are ironed out this will be a good success worthy of buying the Studio modules needed to get this thing onto other platforms!

[JDE]

Thanks for the bug reports BPzeBanshee, the fullscreen glitch and key remapping issues can be reproduced on my PC as well, and I'll make sure to get them fixed for the updated demo. As for the view being adjustable when the player is dead, that's intentional but I can disable it if people don't like it - thoughts from others who have played the current demo?

[Aleksei]

Never noticed that you can move the dead player cuz I never missed

Seriously though, I would fix that less someone finds a way to purposely die and get to a certain spot for point exploitation.

[JDE]

An updated demo (v1.03) is now available, and I've added a list of the changes it includes to the OP. Many thanks to BulletMagnet, CStarFlare and BPzeBanshee for helping to hunt down bugs!

[Iori Branford]

File is private now; I'm asked to log in with Google account and then to ask your permission. So, um...please?

[JDE]

Sorry Iori, I've changed the file to public now - hope you enjoy the demo!

[Blackbird]

My firewall recognizes this game as a keylogger. You wouldn't be trying to access my bank account now, would you ?

[JDE]

Don't worry Blackbird, the most nefarious thing Space Moth will do to you is hide bonus items in tricky places.

Talking of which, for anyone having trouble finding all the items in the demo, they appear in this order:
Cherry, Hamburger, Pretzel, Apple, Butterfly Broach, Chocolate Bar.

[Blackbird]

I wonder why it is that my firewall hates some games and isn't worried about others. It must have something to do with how the game polls the keyboard for inputs.