Degica Shmups Thread

[Blackbird]

I can ask him, might take a bit to get back though - I try not to spam him too often, haha.

[ptoing]

I am 100% convinced that the art would look a lot more professional and better if there was internal antialias. I am not really sure that this is a consious design decision. To me it looks more like a lack of knowledge about rendering.

Cagar: What I am talking about is not the fact that the hud and such is higher res than the ingame graphics, but the lack of any kind of antialias. It just makes everything look noisy as hell. Look at the stuff that Cave has rendered out for example, or the 3D prerendered stuff by Psikyo. You do not get noisefest inside of sprites, because they had internal AA on when rendering. Trufax.

Also, while they are at it the 3 in the continue countdown has a line of stray pixels on the right side.

[Cagar]

Cagar: What I am talking about is not the fact that the hud and such is higher res than the ingame graphics, but the lack of any kind of antialias. It just makes everything look noisy as hell. Look at the stuff that Cave has rendered out for example, or the 3D prerendered stuff by Psikyo. You do not get noisefest inside of sprites, because they had internal AA on when rendering. Trufax.

Yeah I know (?)

[Blackbird]

Just a heads up everyone: We're going to have a small promotional giveaway for Crimzon Clover in conjunction with Indiegamerchick. We'll also have an hour long demo stream of Crimzon Clover on her TwitchTV channel.

The giveaway will occur on Wednesday, at 6PM EST at https://twitter.com/IndieGamerChick . The rules and conditions for the giveaway are here: http://indiegamerchick.com/gamesmatter-rules-and-faq/

The livestream will also occur at 6PM EST. Streamer Megapieman will be hosting a brief demonstration of the game on IGC's TwitchTV channel:

http://www.twitch.tv/indiegamerchicktv/profile

We'll show off some basic gameplay, talk a bit about the game, and most likely have some Q&A.

Most of you have the game already and are ineligable for the giveaway, but I would certainly enjoy it if you want to come hang out with us on stream and talk shmups =). If you don't have Crimzon Clover already, why the heck not!? Come get it for free and help spread the word about the game!

[vector7]

I posted info about a small bug on steam but nobody answered so i decided to repost it here. After defeating 1st, 3rd and last bosses (not sure about 4th) a wind-like sound starts playing and if you restart or return to title that sound still continue playing for some time. That sound is also before 2nd boss. Here is when it plays in SLshoot video http://youtu.be/tAAa22DFIqk?t=3m38s http://youtu.be/tAAa22DFIqk?t=6m37s http://youtu.be/tAAa22DFIqk?t=14m39s http://youtu.be/tAAa22DFIqk?t=32m23s Maybe it's not really a bug but i doubt it's supposed to play after restarting or quitting to main menu.

[Blackbird]

Yeah, I can hear the bug in action. The sound effect is playing a bit too long and it should cut off when you get back to the menu. I'll pass it on to the developer.

[ptoing]

Oh, speaking of sound. I think it is annoying that the music does not pause when you pause the game. Maybe relay that to them as well.

And not exactly a bug, but when pressing left and right, or up and down cursor keys at the same time the ship should not move, imo. But it does. I think this comes from stick focused testing where this kinda thing is impossible. It is a very minor quibble though.

[Blackbird]

Going live at http://www.twitch.tv/indiegamerchicktv/profile in just a few moments! Hope to see you there!

[rancor]

With hesitation ( I hate DRM as well as "digital distribution"), I finally bought this game today - and let me tell you, it was a pain in the balls from start to finish. First of all I couldn't pay for it because my paypal address didn't match my physical location. I live in Japan, but all of my financial information is US based. So, I tried to use my credit credit card - that didnt work because again, my IP location and the address for the card didnt match. Next, try the wifes card. Doesnt work because her name and my name didnt match. I finally hauled my ass down to the convenience store to pay by that method.

So... now I've got the Crimzon Clover download going, finally get it installed, and it comes up in a tiny window that when I try to stretch or full-screen it does this odd scaling that never works out quite right. Completely unplayable Sooo.. on to google to find that other people are having this same problem, and theres a "hack" to get it working right. After finding the secret keys of Z, down, Z, Z, etc.. I start the game up to try again. It continually crashed when I hit "Z" for the second time. No idea why. no error messages, nothing. Just exit game. Next I read that if that doesnt work, then the resolution needs to be 1024 x >768. Well.. shit. I made damn sure that I met all of the the recommended requirements before I purchased to run the game at 1024x768 because I have this PC connected to a CRT - thus I can't change that.

I've now spent an hour of my life on this, Y1000, and have absolutely nothing to show aside from frustration and a renewed hatred for paying for something that I don't own. Were this a physical product I would own cover art, a disc, SOMETHING. Even then I could sell it on to someone else in the hopes that they could get it working. At this point I have nothing aside from a Y1000 hole in my pocket and an hour gone by with nothing to show for it.

I think this game needs some serious bug-fixing if I and others cant even get it past the title screen, or AT LEAST change the running requirements. I feel like I did my due diligence, jumped through all of the necessary hoops, and yet there's literally nothing I can do with this at the moment and I have no clue what the next step would even be.

I lol at the thought of even asking or having a snowballs chance in hell of getting a refund.

anyhow - this is nothing against Blackbird. You've done a fantastic job helping others and promoting this game. Just think of this as the frustrated rantings of a guy that should have known better, but gave in to his 1% believe that it might actually work. I've ranted about DRM and DD in other threads, but I want to support the STG community as well as Yotsubane with this somewhat new release. It seems that I'm always that "unique situation" that can't have things go my way when it comes to buying things online..

With that being said...

Digital distribution / DRM. I'm done.

edit: lots of typos.

[MathU]

Why didn't you just wait for the DRM-free release?

And why is it the end of October and the DRM-free release still isn't out?

[rancor]

Why didn't you just wait for the DRM-free release?

First I've heard of it. I suppose I'll buy it again if it's released on disc. I had no doubts that if I took the PC I have it installed on now here in Japan, and tried to play it in the US it wouldn't work anyhow due to some IP location bullshit.

[-S.L-]

Pardon my stupid question Rancor, but did you try the game on Nesica as you are in Tokyo ? Maybe you just won't like it anyway ?

[rancor]

yeah - of course. I've played it 100x in the arcade with no problems. I have a NESICA card and an account setup with their service.

[Blackbird]

@rancor: Sorry you had a bad experience. The PC can be a frustrating platform sometimes. The game runs perfectly for 99.9% of people, and then the other .1% run into an inexplicable game-breaking bug =/. Yotsubane is aware of this bug and I have confidence that he will fix it; after all, he's already made several patches since release to remove other bugs and add configuration features to the game.

I don't know if Steam refunds game purchases, but I stand by the quality of our games and believe that, if you purchase one, it should be playable. If it comes down to it, I will see to it personally that you get a refund. However, I hope that Yotsubane will patch this bug soon and get his game working for you, because that's what you paid for.


A status update on DRM-free Crimzon Clover, since it's been a while: Crimzon Clover has been submitted for processing/verification with GOG. It's just a matter of waiting for them to finish integrating it into their store and post the page online. There's nothing we can do on our side to push it along any faster, we just have to wait for them to finish. It should be soon, though.

[rancor]

I understand all the problems with Steam, and realize that theres nothing you can do to fix that. The one thing that I do ask is that you update the minimum requirements. I can see from the forum postings where I found possible solutions that this limitation has been know for quite a while, and yet even after making sure that my setup met the posted requirements, I didnt see anything about this. I realize that mine is a special situation (living in Japan with a different address, using a Sony PVM CRT with a PC) and thats why I checked everything twice before making the purchase. Its just... disappointing. I hope a patch will be posted soon.

[Tim James]

Blackbird, what do you think are the chances we'll get the doujin gameplay modes in DLC or something?

[Blackbird]

Getting some kind of doujin version arrange mode seems pretty unlikely; it's not planned at this time.

[Mischief Maker]

How 'bout a World Ignition patch for those of us who have the doujin?

Thanx again, Rancor!

[qmish]

Just bought in Steam, works perfectly for me. Just a bit curious why some graphics looks like it was "sharpen" to maximum, like background here:
http://s27.postimg.org/8pc8uxp77/2_E51_ ... 5_A102.jpg

That being said, i'm glad that CC making his way to wider audience and thanks to all who participating in it

[Mischief Maker]

Rumor has it GOG just got the rights to Lucasarts' catalog from Disney, so don't expect Crimzon Clover any time soon.

[Blackbird]

Ah, so that's the "new publisher" that they have a countdown for on the main page. Shoot, I thought someone had finally come to appreciate our genius .

[-S.L-]

I was thinking of a Black Label version last night, and I came up with tons of ideas, just in case they are planning to do one sometimes, I'm happy to share my personal thoughts and ideas

[Necronom]

Rumor has it GOG just got the rights to Lucasarts' catalog from Disney, so don't expect Crimzon Clover any time soon.

They are about to release the Tie Fighter Special edition:-)...and the X-Wing one too:-))

[Blackbird]

Feel free to PM me, S.L. I don't know if Yotsubane would use fan ideas, but I'm certainly interested to hear =P.

[-S.L-]

Also I'm gonna add something really really important in my eyes to fix on Boost mode. (and I think the same thing happen in the other modes)

I usually play in Yoko, the reason is that the Boost timer is on the side, but in Tate position, it is on the main screen of the game, on the top left corner, but when you put your ship on it, it goes behind and you can't see it anymore (the ship), so I really suggest the programers to make the timer disappear when the ship goes on its area, some kind of transparent fading effect sort of thing, just like in Dodonpachi Saidaioujou when your ship reach the "HIT" numbers zone.

For a concrete exemple, boss 3, at the second form, with the lasers that force you to go all around it, your ship WILL have to cross that Boost timer, and you basically cannot see it anymore and you could die because of that

[Bonus!]

Blackbird,
do you know what Yotsubane is currently working on, or is this classified information?

[Observer]

Wasn't the guy working on a multi-directional shmup with some Espgaluda/Progear cues? Garukilla IIRC. And it felt like that movie about dragons taking over the world. It was using the CC ship as a template but I get the feeling it was going to be a character-driven game.

[Blackbird]

He's hasn't said too much about it to me. I don't think he's ready to talk about it just yet. I'm looking forward to a new project just as much as everyone else, so you can believe that, when the time is right, I will tell you.

[Bonus!]

Is there any update regarding replay upload? It would be fantastic if the top 10 (or 50) scores were automatically uploaded to the leaderboard. That can't take up a lot of bandwidth. I'm sure a lot of players would greatly appreciate this.

[Blackbird]

I haven't heard anything about replay uploads. It was mentioned at some point, but we didn't follow up on it at the time for a reason that I can't remember now. I'll have to remind everyone about it and see if it's feasible, it would be a nice feature to have.

They would have to be voluntary replay uploads if we did implement them. There are several superplayers using CCWI, some of whom might be protective of their replays for competitive or commercial reasons, and it would definitely anger some players if they couldn't play the game without revealing their secrets.