Space Masters Blasters!

[Radlabgaming]

Hello everyone!

I am brand new to the shmup genre and have just created my first shmup in beta.

I would love to get feedback from people that have played this genre more and any suggestions you guys can provide would be amazing!

I have attached a link so you can see trailers, images, and more about the game!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =358207167

[Lord Satori]

Sorry, but I can't get the damn page to work right. I'm not sure if it's my side or their side. I'll edit with feedback/post again if I can get it to work.

[Rozyrg]

The inexperience really shows, I'm afraid. I'd spend some serious time looking to relevant examples from the genre and give the whole thing few more goes before even thinking about asking anyone for money.

[Ebbo]

The inexperience really shows, I'm afraid. I'd spend some serious time looking to relevant examples from the genre and give the whole thing few more goes before even thinking about asking anyone for money.

Sums up my thoughts in a much nicer way than I could've said myself.
Fortunately it's not too late to begin anew and there is already a plethrora of beginner friendly topics to get things started in a right way.

[Radlabgaming]

Thank you guys for your feedback!

Can you guys give me some specific suggestions, or mention to me what you guys find horrible?

Thanks!

[n0rtygames]

What Rozyrg said, basically.

* Player bullets are extremely slow, the build up of player bullets across the screen 'painting' lines of bullets looks very "my first shmup" -- its something we've all seen and done. Faster bullets from the player, or lower rate of fire - depending on the game you're trying to make.

Don't get me wrong, not everyone has to rip off the "big" titles that we know and love around this forum. Remember that it all started with titles like Space Invaders..

* Lack of any polish or real effort on GUI - those red blocks have got to go man.

* Enemy formations - nothing particularly interesting going on here. There's nothing wrong with having a screen full of enemies all dropping bullets down like that. Again - see Space Invaders.

Honestly, I'd just try to recreate an accurate Space Invaders clone first before you do anything else. Not to sell - You won't make a lot of money off it, chances are nobody will buy it. But you'd learn a lot! I think..

[Radlabgaming]

What Rozyrg said, basically.

* Player bullets are extremely slow, the build up of player bullets across the screen 'painting' lines of bullets looks very "my first shmup" -- its something we've all seen and done. Faster bullets from the player, or lower rate of fire - depending on the game you're trying to make.

Don't get me wrong, not everyone has to rip off the "big" titles that we know and love around this forum. Remember that it all started with titles like Space Invaders..

* Lack of any polish or real effort on GUI - those red blocks have got to go man.

* Enemy formations - nothing particularly interesting going on here. There's nothing wrong with having a screen full of enemies all dropping bullets down like that. Again - see Space Invaders.

Honestly, I'd just try to recreate an accurate Space Invaders clone first before you do anything else. Not to sell - You won't make a lot of money off it, chances are nobody will buy it. But you'd learn a lot! I think..

Thank you for your specific feedback! I will look into that and get the UI re-done for sure! This also does support full controller support!

[mehguy]

Judging from the gameplay, this game needs a lot of work. I don't think this is a sellable project at this point. Also, put more effects such as an explosion after they die rather than they just disappear.

EDIT: I see you put it on indiegogo.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/spac ... up#gallery

I don't sound to be mean, but you should probably take it down. You should work on the game a lot more before asking the public for 2500 dollars. As of now, I see the game in the pre-alpha stage. But, it's totally up to you. I only suggesting.

[Radlabgaming]

Yea we have made quite a few changes including the animations for the ships getting destroyed and etc. I will upload a new video for you guys to look at soon.

[Radlabgaming]

After reading through your guys replies and etc. I was able to add many new features, animations, and etc. to create a much better shmup! I would love you guys to take a look at the new version and let me know what you think!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APKMEVwFrvA


I also have got it put on itch.io located here: http://radlabgaming.itch.io/space-masters-blasters

[n0rtygames]

Better.

Don't have explosions covering your enemies though, that's kinda crappy. Also don't worry about having these gimmicks such as time stops just yet - the game isn't mature enough yet to worry about such things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=437Ld_rKM2s

See how accurately you can clone that. Look at the logic of what's happening. Notice how there's some logic around which invader is firing. Note how they all move in formation and obey simple rules. When an invader gets to the edge of the screen, all invaders move down one row and then sweep back across the screen. The more invaders you kill, the faster the invaders get.

There's a good reason to do this - you'll learn a lot and then such a simple concept can lead on to an awesome concept such as : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBrLZ2yWUu4.. Galaga!

If it's good enough for Xona Games to make 3 iterations of stoner paradise...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox0eFVh-bE0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxLJ4df--zw

Quite serious about the whole Space Invaders thing.

[Radlabgaming]

Thank you for your feedback. I will be reviewing through everything you told me and work on making my enemies work more efficiently! I will update you guys once I have another video of the corrected enemy styles!


Thank you guys so much for helping me through my shmup!

[n0rtygames]

I don't mean just "change your enemies and now your game will rock" - I mean sit down and think about how they work.

The invaders act as a collective. This is an important thing to consider - meaning there is some overall brain (or rule) behind the way the invaders move.

Your problems are:-

I am brand new to the shmup genre

have just created my first shmup in beta

from people that have played this genre more

Play the games yourself, research - find and share a mutual fascination for the genre with the rest of us. Be prepared to completely throw this game away along with your next 99 ideas too. There's a hell of a lot of things to learn from writing shmups - from basic mathematics, writing efficient code to handle lots of things happening at once and all the way to complicated rank systems so you can change the entire behaviour of your game with a single variable.

I never released this terrible 4 player shooter with life bars


But it's actually one of the early iterations of Chronoblasts codebase. Eventually, it grew in to this:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oyk9-XS8eE

It's a marathon, not a sprint. Just have fun on the way and enjoy learning to write games!

[eebrozgi]

This might be obvious and I don't know about your overall experience, but I want to stress it anyway: I agree on n0rty's advice, but I want to add that please don't limit yourselves to the shmup genre in your playing/research/whatever. Play everything!