RegalSin wrote:The art in my opinion is quesitonable, because it looks like it relies on computer art
BryanM wrote:You're trapped in a haunted house. There's a ghost. It wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat. When forced to decide between the lives of your friends and the chastity of your kitty, you choose the cat.
I didn't know those two games. Laserreimu is graphically awesome and the other one is very good too.Pteriforever wrote:Fun!
From the screenshots I thought it'd be a bit like Laserreimu or Librasphere, but it was actually pretty different. I like the variety of characters, and all the bullet patterns seem fairly well-designed ^.^The artstyle is really cute, too~ Only complaint is that the hitboxes are a little wonky and take some time to get used to.
Lord Satori wrote:The girl with the chain on her neck reminds me of Bernkastel. I'm digging the characters.
Glad you like the characters. I lost many months and HP drawing them all!Blackbird wrote:Yeah, the character designs are pretty cute! I'll give this a try later.
Not at all. I appreciate your very long feedback and I agree on many points you raised!Kuroonehalf wrote:Hope you don't take the big list of remarks I made as a negative thing, as it's not intended to be.
Yep, it's also not very comfortable. Added this today.Kuroonehalf wrote: - I think assigning Esc to the button for skipping dialogue is not very intuitive at all. Assigning it to X and/or doing like the Touhou games do where ctrl fast-forwards the text would be appreciated. Related: being able to choose text speed also appreciated.
I see that hellsinker's bullets are more shaded and also come in many interesting shapes. I'll look into it!Kuroonehalf wrote:- Having all the bullets be light bullets (as in their inner color is white) looks good at first glance but is very tiring on the eye after a while, like you're looking at little shards of sunlight. There's a good reason why they're used so little. I'd highly recommend looking into diversifying those inner colors. I personally suggest looking into Hellsinker's bullets for inspiration (in addition to games you probably already take inspiration from), as I feel that game has the best bullets out there by a gigantic margin.
As a rule of thumb I'm making entities you can interact with pixelated while decorative elements are not.Kuroonehalf wrote: - Is this resolution the intended resolution for the final product? I ask because the bullets and entities look a bit pixelated and I wonder if this is intentional. Personally I'm not fond of pixelated bullets and would much rather play a lower resolution where the sprites are more crisp.
An impact sound is played when you hit bosses but it doesn't stand much. I'll have to tweak it, maybe making it more high-pitched.Kuroonehalf wrote:- Some sort of SFX indicator for when your bullets are hitting an enemy is severely lacking.
This could be a nice addition that I would have never thought of by myself.Kuroonehalf wrote:- Ability to remember the last scoreboard name input and default to it whenever we get to that screen again, so that we don't have to write our name every time.
Oh yes, there is however it was getting rendered behind the boss' bullets making it not visible half of the time. Fixed.Kuroonehalf wrote:- Is there no Boss health bar? I'm not sure if I'm blind or it's really not there. Related to this, it's always nice to be able to see this sort of information without having to look at the very top part of the screen. An indicator on the sides (vertically) or on the bottom, or even an SFX indicator where the sound gets slightly different depending on how much % of HP the boss has left (I believe ZUN uses this when bosses have like 10% HP left, but having it vary for more HP percentages would be cool too), would be great.
Yeah, I can understand the need for complexity. Making a comparison to a genre I know better it's like Final Fantasy Tactics to Disgaea or Tactics Ogre. The latter are way more complex than the first one but they are also more rewarding for this very reason.Kuroonehalf wrote:- * A lot of these characters feel too simplistic and alike each other. Even characters with slight quirks like Fumin who is able to set her dragon on a fixed position on the screen as she moves, or Dev, feel like they're missing tools. I totally understand if that doesn't bother you, as I know plenty of folks are fine with simplistic controls as well, but personally it's something that bothers me a lot. I love complexity - having constant material to learn and skills to juggle makes a game feel a lot more fresh for longer - which is why I adore Hellsinker and have been playing it for over a year, and why I couldn't play games like Danmaku Unlimited 2 for more than 2 hours. I feel like at the very least every character here should have (significantly) different shots depending on whether they're focused or not.
)Thanks for the feedback, all fair points!Ebbo wrote:You obviously put a lot of effort into this demo, even though it's pretty short. Somewhat sluggish menus aside, I do like the slick presentation and overall everything feels and looks rather pleasant.
The character sprites look nice but the sparse animations left me wanting something more. Maybe a little idle (edit: scratch that, on closer inspection characters actually do have idle animations) or banking animation for each character would keep them from feeling too stiff.
I second Pteriforever's notion about bullet hitboxes, those feel almost uncharacteristically big compared to other bullet hell games. I'm not too fond of the grazing mechanic either. I think there could be more interesting ways to go with the scoring system... It doesn't quite mix with the level design which seems a bit too samey and uneventful for my tastes. It lacks energy, for the lack of a better word. I'd say the foundation is there, it just needs some adjusting.
BryanM wrote:You're trapped in a haunted house. There's a ghost. It wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat. When forced to decide between the lives of your friends and the chastity of your kitty, you choose the cat.
Thanks a lot for all the ideas! Much appreciated!Blackbird wrote:^ Emad's aware of the hitbox issue and has made some adjustments for the next version.
Regarding an "eventful level", here are some ideas:
- A mix of larger and smaller enemies to create varying levels of tension throughout the level. Think about creating a "narrative" with the difficulty curve of the level.
- Integrate enemies into the feel of the level, make them feel like they belong there. If you have a forest level, add some treants or some birds that fly out from the trees. If you have a water level, get some giant crabs going. It gives the game some more character. (Not specifically a recommendation for your game, but just the general idea).
- You can could think about having non-bullet threats like stage hazards. Not everyone likes to have them in vertical scrollers, but it is something to consider.
- Scoring opportunities. These can take different forms depending on what the final form of your scoring system is, but common examples from other games include enemies that drop points items/medals when shot, clusters of high-value targets that are difficult to attack, enemies that turn all the bullets into points when destroyed, and so on.
Help me out here shmups forum, I'm rubbish at brainstorming for this stuff =P.
Game Maker Studiotiaoferreira wrote:Emad, what tool did you used for build the game?
Also, your character designs are ace 
It makes me very happy to hear that the characters are liked by many of you.Stompp wrote:From watching the two vids your game looks quite enjoyable. Come X-mas I will give it a go
Oh gosh, they wrote an article on my game.Stevens wrote:Just saw the demo on Siliconera. Looks great! I dig the art style and music.
So girls shooting at each other is automatically labeled "touhou style" nowadays?RipperRoo wrote:but im not a fan of those touhou style things
BryanM wrote:You're trapped in a haunted house. There's a ghost. It wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat. When forced to decide between the lives of your friends and the chastity of your kitty, you choose the cat.
The guy is awesome! Yes, there are plenty of credits both in and outside the game!RipperRoo wrote:Dont forget to credit Lada Laika... awesome song
Totally agree. The deathbomb is the main thing that needs to be tweaked, thanks for giving me some specific directions. Much appreciated!Shepardus wrote:I like that there's a timer for the deathbomb, though in my opinion the timing should be made a little tighter as right now I feel like it's hard to miss a deathbomb unless you're actually trying to die or if you didn't notice that you hit a bullet. I think it would also give the hit more impact if the character were frozen during the deathbomb window rather than able to freely move around. This way newer players would be better able to connect the timer mechanic and their subsequent death to getting hit, and more experienced players would be less likely to miss the fact that they got hit while passing through a dense bullet cluster. A more noticeable sound to getting hit would also help.
Noted down. I'll give it a look when I get to try the game on a better monitor.Shepardus wrote:The dark background in stage 3 made it sometimes hard to judge where the playable area ends and the border area begins since the border's marked off by dark shading. It wasn't really an issue when I was playing it since I was focusing on that area whenever my character was close enough for the border to be relevant, but I could see it becoming an issue in more frantic situations where the player isn't specifically paying attention to the border area.
Yes, definitely.Shepardus wrote:Also the menu animations and fade-ins/fade-outs could stand to be faster.
Happy to hear that you liked it!Stevens wrote:I just tried the new demo.
Thoughts:
- I still like the art style and music, especially the first boss theme.
- I really like the bullet patterns. My experience is limited but they are unlike anything I have encountered before.
The bad - just an opinion - please please please tell me it won't be analog stick only for control. I feel it is much less precise than using the d-pad.
Keep up the great work! I look forward to your next build. Good luck!
Play Touhou.Stevens wrote: - I really like the bullet patterns. My experience is limited but they are unlike anything I have encountered before.
At first I was like "what the hell is he talking about?"BPzeBanshee wrote:Shameless plug, but if you're having trouble with joystick/gamepad functions in GM have a look at the way GMOSSE does it in Scripts -> Core -> scr_input(). Main issue with analog sticks is if you don't have your own deadzone control and have a joystick that's even slightly off-center it'll cause issues. D-Pads shouldn't be an issue either.
Grazing gives very little points. It's always way more convenient to kill enemies and bosses as fast as possible.Cagar wrote:Feedback:
-Remove grazing
-Replace tap-dodge patterns with something that you actually have to dodge
-HELL was way too easy
This is precisely why we're here and you're posting here and not on somewhere like Yoyo's GMC where most folks aren't accustomed to this genre. Make it as hard as what *you* can handle first and adjust (or choose not to depending on quality of said feedback) based on feedback from here later. Make the most out of your willing game testers to perfect the game.I'll try to review the difficulty of some patterns too, especially on hell.
The main problem is that I don't know how much difficult I can make them, I'm not good enough at shmups to judge what is "hard" and what is "unfair".
