Fire Lancer - Hot-Blooded Wonder Shooting - DEMO: DEC.25

[trap15]

Website: http://firelancer.ws/

I'm working on a shooting game with a limited enough scope and things that I might actually finish it, so hello. This game, Fire Lancer, is being developed for WonderSwan Color and WonderWitch. Fellow member ptoing is doing the graphics.

The game play style is inspired by many games I've played and enjoyed. It is closer to the older style of shooting, in that it has a relatively lower amount of bullets, but they are fast.

DEMO RELEASE: December 25th, 2018 (it's out!)

Check the website for the download, and the scoring competition!

FINAL RELEASE: ???

[nasty_wolverine]

what? no cloud stage?

[railslave]

Wow, love it, the graphics work really well imo.

That thing in motion is sexual

Most exciting thing for a while.

[trap15]

Added Preview 5.

[trap15]

https://youtu.be/b2RTV7qorZw Preview 7! Stage is really starting to come together, quite playable at max rank even. I play the beginning run at normal rank, then set it to max for after that. Need to start drawing new sprites, some of these should probably be bigger than my medium enemy.

[emphatic]

Not familiar with the hardware at all, but very impressed nonetheless. (y)

[trap15]

https://youtu.be/Obj5LIgrd_w Preview 9. Added an intro (double speed by holding a button), finalized the timer, drew a "Big"-type enemy sprite, some misc tweaks. This is running on the WS port, which works just the same as the WW version. Might work on sound next, I definitely need SFX and music soon I think. Should be able to whip up some sfx quick enough maybe.

[BPzeBanshee]

This looks pretty cool!

Not familiar with Wonderswan hardware but is playing samples possible? sfxr is pretty good for making basic sfx if you're able to make use of WAVs.

[trap15]

It's possible, but it's pretty low quality: 4 bit PCM, 12000Hz. I'll probably use it anyways, as I'd like to do voice samples, but I'm probably going to use an existing WonderWitch sound driver so I don't know exactly what my gamut of possibilities are. M-KAI's vsound is open source, so I'll probably use it because then I can somewhat easily port it to native WS.

[trap15]

http://youtu.be/W1SOK3GUVy0 Preview 10. Adds sound effects (original), music ('izumicjsr.mml' from the vsound samples), and background (taken from USAAF Mustang).

Background uses tile coalescing for necessary space saving. Sound driver is M-KAI's vsound, ported to native WS (uses as vsound.il for WonderWitch version).

Need to make background larger than total background tile size (shouldn't be too hard).

[emphatic]

Looks fun! Would it be possible to flip every other background image so they blend seamlessly?

[trap15]

That background image is just a test. I've switched to a more seamless test BG since then (after adding the necessary things for looping and multi-screen scrolls).

I'm looking into adding some touches of color, but not sure yet if I want to abandon monochrome. I think I'm abandoning WS in general, as having double the number of tiles is very nice. But I will probably still keep it lightly colored, if at all.

If I end up not using the extra tiles, it would be easy to put it back to mono WS.

[Dave_K.]

Wow, you're making some nice progress on this!

Is the slowdown that shows up at times intentional or the limits of the system? If it a system limitation, how was M-KAI able to get so much more happening on the screen?

[trap15]

It's just my code not being fast enough. I need to take some time and optimize some more to try to remove what relatively little there is left. Most of the CPU time is spent checking collision between enemies and player bullets. Will probably end up rewriting some of the more commonly called parts in assembly.

[BIL]

Looking sharp!

Love the Fighting Hawk (plus Thunder Dragon 2?) reference btw.

[trap15]

Thanks! Yeah, I had to pay homage to that, I always giggle at it whenever I watch a replay or play it. I suppose the intro/exit does look a bit like TD2, but that wasn't really what I was going for. Macaw keeps telling me to make them shootable, but I'm trying to not rip it off too much!

I've uploaded a new preview 11, which adds some slight color tinting, shuffles some stuff around, and adds more on to the stage. Need to start asking people to test for me soon I think, I'm losing context on the stage design just on testing it myself. Also need to start thinking of the boss design :3

[emphatic]

CPS2 port please.

[cave hermit]

I'd be willing to test a preview build for you

[n0rtygames]

The player death effect is a thing of beauty. Well done

[trap15]

Thank you for the complements

Uploaded a Preview 14, with a bunch of cool new things including a menu and extends and suicide bombings.

[Shepardus]

I'm liking that Ibara-esque death effect. More games ought to have flashy deaths.

[trap15]

That's not a death, that's a suicide bomb Use a life to explode into shrapnel to quickly destroy enemies.

Actual death happens in that video, which is the one where the player falls off the bottom of the screen.

But yes, fancy explosions are quite important to me

[mice]

Looks awfully nice!
Is it hw sprite rotations? Will need to look at the spec's.

[trap15]

Nope, but that you thought it was means I have it smooth enough

I made the base image at 0 degrees, then rotated it 8 times in steps of 11.25 degrees (11.25,22.5,33.75,45,56.25,67.5,78.75,90), then use hardware X/Y flipping to mirror it to the full 32 rotations.

[MintyTheCat]

That's a very nice bit of work, Trap.

It does not get boring as many Shmups do from what I can see. Keeping the player focused against overwhelming them all the time is a hard thing to balance but I like what you have thus far.

Did you bolt scrolling on after you had enemy/object management down? I ask this as your scrolling looks jaggy.

An odd choice of platform mind you but I remember the Witch back in 1999.

Are you looking at going for a physical release?

Keep up the good work.

Cheers,

Minty.

[mice]

Nope, but that you thought it was means I have it smooth enough

It sure is.
Would love to test this, seems to play beautifully.

[trap15]

Did you bolt scrolling on after you had enemy/object management down? I ask this as your scrolling looks jaggy.

The scrolling is as well integrated as anything else. The only reason it looks a bit jaggy is because the WonderSwan is ~75.47Hz frame rate, which ends up aliasing to 60 because of the capture, so it skips lots of frames.

Are you looking at going for a physical release?

Maybe. Once it's at a point I would release it at, I'll probably scope out the costs.

Would love to test this, seems to play beautifully.

Thanks! I'll reach out to you about that later probably.

EDIT: Just uploaded Preview 16 http://youtu.be/SpxHWyTiE6w

[trap15]

Preview 17 uploaded. Boss sprite by ptoing, some more cleaned up sprites and things are coming soon.

[ptoing]

Whee.

[emphatic]

Cool. To me, it's like a mix of 1943 and Garegga.