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

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trap15
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Fire Lancer - Hot-Blooded Wonder Shooting - DEMO: DEC.25

Post by 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: ???
Last edited by trap15 on Tue Dec 25, 2018 12:03 am, edited 27 times in total.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by nasty_wolverine »

what? no cloud stage? :mrgreen:
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by railslave »

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

That thing in motion is sexual

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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by trap15 »

Added Preview 5.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by 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.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by emphatic »

Not familiar with the hardware at all, but very impressed nonetheless. (y)
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by 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.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by 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.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by 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.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by 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).
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by emphatic »

Looks fun! Would it be possible to flip every other background image so they blend seamlessly?
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by 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.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by 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?
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by 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.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by BIL »

Looking sharp!

Love the Fighting Hawk (plus Thunder Dragon 2?) reference btw. :mrgreen:
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by 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! :lol:

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
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by emphatic »

CPS2 port please.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by cave hermit »

I'd be willing to test a preview build for you :wink:
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by n0rtygames »

The player death effect is a thing of beauty. Well done :)
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by 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.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by Shepardus »

I'm liking that Ibara-esque death effect. More games ought to have flashy deaths.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by trap15 »

That's not a death, that's a suicide bomb :lol: 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 :)
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by mice »

Looks awfully nice!
Is it hw sprite rotations? Will need to look at the spec's.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by 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.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by 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.

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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by mice »

trap15 wrote: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.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by trap15 »

MintyTheCat wrote: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.
MintyTheCat wrote: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.
mice wrote: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
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by trap15 »

Preview 17 uploaded. Boss sprite by ptoing, some more cleaned up sprites and things are coming soon.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by ptoing »

Whee.
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Re: Fire Lancer (WIP)

Post by emphatic »

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