Rocking Pilot - looking for someone to make [TRAILER] [PAID]

[kurismakku]

Hi everyone !

I am so happy I have found this place ! Place where people love and create shooters, which is really uncommon this days.
So, for more then 2 years I have been making different shooter prototypes.
Two of them are nearly finished full games, and here I am gonna present you one of them, Rocking Pilot.
Last year I released one game Sudden Aviator that had lot of flaws since it was my first shooter project.
For last 9 months I had a little pause from shooters because I was working for one video game company, but I am back now, and I want to finish what I started.


So below I am gonna explain what this game is about. Hopefully you will like it and I will get some feedback here that will help me make this game better. If this will work, I will probably continue to work on this forum with my future games, together with you.
Please, if you like or don't like something, let me know !



Genre : 2D arena shooter
Controls : WASD for movement, MOUSE for aiming, LEFT MOUSE BUTTON for shooting, RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON for activating special attack

This game is in development for more then a year now, I am designer and programmer, and my friends helped me with art and music.
Most of the game is finished, there is only few things left before I can release this game :
- tweak two weapons, design and add one more weapon, fix some missions and maybe add "quick challenges", difficulty balancing, survival level, art and animations for special effects, and two bosses.
The most important thing I wanted to have in this game is that player enjoys shooting and destroying, I wanted that he feels really powerful.
I was inspired mostly by shooters from Vlambeer and Metal Slug.

Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cbgJogGv9I

Few new screenshots :



: KEY MECHANICS :

AIMING - since most of the weapons fires lots of really fast moving bullets, enemies also move faster. Enemies are designed in way that player needs to make constantly decisions which enemy he wants to target. Since during level player constantly switches weapon ( cause weapons have limited ammo ), player never gets used to the same aiming skill for too long. With most of the weapons it's easier to aim if player is closer to enemy ( which is of course more risk ).

SAVING AND PICKING AMMO - if player constantly shoots he will run out of ammo really fast. This means he needs to if possible move around the screen to pick the available ammo ( that is dropped by enemies ) which can lead him out of the perfect route or can move him closer to edge where enemies spawn ( risk ). Ammo pick-ups fade out really fast, so it's not really possible to save pick-ups on the screen. So if player wants to pick ammo he usually needs to fly to spot where enemy was killed just after the kill, and ideally even before kill happened. In casual mode, ammo saving is not really problem because ammo doesn't spend so much. One idea I got is that I could make that weapons with higher upgrade level consume ammo faster. Since player upgrades weapons slowly as he progresses through the game, this will make that he will need to be careful more and more about spending ammo which is gonna slowly introduce this mechanic, from "easy" mode to "hard" mode. When player is out of ammo he can still use close ranged weapon - propellers. Note that spot where enemy was killed is not always free. Faster ammo fades away, more skill is needed in predicting future state of the arena.
Also, not all ammo is necessary, so player can decide not to pick up some.

PROPELLER - it is used for offense and defense. Offense usage of propeller is as close ranged weapon. When player moves close enough to enemy so that propeller is touching the enemy, enemy will receive damage over time. What will also happen is that propeller will start to shrink. This is added so that it's not too easy to use propellers. This way propeller can deal lot of damage which is satisfying, but also have limited time of usage. Propeller can be also used for defense, for deflecting enemies bullets, and also for blowing off poison gases. Propeller shrinks while player shoots, and spreads when player is not shooting. When fully spread, it can protect the player from small planes, and also from enemies missiles. During special attack propeller spreads few times more then usual, and it deals much bigger damage as well. Also, propeller will deal damage to player when touching electrified source like Tesla towers.

HEALTH - it's continuous so player can receive damage over time, for example from opponent's laser. It also regenerates slowly, and regeneration is faster when health is lower.

SPECIAL ATTACK - to activate it player needs to have amount of special energy. Special energy fills over time and it also fills a little when player picks ammo. Special attack can be activated when player have at least 25% of max special energy. When special attack is activated, propeller starts shining in golden color, and it quickly spreads much more then usual. More special energy player have, propellers will spread more, and they will also make more damage. So at 25% player can kill only really close enemies, but since damage is much bigger it can be still used to gain advantage or quickly defend from enemy attack. At 100% player can clear most of the screen specially if special attack is fully upgraded.

COMBO - multiplier affects the score player receives when he kills the enemy. For example if combo is x4, he will receive x4 more score then usual. Combo increases by 1 each time player destroys the enemy. Combo falls to 1 when combo countdown reaches 0. Combo countdown is set to x each time player kills enemy. The higher current combo is , smaller countdown will be, which means that player needs to kill enemies more quickly when combo is higher if he doesn't want that combo falls to 0. Also, combo timer falls drastically down when player receives damage. Combo countdown is frozen while player damages enemies using propellers which is advanced skill that enables really high combos. I was testing also that this works too when propellers are touching edges, but result was gameplay where player was grinding edges all the time, which becomes boring after some time.

ENEMIES - in game there is lot of different enemies that combine well together and create different puzzles. Basic classes are airplanes, tanks, submarines, zeppelins, and soldiers. They can be also separated in few more categories : ground enemies, water enemies, flying enemies, shooting / non-shooting enemies. Shooting enemies can shoot standard bullets, laser bullets ( cannot be deflected ), laser rays, missiles, nuke missiles, and poison missiles. There is few more, but it is not important now. In every level I introduce at least one new enemy that changes the game in some way. And during the game player fights against two interesting bosses.

ENVIRONMENT - poison storm, clouds, clouds storm, fog, water surfaces, the skull that adds specific rules for short amount of time.

GOALS - short challenges, missions, side missions, and grinding challenges. Missions are usually something like "survive x seconds", "kill x enemies", "save x ally soldiers", "destroy x enemy towers".

WEAPONS - minigun, shotgun, and laser cannon are finished. I also have homing missiles weapon and grenade launcher weapon, but I am not satisfied with those two. I am still not sure what will be the 6th weapon. The reason why I have so much problem with designing weapons is because they need to meet certain requirements :
1) feeling - they must be fun to use, feeling of shooting needs to be awesome, it should be satisfying to shoot every bullet, and it also should be satisfying when enemy is hit by it.
2) skill - weapon shouldn't be trivial to use, and should be in some way different then other weapons
3) upgradeable - every weapon can be upgraded two times, and what is important is that every weapon upgrade can be noticed immediately. So it is not enough to just increase speed of bullets, speed of shooting etc.
4) performance - it shouldn't affect the frame rate performance too much.
5) art - it should be possible to make it work with simple animations because I don't have animator in my team ( this is huge problem )

Anyone have suggestions for weapons that could work ?

[Ebbo]

Well I'm certainly glad to see an arena shooter that goes for a bit more involved look instead of simple abstract shapes.
The way you've implemented the propeller into gameplay also sounds pretty interesting but I'm not too fond about the regenerating health system. I just hope it doesn't mean that there will be unavoidable enemy attacks.

Any chance of a playable demo?

[S20-TBL]

The propeller is particularly interesting--I like the concept of using it to defend against bullets and attack enemies, causing it to shrink if you use it for too long, and even using it for your special move.

Question: do you plan on including bigger maps than the one you have right now? It would be interesting if this game had more mission objectives spread across a large level, like destroying an enemy caravan that appears at one end of the map before it could reach a checkpoint at the other end, or destroying bases at different coordinates.

I'm not too fond of the regenerating health myself, but that would have to depend on how frequent and aggressive the enemies are by comparison, so I'll wait and see first.

As for weapons, you could try slow floating mines that explode on contact, napalm bombs that leave circles of flame which remain on screen for a while, or gunpods that track and shoot enemies until they expire.

[kurismakku]

Thanks for the comments !

Demo, yes, I will post here site-locked link after I add remaining weapons and balance the difficulty in all levels.

I tried bigger maps, but problem is that gameplay feels really different ( aiming and moving ) when camera scrolls.
I would like to have bigger maps because this would enable more mechanics like for example escaping from dangerous situations or avoiding some deadly big enemy. Also, it would be possible to have enemy bases and different zones you need to visit or control.
I actually have somewhere SWF demo of scrolling arena, so I can find this and post it here to show you what I mean. But like I said, generally I didn't like the feeling of movement and shooting, it didn't feel so much powerful if that makes any sense.
In standard shmups like Dodonpachi this is not a problem, you still have limited space there - you can reach the edge instantly. So it's not actually problem in scrolling background - problem is when you move the player and he is constantly in middle of the screen while background below him moves.

Reason why I added regenerating health system is because I wanted more tension. With this system player can die from few hits, but he can also receive lot of hits during the level. This also enables that player can try to defend himself when his health is low, play less risky, in order to get his health back up. If arena would be bigger, and he could escape it would make even more sense. What I like is that it happens more often that player have low health, but he manages to survive after and finish the level normally. At the same time I didn't want that it's like Gears Of War because you don't take hits so often, and there are no places to hide. So think of it as something between normal and Gears Of War health system.

Anyway, I am still struggling with weapons. This is third day now.

I tried with mines before, but what I didn't like about them was that it wasn't so satisfying to use them. Game really feels better when you can hear constant sound of shooting, and constant sound of bullets hitting the target.

Flamethrower would be amazing, but artist that works with me doesn't have experience with animations like that. Fire could interact in so many ways, enemies could burn, it could burn on the ground, wind from propeller could move it around or even combine with it to make flame storm, and also flame would die really fast on water which would make this weapon not so good in levels where there is not so much ground.
I had similar idea to make lightning weapon that would work great in water levels, and also instantly chain electricity between groups of enemies, but again, problem is animation, and also lack of my ability to make this look good with simple sprites.

I am testing gunpods now, I already have power-up that summons pods with small propellers that move around, but they aren't satisfying as I wanted so maybe I will make them shoot, and convert them to weapon since it's so hard to make weapons that really work. So if they would move freely and have limited range this could actually create really different gameplay because player will need to hide behind them in order to protect himself from enemy attacks.

If you have more ideas, I would be happy to hear them. This is really hard...

[S20-TBL]

I tried bigger maps, but problem is that gameplay feels really different ( aiming and moving ) when camera scrolls.
I would like to have bigger maps because this would enable more mechanics like for example escaping from dangerous situations or avoiding some deadly big enemy. Also, it would be possible to have enemy bases and different zones you need to visit or control.
I actually have somewhere SWF demo of scrolling arena, so I can find this and post it here to show you what I mean. But like I said, generally I didn't like the feeling of movement and shooting, it didn't feel so much powerful if that makes any sense.

I don't know what you mean by "powerful". Do you mean the game wasn't fast paced enough in terms of action, or that the levels felt empty? Balancing enemy pacing will get you through this hurdle.

Reason why I added regenerating health system is because I wanted more tension. With this system player can die from few hits, but he can also receive lot of hits during the level. This also enables that player can try to defend himself when his health is low, play less risky, in order to get his health back up. If arena would be bigger, and he could escape it would make even more sense. What I like is that it happens more often that player have low health, but he manages to survive after and finish the level normally. At the same time I didn't want that it's like Gears Of War because you don't take hits so often, and there are no places to hide. So think of it as something between normal and Gears Of War health system.

I'm cool with this.

I tried with mines before, but what I didn't like about them was that it wasn't so satisfying to use them. Game really feels better when you can hear constant sound of shooting, and constant sound of bullets hitting the target.

Sorry I didn't clarify: I was thinking of the mines as a subweapon. You would still have a gun, but it would be a focused shot while your helicopter scatters slow moving floating mines. The mines would not stay in one place either: they would slowly float around until they hit an enemy or you bump into them to speed them up. Additionally, they could also have the effect of canceling enemy shots which would make them useful as a defensive weapon.

If you can't make this work you could always bake it into the gunpods.

Flamethrower would be amazing, but artist that works with me doesn't have experience with animations like that. Fire could interact in so many ways, enemies could burn, it could burn on the ground, wind from propeller could move it around or even combine with it to make flame storm, and also flame would die really fast on water which would make this weapon not so good in levels where there is not so much ground.

All you need is a simple fireball graphic to display a flame projectile, then multiply and scatter that one fireball projectile to create swaths of flame. If you want a "firestorm" effect with the propeller catching on fire, you could have the helicopter object pick up fireballs that attach to the tips of the propeller blades and spin around with them. No need for overcomplicated stuff.

Regarding the gunpods, why don't you try giving them different weapons too? One gunpod could be scattered machine gun type, the other could be slow firing rockets, a third could be a focused, piercing laser shot and so on.

[kurismakku]

I was thinking more about mines this night, and I am gonna try them out again!
Mines will be spawned below helicopters body, and there will be lot of them instead of only few like it was before. They will not release small explosion waves ( boring ), but instead shoot 3 bullets around them in form of circle... so it will be like 3 slashes.. Also they will not be placed on the ground, but they will float, and look like semi-transparent bubbles. Since u place a lot of them, you will hear constant sound of placing them... You will also be able to push them away a little with propellers. I will probably also make that this mine bubbles collide with each other, so they will always try to cover as much space as possible. So they will look cool, explode cool, and shoot bullets from themselves in cool way. I am still thinking what to do with cursor in this case, maybe I will add some kinda shield or something to cursor as well so it will be weapon made from 2 things.
I am still thinking about this, one idea I got is that you could use mouse cursor to pop this bubbles, but idk.

I also don't like current homing missiles weapons, it's just missiles flying after enemies, it is not different enough from minigun or lasers. So I got idea that instead I make them slower at start, and I also make them follow the mouse cursor constantly. Maybe I will change their appearance to look like missiles from Ikaruga. So player will need to guide them, and since they are slow on start and not so fast after either, he will need to predict a little movement from other enemies.

As for the scrolling camera problem, here is better explanation.

1) FEELING OF MOVEMENT - when arena is bigger then screen, when player moves he stays in the middle of the screen while background below him scrolls. Because of this player is a little disoriented, his position is not anymore relative to the position of the screen, for example moving 100px up will probably still leave him in middle of the screen. So instead of moving player around the screen, you are moving the background. So it just doesn't feel so good.

2) FEELING OF AIMING - when arena is bigger then screen, and you shoot while moving around, your bullets don't hit the cursor anymore, instead they are offset. It really makes aiming a lot different.

3) APPROACHING GROUPS OF ENEMIES - since you are flying towards enemies once you encounter them it is kinda hard to avoid them and also properly aim. Another thing I didn't like was when there was couple of enemies in some area, and I was approaching them, it made me shoot at them from distance which is kinda not really fun gameplay.

Here is the video I recorded that shows this problems. Though, it is much better now as it was when I tested it with Sudden Aviator because in Rocking Pilot bullets are much faster. But I don't think it's possible to get the same type of gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNVzk-OUvH8

[S20-TBL]

The scrolling demo video actually looked quite natural, I wasn't even disoriented at all because my point of reference becomes the background and not the player object. Remedying the disorientation can be done by reducing the view border required before the camera begins scrolling, or by slowing down the movement slightly. Think a Commando-type shooter.

True, it changes the gameplay, but the question is what type of experience are you trying to create? If your aim is to create a Smash TV styled arena shooter, then it's perfectly OK to stay in a single screen.

From what I can gather, the choice to remain in a single screen wasn't only dictated by the speed of the gameplay and overall movement, but also the combat revolving around the use of the propellers for offense and defense, which wouldn't work as well if the arena was a lot bigger. Would this be correct?

[kurismakku]

Yeah I think that in smaller arena I can create more chaos, destroy more stuff, as you say create Smash TV styled shooter.
Do you know any games of that style ?
For me it is important that player is engaged all the time, and that enemies are surrounding him. If area was big, this would be harder to design, but maybe it is possible, I just didn't try enough.

So I designed mine weapon in the end ! It's actually really fun to use.
Mines spawn on cursor position, and they don't explode when enemy hits them but instead they explode after x amount of time.
So basically they are delayed explosion.
Cool thing is that they bounce from each other, they bounce from enemies, and they bounce of players propellers too.
So it is possible to play mine hockey !
I am gonna create boss that will shoot mines like this at player and he will need to bounce them back to protect his area on the bottom of the screen. The thing is when player's propellers are hitting mines they are pushing player in opposite direction and also they cause his propellers to shrink since he is dealing damage. I also plan to create enemy that will shoot mines like this at player, probably in extra survival level at end of the game.
As for upgrades, with each upgrade mine explosion radius increases, at level 2 they become magnetic on short distance, at level 3 they hunt enemy no matter how far it is. With super powerup mines become sticky so for example if enemy airplane hits them, it will carry them around until mine explodes !

Here is the video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4GJxjSb5k4
p.s. I finally figured out how to make 720p videos so I am gonna upload more quality stuff next time

Now I am designing homing missiles. I decided I am gonna make them follow mouse cursor so it is important for player to hold mouse cursor over enemy. The way I am gonna make them even harder to use is that they can follow mouse cursor only if cursor is close enough, otherwise they just continue flying in current direction. Also, I am gonna make that while they are in clouds or while cursor is in clouds, missiles cannot detect cursor, so again they are flying in current direction.

Aaaand title screen image !

[tiaoferreira]

Incredibleartwork. Is this the cover of game? Will it be sold on "physical media"?

[kurismakku]

Incredibleartwork. Is this the cover of game? Will it be sold on "physical media"?

Thank you.
Yes, that is cover of the game, but we are not sure how we gonna sell the game yet.
Probably we gonna find sponsor that have Flash website, but it would be great if we could release this game on Steam.

[kurismakku]

I redesigned laser weapon, last version wasn't really fun to use, and mechanic was too similar to minigun.
So I added flickering, gatling sounds, added charging delay of 0.2 seconds, 5 times slower aiming rotation then other weapons, and 1.5x more damage. It's much more satisfying now. Advantage : instant hit, disadvantage : cannot change targets fast.

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

What you think ? Anyone have some suggestions ?

[tiaoferreira]

Unfortunatelly, for some unknown reason, the quality of your video on YOUTUBE is seted to 140p = is horrible to see, sorry for that. But the game looks good

[kurismakku]

Unfortunatelly, for some unknown reason, the quality of your video on YOUTUBE is seted to 140p = is horrible to see, sorry for that. But the game looks good

Not for me, maybe you had problems with internet connection when you tried playing the video ?

[tiaoferreira]

No, there is not problem. The you tube set the video automatically. Various videos were hit by these new BAD IDEA from youtube.

[kurismakku]

Hey everyone, here is the new video, switch to 720p to see it running in 60fps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGxVdx8LYhI

I am looking for someone that could help me design the final boss. I need someone that have experience with designing interesting bullet patterns that player needs to avoid.
We can discuss it here or you can add me on Skype ( xravenxiii ).
In any case obviously I need to first give you access to the game.

I am also looking for writer that could write short interesting story for this game.

[tiaoferreira]

Hey, man! I've somethings here, maybe it interest you !

[kurismakku]

Hey everyone !

I am happy to say that game is almost released and we have new trailer !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cbgJogGv9I

If you like the video please give it a like, it will help a lot !
Now we are in process of finding sponsors, but game will be also released on Greenlight !

Few new screenshots

[kurismakku]

More screenshots !

[kurismakku]

Hi everyone !

I am looking for someone that can make Steam release trailer for Rocking Pilot !

Trailer should be around 60s long, and it should show interesting gameplay moments and features.
It should convince the players that game is interesting & that they should try it.
I already have recorded footage and music.

What you need:
Prior experience working with game trailers
Bonus points if you can make that video is in sync with music
Video examples of related works

Contact me here or with email : krismacanga@gmail.com

Example trailers :
Switchcars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FM72vSyCGo
Geometry Wars 3 https://youtu.be/fmfmcAPaFaw?t=16 ( the text should be shown on top of gameplay footage )
Nuclear Throne https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qhUTz6ldmI

Footage :
- gameplay : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypxsyuqg3-g
- overview of map, upgrades and achievements : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzHrtCyjDxs
- current trailer that was made for sponsors : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cbgJogGv9I ( intro movie is not needed )