[DEMO] XYDONIA / ザイドニア [Kickstarter LIVE]

[Shingo]

DEMO V2 AVAILABLE! Get it on Game Jolt or itch.io
XYDONIA's Kickstarter campaign was succesful! THANK YOU! CLICK HERE to check it out!

We got GREENLIT on Steam!

Hey everyone! I'm here to finally show you the game I'm working on as the lead artist and game designer, XYDONIA, a horizontal shmup inspired by Japanese arcade classics.

This started as a hobby, as me and my friends always loved STG's and making one ourselves was something we aimed for. After dedicating ourselves more and more, with time, we decided to try and make it a full commercial product.

We plan to make a game that really brings you back to the arcade years, not just in a nostalgic way, but also with challenging gameplay and an overall entertaining experience. We'd also love to see more ‘90s Japanese-influenced shmups coming out, that's why we started making one ourselves!

KEY FEATURES

• Old-school arcade style 2D graphics, resolution and palette are faithful to the technical specs of the time (similar to Neo Geo/mid-‘90s titles)
• Sound effects and soundtrack powered by the YM2151+SEGA PCM FM chip (arcade "big brother" of the YM2612, SEGA Mega Drive's audio configuration), featuring shmup legends Shinji Hosoe and Keishi Yonao (more info on our Kickstarter page)
• Multiple paths of destruction for extended replayability and challenge
• Customize each playthrough with different equipment and assist characters
• A unique "scavenge" system that allows purchasing of new equipment
• Easy to learn, hard to master scoring/ranking system
• Two-player Co-op

Alpha V2 download links: Game Jolt / itch.io

SCREENSHOTS

Title Screen



Character / Weapon Select



In-game (optional CRT shader + border overlay for widescreen monitors)



No shaders, in-game

VIDEOS

Kickstarter trailer: https://youtu.be/5k5-_H-1hr0
Message from Shinji Hosoe: https://youtu.be/MZYumKuPxSQ
Gameplay trailer: https://youtu.be/OKSIcRc1M50
Stage 00 gameplay: https://youtu.be/WCm_XFB1PJw
Prototype arcade cab gameplay: https://youtu.be/Ra-vw4VQTpI

UPDATES

10/29/2015 ~ New Aspect ratio, border overlay
03/18/2016 ~ New character (Yoko), assist characters, Bull's option system
04/10/2016 ~ Weapon Type C, Revamped character selection screen
05/03/2016 ~ More option system info, Yoko and Bull
06/17/2016 ~ Stage 1-B, Kickstarter announcement
06/18/2016 ~ Stage 00 Alpha V2 gameplay footage
06/20/2016 ~ Steam Greenlight announcement
06/27/2016 ~ Kickstarter launch
07/01/2016 ~ Physical copy mockup
07/05/2016 ~ Alpha Demo V2 release
07/19/2016 ~ Physical copy promotional flyer and video message from Shinji Hosoe
07/20/2016 ~ XYDONIA x Starr Mazer crossover announcement
07/23/2016 ~ Kickstarter goal reached, time for stretch goals
07/27/2016 ~ Final hours on Kickstarter, Ruka's scrapyard (shop)
07/28/2016 ~ XYDONIA successfully funded on Kickstarter!
12/11/2016 ~ Alternate stages, Star Map, new boss WIP.
17/01/2017 ~ Mecha-Tokuma boss preview.

CONTACTS

If you're interested in following XYDONIA's development, you can check our social links:

Twitter - https://twitter.com/BreakingBytesHQ
Facebook (XYDONIA) - https://www.facebook.com/xydonia
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/breakingbytesgames
tumblr - http://breakingbytes.tumblr.com/

[Ebbo]

Kudos to people who did the graphics and music because this looks and sounds fantastic. Presentation is top notch all around (lots of neat details) and despite the dialogue boxes everything actually moves at very brisk pace. I'm pretty hard pressed to find areas for improvement... Those popcorn enemies popping up from the background did catch me off guard plenty of times though so maybe they could either be more visible or better telegraphed?

Good luck with the full product, this one certainly has potential in spades!

[Shingo]

Thanks, we really appreciate it! We're working hard to make it as much polished as possible, despite being a very small team.

About those popcorn enemies, yes, this is one of the first issues that most people noticed, and rightly so. It was just a placeholder for a "flying in the background - coming to the foreground" type of pattern we were testing, that ended up staying in the alpha stage.

It will be definitely fixed soon!

[trap15]

Woah, this looks very legit. Great work. Though, will there be a setting to disable the text (sort of like what Gleylancer has)? That's the only thing I can really say doesn't get me hyped, everything else kinda blew me away with the quality and style!

[Shingo]

Thanks!

An on/off option shouldn't be a problem, stages will be somewhat timed after those dialogues but, as I anticipated in the description, they will not be as present as they are on this stage (we just wanted to show what type of characterization we were aiming for) and will be quite shorter.

Slowing down the action for some lines of text, in a shmup, is not our main goal.

[Xyga]

Ideed! Looking and sounding good, it gives kind of an early MD/x68k vibe. *thumbsup*

[trap15]

Going by the rest of the game, I had a feeling you were already aware, good to know it's true

[Shingo]

Yes, absolutely. Being a shmup player myself I know what I wouldn't like.

[RHE]

CRT emulation shader

Great!

[Shingo]

CRT emulation shader

Great!

Couldn't have a low-res game without a CRT shader.

[n0rtygames]

Will buy this.

Do you have a 4:3 mode? It's probably a lot of work to cram it in now if you haven't - I've figured out how to do some screen scaling tricks myself lately in ye olde unity for next project (also a hori!) but I mean beyond the basics - would it break your game to bring in the left/right fences a bit? See Trouble Witches and how they had a 360 and 4:3 mode.

It's not a deal breaker by any means, but there are certainly those who appreciate the touch at least.

[Shingo]

Do you have a 4:3 mode? It's probably a lot of work to cram it in now if you haven't - I've figured out how to do some screen scaling tricks myself lately in ye olde unity for next project (also a hori!) but I mean beyond the basics - would it break your game to bring in the left/right fences a bit? See Trouble Witches and how they had a 360 and 4:3 mode.

It's not a deal breaker by any means, but there are certainly those who appreciate the touch at least.

We're still deciding on that one, I suppose that "stretching out" the playfield on a 3D engine should be a little easier, while our game is fully 2D and making a fast transition from 4:3 to widescreen and vice versa is really stage design-dependent, by the way it's coded.

I'll admit that playing a hori shmup in 4:3 is the best way for me, as a player, but as developers we have to make tough choices, especially if we're gonna sell this game.

We're not ruling out the possibility yet, anyway.

[emphatic]

Looks arcade perfect. The stage is too long, but you are fixing that. 1st day purchase.

[n0rtygames]

We're still deciding on that one, I suppose that "stretching out" the playfield on a 3D engine should be a little easier, while our game is fully 2D and making a fast transition from 4:3 to widescreen and vice versa is really stage design-dependent, by the way it's coded.

I can understand. Pretty much why I made a point of asking if it would break your game - if you've mostly worked to a 16:9 ratio and designed your game around that then changing the playfield can catastrophically bugger things up in ways that you wouldn't necessarily expect. i.e suddenly that boss which was perfectly positioned in your 16:9 space suddenly becomes this terrifying behemoth as he now takes up a larger chunk of the screen. Had it happen - hilarious and the end result is you end up sacrificing some of that gorgeous sprite you've had kicking about in order to fit in to the screen space and retain that same distance between player + boss you'd designed.

That said, render everything to a render target - assuming you're running at 1080p then take the inner most 1440px and squirt that back to the screen while pushing your players minX/maxX accordingly and give the game a full playtest. It might not suck - if it doesn't, voila! Instant 4:3 mode achieved.

If it sucks and elements of your game break (as described above) - might not be the best idea if it's going to take you a long time to rework bosses and figure out two modes of operation for them and to be perfectly honest with you, judging by the quality of the game on display I really don't think anybody here is going to jump down your throat for being a 16:9 game - it's just one of those things that would be going the extra mile which this community would appreciate.

I'll admit that playing a hori shmup in 4:3 is the best way for me, as a player, but as developers we have to make tough choices, especially if we're gonna sell this game.

No I completely get it - it's cool. To be fair, going for a non danmaku hori with character oozing out of every orifice is a great way to appeal to a more casual audience. Also do gamedev 8 hours a day in ze job (hence not having as much time as I'd like on my shmups for the past god knows how long) and yeah - sure enough sometimes you have to make decisions like that. I don't think a 16:9 hori is necessarily a bad thing though - but I'm mostly thinking of the hardware. 4:3 would get you kudos for being able to run nicely in a cabinet for instance.

We're not ruling out the possibility yet, anyway.

Don't care - still buying. Less foruming more coding please. Where can I throw my money?

[Shingo]

Looks arcade perfect. The stage is too long, but you are fixing that. 1st day purchase.

Thanks! There are still some older sprites that I need to fix to get the perfect arcade feel that I want, but I'm happy that it's getting through despite that.

I can understand. Pretty much why I made a point of asking if it would break your game - if you've mostly worked to a 16:9 ratio and designed your game around that then changing the playfield can catastrophically bugger things up in ways that you wouldn't necessarily expect. i.e suddenly that boss which was perfectly positioned in your 16:9 space suddenly becomes this terrifying behemoth as he now takes up a larger chunk of the screen. Had it happen - hilarious and the end result is you end up sacrificing some of that gorgeous sprite you've had kicking about in order to fit in to the screen space and retain that same distance between player + boss you'd designed.

That said, render everything to a render target - assuming you're running at 1080p then take the inner most 1440px and squirt that back to the screen while pushing your players minX/maxX accordingly and give the game a full playtest. It might not suck - if it doesn't, voila! Instant 4:3 mode achieved.

If it sucks and elements of your game break (as described above) - might not be the best idea if it's going to take you a long time to rework bosses and figure out two modes of operation for them and to be perfectly honest with you, judging by the quality of the game on display I really don't think anybody here is going to jump down your throat for being a 16:9 game - it's just one of those things that would be going the extra mile which this community would appreciate.

Yep, cropping a 4:3 image from the full resolution (which is 428x240 native, that would let us achieve good ol' 320x240) is the only option we have, really. If this was a 2.5D game we could have used some camera tricks to bring a 4:3 ratio to 16:9, but we're doing this the old(er) way.

The main issue with this is that, like you said, if we don't wanna break anything, we might have to design two versions for each stage, and that's gonna take some time if we wanna do it right.

We'd love to go that extra mile, we just have to run some tests and find the most efficient way.

No I completely get it - it's cool. To be fair, going for a non danmaku hori with character oozing out of every orifice is a great way to appeal to a more casual audience. Also do gamedev 8 hours a day in ze job (hence not having as much time as I'd like on my shmups for the past god knows how long) and yeah - sure enough sometimes you have to make decisions like that. I don't think a 16:9 hori is necessarily a bad thing though - but I'm mostly thinking of the hardware. 4:3 would get you kudos for being able to run nicely in a cabinet for instance.

You're right. We're never gonna sacrifice anything regarding authentic gameplay or add RPG elements and stuff like that, we're trying to make a game that could draw more people to play it based on its presentation only.

I don't think 16:9's bad, either, it's just not the best option for a 100% faithful arcade experience. But, again, casual audiences today don't really care about that.

The game is currently being developed for PC only, but we might extend that to consoles if we get the chance. Needless to say, seeing our game running on a cab (without the need of a Darius II-esque setup ) would be awesome.

Don't care - still buying. Less foruming more coding please. Where can I throw my money?

No worries, we're not stealing any time from development.

We just need some community feedback to know if we're making a game worth playing.

[trap15]

The game is currently being developed for PC only, but we might extend that to consoles if we get the chance. Needless to say, seeing our game running on a cab (without the need of a Darius II-esque setup ) would be awesome.

I may be able to lend some code and assistance here, towards getting it running on ~arcade hardware~

It would not be too much of a stretch to put it on a TypeX2 (essentially a WinXP PC with a unique input handling setup) and toss that in any ol' JVS cabinet.

[Shingo]

I may be able to lend some code and assistance here, towards getting it running on ~arcade hardware~

It would not be too much of a stretch to put it on a TypeX2 (essentially a WinXP PC with a unique input handling setup) and toss that in any ol' JVS cabinet.

That's great. We'll keep that in mind.

[emphatic]

How about having a 4:3 "action space" of the screen, where enemies and bullets can collide, and the screen can be extended to 16:9 with a preview in front and back for "casuals"? In options, let us choose between "arcade" or "extended" screen size? A third option would be a bezel type option surrounding the 4:3 space.

[Shingo]

How about having a 4:3 "action space" of the screen, where enemies and bullets can collide, and the screen can be extended to 16:9 with a preview in front and back for "casuals"? In options, let us choose between "arcade" or "extended" screen size? A third option would be a bezel type option surrounding the 4:3 space.

Not a bad idea, it's the closest to our apporach, I'll have to discuss it with the coder.

The bezel option will be there for sure, if we manage to add a 4:3 mode. I'd pick it anytime over black bars or stretching (yuck!).

[emphatic]

Perhaps adding a blur or shadow effect to the extended area, so you won't have to change when enemy waves appear? I don't think most casuals have a problem with things like enemies popping up like magic, as long as the game is full screen on their wide screen TVs or monitors. I wouldn't mind either, but I would probably play this in my cab on a 4:3 screen.

[MintyTheCat]

This looks very nice and polished. I quite like the music and it has that old school feel to it. I thought I was looking at a Megadrive Shmup for a moment. Nice and chunky graphics style too and it reminded me a bit of Andros Dunos on the NeoGeo.

I agree, please make it an option to remove the on screen dialogue - you do not want this to curtail the flow of the action and dialogue is for RPGs

Keep up the good work and it is nice to see a Developer making a decent Shmup with a nod to the classics.

[emphatic]

BTW, an option between ARCADE and CONSOLE mode would be ace, with INSERT COIN/FREE PLAY message and attract mode.

[Shingo]

This looks very nice and polished. I quite like the music and it has that old school feel to it. I thought I was looking at a Megadrive Shmup for a moment. Nice and chunky graphics style too and it reminded me a bit of Andros Dunos on the NeoGeo.

I agree, please make it an option to remove the on screen dialogue - you do not want this to curtail the flow of the action and dialogue is for RPGs

Keep up the good work and it is nice to see a Developer making a decent Shmup with a nod to the classics.

Glad you like it.

Regarding the music (which is fine already, no doubt), we're currently trying to make it sound more like an arcade chip (YM2151 for example), to better couple it with the graphics. This will be much easier for us if, as was recently announced, the tracker we're using (Deflemask) will include a YM2151 chip emulation in a future update.

Don't worry about dialogues, they will very likely be optional.

BTW, an option between ARCADE and CONSOLE mode would be ace, with INSERT COIN/FREE PLAY message and attract mode.

This is something we already had in mind, in the beginning we were going to have two modes: STORY (console) mode, and ARCADE mode. The latter wouldn't feature any dialogue whatsoever, just the game from start to finish.

Since we decided to make some big changes to the structure of the game flow, like adding alternate paths based on different gameplay conditions (not choices), but also weapons and characters, i think that two modes would be too redundant and similar to each other.

This means that we dropped the STORY MODE, not the other way around.

If we ultimately decide to stick with a 4:3 ratio, we'll probably build the game around that and add 16:9 optional features.

[emphatic]

If we ultimately decide to stick with a 4:3 ratio, we'll probably build the game around that and add 16:9 optional features.

That's great thinking. Just expanding the screen slightly in both directions, but restricting the player ship from going there should take care of "the modern screen problem".

[MintyTheCat]

Yes, Deflemask is a pretty good project.

Going back eons ago around 2000 I got into FM chips by reading the MAME sound driver code in my town's library

There are also many modules that represent FM generally. the 2612 has only 4 Operators as I recall compared to what you find in the yamaha DX7 which has 6 and many more Algorithms.
YM2610 as found in the NeoGeo is much more powerful than the 2612.

[Shingo]

That's great thinking. Just expanding the screen slightly in both directions, but restricting the player ship from going there should take care of "the modern screen problem".

This could be a solution, definitely one of the possible ways we'll deal with it.

There are also many modules that represent FM generally. the 2612 has only 4 Operators as I recall compared to what you find in the yamaha DX7 which has 6 and many more Algorithms.
YM2610 as found in the NeoGeo is much more powerful than the 2612.

Yep, that's why our two composers are currentrly working together to achieve a sound that's more similar to the YM chips used on the Neo Geo or other arcade systems.

YM2612 sounds fine but has some limitations, we'll see what they'll be able to pull off with the next tracks.

[LukeMcQueen]

Hi guys! I'm the sound programmer and additional composer for XYDONIA. I'd like to thank you all for playing the game and providing us useful feedback. Keep it coming! If you have any technical questions about the sound compartment just ask away, I'll be glad to answer you.

[Despatche]

i'm fine with 16:9, but i don't really consider 4:3 to be "the arcade experience".

multi-monitor powaaaa benefited darius, 16:9 benefited pac-man, and dariusburst has both because it's crazy, so idk

[emphatic]

Sure, but making the game optimized for the 4:3 then expanding it slightly on the sides makes more sense than having bullets coming at you before you can see the enemies and shooting those enemies before they enter the screen is what would happen if it'd be the other way around. While there even today is a lack of proper widescreen retro styled shooting games, consider how many retro game enthusiasts playing on 16:9 screens (the presumed target audience) there is.

[Shingo]

16:9 ratio will be supported anyway, it's just a matter of deciding how it will work.

Right now, the game is built around it, but we might decide to switch to 4:3. If that happens, 16:9 won't be dropped, just reworked to be an optional feature.