Designing smart, meaningful SHMUPs

[AttilioHimeki]

Hello everyone

I'm Attilio, a game developer currently working on a danmaku SHMUP, Hoshi he no Chikai (An oath to the Stars).

I've recently published an article on Gamasutra about level design and how to create smart and meaningful SHMUPs. I'd like to share it here to get some feedback and hopefully start a nice conversation about it

Here's the link: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/AttilioCarot ... SHMUPs.php

Let me know what you think!

[Cagar]

Explain.

[AttilioHimeki]

Explain.

The scope of this article is level design, learning curve etc.
I'm planning to cover scoring systems in a future article, still haven't collected my thoughts on the subject

[Cagar]

Alright.
I just found it weird to even grasp the subject when the level designs (especially ikaruga) are so heavily revolved around scoring.

[Legendre]

I liked this article but I felt that the majority of it consisted of non-shmup-specific concepts like interest curves and thematic continuity. This isn't a bad thing, mind you, but I'd love to see you address some more shmup-specific concepts to be explored, like pressure application concepts, the details of bullet pattern building, etc, in a future article.

I have to respectfully disagree with Cagar, I don't feel that scoring mechanics are necessarily essential to a discussion about level design. In most cases an engaging scoring system can be compatible with any number of potential level design philosophies. Naturally there are exceptions to this (Ikaruga and most grazing mechanic shmups) but I think it is completely reasonable to consider the theory and application of level design without giving any consideration to the scoring system that may eventually be attached to it.

[trap15]

You are not going to have a meaningful scoring system that isn't simply tacked on without designing your stages around it. Not discussing scoring in level design discussion is a serious loss.

To the article: I wish it was more general stage design than just Ikaruga wanking. There are a lot of styles of stage design and I feel like Ikaruga is one of the most basic, formulaic, and rigid styles.

[AttilioHimeki]

Thanks everyone for your feedback, I'm glad you found the article interesting

I'm planning to write a follow-up where I cover more specific stuff, like scoring system, bullet patterns etc.
I'm still playing and examining other shmups to get a good insight of what works and what doesn't regarding scoring systems and what I personally like, as it's quite a complex subject, so any reference or articles you may have on the subject would be most welcome

While I'm using Ikaruga screenshots in the article, the analysis I do is supposed to be more general, and applicable to any shmup. I won't hide that Ikaruga is one of my favourite games and one of the main source of inspiration for my project, so you'll always notice that in my approach