Shmup in progress: Faaltist (because I suck at naming games)

[Hexrapper]

Alright, here's the low-down. I've never played a shmup before (aside from 1945 on the PC). I'm very unfamiliar with them. But for whatever reason, I've been compelled to make my own. Actually, the reason is me stumbling across this site and becoming fascinated with them.

This means two things. For one, I'm very inexperienced with shmups. That might have an effect on the game I'm making. Two, I don't have a base of techniques to include in the game other than what I know from what I've read (I've read on Ikaruga, for example) and what I know from other games that aren't shmups.

I come here and ask a number of things: what do you think of this extremely early WIP? How could I improve it? How's the difficulty? What should I add/change?

I also am curious as to how to make a scrolling room in Game Maker (the tool I'm using). I haven't managed to figure that out yet. All that said, here's the demo.

http://rapidshare.de/files/12354711/Faaltist.zip.html

Controls:

Q: Change suit to Red (can't get hurt by red bullets)

W: Blur (motion stops and you blur. Nothing can hurt you)

E: When you pick up the 'S' icon, speed increases for a short amount of time.

D: Change suit to Purple (can't get hurt by purple bullets)

Space: Shoot

I know the graphics suck; I'm a terrible graphics artist. I'll try and improve them. I will improve the background. And I am well aware that it lacks noises. This is an extremely early WIP. As a matter of fact, I just started it a few days ago. Thanks in advance for feedback

[cigsthecat]

My first suggestion would be to download MAME and a bunch of good shooters then play for a while. You have to know what the basics for a shooter are before you can make one. Right now you just have a curtain of bullets falling onto the player randomly. Don't just copy Ikaruga.

To make a scrolling room you first make a really tall room (however long the level will need to be) Then create a view that will represent the area the player sees. Then create a controller object (without a sprite) and place it in the room. In the step event of that object use the "set the value of a variable" action to set the view_yview variable relative to -2 (this is how fast the room will scroll) every step. The view will then scroll upwards over the bg.

I would suggest downloading the 1945 tutorial and altering it to understand how things work. That's how I got started.