[GFX/SFX WANTED] nKaruga, a 2D Ikaruga demake in C++

[matrefeytontias]

Hey !

I'm Matrefeytontias, a French student now attending engineering school, and a newcomer on this forum. I've always had a thing for SHMUPs, and the game Ikaruga in particular ; being the aspiring indie game dev that I am, I started working on a demake of it (think of it as "what would have Ikaruga looked like on an NES" I suppose).

I have been working on this project on and off for 2 years now (those who know French CPGE classes will know why it took me that long), and I am glad to say that the game is in a very playable state, a little over 50% done, and with most core mechanics implemented as well as fully playable levels 1 and 2, including boss fights.

But enough chit-chat, let's have some eye candy.








The latest addition to the game ...

Of course, you can try the game for yourself if you have a PC with Windows on it - I have plans for a Linux build in the near future. You can play the current version after you downloading it (for free, obviously) on GameJolt : http://gamejolt.com/games/nkaruga/92026

So now the thing is, I'm no artist myself. I am working with a composer who takes care of the music for me, but all SFX are placeholders (as you can very clearly hear) and I lack a lot of sprites (I worked with 2 artists before, but one hurt himself very bad and had to leave, while the other just vanished). I cannot offer any payment, as I am myself not getting any out of this (I may eventually put it as a pay-what-you-want thing, after figuring out if it's legal or not, seeing that it's a demake), but as a hobbyist, it would be greatly appreciated - and you would get your name in the credits.

Hope you enjoy the game, and thanks by advance for any feedback or help !

[matrefeytontias]

The game's link has been added, you can now play it !

[ciox]

Looks really good and controls well so far, I hope you can find the extra help you need.
Try to reduce dead air if you can i.e spaces with no enemies, there's more of that than there should be, it is a pain to reduce dead air if you spawn enemies based on frames instead of with "wait(100);" "spawn(enemy,x,y);" actions but still worth taking care of, maybe consider having such an actions system if you don't already.
Can also make it a tiny bit more faithful to the original levels in places but you already have a lot more fidelity than I was expecting really and small departures that don't change too much might help the "demake" feel even, will have to see all the levels to really say but so far it's alright, with the dead air out it should be an interesting "riff" on ikaruga gameplay.

[matrefeytontias]

Thanks ! I'm working hard on it.

The "dead air" problem you're talking about probably comes from level 1, right ? I built this one before my level scripting system was entirely fleshed out (the "actions" you are talking about ; I do have something like that going on), and also before the camera system was in place (and technically the path solver, but I don't think I'll use it anyway). For short, I was missing a couple useful things at the time, and seeing that the script for level 1 is already over 400 lines long I think, I still haven't found the motivation to go back and fix it. The second level 2 should give a much better experience on that front.