Blue Revolver

[Keade]

Sorry if this has been asked before...I'm confused: why is the ship so much faster in missions than in "arcade" ?

edit : oh I see...thanks !

[Danbo]

Quick thing to ask: Steam gives a boost in visibility for games that hit 500 reviews with 95% positive rating, it's going to be a long road to get there but it's the next step to take in terms of getting the game in front of people. So if you bought the game on Steam, leaving a review helps us out - feel free to be as honest as you like, I'll gladly take something well-considered and fair over a review like "you die in one hit and it doesn't use the full screen, it's really strange!"

Also thank you for writing that blog post. I realize that must have been difficult to write, but as someone who was looking forward to replay support I really appreciate you opening up. For the record I do really like this game, and it's currently my favorite shmup on Steam (aside from maybe Jamestown but that's more for the co-op experience). There's small things here and there that I don't like but I think it strikes a good balance between being approachable for newer players while also having interesting stage patterns and varied shot types for anyone who wants to route for score. The scoring system isn't as deep or challenging as most of the well-liked arcade shmups, and I think we would see scores level out if more of the top players were to take it seriously, but it's also a lot more intuitive than most bullet-hell games. All of that is to say I think you've earned any success you get from this game, and I'm looking forward to Stellar Circle's future works.

Thank you. The problem is going to be realising when to just leave the game alone - I still think I can make the game far better, but there is a cost for players in constantly tinkering with the game, and there's the risk of getting rid of things people actually like in the course of refining it (I mean, some people probably greatly enjoy being able to do a ton of damage with certain device combos!).

Sorry if this has been asked before...I'm confused: why is the ship so much faster in missions than in "arcade" ?

As of v1.1, the shot type affects your ship speed. Different missions have different ship "loadouts", so the speed varies.

[WarpZone]

In 1.11, the game crashes in the tutorial when I press a fire or bomb button:

http://i.imgur.com/gglRzn0.png

[Danbo]

In 1.11, the game crashes in the tutorial when I press a fire or bomb button:

http://i.imgur.com/gglRzn0.png

Thanks for the heads up! I'll get this fixed ASAP, in the meanwhile you can fix this by turning off Scoring Info.

[Winane]

For what it's worth, getting replays working on Linux would be this customer's #1 priority at this point.
(Is there anything interesting to mention about the technical limitations making that difficult?)

And yeah, speed selection would be nice, unless you strongly feel that some speed/weapon combinations are somehow game-breakingly overly advantageous, or something.
As long as you promptly announce your intention to break compatibility with v1.1 replays, I doubt many people would mind much if old replay compatibility does get broken in future updates, if it results in an overall-better game.

Web view on the leaderboards for convenience: http://leaderboards.bluerevolvergame.com/

Thanks for that!
Might it be possible to add replay download links to that page?

Seems odd that the game doesn't come with any sort of readme file. Was gonna suggest putting that leaderboard link in the readme.

I still find the main menu highlighting a little confusing. I mean, it takes me an extra moment to mentally confirm that I've got the correct item selected.

No replays in Missions or Experimental Weapon modes?

Looks like the game fails to ask for a name to store in the replay file, if your score isn't high enough to make it onto the high scores list. :/

Would be nice if the cursor looped around when reaching the top or bottom of the replay selection menu.
And would be nice if the date format was less ambiguous. I.e., year/month/day.

Aren't the description & graphic wrong for Val's Follow type on the Shot Select screen?
And its icon on the replay selection screen.

Why do the bullets from Mae's Follow-type options spawn so far in front of the options? Looks kinda weird.

Looks like the tutorial text doesn't take button remapping into account.

Not a big deal, since it's the same speaker as the previous line, but for consistency's sake:
This line in the Russian translation is missing the "ДИ: " quote attribution:
"Только пообещай нам, что начиная с этого момента ты перестанешь жить столь безрассудно и начнешь следовать закону."

"I got a score of _ in #BlueRevolver v1.1!" <- Version number should be updated.

A few reminders:
"machinegun" -> "machine gun"
"what do you want from me!" - lacking question mark.
"VAL: I'm calling sick today." -> "calling in sick"
"from the bottom of our hearts" -> "bottoms"

@ http://bluerevolvergame.com/patchnotes/
Missing linebreak:
"drawn over enemy bullets. ​* Fixed a bug where"

I don't use Steam, but I'm curious:
What is the "How Dare You" achievement?
Is the "Supplies Delivered" achievement something like picking up the contents of every supply capsule in one run?
And I presume "The Perfectionist" simply requires using the "Restart" feature once?

Is the occasional unavoidable bullet wall in "Filibuster MK.V" mentioned here something that the player can prevent in any reliable way, or does it just occur randomly?

nobody wants a STG that's constantly changing under them

Well, I hear rogue-lites have been kinda popular lately. =P
More seriously:
I think it's fine as long as these criteria are met:
1. The game is actually being clearly improved, rather than just aimlessly rejiggered for the heck of it.
2. You publicly announce your intention to make further changes, so that players know not to get too horribly invested in the not-final versions.
3. The final version does actually arrive, at some reasonable point.

I'm still wondering about this:

Who is Val's stage 1/2/3 boss? I don't recognize the portrait from any of the other character art I've seen. ???

Is that Val's Mom, or something?
Or maybe it's meant to be you, the author, seeing as how that's your avatar here??

Also, do you and Woofy plan on providing any more context for the game's story? I can't help but feel like I'm missing something, somehow...
E.g., what exactly is involved in being a freelance designer for Technicians? Why does Dee seem so disappointed that Mae's not doing the building as well? Couldn't any old person or machine handle just building her designs?

(Edit: Whoops, wrote down the wrong bullet pattern name before.)

[clippa]

For what it's worth, getting replays working on Linux would be this customer's #1 priority at this point.

From the latest steam survey

[Danbo]

Replays on OS X / Linux are just a can of worms that I chose to keep closed / descope for this point in time. I anticipate a few issues - if the solutions are simple, no problem. If it's a huge amount of work, then it's hard to justify, sadly.

Probably no for replay download links on the web view? I'll check if it's possible.

Replays for missions don't make much sense to me (not like the mode tracks highscores or anything), but once I figure out what to do with Exp.Weapon it'll become a more fleshed-out mode in terms of these features.

Other concerns noted.

Achievements:

Spoiler

How Dare You is for entering a censored word on the high score screen.
Supplies Delivered is for crashing into a resupplier. It boggles my mind that like 20% of players have this achievement.
The Perfectionist is for restarting on Stage 1 three times in a row.

The wall comment actually refers to Filibuster. It happens randomly -- it's no good, hope you can bomb it. I had almost an entire rework of the last boss (everything but press and revolver) all but ready to go, but decided to hold it back for now. When it comes to that type of change (boss patterns, enemy layouts etc), I want to deploy it all as one big change, so there's less disruption for players.

I hate roguelites. I don't like when games are "in flux" a lot. Maybe I should have run this game like that, since I'm so slowly learning how to support a game post-release, but ultimately it's not what I would like as a player.
What one person sees as clearly improving the game is what another person might see as pointless rejiggering.

The ST1-3 boss for Val's scenario is a younger version of Val. It might make more sense if you see her ending, but maybe not - keep in mind she just kinda snuck into the game as a bonus character. Mae's is the proper ending.

As for context around the game's story: I don't have any input on that type of thing, ask Woof. Here's what I think: "Putting a lot of text in a game sure makes localization hard..."

[Chacranajxy]

So, I bought this game a couple weeks back, and finished building my new arcade stick yesterday, and figured I should give it a shot.

The hell? This game is completely fucking awesome. How did I not play this until now? It just feels good to play. Soundtrack's amazing, too -- I keep the volume cranked.

[BurlyHeart]

Anyone have issues playing this with a ps3 controller?

It seems like there's a directional button continuously stuck, I've tried rebinding the controls but directional inputs are not acessible. The game worked fine with my arcade stick.

Edit: Seems to be a Mac issue and have a similar problem in mame. Strange I can't rebind the directional controls though for my ps3 controller. Same issue with my TE2+, but at least that does show me to rebind the directions.

[Danbo]

Highly exciting announcement!

http://bluerevolvergame.com/1year/

Any questions you folk might have about Black Label, feel free to ask. Things are still in development, and subject to change, but maybe I can illuminate what I want to do with this update at the very least.

We'll be looking for a wholly new round of playtesting starting from when Black Label Arcade is ready, if you've not been involved in previous playtesting and you're interested, feel free to drop a PM.

[EmperorIng]

Wow, it's so cool to see all these new fixes, tweaks, and content coming along! Blue Revolver was probably my most-played shooter last year, so I can't wait to dive into things again once this black label comes out!

[marus]

Awesome news! I'm definitely interested in playtesting if you'll have me.

Out of curiosity, can you elaborate what you're planning on the "overhauled last stage"? The last stage is already pretty long, so if you're thinking of adding to it I feel like it would be better to just create an all new stage (although I realize that would require a ton more work, so maybe that's not feasible).

[Rue]

Awesome news! I'm definitely interested in playtesting if you'll have me.

Out of curiosity, can you elaborate what you're planning on the "overhauled last stage"? The last stage is already pretty long, so if you're thinking of adding to it I feel like it would be better to just create an all new stage (although I realize that would require a ton more work, so maybe that's not feasible).

It's pretty long and repetitive, using only a handful of enemy patterns and combinations which is slightly modified from what you already dealt with in stage 4. That entire stage felt pretty bare bones in comparison to the rest and usually accounts for half of your total score. I'd suspect it's been remade into a new stage entirely, possibly along with new patterns for each boss.

[Cee]

Awesome news! I'm definitely interested in playtesting if you'll have me.

Out of curiosity, can you elaborate what you're planning on the "overhauled last stage"? The last stage is already pretty long, so if you're thinking of adding to it I feel like it would be better to just create an all new stage (although I realize that would require a ton more work, so maybe that's not feasible).

Overhaul generally means revision and refinement not extension so i'd assume it's more to do with the contents and pace/scoring of the stage.

[Danbo]

It's being completely redone in terms of pacing, enemies, midbosses/boss. It should be about the same length. Stage 5 was the weak point of the game by far, so hopefully we'll be able to correct that.

Specifically, one idea I have is for the 4 midbosses to appear and attack alongside regular enemies a la Stage 2, such that the impetus to speedkill them to spawn more enemies is lessened.

[marus]

Oh okay, that sounds awesome! I misunderstood what you meant by overhaul. I agree that stage 5 is pretty repetitive, and it took me the longest to learn since most of the enemy patterns blend in together. Having some more variety would help a lot.

[Oniros]

Double Action gameplay reveal trailer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Aq7atAuw8

[BurlyHeart]

Very happy to hear that. Enjoyed my time with the game and will pick it up again when the update drops.

[EmperorIng]

Looks fantastic. It feels like a... halfquel? Love the look of some of those new patterns. Blue Revolver was one of my favorite releases in 2016 so I am hopeful this can be too in 2019!

[marus]

Lookin good! I like the new ship. That spread special weapon reminds me a lot of the scrap experimental weapon. It looks like it'll be a good burst-fire type weapon to cash in on chains with, and I bet it could do some good damage too if you can point blank with it. I'm looking forward to giving this game another spin once this comes out!

[BurlyHeart]

Just broke 60m on Normal but died to the final boss. My 1cc score is now 25m less than my St5 score!

Been doing a run on normal or hyper every day for the past few weeks. Slowly getting better. Having a tremendous amount of fun.

[EmperorIng]

Good to see you jumping back into this. I wonder in the time since my Normal 1CC if my skills have improved to get a Hyper mode clear. I've put on a number of 1ccs since then.

I'll just say danbo if you double-charge for Double Action if and when it comes out I'd still pick it up. The hours I spent just learning Normal more than justify its cost.

[oversoul17]

The long awaited Double Action update goes to public Beta in a few hours per danbo's X account.

Changelog here: https://danboland.net/DA_CHANGES.html

[EmperorIng]

Huge news; I had more or less believed it was never coming out. Being free is completely insane; I hope there's a new wave of players to take advantage of this value (and a good-ass game too).

[Lethe]

Played a couple of credits of the beta and I'm impressed. Loads of evidently very considered changes. Val/Missile is subtly but notably harder to use, the other shot types seem much better, you have an incentive to capture patterns instead of just nuking everything that doesn't have a Break bonus (one of my biggest issues), difficulty curve is better with stage 5 being the best part instead of the worst. Even the slowdown is implemented nicely which isn't something you'll hear me praise every day. Although the slowdown does make the stage 5 boss very easy in conjunction with her new patterns which seem a bit too fair right now even at max rank.

The arrange mode is intriguing. I've only tried it out with one weapon so far, the drone, and on the later stages it felt trivial to bomb -> drone -> drone -> bomb refills -> repeat, resulting in easy survival and the scoring going fucking insane (over 100mil from stage 5 alone with no idea what I'm doing). Even if XP-Mode isn't supposed to be balanced the ammo refill on bombing or the frequency of bomb refill could be toned down IMO. It overshadows the pointblank-for-ammo mechanic pretty severely.

Implementing an option for Good Movement (i.e. Touhou-style) seems a bit mad, given how viable it already was to bullshit through virtually everything, but it's not like I can pretend I don't prefer it.

Bombs now grant a 3s period of invulnerability (was 6s)

Wait, it used to be 6 seconds? wtf?

[BurlyHeart]

Whoa big news. Huge fan of the game and looking forawrd to seeing the update.

[Some-Mist]

I got hooked into double action yesterday. I had only played a few hours of vanilla back in 2020/2021 and now I have the itch to go back and attempt a hyper clear.

In double action, I nabbed a normal clear with all 3 characters, and then maybe put a dozen or so runs into hyper mode. My best run was a stage 5 boss 50m run. Also knocked out the parallel 1st/2nd stage bosses and almost the 3rd in my one run.

After the first couple of runs I flipped it over to 120hz for a run in both normal and hyper and it felt a little weird, so I went back to 60hz since it was the rate tested. Feels real nice for a work in progress

[Lethe]

It's out now, as of about 90 minutes ago.

[Some-Mist]

hell yeah! I played the beta again on Monday and nearly got to the 4th stage boss on parallel mode. man, that 3rd boss is kinda hard to take down

[Some-Mist]

took a few runs but got a hyper clear again and back on the boards.

the changes are nice between the final release and beta. the bosses seem to give scoring gems no matter what now, which increases score potential, and I noticed some areas, especially in the 5th stage are easier to chain score but the difficulty has jumped a bit in the final stage