Crisis Wing - Out now!

[pieslice]

Crisis Wing - a Toaplan styled vertical shmup is now released!

Get it from Steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1402090/Crisis_Wing
Get it from Itch.io - https://piesliceproductions.itch.io/crisis-wing

[schleichfahrt]

Congrats on the release, it's definitely a good year for friends of Toaplan-style games.

[EmperorIng]

I've been looking forward to this since the early days of the development thread. Congrats on the release; I'll be picking this up shortly.

[Sturmvogel Prime]

Congratulations on your release! Good luck!!

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Wow, this STG title was worth the wait. I like the little extra embellishments/details (sprite-wise) on the end-stage bosses when each weapon fires their respective bullets/lasers complete with bullet lighting dynamics/fading. Crisis Wing feels like what Toaplan would've done if they were still around to develop/release a modern-day STG title in the 21st century -- certainly an old-school "quarter/yen-muncher" STG if you will with some slick graphical embellishments/touches. The screen really shakes like crazy when an end-stage boss bites the dust indeed.

For pieslice, do you have any plans to release it on the Switch or on an indie arcade platform (such as the Exa-Arcadia or Airframe platforms) in the nearby future?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Stevens]

I like the little extra embellishments/details (sprite-wise) on the end-stage bosses when each weapon fires their respective bullets/lasers complete with bullet lighting dynamics/fading.

I fucking love how each of the bosses weapons are tied to a specific gun battery. Rather then them all just vomiting from the same location/looking identical.

This game is fucking aces.

[schleichfahrt]

This game is fucking aces.

During its development I had a lot of doubts and was unsure, but seeing the end result I wholeheartedly agree.
It's legit and it's awesome.

I sincerely hope it sees the success it deserves.

[M.Knight]

I bought it and played it. It's good fun, I enjoy it wayyyyy more than the Tatsujin games despite the very close influences and inspirations. Time Attack mode is also a pretty cool addition and probably my favorite mode in the game. The short duration and focus on score bonuses combined with the cool Toaplan visual style is an entertaining mix.

There are still a few things I'm kinda iffy about, with some definitely being personal preferences rather than actual issues, but there are things you should probably fix among them IMO.

-Recovery can get brutal since the default shot isn't always super powerful. If you use the bombs well you can survive and make it to the next powerups but it's still a pretty tough task. The default shot feels underpowered. I'm not a fan of linear item-based powerup systems with power penalities upon death in shmups and this is a good example why. But at least a death doesn't ruin the run, so it's probably getting better with time and experience.
-Some of the bullets are hard to see, the flashing effects or halos can be kinda confusing and don't help distringuish the shapes correctly.
-The player's medal and item collection hitbox seems to be as small as the actual cockpit hitbox so it's a pain to get some medals or items.
-When dying (with checkpoints off), you sometimes get a mercy powerup to get back on your feet. However, due to the point above, players who died near the bottom of the screen can't actually collect the item when they respawn sine it'll be too low on the screen and impossible to grab anymore.
-The shots only start in front of the ship and there is no hitbox on the ship itself when firing so being on top of a tile in the time attack mode does not destroy the tile. You have to be underneath it which forces you to be less agressive when playing
-The Raizing-style medal system is an interesting addition that makes some sections (like the stage 5 super agressive zakos) tricky and fun, but the rate at which the medals appear is low enough that you'll almost never get two at the same time on screen when playing the arcade mode. I got the feeling the number of enemies to destroy to spawn the next medal increases with the medal value, maybe that's why. The result is that it's actually hard to break the chain aside from an untimely death. And the recovery mechanic is almost never usable.
-Some of the stage portions have a little lulls in the pacing. Nothing major but you'll get those 1 or 2 seconds of waiting between some of the waves and since there are no ground objects in the arcade mode, you're kinda left with nothing to do.
-The ability to quit is cool, I wish there was an intant restart though, especially for Time Attack
-Having to wait to see the Time attack leaderboards instead of just pressing left and right to scroll through the entries is needlessly frustrating
-The initials entry start at A for every letter instead of resuming at the letter you previously input
-You can still move the cursor during the fadeout transition after you select a mode and it does some weird things to the ship which moves in the opposite direction of the key you've pressed on its own, but pressing movements keys again can fix it.( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGM2ti68Fqw ) You can also press a button to select another mode during the fadeout ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX1UIyfOhfc ) For the info, I disabled the controller input and play on an AZERTY keyboard with WX and directional arrow keys as the controls. (plus space for pause)
-Powerups spawning at the top can't be grabbed until they move down the screen a bit and this can be annoying if they started at the color you want but then changed as soon as they became grabbable.
-Stage 4 is wayyyy too long. The earlier stages were much better paced and this one's length hits like a truck, especially the first time around.
-Are item drops on the powerup carriers random? There's one carrier in the Time Attack mode that used to give me a bomb but it once gave me a powerup, screwing up my scoring.

But despite all those nitpicks I spent a few hours on the game and am having fun with it so it's doing something right. I love the music (especially stage 3!), the explosions are great, when it gets challenging (like the agressive popcorn waves where you need to properly stream) it's fun, and the Time Attack mode alone is worth the price of admission. I definitely didn't expect to like it as much!

[Austin]

Bought it, played it.. Gets a "meh" out of 10 at the moment. I need to put more time into it.

[Despatche]

The fated time has arrived.

Will be checking this out as soon as I can. Congratulations on the release!

[Stevens]

Also props to the fact that there is a full digital instruction book.

PHYSICAL COPY WHEN?!?! jk.

[pieslice]

Hi M.Knight. Thanks for the thorough and detailed feedback!

-The ability to quit is cool, I wish there was an intant restart though, especially for Time Attack
-Having to wait to see the Time attack leaderboards instead of just pressing left and right to scroll through the entries is needlessly frustrating
-The initials entry start at A for every letter instead of resuming at the letter you previously input

Definite quality-of-life improvements that will be patched to the game. Also I think the game should remember your initials.

-You can still move the cursor during the fadeout transition after you select a mode and it does some weird things to the ship which moves in the opposite direction of the key you've pressed on its own, but pressing movements keys again can fix it.( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGM2ti68Fqw ) You can also press a button to select another mode during the fadeout ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX1UIyfOhfc ) For the info, I disabled the controller input and play on an AZERTY keyboard with WX and directional arrow keys as the controls. (plus space for pause)

These are definitely bugs that need to be squished!

-Are item drops on the powerup carriers random? There's one carrier in the Time Attack mode that used to give me a bomb but it once gave me a powerup, screwing up my scoring.

This is also a glitch. Bombs should come in fixed intervals.

[pieslice]

Has anyone experience strange behaviour if the screen is set to CCW rotation? It seems that the controls get mirrored...

[Klatrymadon]

Yeah, that happened to me the first time I played the game, and nothing I would do seemed to fix it (I fiddled with all of the options for X and Y inversion, the other 'axis' settings, etc, to no avail). That was when playing with a 360 pad. I've been using a universal arcade stick since and haven't had any problems. (Options are currently set to "Xbox 360 defaults").

I like the game a lot, having spent about an hour with it so far, but would echo most of M.Knight's points! The slightly underpowered feeling of the main shot leads to some enemy waves feeling a bit 'euroshmuppy', as they race to the bottom of the screen whilst easily absorbing whatever you manage to throw at them. This is pretty well rectified by keeping the green shot and not dying, but it can make recovery a bit of a slog. Once you've got a bit of momentum going and you're medalling nicely, though, it's really fun! My favourite thing about it so far is how often the bosses attempt 'cross-ups', herding you with one attack to slam you with the next. They patterns they use are actually pretty generous in terms of dodging space, but they manage to feel vicious and devious.

[M.Knight]

Nice, thanks for the answers! And you're welcome!

If the bombs spawn on a cycle instead of being pre-assigned to specific carriers like I assumed, then they shouldn't actually be glitched. Or at least what I experienced wasn't a glitch. I checked the recording I made of the run where I had this behavior and there was one of the earlier powerup tiles that I wasn't able to destroy before it left the screen. This must be why I didn't get the bomb when I expected it : my item cycle had a delay.

I tested the CCW option and left/right seem to be inverted, yeah. Up and down are fine for me though. Also, for some reason you spawn on the right side of the screen instead of on the left side.


EDIT : Oh yeah, I forgot one thing : U and V are very very similar in the initials entry

[pieslice]

It looks like CCW draws the game horizontally mirrored - should have catched that before the release. Need to patch that asap.

[Some-Mist]

This looks badass! Insta-bought

Congrats on the release

[Flobeamer1922]

I bought this the day after it came out. As someone who's enjoyed and played a lot of the two Truxton games, this is a game I'm liking a lot! I've reached up to partway through stage 5 so far, and I'm feeling pretty much right at home with this one! This game has some great tunes, cool graphics, and a lot of what I liked about the Truxton games. I really enjoyed stage 4's references to Truxton II, and even its bonus round's reference to Vimana, which surprised me. Being able to choose whether or not to play with checkpoints is a great feature. I've been playing with checkpoints enabled to get that true classic Toaplan shmup experience. I also really appreciate the inclusion of a practice mode, because some parts of these stages are rough, and the stage 5 boss is proving to be a real wall for me at the moment. I do have one little thing I want to point out, though. I'm not liking how, when you pause and the "QUIT GAME" text appears, yes is highlighted by default. I've found myself accidentally exiting out of the current game a number of times because of this. Not a huge deal, but it's a bit annoying, and I'd imagine I'm not the only one who's had trouble with that.

[M.Knight]

From what I understand, there are two ways to pause :
-Press Esc. This is what brings up the "Quit? Yes/No" menu you have mentionned
-Press the dedicated pause button that you can set up in the config menu. This will simply pause the game without any option to quit the game. Using this button instead of Esc can solve your issue I think.

Oh, this reminds of me of a a thing : is it possible to disable the credit-feeding? Or at least have the "Continue" option default to No instead of Yes ?

[MathU]

Will there be a Steam-free release at some point?

[Aurel]

Good game: congrats !!

With CRT shader applied it looks very nice!

[pieslice]

Omg that looks cool!
Is that an open source CRT shader?
I'd love to patch that shader in to the game.

[pieslice]

Will there be a Steam-free release at some point?

That is a definite possibility - that depends if I could get a publishing deal with some other dealer(s) as well.
The Steam version is DRM free though.

[Aurel]

Omg that looks cool!
Is that an open source CRT shader?
I'd love to patch that shader in to the game.

I use the shader "CRT-Geom MOD" for ReShade
You can find it here : http://www.mediafire.com/file/20oczm06i ... 3.rar/file

[pieslice]

I use the shader "CRT-Geom MOD" for ReShade
You can find it here : http://www.mediafire.com/file/20oczm06i ... 3.rar/file

That one is GPL so no use for commercial products
Too bad this is probably the best looking CRT filter to date. Probably some public domain ones can be tweaked to look nearly as good though...

[pieslice]

Version 1.0.3 is live

Changelog:

Technical upgrade:

• Game recognizes if the desktop set to portait orientation.
Use Letterbox view mode instead of Rotate90 CW or Rotate90 CCW if your desktop is set to portait orientation. Rotated view will look deformed in non-landscape desktop orientations.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed menus being interactive during fade-out transition
• Fixed game's internal difficulty being set to lowest value if Continue is used on loops higher than 1

Quality-of-life changes:

• Replaced the simple in-game Quit Prompt with Pause Menu
Pause menu allows quick restart without navigation back-and-forth between the main menu and the game
• Quit and restart selections default to NO, not YES
• Name entry changes:
When entering your initials, the next letter is the same as the previous one, not A
Name entry remembers your name throughout one game session (Entering Main View will reset the name back to AAA)
• High score tables can be quickly switched by moving left or right

Additions:

• Added UI sounds to in-game menus

[pieslice]

1.0.4 Version is now Live!

Technical Upgrades:

• Converted the game scripting backend from Mono to C++ (IL2CPP). This should increase performance across all machines.
• Reworked the screen drawing routines. This will fix several issues regarding the game view such as inverted screen in certain situations when counterclockwise rotation was used as well as user-interface layout issues with certain resolutions. Also the screen tearing with v-sync off is greatly reduced and in general the input lag is often less than with the previous version.
• All graphics are drawn with better pixel-perfect accuracy.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed the stage 3 boss occasionally not morphing to its final attack form.
• Fixed self-destructing wing cannons in the blue gun-wall enemies in stage 5.
• Fixed the “medal loss” sound being played every time a medal fell off-screen - regardless of whether the medal score chain was lost or not.

Additions:

• A CRT filter is added to the game. The CRT filter is found in the Video Options view under the “True low res” item.
• All background graphics have been slightly reworked for greater detail.

Adjustments:

• Gameplay change: When the player is destroyed a mercy power-up is dropped every time the player had a sub-weapon installed.
• Gameplay tweak: Mercy power-ups dropped after being destroyed will move upwards before starting to float. They also move 30% slower than regular power-ups thus making them easier to catch.
• Graphics tweak: Made several changes to the enemy bullet graphics in order to increase their visibility.
• Audio balance tweak: Reduced the volume of the player weapon fire.

Quality-of-life Changes:

• Single-player game-modes can be played by either keyboard or controller simultaneously
• Controller connection is recognized by the game user interface (not in-game) - no need to restart the application for the game to recognize recently plugged-in controllers.

[EmperorIng]

Awesome! I've been playing this off and on and I'm happy to see you tweaking some things. This has been a fun game to play, even if I haven't survived past stage 4 yet

[pieslice]

Nice, thanks for the answers! And you're welcome!

If the bombs spawn on a cycle instead of being pre-assigned to specific carriers like I assumed, then they shouldn't actually be glitched. Or at least what I experienced wasn't a glitch. I checked the recording I made of the run where I had this behavior and there was one of the earlier powerup tiles that I wasn't able to destroy before it left the screen. This must be why I didn't get the bomb when I expected it : my item cycle had a delay.

Hello again!
The bombs spawn every fifth power-up carrier (or box in Time Attack), they are not assigned to a specific carrier (or box). There are ten (10) power-up boxes in the Time Attack mode - by destroying them all you'll get two (2) extra bombs.

I watched your 301K replay and you actually did not destroy one of them - therefore you did not get the second bomb spawn.

[pieslice]

Awesome! I've been playing this off and on and I'm happy to see you tweaking some things. This has been a fun game to play, even if I haven't survived past stage 4 yet

The latest version should have recovery after death a bit more lenient as you will always get the mercy power-up if you have a sub-weapon installed.