STG veterans - need your feedback (WIP)

A place for people with an interest in developing new shmups.
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Do-NX-FB-72D
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STG veterans - need your feedback (WIP)

Post by Do-NX-FB-72D »

First of all, thank you for clicking on this post. Your interest means a lot to me.

I've been working on a secret project for the past two years: a retro console STG with a danmaku-inspired style, but slightly less intense due to hardware constrains. My goal is to make the game more approachable for less experienced players without introducing 'euroshmup' mechanics.

Throughout the development, I’ve paid close attention to the insights shared by Bog Hog and The Electric Underground, as their opinions have been a big influence on my design decisions.

Unfortunately, I can’t share screenshots or reveal too many details about the project at this stage, but I’d still love to hear your thoughts on some general aspects of the genre. I’ll outline a few points and ask for your input to help shape the best possible experience.

Here’s one of the key design questions I’d love to hear your thoughts on:

Should the in-game rank system influence the score awarded for destroying enemies?

Here are the options I’ve been considering:
  1. Each hit gives more or fewer points depending on the current rank, and destroying the enemy also provides a different reward based on rank.
  2. Hits always give the same amount of points, but destroying an enemy at a higher rank provides a higher reward.
  3. Rank should not affect the points awarded for either hits or destroying enemies.
Observations: Each enemy type has a predefined reward for each rank. For example, an enemy might provide 1,000 points at Rank A, 500 points at Rank B, etc. Additionally, rank will affect the density and speed of bullet patterns, so higher ranks will naturally make survival more challenging

Do you think it would be controversial to include a mechanic that rewards players for dodging bullets near their hitbox (similar to Ibara Kuro Black Label), but prevents the player from shooting during this 'bullet time'?

I’d love to know your thoughts—would this feel like an interesting risk-reward dynamic, or does it go against the core principles of the genre?

I’d love to hear your opinions on this and ask that you explain the reasoning behind your choice. If you're interested, I’ll be asking about other aspects of the game in this post—and there might even be a surprise down the line!
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DMC
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Re: STG veterans - need your feedback (WIP)

Post by DMC »

I like the ambition of trying new ways to integrate rank mechanics into scoring.

So hits here means just damaging an enemy without destroying him? If so, the difference between your option a and b will only matter a lot for the bigger enemies right? Like Bosses.
If you could do hits without reducing HP too much, like in Battle Garegga (for example the first boss where you can shoot off the pain on the sides without killing the boss to milk some extra tick points, plus shoot some extra parts, https://youtu.be/cQgeb6Sa-ts?si=lifJQSPA78LbtdVm&t=94) then I guess option a would be a quite drastic change. The player drives up rank, and then milk hit points.

But what do you consider the real differences would be between a and b?
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Do-NX-FB-72D
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Re: STG veterans - need your feedback (WIP)

Post by Do-NX-FB-72D »

DMC wrote: Sat Jan 25, 2025 12:24 pm I like the ambition of trying new ways to integrate rank mechanics into scoring.

So hits here means just damaging an enemy without destroying him?
Yes
DMC wrote: Sat Jan 25, 2025 12:24 pm If so, the difference between your option a and b will only matter a lot for the bigger enemies right?
Like Bosses.
If you could do hits without reducing HP too much, like in Battle Garegga (for example the first boss where you can shoot off the pain on the sides without killing the boss to milk some extra tick points, plus shoot some extra parts, https://youtu.be/cQgeb6Sa-ts?si=lifJQSPA78LbtdVm&t=94) then I guess option a would be a quite drastic change. The player drives up rank, and then milk hit points.
Right now, this is the system I have in place: there are 4 possible ranks—A, B, C, and D. Rank A is the highest difficulty. To increase the rank, the player must collect medals (1 medal increases the counter by 1 step; 100 medals raise the rank by one full level). Each time the player dies, the rank decreases by a full level.

As a result, killing or milking enemies does not directly increase the difficulty, but playing to maximize your score does.

The medal system works similarly to Muchi Muchi Pork. It starts with a value of 100 points. Collecting all medals on screen increases the value of subsequent medals to 200, 500, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, and finally 10,000 points. However, if you miss the last medal on screen, the value of the next medals drops to one-tenth of the current value.

Does this appeal to you?
DMC wrote: Sat Jan 25, 2025 12:24 pm But what do you consider the real differences would be between a and b?
I want the player to be interested in maximizing their score, but I don’t want to punish them too harshly either, so I’m aiming for a balance in this aspect.

I’ve considered that lower ranks could give no points for hits, while higher ranks could reward them. However, this would create greater disparity in the final scores.
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Re: STG veterans - need your feedback (WIP)

Post by Ixmucane2 »

Since a good player will make very few errors, the design of scoring systems should start from a perfect or almost perfect performance as a baseline (maximum score) and decide how much the total score should decrease for various types of failure (letting an enemy escape, losing a life, not catching or not creating at all a medal, having lower rank/difficulty than the maximum possible for any reason).
Some of these errors should be terrible, some significant, some completely forgiven, in order to align fun gameplay with score incentives.

From this point of view there is no obvious reason to award points for hitting enemies without killing them; an indirect reward can make more sense, for example:
  • hits produce rank increasing medals or score multipliers, only kills give points
  • weak hits give offensive resources (e.g. by turning damageable boss parts into pickup items instead of destroying them)
  • keeping enemies alive gives valuable extra enemies time to appear on screen (typically timed waves of minor or popcorn enemies along with a boss)
  • keeping enemies alive gives points or offensive resources (e.g. by letting the player graze more bullets, for score or to charge special weapons)
Obviously rewarding elaborate slow killing in any of these ways precludes other fun mechanics like bonuses for killing enemies in a short time (e.g. late Raiden games) or bonuses for shooting point blank.
Likewise, difficult dodging (likely in a somewhat danmaku game) is incompatible with rewards for shooting enemies in a timely manner and/or with accurate aiming, and requiring the player to pick up many or important items (particularly medals) is incompatible with intense bullet patterns and other obstacles.
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marus
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Re: STG veterans - need your feedback (WIP)

Post by marus »

My goal is to make the game more approachable for less experienced players without introducing 'euroshmup' mechanics.
One thing to keep in mind is that newer players generally aren't going to care too much about your scoring system, unless you're making some specific design decisions that present scoring front-and-center to the player. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing (there's a lot of shmups that I love playing for survival but have zero interest in scoring), but I thought I'd point that out since your questions are focused on scoring. Imo for a "standard" shmup, focusing on making survival fun and engaging will make your game more appealing to all players, while balancing scoring will add depth and longevity for more experienced players.

In particular, I think games with complex rank systems tend to be really hard to get right if you're specifically trying to attract less-experienced players. This is because the actions which influence rank tend to have a slower and less visible player feedback cycle (ex in Battle Garegga, picking up powers ups increases rank, but the player doesn't notice the effects of this until multiple stages in). This is why games with complex rank control tend not to be recommended for newer players. I'm not saying it can't work, but it's something to be aware about.
Should the in-game rank system influence the score awarded for destroying enemies?
Without seeing the rest of your game, I think one thing I can say is that you should think about how your various systems a) interact with each other, and b) influence player behavior. In regards to scoring, you already have a medal system which encourages players to increase the rank (more medals = more score = more rank). With that in mind, all of the options you present don't do anything to further influence player behavior:

a - Player is encouraged to increase rank, because more rank = more score
b - Player is encouraged to increase rank, because more rank = more score
c - Player is encouraged to increase rank, because more rank = more score (from medals)

All that is to say, I don't think there's a major difference between any of these options. They all seem fine if you want the scoring-focused player to increase rank as much as possible. It's worth considering if that's what your goal is though, and like Ixmucane2 pointed out above, there's probably more interesting things you can do with enemies to make score routing more complex.
Do you think it would be controversial to include a mechanic that rewards players for dodging bullets near their hitbox (similar to Ibara Kuro Black Label), but prevents the player from shooting during this 'bullet time'?
Again I say this without seeing your game, but I have an extremely hard time seeing how this can work well in a danmaku game. Due to the amount of bullets on screen, you're pretty much always going to be grazing something (even on accident). If you look at games where grazing is a central mechanic, you'll notice that the focus tends to be less "are you grazing", but "how much are you grazing".
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Re: STG veterans - need your feedback (WIP)

Post by Ixmucane2 »

Re-reading, it is reasonable to give higher score at higher rank if the game is more difficult at higher rank and/or if increasing and maintaining rank is an achievement by itself.

But:
  • How does rank increase difficulty, and how much? There's a whole spectrum between increasing score only, or pretending to (for example the medals in Xeno Fighters R) and dramatically raising difficulty.
  • How do you show the difference between difficulty increase as a level by level progression and difficulty increase because of rank, in a way that makes rank obvious?
  • In addition to maximizing rank in order to maximize score, there's at least another (completely opposite) fun thing to do with rank: reducing it before it rises to impossible difficulty. Is it a strategic theme you want to include? If you do, is rank sufficiently visible and easy to affect?
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