Ardius shmup old school

[loucious]

This is my childhood dream... I was 17 when I applied to Delphine software or lankor... without success
Today I'm 51, it's the first time my project has gone this far...
The project is an old-fashioned pixel art shoot 'em up, with few effects calculated by the engine.
His name is ardius. I did everything. Music. Graphics etc.
It's worth what it's worth
Here is a version from three months ago, I will update soon.
Thank you so much


https://youtu.be/fysjWLotpaQ

[Tigerchest]

This is awesome did you do the whole thing in Godot? (Also love the music)

[loucious]

Hi !
Code : godot
Music :FL STUDIO and a real guitarist friend of mine
Gfx: aseprite

My shmup is still in devellopment, i want to show a demo this month
don't hesitate to register on the website : https://www.ardiusthegame.com

for now the latest version is :
https://youtu.be/keYRdtjTfXY

[The_Fix]

https://youtu.be/keYRdtjTfXY

Why comments are turned off? No like comment?
In Soviet Canada, comment read you!

[loucious]

Bad configuration...
That's ok.
Welcome

[The_Fix]

If you click on the link to your website at Youtube the link 404's, just saying.
The ending of the video scared the piss out of me. lol Volume my man.
There's a big jump in quality between the two versions I watched, keep it up!

[Sumez]

This honestly looks pretty fun.
There a certain appeal to old school feeling shmups with a massive amount of bullets yet not designed around modern/traditional bullet-hell patterns.

[Ixmucane2]

The demo video looks great. Some possible graphical improvements:

• Semi-transparent and additively blended player shot sprites.
  Since the shots overlap, currently the dark outermost pixels of a shot can cover the very bright interior pixels of the shot behind it, which would be a reasonable drawing technique for solid opaque objects (e.g. big cannon shells) but is quite unnatural for blobs of plasma.
• Redesigning excessively detailed textures (or rather excessively small details) for things like the hive-like skyscraper ruins (e.g. both background and foreground variants at 2:35 in the video) and the large spans of complex off-black metallic greeble (e.g. starting at 2:50 in the video).
• Avoiding overly flat surfaces, like the completely unshaded blue concrete (large building facades and platforms between 2:50 and 3:19 in the video) and the cheeks and legs of the final boss.
• Increasing the resolution and/or enhance the antialiasing of sprites that are supposed to be smooth: player shots, the "This Night Playing - David Luzi" sign (which could also be made larger or simpler), middle HUD fonts (the score on the right and the menu and intro texts are quite more readable).

[loucious]

Yeah !
Thank you for feedback
iI will note on the todo list

[WitnessOfTheFall]

Sounds very promising, I add my email

Your game looks fun to play. Plus, I enjoy the background and foreground obstacles which tells a story of what is going on there (I like shmup game with good narrative design)

Oh and the music is great !

[loucious]

Thanks you so much !

[loucious]

Today is a great day :
First level in demo:


https://ardiusthegame.com/building/versions/

you can download it and test it if you please.

Thanks !

[WitnessOfTheFall]

Ok, just played several times !

I managed to attack the boss of the level (but not defeat him despite several attempts) with 96000 points.

Your game is really fun to play, great job !

Just one thing, I launch the game 10 times. Twice, I have got the music cut while playing.

[loucious]

thank you very much,
yes there is a bug with the music
it's on a buglist
some people beat the boss with only 1 live some kill him after 40 times
stay tuned

[CoffeeMakerGames]

Your dev story is really cool to me and I love how you have captured a very dark "terminator" kind of vibe to the whole thing. I'll definitely check this game out later today.

Its a story a lot like my own - doing hobby game dev all my life and trying to break into a career but always falling back to corp software dev. So it resonates a lot with me! I just posted my first Steam page for a shmup recently that I'm trying to get off the ground too and taking game dev full time over the last few years.

If you ever want to compare notes, swap playtests or anything like that let me know! But I'll be back with feedback on this initial test soon either way. Looks fun.

[loucious]

Your dev story is really cool to me and I love how you have captured a very dark "terminator" kind of vibe to the whole thing. I'll definitely check this game out later today.

Its a story a lot like my own - doing hobby game dev all my life and trying to break into a career but always falling back to corp software dev. So it resonates a lot with me! I just posted my first Steam page for a shmup recently that I'm trying to get off the ground too and taking game dev full time over the last few years.

If you ever want to compare notes, swap playtests or anything like that let me know! But I'll be back with feedback on this initial test soon either way. Looks fun.

thanks you !
I would be happy to talk to you about shmup dev!

[loucious]

YI just posted my first Steam page for a shmup recently that I'm trying to get off the ground too and taking game dev full time over the last few years.

Cosmic Destroyer ?? wishlisted !!!

[CoffeeMakerGames]

Yep! Cool, thanks

Checked out your game. Love the pixel art and the classic throwback startup, that was cool. I am not sure if it is intended or not but the ship falls behind from the scroll so starting out I was not on the screen and didn't know what was going on. Second time I was able to push myself on screen but had to always press forward or would slide off to the left.

Keyboard controls were not mapped and didn't work, but joystick did. I died a lot but I think most of that was constrained movement from always pushing forward. If if I could overcome that issue I think I could get a little further.

Music was rockin'

[loucious]

Thanks you for the feedback.
You're the second player who tell me the ship don't follow the scrolling...
I'm trying to reproduce this bug... But i'cant do it...
.
Perhaps joysticks or default controls...

[CoffeeMakerGames]

Perhaps its a VSync thing? My monitor refresh is quite high, and the PC is very high end - so its possible its something with frame sync or floating point rounding.
Not sure if you are using fixed time step or not.