Cave Blast 0.1

bpe · Post by **bpe** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 1:14 pm

Please enjoy this total rip-off.. I mean, hack job... no, I mean... one level hommage. Yeah, that's it, hommage.

incognoscente · Post by **incognoscente** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 7:31 pm

A near-as-damnit 1-life clear, score 716,760. Uploaded to MegaUpload because I really really have nowhere else to upload right now.

P_HAT · Post by **P_HAT** » Tue Jun 12, 2007 8:14 pm

Wow, very nice smoke effects!

not bad for ver 0.1

bpe · Post by **bpe** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 8:51 am

Wow, that's a pretty sweet replay ! New levels will need to be more difficult

But, no love for the laser beam ?

P_Hat, thanks

battlegorge · Post by **battlegorge** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:03 am

Nice laser!
Wich programming language do you use?
And whats the framerate, it looks a bit unsmooth and too slow.

bpe · Post by **bpe** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:21 am

I use C++ and OpenGL.

It tries to run at 60 FPS, but I noticed that a replay is slower, not sure why yet

incognoscente · Post by **incognoscente** » Wed Jun 13, 2007 7:55 pm

I wasn't sure what kind of feedback you wanted so I just posted a replay instead. :D

The laser is too slow for me, but I usually go for the fast ships in games (Judge Spear Slave, Uo Poko, Tatsujin ship with max speed-ups, Type A, etc). I also found the laser to not be stronger than the shot so I had no compelling reason to use it. If you want to encourage players to use the laser, I would suggest making it do slightly more damage than the regular shot.

You may disregard the following feedback as applicable:
If you are trying to clone Tsuneki Ikeda's style, you need to give the tanks far fewer hitpoints and have more tanks driving into the scene, widen the gaps between bullets, and speed up the movement of the slowest bullet patterns a little. Also bring in 1-shot flying enemies from the top corners of the screen more frequently to give shorter breaks in the action.
For the boss, provide larger gaps in the long bullet strands so players can dodge through them. In doing this, you can speed up the bullets a bit and increase the pattern refiring times to make the player more active in their dodging. I thought the boss had too many hitpoints, but that may be because I don't like boss fights :\

However, what you have presented does carry a style of its own that need not be forced into compliance with someone else's style.

I found running up and down the bullet strands fired by the boss interesting, different, and a bit of fun. The large, fast blue spread I thought was a bit cheap though. You might want to try one of the following changes to it:

make the blue bullets smaller so the player has more chance of getting lucky in their navigation
make these bullets slower (otherwise the same) so the player has more chance of reacting properly to the situation (you are overlapping about 3 patterns at this point)
make the blue spread a static-aimed pattern that always shoots, for example, straight down and in 20- and 45-degree increments on either side.

For the midboss area, you may want to try moving the midboss to the left (it currently moves right) so new players stand a better chance of navigating that section. You may also try widening the gaps in the pink pattern fired by the midboss and speeding up the bullets fired.

I think tanks are still firing even when they are smoking which threw me off when I first started. I like to neutralize tanks and kill them later :(

And lastly, I must agree with P_HAT about the smoke paticles!

edit:
More replays, including a bug in the controls, a 1-life clear, and a 736,560 pt run. Includes table of contents with notes.
Also, a bug not discussed in said notes: it is possible to launch a bomb while another bomb is still firing (to no benefit). You might want a boolean in the bomb launching code :)

bpe · Post by **bpe** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 1:14 pm

Sorry for the slow reply, but thanks for the awesome tips ! I realize I suck as a game designer so I'll definitely take this into account and try a few things for 0.2

In a bit of a hurry right now but will post more later, just wanted to add a quick heads up.

bpe · Post by **bpe** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 10:01 am

Version 0.2 is here

Enjoy

So how stupid do you have to be to properly implement chaining, Unit Tests and everything... and then forget to actually add the values it produces to the player score

Fixed, and at the same time less stars (and less value to them, another bug), so I think dodging and overall leetness will be more important now

Code: Select all

Changes
    * Faster ship; can get closer to screen edges
    * Laser a little stronger; color changes more clearly with strength (which goes up if you have more pods)
    * Star pickup is more Cave-like
    * Extra bullet color for boss; not-so-lame final pattern; fight a bit less dragged-out
    * Add 10 points when bullet impacts enemy; 10 points when laser hits boss
    * More crap to blow up :)
    * Boss-fight keeps scrolling (with an artwork glitch)

Bugfixes 
    * Actually managed to correctly implement chaining.. and then ignored the scores it produced !! Arggg
    * Small gold star is worth 300 points instead of 100, oops. Less stars all around
    * Can throw a bomb while previous one still in affect
    * Pods keep shooting while main ship explodes

eight · Post by **eight** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 10:33 am

Sounds cool! Can somebody post up screenshots as I'm at work right now.

bpe · Post by **bpe** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 11:59 am

eight · Post by **eight** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 12:25 pm

Oye, looks interesting, thanks. Will give it a try tonight.

incognoscente · Post by **incognoscente** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 7:15 am

Sorry, was much busier the past month than anticipated.
New replays and notes. There is a 995,000-point replay in there along with some thoughts on balance and timings.

I hope the notes don't sound too harsh. I keep playing this game, so it's not that I dislike it. :)

bpe · Post by **bpe** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 4:44 pm

Awesome advice as always ! I'm a bit busy so I don't know when I can update, but I'll definitely try some of those things out.
In fact I'd say some of the advice you write is probably useful to other people too, some good generalizations and ideas in there..
Maybe you can work it into a more general thread for others ?

Thanks again