XOP .. again

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 5:15 am

Hi people. About 2 years ago, I re-released a game I had made, XOP, as freeware. There was some sort of bug that was causing it to crash, much to my annoyance. Anyway, I finally tracked it down, and it ended up being in the MOD player addon I was using. So I replaced the MOD player XOP uses, and now everything seems to be good. I'm keeping my fingers crossed ..

Edit: Didn't keep fingers crossed hard enough, apparently there's some problem with FMOD as well. It's now using the DUMB library.

I've also went back and made some revisions to the gameplay. I've removed all of the game's randomness - random enemy positions and shot patterns have all been changed. The way Dal coins fall has also been changed to be less random.

There's also a new counter that adds up when you destroy enemies, but it drains rapidly. Taking out multiple enemies at once will give you a higher bonus from this. You also get an extra life at 1 mil points.

Button 4, which previously gave your ship a temporary speed boost, now gives a constant speed boost as long as the button is held down.

One more thing I did is, I made the reflect shield not suck. It has a wider range (covers the entire screen) and does more damage to enemies that get into it. Also, all enemies/bullets are affected by it. It's much closer to a bomb, rather than just a way to clear the screen of bullets for a moment. I also boosted some of the secondary weapons to do more damage, so they aren't as useless in the later levels.

I also removed the tutorial screen.

Don't know if this will really interest anyone, but if you were turned off from the game because it decided to crash on you, it's fixed. And if you felt the randomness was annyoing and prevented you from memorizing levels, that's changed now too. And if you felt the weapons/bombs were weak .. they're better now. If you thought the graphics sucked ass .. sorry, they still suck.

I'm planning to make a new shooter, based on a sequel to XOP I had planned to do, but ran out of steam/into real life stuff. Will provide more details when I have some actual screenshots. Since I allready have XOP as a code base, it shouldn't take as long to make.

Anyway, here's a link to grab XOP : http://rydia.net/udder/prog/xop/

I also put up the updated XOP.exe on it's own, if you allready have XOP installed and don't feel like downloading the whole thing again : http://rydia.net/udder/prog/download/xop_exe.zip

320x240 · Post by **320x240** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 7:36 am

Quite Compile-like I would say. Lot's happening on the screen with less "focused" gameplay than many other shmups.

This new version froze my computer though. It would momentarily freeze, with stuttering sound, only to continue after a few seconds, but a little into level 2 it froze for good. The older version I played never did that.

stuntman · Post by **stuntman** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 9:22 am

I really enjoyed the old version (no time to try the updated one right now). Good luck with the new shooter, which I look forward to seeing/playing

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 5:02 pm

320x240 wrote:Quite Compile-like I would say. Lot's happening on the screen with less "focused" gameplay than many other shmups.

Yes, I went with 8 long-ish levels (and 2 extra levels that are just kindof bonus-ish) with lots of variety, but none of them are really as polished as levels from a Cave game, which tend to have 5-6 shorter stages at most.

320x240 wrote:This new version froze my computer though. It would momentarily freeze, with stuttering sound, only to continue after a few seconds, but a little into level 2 it froze for good. The older version I played never did that.

I did not have any problems on my PC, however even one person having a problem so soon really got to me, so I went and changed the MOD library again. Please tell me this one doesn't have any problems .. I apparently have terrible choice in music playing libraries ;P

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 5:02 pm

stuntman wrote:Don't bomb. DON'T BOMB.
Damn! Should have bombed.

Story of my life.

lgb · Post by **lgb** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 10:45 pm

Yay a patch. I'll post some feedback tomorrow.

Udderdude wrote:
stuntman wrote:Don't bomb. DON'T BOMB.
Damn! Should have bombed.
Story of my life.

Indeed so. Stupid conserving mindset is bad for shooters sometimes.

320x240 · Post by **320x240** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 9:35 pm

There where no problems with this new version. I looped it on normal and played the first level in very hard.

A valiant effort really, but as a shareware game it was doomed from the start. Real shmups such as this are just to difficult for the average gamer and trying to make it more mainstream kills it for the dedicated players (i.e. everyone actually spending time with the game.) Add to this the fact that a lot of the hardcore crowd wants "official" realeases only and wont give anything "homemade" the chance it deserves (I'm speaking from personal experience on this) - after all there is so many great games out there allready.

To cater for the average player and still have a game difficult enough for the hardcore player you have to do something like Treasure did with RS and Ikaruga, which is adding a puzzle-element and "serious" content and presentation. Alternavely you can let the player control/fight lots of big-breasted women with little girl voices. Brains and sex is in - twitch is out.

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 9:45 pm

does this game have bullets?

kong · Post by **kong** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 10:01 pm

I guess I'm one of the few who bought XOP. I enjoyed it and I'll give the updated version a spin when I get a chance. I'm looking forward to seeing your next game.

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 10:52 pm

It actually plays very well. I think that many of the sprites look a bit flat and or rushed though. It would be nice to have an option to turn off the scanlines they kind of defeat the whole low res art aspect. I'm not saying that the art is bad but I think you could polish some of the ships a bit more. Some parts were a little too dither-happy. I don't mean to come off as a jack ass I just see a great game that could use a little polish on some of the sprites and tiles.

You can get advise on sprites at Pixel Joint forums/ Pixelation and get more reviews from Shmup-Dev (in my sig).

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 11:57 am

Pixel_Outlaw wrote:It actually plays very well. I think that many of the sprites look a bit flat and or rushed though. I'm not saying that the art is bad but I think you could polish some of the ships a bit more. Some parts were a little too dither-happy. I don't mean to come off as a jack ass I just see a great game that could use a little polish on some of the sprites and tiles.

This was definitely a result of wanting so many varied themes/levels and enemy graphics, that I got lazy and let some of them end up looking like poop.

Pixel_Outlaw wrote:It would be nice to have an option to turn off the scanlines they kind of defeat the whole low res art aspect.

If you set the resolution to 640x480 or 280x300, these resolutions will not have the scanline effect.

Pixel_Outlaw wrote:You can get advise on sprites at Pixel Joint forums/ Pixelation and get more reviews from Shmup-Dev (in my sig).

Thanks for the tip. I am aware that the sprite work in XOP could have used some improvements. I intend for the sequel to have higher quality sprites overall.

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 12:03 pm

320x240 wrote:A valiant effort really, but as a shareware game it was doomed from the start. Real shmups such as this are just to difficult for the average gamer and trying to make it more mainstream kills it for the dedicated players (i.e. everyone actually spending time with the game.) Add to this the fact that a lot of the hardcore crowd wants "official" realeases only and wont give anything "homemade" the chance it deserves (I'm speaking from personal experience on this) - after all there is so many great games out there allready.

Yes, I realize all this now, but back then I was still in college and very optimistic. I guess some people have to learn the hard way .. ;P

Randorama · Post by **Randorama** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 12:37 pm

Music Menu please!

Ehi Udder also.