XOP Black

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 6:54 pm

XOP Black is finished. Yay! It's another XOP game with 5 new levels.

The gameplay is pretty different from the original. Levels are shorter and much more intense. The weapon system has been removed and replaced with a DDP-like wide/straight shot. There's also a scoring system, where you get more points for killing enemies closer to you. Coins will be attracted to your ship at close ranges, too.

I've also re-released the original XOP with some of the stuff I added to XOP Black (Controller config, etc).

http://rydia.net/udder/prog/xopblack/

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 8:45 pm

wut ketsui

hiscore thread plz

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 8:58 pm

wow this game is retardedly easy i beat very hard on my first try

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 9:02 pm

also the scoring system is incredibly retarded

"HEY LETS THROW IN CHAINING JUST TO HAVE A SCORING SYSTEM LOL"

and the game is incredibly glitchy

the bullet patterns are stupid

P_HAT · Post by **P_HAT** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 9:40 pm

AWESOME

But -

*Too easy on normal (i 2-all on my first run

)
*Where my red hitbox?

Ok, need play more.

P.S. WTF is Eva-style face on gigantic cosmic Giger-style vagina???

P_HAT · Post by **P_HAT** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 9:54 pm

shoe-sama wrote: and the game is incredibly glitchy

the bullet patterns are stupid

Agree

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 10:02 pm

it's too easy to dodge the bullets by just holding down accelerate key and moving max speed

also who teh hell uses a fastkey

everyone uses slowkey

Zebra Airforce · Post by **Zebra Airforce** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 10:15 pm

shoe-sama wrote:it's too easy to dodge the bullets by just holding down accelerate key and moving max speed

also who teh hell uses a fastkey

everyone uses slowkey

just set ship speed to slow and fast + full-auto on the same button

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 10:45 pm

also why are there only 4 stages

and how come the tlb is a wuss

its like easier than gradius brain lulz

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:11 am

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:17 am

shoe-sama wrote:wow this game is retardedly easy i beat very hard on my first try

Either you're lying, or really good at shooters. If so, grats, you beat a shmup that wasn't meant to be as hard as the most difficult stuff out there. Maybe I'll make a new version with an even higher difficulty just for you :p

shoe-sama wrote:it's too easy to dodge the bullets by just holding down accelerate key and moving max speed

I don't know what part of the game you are moving around with accelerate and skipping entire bullet patterns, but I wasn't able to find any myself.

shoe-sama wrote:also the scoring system is incredibly retarded

"HEY LETS THROW IN CHAINING JUST TO HAVE A SCORING SYSTEM LOL"

Sounds like you made that conclusion in all of 2 seconds. You must have, because it doesn't actually have an enemy chaining system to begin with. Try actually playing it for score?

shoe-sama wrote:and the game is incredibly glitchy

Going to elaborate on this, or is "It's not a perfect clone of a Cave game" a glitch now?

shoe-sama wrote:the bullet patterns are stupid

Ok, this is just dumb. If you're going to take a crap all over my game, at least back up your opinions with some description. All you're doing is spamming/flaming. And I know how much you love to spam.

320x240 · Post by **320x240** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 1:59 pm

Don't worry, if it isn't made by Cave or part of a series any new game will be met with a trashing here. The main point is to develop your own style and keep on refining it.

Also, shoe-sama is to busy playing your game to respond right now.

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:26 pm

i see a load of harsh commentaries... anyway, i like this game, and if its free, way better for me!... so its just a matter of pov.

Zebra Airforce · Post by **Zebra Airforce** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 4:46 pm

Okay, after some play here are my criticisms:

-The bullets in the EX level are a too bright, and they hurt my eyes

-One of the bullet patterns didn't seem to function correctly. I was playing on Normal, Stage 4. One stream shot almost straight down, while other curved to the side, but neither came close to hitting me.

-The sparks from your shot hitting enemies are on the layer above bullets, making it hard to see them when point-blanking enemies.

-Options are plentiful and fun to play with, but it doesn't save my controller configuration!

-Massacre mode is fun

-I'm a little confused about the scoring system. What is the number that pops up when you destroy some enemies? And do coins increment in value as you collect them, or is that just a coin counter in the corner?

PS shoe-sama is being a cunt as usual, just ignore him

Shion · Post by **Shion** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:23 pm

Great game, cool enemy design

Like said, it's a bit easy if you're used to the madness of arcade games, but definitely not a bad game. I'm going to give it a go on the highest difficulty tonight to form a better verdict.

Yay for homebrew shmup developers!

stuntman · Post by **stuntman** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 6:57 pm

So, it's not that difficult, but there's nothing wrong with that. I got pretty far on my first go, and I had fun getting there. The reworked music from the original XOP is pretty cool, and the graphics might not be stunning but work perfectly well. The addition of controller settings is welcome (no problem saving my config). On the whole, the game has scope for some improvements, but it already gets plenty of things right. Thanks for releasing this, Udderdude.

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:12 pm

wtf is that item counter then?

and the patterns are incredibly stupid so making it more difficult in that direction isn't gonna do anything

Zebra Airforce · Post by **Zebra Airforce** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:17 pm

stuntman wrote:So, it's not that difficult, but there's nothing wrong with that. I got pretty far on my first go, and I had fun getting there. The reworked music from the original XOP is pretty cool, and the graphics might not be stunning but work perfectly well. The addition of controller settings is welcome (no problem saving my config). On the whole, the game has scope for some improvements, but it already gets plenty of things right. Thanks for releasing this, Udderdude.

Well put! Though, I think the graphics are pretty awesome.

So, it saves your config and not mine? That's weird.

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:54 pm

shoe-sama wrote:and the patterns are incredibly stupid so making it more difficult in that direction isn't gonna do anything

Care to elaborate or are you just going to keep flinging mud?

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 8:15 pm

oh it's just the same problem that all games that tack on higher difficulty have

they just throw in more bullets and oftentimes make the game unfair at certain points

unless modifications were made to balance out those sections

the only places where that really bothered me was the 2nd and 3rd boss on very hard though, due to low visibility

320x240 · Post by **320x240** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:13 pm

I understand where shoe-sama's coming from. Designing patterns that are both hard and fair is the most difficult part in a modern shmup. I guess that is where Cave excels.

I haven't played XOP Black yet though, so I can't comment on it.

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 3:43 pm

shoe-sama wrote:oh it's just the same problem that all games that tack on higher difficulty have

they just throw in more bullets and oftentimes make the game unfair at certain points

unless modifications were made to balance out those sections

the only places where that really bothered me was the 2nd and 3rd boss on very hard though, due to low visibility

I did not 'tack on' the higher difficulty. I tested and developed the entire game on very hard, and only went down to hard/normal to make sure everything was working properly.

The level 2 and 3 bosses are perfectly fair, you just have to watch out for the add-on parts bullets. They aren't random, or spewing tons of super-fast crap that you can hardly avoid. just be careful of them. It's true they don't follow along with the pattern of the main boss, but that's just different, not unfair.

If you're talking about the level 3 boss's desperation shot .. you can always blow up his add-on parts before he starts firing it.

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 3:53 pm

Zebra Airforce wrote:-The bullets in the EX level are a too bright, and they hurt my eyes

First time I've had anyone tell me the bullets are too bright .. usually they say they can't see them. I guess I went overboard that time o_O

Zebra Airforce wrote:-One of the bullet patterns didn't seem to function correctly. I was playing on Normal, Stage 4. One stream shot almost straight down, while other curved to the side, but neither came close to hitting me.

Sometimes this will happen, if the shot pattern wasn't a spiral or something similar.

Zebra Airforce wrote:-The sparks from your shot hitting enemies are on the layer above bullets, making it hard to see them when point-blanking enemies.

I didn't notice this. I'll consider fixing it in a later update.

Zebra Airforce wrote:-Options are plentiful and fun to play with, but it doesn't save my controller configuration!

Did you try hitting Save Options? It's not like most PC games that auto-save your config. More like a console game.

Zebra Airforce wrote:-I'm a little confused about the scoring system. What is the number that pops up when you destroy some enemies? And do coins increment in value as you collect them, or is that just a coin counter in the corner?

The number you see is the amount of points you just got for killing that enemy. It's mainly effected by the proximity bonus, if you kill them closer you get more points. The higher your coin counter is, the bigger the proximity bonus will be as well. The coin counter tells you how much points you'll get for collecting the next coin.

Zebra Airforce · Post by **Zebra Airforce** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:17 pm

First time I've had anyone tell me the bullets are too bright .. usually they say they can't see them. I guess I went overboard that time o_O

Yeah, other than that they are just the right shade. I know that it's difficult to balance visibility between being too bright or too dark.

Did you try hitting Save Options? It's not like most PC games that auto-save your config. More like a console game.

...

Thanks for the info on the scoring system! Looks like it's a bit more complex than I had previously thought.

shoe-sama · Post by **shoe-sama** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:43 pm

On very hard stage 2 and 3 boss the bullets are too slow to judge their direction at times. So I just bomb.

Dude I already said they were low visibility and you just come in and are all like lol look at the bullets.

It'd be much better if the side bullets were arrowhead shaped.

God · Post by **God** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 2:05 pm

Now I don't normally play curtain-verts but I gave this a try on a whim and really had a blast.

I turned the difficulty all the way down and the explosions all the way up and had some nice casual fun. On my next round I'm not sure but I think I "no miss no bomb"ed it on Easy. I think the lower difficulty makes a big difference; if I was trying to introduce someone to shmups I'd show them ...Ikaruga but failing that I'd use this game. Don't get me wrong, its not too easy; on the hardest difficulty level I burned thru all my continues before the end of level 2.

Stylewise I really liked the scanlines, the monsters and the orange explosions.

My biggest criticism is the pause. I have a small pile of nitpicks with the way the game pauses.

lgb · Post by **lgb** » Wed Feb 27, 2008 10:58 pm

A minor request? Is it possible to download this in a .zip?

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 3:09 am

LGB wrote:A minor request? Is it possible to download this in a .zip?

Done. http://rydia.net/udder/prog/download/xopblack.zip

Lynx Winters · Post by **Lynx Winters** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 4:52 pm

I like this game a lot, though I do have a couple of questions.

First, can you only have three ships in stock? I got the 1mil extend just before the first boss, stayed alive through to the second extend, but still only had three ship icons at the top. When I died later, one of the ship icons went away as if the second extend never happened. Now, maybe my memory is just really fuzzy and I did die somewhere between the first and second extend, but I do remember it being odd that I didn't seem to have as many lives as I should have.

The other question is about the reflect/bomb. The bomb part of it wipes out small enemies really easily, but is the bullet reflecting part more for large enemies and bosses? I haven't bombed much but I have I didn't really notice the reflected bullets doing much other than floating around. Maybe I'm just not bombing at the right places to notice the reflected bullets having any effect.

Other than those two possibly-non-issues, I really like this game. The graphic and music style is pretty reminiscent of 16-bit shooters, but the gameplay itself is more modern. Some of the bullet patterns are weird, but I think that's coming more from overlapping patterns than anything else.

Also, are the the same Udderdude that made/makes stepfiles for DWI/SM?

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:42 pm

Lynx Winters wrote:First, can you only have three ships in stock? I got the 1mil extend just before the first boss, stayed alive through to the second extend, but still only had three ship icons at the top. When I died later, one of the ship icons went away as if the second extend never happened. Now, maybe my memory is just really fuzzy and I did die somewhere between the first and second extend, but I do remember it being odd that I didn't seem to have as many lives as I should have.

The ship icon shows your remaining ships, not counting your currently used ship. So if you got a 1-up with 2 lives left, you'd see 3 ship icons.

Lynx Winters wrote:The other question is about the reflect/bomb. The bomb part of it wipes out small enemies really easily, but is the bullet reflecting part more for large enemies and bosses? I haven't bombed much but I have I didn't really notice the reflected bullets doing much other than floating around. Maybe I'm just not bombing at the right places to notice the reflected bullets having any effect.

It will affect large enemies, but not minibosses/bosses. They fire so many bullets on the harder skill levels (Very Hard wave 2), even one bomb was enough to almost kill them. So I made them not effect minibosses/bosses.

Lynx Winters wrote:Other than those two possibly-non-issues, I really like this game. The graphic and music style is pretty reminiscent of 16-bit shooters, but the gameplay itself is more modern. Some of the bullet patterns are weird, but I think that's coming more from overlapping patterns than anything else.

Also, are the the same Udderdude that made/makes stepfiles for DWI/SM?

Thanks and yeah, I am the same guy.