introducing Duality ZF

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:12 am

Ed Oscuro wrote:Eh, can't a single person park their ship somewhere and clear everything then? Or are there tons of insane enemies that soak up everything you can throw at them point-blank?

A single player cannot kill all enemies immediately with full power. Some enemies are tough, and there's tons of weak enemies to soak up the bullets. You'll have to work to avoid dying since the game is a one-hit-kill. Also, you can use the morphing power of the DUAL-SL (spread/laser) weapon system to concentrate firepower on the enemies you want to go down fast, while leaving others alive for the moment. The game gives you enough firepower to kick ass -- You can kill everything.

But, they are going to shoot before they go down.

Now, if you have 8 fighters (4-player DUAL PLAY) all with max firepower, you are going to kill things fast, especially in the easier modes. This is something unavoidable, and such people can challenge the higher difficulty modes (they'll want to -- that's where the higher scores are to be had). Luckily their scores, while are comparable to, will not be merged with single-player scores. If you want to kick ass as a team, you'll be judged against other teams.

Ed Oscuro wrote:Like a Samurai Spirits zoom?

Not sure what that game does -- the videos I see give me nothing. Duality: ZF gives equal real estate on left/right sides of the extreme-most fighters. All camera motion is smooth.

SandtouchLC · Post by **SandtouchLC** » Sat Apr 04, 2009 2:52 am

Jason wrote:
Ed Oscuro wrote:Like a Samurai Spirits zoom?
Not sure what that game does -- the videos I see give me nothing.

Here is the SamSho zoom. It is a full-playfield zoom out.

Shion · Post by **Shion** » Sat Apr 04, 2009 2:05 pm

Looks tight. Shame I don't have an Xbox (or any current-gen console for that matter).

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Sat Apr 04, 2009 4:43 pm

SandtouchLC wrote:
Jason wrote:
Ed Oscuro wrote:Like a Samurai Spirits zoom?
Not sure what that game does -- the videos I see give me nothing.
Here is the SamSho zoom. It is a full-playfield zoom out.

Duality: ZF does not zoom the play field. If players move in opposite directions, they hit the visible screen edges. We allow players to move as far off-screen as possible without losing sight of the fighter (on typical TV displays, whose overscans are so variable, it's a complete pain). I hate bumping into screen edges when there's still plenty of room to maneuver around that last bullet.

Camera positioning really is an art form. It can ruin games. I think what I have works well, as I've addressed all issues I've seen.

TodayIsForgotten · Post by **TodayIsForgotten** » Tue Apr 07, 2009 3:08 pm

That's looking good Jason. Graphic style is weird, but in that vein its looking good.

Xonatron · Post by **Xonatron** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 7:39 am

Another sneak peak; An older video, but we'll share it anyway:

Duality: ZF March 2009 Tech Demo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClxTi__1F0s

Better videos to come soon

Kaiser · Post by **Kaiser** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:51 am

Matthew Doucette wrote:Another sneak peak; An older video, but we'll share it anyway:

Duality: ZF March 2009 Tech Demo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClxTi__1F0s

Better videos to come soon

All i gotta say is HOLY SHIT! That was impressive! I can't wait for a a video with some insane boss Matt : P

John845 · Post by **John845** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 6:04 pm

Love the new particle effects and new details you guys added.

ZOM · Post by **ZOM** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 6:51 pm

Matthew Doucette wrote:Another sneak peak; An older video, but we'll share it anyway:

Duality: ZF March 2009 Tech Demo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClxTi__1F0s

Better videos to come soon

WOW! Explosions: awesome, Fire-rate: very good!

I sincerely applaud to you guys for really learning the "superb-shmup 101" rules that go around in this niche genre: that video really shows this.

I see many threads here in the dev section asking about criticism&impressions on their "shmup" but when they finally receive good constructive criticism, they either keep their fingers in their ears or act like a total cocky dumbass. BUT NOT YOU TWO!

+1000

I really hope you sell many copies of Duality: ZF. Good luck!

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 2:46 pm

Thanks for all the compliments guys. Most of the arcade style features like fire rates, explosions and ship speed and control mechanism were decided by us years ago, and were implemented from day one -- so we were largely on the same page as you guys, being huge shmup fans, from the get-go. The stuff that challenged us was ideas we hadn't seen tested yet: new camera modes, wide screen + wider playing field than the screen, 4-player multiplayer, weapon morphing particulars (although the general idea was there for years), all of which had to go through beta testing to tweak out. One idea I sadly had to scrap was no limit on bullets shot, but still maintain faster fire rate when closer to enemies (like the old school shooters did -- since I love awarding the aggressive), and nothing I tried worked, since you couldn't sense the increase in rate. I had a perfectly morphing fire rate, depending on spread/laser width and amount of on-screen bullets, and the firepower changes just couldn't be conveyed to the user, so I went back to the old school design which works very well. You guys helped us decide on some things we kind of knew were wrong but wanted to keep, like the up/down scroll mechanism. Sometimes it's just nice to hear someone else's thoughts to put the final nail in the coffin for bad ideas. There are details missing in this demo, and we're still working on some details that are known, but lacking, requirements, such as more exciting boss fights. All your feedback is greatly appreciated, and we try our best to listen. Thanks again!

sjewkestheloon · Post by **sjewkestheloon** » Mon Apr 13, 2009 8:09 pm

Video looks fucking brilliant

John845 · Post by **John845** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 6:11 pm

Jason and Matthew. I suggest you guys make an account on gametrailers for your company and for the game. This community game here:

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/hexothermic/11169

Hexothermic, has there own page, and own videos on the website. I saw there video on the main page of the website, so its a good way to attract more sales. Of course Duality looks infinitely more times better than Hexothermic and is a different game completely, but you guys can get much more advertising done if you spread beyond youtube. And if you get a professional video done from the current build you guys are on, and put it on gametrailers it will without a doubt gain lots of views and potential customers.

Xonatron · Post by **Xonatron** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 7:49 pm

We were waiting to create a professional trailer for gametrailers.com. We figured YouTube was accepting of in-development videos, and gametrailers.com was mostly only professional trailers. Am I right with this, or could I have posted all my vids there, too?

We have HD capture hardware ordered and on the way, so our next videos will be HD.

Also, what about vidoes of actual uninterrupted game play, not edited trailers? Do they belong on gametrailers.com?

Thank you!

John845 · Post by **John845** » Fri Apr 17, 2009 10:32 pm

Gametrailers can take any kind of footage. In my opinion you should release a good trailer first, to get peoples attention. After that start releasing small gameplay clips up till the games release.

landshark · Post by **landshark** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 2:13 am

Please make the trailer *very* gameplay centric. I hate all the trailers which are mostly text advertising the features/mechanics instead of showing the them via gameplay.

One of the best trailers I've seen was for Bionic Commando: Rearmed.

(click the HD button and make sure sound is on)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daDiZrmZb-c

Even just watching that makes me want to go and play the game again.

John845 · Post by **John845** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 5:34 am

Yea that's such an awesome game, and awesome trailer too.

Aru-san · Post by **Aru-san** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 7:41 am

Jason wrote:Or did you mean 'combination fire' like Raiden, where the firepower increases when bullets bounce off each other's fighters? We don't have this. Ideas are in the works for version 2 though.

If this were to be implemented in Duality ver. 2...

Hmm...Player 1a shoots a normal bullet. It hits player 1b which turns into a spark bullet a la Raiden. Spark bullet hits player 2a which shoots out even larger spark bullets. That hits player 2b, in which that hits player 3a, in which that hits player 3b, in which that hits player 4a, in which that finally hits player 4b. The final result....

BAM BAM BAM BIG PLAYER BULLETS = MUCHO DOMINATION

I could be wrong, though.

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 4:04 pm

Aru-san wrote:...Player 1a shoots a normal bullet. It hits player 1b which turns into a spark bullet a la Raiden. Spark bullet hits player 2a which shoots out even larger spark bullets. That hits player 2b, in which that hits player 3a, in which that hits player 3b, in which that hits player 4a, in which that finally hits player 4b. The final result ... MUCHO DOMINATION ... I could be wrong, though.

No, you are quite right.

One of the biggest problems with the weapon system, which can shoot up to 65 (individually calculated

) bullets every 4th frame from all 8 players = 2,080 individual on-screen bullets, means it has 173 times the firepower as a single player with no power ups. Thus, even with no 'combinational firepower' (I keep using this; did I just invent new terminology?) this allows for mucho domination. And it ruins the game. We have solved this in a manner that other arcades use.

Raiden I and II have those spark bullets that are formed when your bullet hits another player, which are so deadly you can kill bosses literally in under 2 seconds. Both players have to be positioned properly, and work together, to make use of this. So, you get a reward for that. Duality: ZF has no such feature since it's so easy for those thick lasers of 8 fighters to all join into one with hardly any effort, and this just multiples the domination problem mentioned above that was agonizingly difficult to solve.

Duality II will have this feature (although I'm uncertain how we'll solve the domination problem. We may merely need to force multiplayers to challenge harder difficulty levels). Another Duality concept will be introduced: You'll have two weapon systems: 1. the DUAL SL spread/laser, and 2. the DUAL-you'll-have-to-wait-and-see

Each weapon system can morph between the two extremes, and any of its output can merge and react with other bullets. Since I already have 2,080 INDIVIDUALLY CALCULATED player bullets on screen, you can imagine the optimization that'll be required to make this happen; but I'm going to try.

John845 · Post by **John845** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 1:07 am

I know this sounds unlikely, but is there a possibility of a release on PSN? I'm guessing since you guys are using XNA and XNA is from Microsoft then its impossible to release on another system.

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 1:22 am

Yup, we're coding in XNA which works on top of Microsoft's .NET Framework, thus, to release on PSN, we'd have to recode the game from scratch, so that's not going to happen.

It'd be great if someone developed a compiler that let XNA Game Studio code to call PSN functions instead, like a driver but implemented at the compiler level for optimal speed. That'd open up some serious distribution channels for game developers!

rancid3000 · Post by **rancid3000** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 1:49 am

This game looks amazing! I'm going to buy it as soon as it comes out. Good luck to both of you.

Xonatron · Post by **Xonatron** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 2:02 am

rancid3000 wrote:This game looks amazing! I'm going to buy it as soon as it comes out. Good luck to both of you.

Thank you!

Speaking of selling the game, I am starting to wonder how to market our game. Some of you may know about the recent Xbox LIVE Community Games figures. They show not many gamers will find our game, if we don't do something out it ourselves.

How do we get the message out to gamers who don't hang in shmup forums? If you guys have any ideas, I would love to hear from you.

Do any of you have blogs, video or audio podcasts, review sites, or whatever, that would be interested in a spot for Duality: ZF? What would that take (from us)? We are already planning to be reviewed on a few shows, but the more the merrier.

lilmanjs · Post by **lilmanjs** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 3:18 am

have you guys tried submitting your game to gamespy.com?

John845 · Post by **John845** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 6:11 am

You can try contacting destructoid.com, 1-up.com, or maybe even kotaku.com. I know destructoid talks about indy games from time to time, so maybe if you approach them they might want to do an article on duality.

romscout · Post by **romscout** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 1:47 pm

I'm glad you guys took the criticisms to heart and worked on making this a great game. This was a fun thread to read.

I'm certainly sold.

Too bad I don't have a 360 yet! D: Is there any chance at all you'll consider having a PC release as well (pretty sure XNA makes it easy for a PC port from a 360 creation... screw it, I'm clueless)? Maybe after some updates or something? I'd buy it. It'd be nice to have a creative PC shmup that actually makes use of widescreen. Obviously piracy would be a bigger issue, but you could certainly delay the release to make sure you rake in some cash for certain first.

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 2:44 pm

Thanks for the marketing tips. We are certainly going to check some of those sites out.

Your help is very much appreciated!

romscout, we are anticipating a PC release via Steam and perhaps other distribution channels. You are right, the XNA platform makes this easy. The only unfortunate thing is that the game is tuned to work with the Xbox 360's insanely fast GPU, and without a for-game-playing GPU, a standard PC GPU doesn't have the bandwidth or fill rate required to maintain 60 fps -- my brand new quad core systems are a testament to this.

This can be fixed, but the graphics level may have to be reduced (i.e. less explosions, or sprite flickering effects, or something...). We don't want people with slow PCs ranking up the highest scores on the online scoreboards because they are playing in slow motion! Perhaps the game will auto-adjust detail level according to framerate. This is one reason why consoles are easier to program for -- everyone has the same hardware!

DJ Incompetent · Post by **DJ Incompetent** » Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:19 pm

@Doucette

hit me up a PM when it's out. If it's worthy of a good time I'll can probably get ya 20-somethin' purchases.

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Mon Apr 27, 2009 7:50 pm

Jason wrote:We don't want people with slow PCs ranking up the highest scores on the online scoreboards because they are playing in slow motion!

There is an easy way to get around this, and that is record the average or lowest FPS for the entire level, and if it's under a certian amount, disqualify from submitting a score.

Xonatron · Post by **Xonatron** » Mon Apr 27, 2009 9:13 pm

DJ Incompetent wrote:hit me up a PM when it's out. If it's worthy of a good time I'll can probably get ya 20-somethin' purchases.

Wow, thank you, DJ Incompetent! We're going to try to break into the XBLCG top 10 list (example), which only takes 200 purchases in a week, based on rough estimates. That goes to show how important 20 sales can be. Those 200 purchases might take 10,000 downloads, though, if we have only a 2% conversion rate. That also goes to show how hard it can be to get sales.

I want to rally up a few of the shmup communities to help spread the word using voting sites and whatnot. Do you think that's overboard? I figured even if you don't buy the game, you might want to support it. Do you all think I should give it a try? I'll try a hundred things if just one of them works.

Jason · Post by **Jason** » Mon Apr 27, 2009 10:12 pm

Udderdude wrote:
Jason wrote:We don't want people with slow PCs ranking up the highest scores on the online scoreboards because they are playing in slow motion!
There is an easy way to get around this, and that is record the average or lowest FPS for the entire level, and if it's under a certain amount, disqualify from submitting a score.

Yes, thank you. I already thought about this, and it's a nice fix to prevent the scoreboards from being manipulated. But it doesn't solve the problem for the guy with the slow PC who doesn't wish to screw the system. So, I still need to make the game attempt to alleviate the problem at run-time. But, yes, in the end, scores with low frame rates will be ignored. I can't just use the lowest FPS metric, since sometimes dumb background processes bring the system to halt for a full second (*cough* Avast! *cough*) and this should be allowed if it's a short duration. BUT proper calculation could get tricky, since you wouldn't want someone taking advantage of this and ONLY slowing the PC during those times of heavy bullet dodging...

shmups.system11.org

introducing Duality ZF

Re: introducing Duality: ZF (two month alpha demo)

Re: introducing Duality: ZF (two month alpha demo)

Re: introducing Duality: ZF (two month alpha demo)

Re: introducing Duality: ZF (two month alpha demo)

Re: introducing Duality: ZF (two month alpha demo)