Duality ZF (Xbox LIVE Indie Games) coming soon...

[Kaspal]

good chatter aside, do you guys mind givin US, shmup players, another temptative date?... one that its actually possible?

i say this cuz as you already know, we've been waiting for your game for almost a year now, and tease after tease, im gettin annoyed (Again).

if you happen to hit the XBLA that'd be awesome... i'd gladly pay the 800MSPs if thats the price it is released with (just because i wont be forced to be online to play... i dont think i need to go over this discussion again... i just hate that).

if you cant hit that, then at least let us know how is it going... cuz while i understand that we're still in the "after teh contest have finished" (your last temptative release date), i'd love a more precise one (say, 3rd october week).

yeah, i know you're making improvements (i get the impression that you've been doing so for like 6 months now), and shit, but still, keeping us in the loop wont kill you... at least, i dont think so.

anyway... what i wanna say is, i know you're working hard on your game, trying to get it "right" so you can hit hard when it gets released... but once again (i know i've said this in the past), theres no such thing as perfection... and im sure you get better feedback (and hatemail nd shit) in here than i the XBox forums... so, release it soon, take note of whatever ppl feel failed, and dont make the same mistakes in the sequel (that from what i gather, its at least been thought about)... i know you're trying to get it right from your POV but still, someone will hate the game regardless.

think about it.

[Xonatron]

It is a good thing to realize we are not making a bullet hell shmup. Even though we have not played Cave shmups, we have knowledge of them. We have watched videos and played other bullet hell shmups. Duality ZF, by definition and by choice, is not a bullet hell. We have a bullet hell mode, but this mode is not based on the best bullet hell games, on purpose. It is a bullet hell game mode based on our own formula, which is a spin off of the other Duality ZF game modes and gameplay.

We are making our own game. It would be foolish of us to compete against Cave at their own business. Plus, as individuals, we want to try out the ideas that we want to try out, not ideas found in another sub-genre, a sub-genre that we have been mostly disinterested in, that has been proven to work for Cave. If we fail, if Duality ZF sucks, I can guarantee we will listen to the feedback and understand why it failed. We just hope it succeeds, as our heart is in the making of a specific type of game (one based on the elements Jason described above) and it will be very hard to change where our hearts lie.

Remember, we are just two guys who use to check out these forums just like everyone else here. We are not (yet) a business.

Don't confuse the lack of Cave-ness in Duality ZF for the lack of knowledge of Cave shmups, and relate it to that Duality will suffer for it. We know enough about Cave shooters to know we don't want it in our games. As a shmup fan, I do want to play all the Cave shooters to see what I am missing, but, it would be a huge failure to try to make a game that compares to Cave shmups without that Cave experience. Our decision to not bother going in that direction was a correct one. We headed towards a direction we fully and intrinsically understand. The surefire way to fail at making games is to make a game in a genre (or in this case a sub-genre) you do not understand.

I'm not sure if there was anything else besides the lack of Cave-ness that was a noted as a flaw in our game. If there was, please spell it out for us. We do listen.

...

As for a release date, we'll post when we submit our game to the XNA.com playtest, which means it will be very close to a release. After playtest we have to submit it to peer review and then it is available for download. I hope it gets great ratings, as apparently with 500+ indie games on the system, you get lost unless you are rated well.

[fog]

As for a release date, we'll post when we submit our game to the XNA.com playtest, which means it will be very close to a release. After playtest we have to submit it to peer review and then it is available for download.

I assume you mean you'll take that route if you don't get on XBLA as Jason says you are shooting for? How long does it usually take to get a reply from Microsoft about XBLA submissions? I know Jeff Minter submitted Gridrunner Revolution, didn't hear anything back from them for months and eventually just gave up. I hope you don't have to wait that long.

Regardless of which route you take, good luck guys

[Xonatron]

As for a release date, we'll post when we submit our game to the XNA.com playtest, which means it will be very close to a release. After playtest we have to submit it to peer review and then it is available for download.

I assume you mean you'll take that route if you don't get on XBLA as Jason says you are shooting for? How long does it usually take to get a reply from Microsoft about XBLA submissions? I know Jeff Minter submitted Gridrunner Revolution, didn't hear anything back from them for months and eventually just gave up. I hope you don't have to wait that long.

Regardless of which route you take, good luck guys

Good catch. I believe we are going to release Duality ZF to Xbox LIVE Indie Games *regardless* if we are accepted into Xbox LIVE Arcade, unless they forbid it. Because, by the time they will release our game (I predict another year to a year and a half), we could have Duality 2 done (and put it on XBLA) and be selling Duality ZF the entire time. We'll see what happens and what is allowed or not.

[emphatic]

I really hope that just getting a US Live! account will enable me to buy this game when it's out. Keep up the good work.

[Zejiro]

I thought they said on CBC that it's going to be a worldwide release?

EDIT:
The game looks awesome btw Good job!

[yyr]

I thought they said on CBC that it's going to be a worldwide release?

Currently only gamers in the following countries can play or purchase XBL Indie Games: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States.

But if you create an XBL account and can somehow convince the system that you are in one of those countries, it may work.

[Zejiro]

I live in Sweden, so I won't have to convince anyone Good luck to people in other countries though!
Good stuff.

EDIT:
Btw.. why only those countries? I can understand France, Germany, Japan, and the United States. They're all pretty "important" countries when it comes to gaming (oh well. France and Germany are not THAT important..) but why only a few other countries? And more importantly, why Sweden? Is it some kind of reward because we've managed to stay out of trouble for several hundred years?

[emphatic]

Btw.. why only those countries? I can understand France, Germany, Japan, and the United States. They're all pretty "important" countries when it comes to gaming (oh well. France and Germany are not THAT important..) but why only a few other countries? And more importantly, why Sweden? Is it some kind of reward because we've managed to stay out of trouble for several hundred years?

Here's a hint:

[Zejiro]

Carl XVI Gustaf is a bad-ass!

[spadgy]

Matthew! I just read your answers to the Q&A back for Develop magazine (the one done through NSBI for our forthcoming Canada feature). I'm the Journalist writing your article, at it was me hassling you with those questions through Jayson.

I'm doing the article in the morning. What a coincidence!

Once Develop has the article in print and online, I'll make sure I link to it here.

[Xonatron]

(Spadgy, thank you for your help. When will the article be published? Stay in touch!)

A quick note that we entered IGF 2010 (Independent Games Festival):
http://xona.com/2009/11/02.html

Check out the new screenshot for the entry:

full size: http://xona.com/2009/11/images/Duality_ ... enshot.png

Complete Duality ZF craziness.

Also showcased in that screenshot is our new control mode, called G-Mode. I'll let you guess at what it is, if you'll like it, and what it pays homage to.

[Kaspal]

cool pix... but, still, when are WE (not the press, the testers or whatever) gonna FINALLY have the (??) pleasure (??) of trying it out?.... im kinda tired of the teasing guys, really.

[Jason]

The current issue is the online scoreboards. It works in practice with a few scores, but the problem is when 10,000+ people all have their scores in all of the possible game modes in all of the possible number of players (120 in total), having all of this quickly loaded, accessed, shared, saved, with the knowledge that people power off and quit games at will, is a real problem on the Xbox 360. Hard drive speed, lack of software power (limited by the .NET framework's desire to have 'safe' code, further limited by the smaller Compact .NET subset of this framework), network bandwidth, and limited memory are all concerns. This all has to work once this hits the market and starts selling as much as we expect it to. And none of this would be an issue if we just had a single scoreboard to share. One of the problems is that I have no access to the speed capabilities of the final release, and the XNA team has admitted that there's a severe HD slowdown issue for development builds, which is what I am seeing. But I cannot assume the problem will disappear. I cannot have you guys playing Duality ZF with slowdown issues, even if just in the menus -- that will absolutely kill our year long effort. We don't get a second chance to make the first impression. It is critical we get this right from the get go.

All I can say is that I will solve this issue and the online scoreboards are going to absolutely rock.

While I have my head involved in these details, more content is being added to the game -- more enemies, more bosses, more attack patterns, and this will continue until all of the core game functionality (i.e. online scoreboards) is completed.

[Kaspal]

and so, the teasing will continue, you will continue to hype us with the game on and on ... and of course, the game will be delayed some more...

im fine if you polish the game... im really ok with that, that makes me want to get it sooner... but still, its been a year since the original release date... and while i know the game its different from that original build, we'd KILL for at least a playable demo... or something... videos or pix dont cut it anymore, so yeah, im cool with you fixing that thing with the scoreboards... but im kind sure that once you're done with that, you'll want to add (yet) another thing that will delay it some more...

anyways... its your game, you can do with it what ever you want, but all im saying is, release it already.

[antron]

Also showcased in that screenshot is our new control mode, called G-Mode. I'll let you guess at what it is, if you'll like it, and what it pays homage to.

galaga

[yyr]

The current issue is the online scoreboards.

I can tell you that implementing that in my latest title was a PITA, and for my next titles I will go back to using Internet-based leaderboards. It sucks that it's not integrated into the game, but this way there will be one unified scoreboard and no impact on the game itself. If you guys are definite on doing an integrated scoreboard, though, and are worried about speed issues, the best thing I can recommend is limiting the number of entries. That sucks too, but if someone has to reach the top 500 or 1000 to be ranked, maybe they'll try a little harder.

[Jason]

The current issue is the online scoreboards.

I can tell you that implementing that in my latest title was a PITA, and for my next titles I will go back to using Internet-based leaderboards. It sucks that it's not integrated into the game, but this way there will be one unified scoreboard and no impact on the game itself. If you guys are definite on doing an integrated scoreboard, though, and are worried about speed issues, the best thing I can recommend is limiting the number of entries. That sucks too, but if someone has to reach the top 500 or 1000 to be ranked, maybe they'll try a little harder.

It is a PITA and even more so because Duality ZF has 120 scoreboards that all have to be loaded into memory and shared even though you're only playing one game mode at a time, since the likelihood of P2P with another person playing the same mode is small, especially for the 4-player scoreboards. Regardless, the effort in the end is worth it. Internet based scoreboards are not linked in automatically and therefore lose their meaning, as you are not being ranked with everyone. Don't go back to that style. P2P scoreboards, when done correctly, are unified. If your game doesn't sell well enough to always find other hosts, then leave your own Xbox 360 online so that it acts as a permanent server. For example, I downloaded Biology Battle to a new Xbox 360, and loaded the global scoreboards as fast as possible, and within seconds it had already synced up 36,000+ scores from another host, so make no mistake, P2P scoreboards are fully unified and in fact have certain abilities that leaderboards do not, since the game has immediate access to every score, which you cannot do with leaderboards without DOS'ing the server. You'll see the benefits derived from this in Duality ZF, I won't reveal the details quite yet. Oh, and limiting the number of entries is not an option, as we show all your friends' scores and their global ranks, so we have to store every last score.

[TodayIsForgotten]

That would be great if you can figure out how to handle 10,000 scores, but what if you get 50,000 scores? Seems like another issue will arise. Perhaps, a better solution would be to omit some leaderobards. To be honest, im not going to try and be on 120 leaderboards. I"ll probably work on at most 10. If anything, make it top 100 for leaderboards like time attack or stuff with time only.

[Square King]

It is a PITA and even more so because Duality ZF has 120 scoreboards that all have to be loaded into memory and shared even though you're only playing one game mode at a time

120 boards? This can't be a good idea.

[Jason]

Think 18 scoreboards.

I don't like saying 120 since there are only really 30, and in some sense, only 18. Internally there's a bunch of scores, but certain ones are related and can be compared (really they all can, since the scoring system is "fair"). You see the scores of friends you care about, so the info is not overwhelming, it only shows what matters. The game works as follows:

• select number of people (1..4). A single player score can challenge 2-man through 4-man teams automatically. But you can't get #1 on the single player with a 4-man team. So really 120 boards / 4 = 30 boards.
• select 1 of 5 control modes. Any mode identical to another but superior (i.e. MultiDir = Solo Play but more powerful) are automatically challenged when you play the inferior mode. 2 cases of this implies only 3 of 5 control modes challenges all 5. So, 30 / 5 * 3 = 18 boards.
• select 1 of 6 game modes. This is where the scoreboards are shown during game startup -- it shows the scores that are relevant, 6 scoreboards for the 6 game modes (think Geometry Wars 2). You only see what you care about.
• play the game and get a score. You'll see the relevant scoreboard with your friends' efforts, which potentilly arose from other modes of play. E.g. if you play 2-player MultiDirectional, you'll see scores from 1-player Solo Play, since that's a relevant comparison. Your score is recorded into all relevant scoreboards.

Consider what this allows: Your first-time 4-man play will see all your friends' 1-man plays from all control modes that are relevant, so the 4-man scoreboard will already be filled with relevant content, even if NONE of your friends or yourself have ever played a 4-player game before. Further, a 3-man effort can compete for the high score in the 4-man boards since it's fair, but a 4-man play cannot pollute the 1 through 3-man boards.

Further, I may show the most popular game styles, so you can know which are the most competitive.

[Xonatron]

(EDIT: Jason just responded at the exact same time I did. So this may be repeating, but I'll leave what I wrote unedited.)

Re: 120 scoreboards...

Consider Forza 3 has over 100 tracks and 10 classes, which makes for over 1,000 scoreboards. That's not including drifting scores and extras they have included which could double or triple this number. Whatever the case, the number is in the thousands. And it doesn't break the game, because the presentation hides all the boards that are not meaningful to you.

We plan to do the same with Duality ZF.

As a single player, you will only have a maximum of 30 scoreboards, and that's assuming you play all 6 game modes with all 5 control modes. You probably won't. If you don't like our two G-Mode control modes, that leaves just solo play, dual play, and multi-direction for just 18 scoreboards.

But, if you decide to play with friends (which will happen very little compared to the amount you'll play solo), you'll have boards there, too, for your convenience.

Dominate what you want.

[Xonatron]

Also showcased in that screenshot is our new control mode, called G-Mode. I'll let you guess at what it is, if you'll like it, and what it pays homage to.

galaga

Odd that you are the only one to guess so far. We got quite the different response on our xbox.com forum (http://dualityzf.com/forums/) I'll wait a bit and see if anyone else chimes in before responding more!

[Jason]

That would be great if you can figure out how to handle 10,000 scores, but what if you get 50,000 scores? Seems like another issue will arise. Perhaps, a better solution would be to omit some leaderobards. To be honest, im not going to try and be on 120 leaderboards. I"ll probably work on at most 10. If anything, make it top 100 for leaderboards like time attack or stuff with time only.

There are only 30 single-player scoreboards. If you omit the weaker control modes (once the more powerful ones are unlocked) there are only 18 boards. Half are campaign modes (8-stages) and half are quick-play modes (1-stage). The 9 quick-play modes will likely be the most competitive, although the craziest scores and bosses are the rewards for playing campaign.

I realize this is a lot of content, but we want to reward everyone who plays any game mode they enjoy by showing their score in lights. Storing only top 100 isn't an option since we want to show world rankings of all friends. When I solve the issue for 10,000 scores, I'll solve it for 50,000 at the same time, no worries.

P.S. I can't wait to see what you're capable of in this game...

[DJ Incompetent]

Also showcased in that screenshot is our new control mode, called G-Mode. I'll let you guess at what it is, if you'll like it, and what it pays homage to.

galaga

Odd that you are the only one to guess so far. We got quite the different response on our xbox.com forum (http://dualityzf.com/forums/) I'll wait a bit and see if anyone else chimes in before responding more!

...
...
...
um

- G-Mode -- two fighters locked together (homage to Galaga)

[Xonatron]

Wow, they posted it! I had no idea they would. (We had to reveal what it was so the judges would understand.)

[Zaarock]

"All five are never before seen shoot’em up firsts." , hmm.

[TodayIsForgotten]

I always wondered why dual play was a first. The only thing i can think of is its different than what raiden does.

[Jason]

Explaining Duality ZF's Dual Play takes too many words for it to be accurately marketed without boring people, so we leave the details out. Duality ZF is the first game to natively support Dual Play. Raiden ports are limited to the same limitations as the arcade: 2 fighters maximum, 1 player maximum, controlling their fire independently. Duality ZF has native support allowing all 4 players to control dual-fighters, without stealing fighters from other players wishing to join. Reserve fighters are handled appropriately. The firing mechanism is linked to reduce the barrier to entry as low as possible. The entire game is structured around this native implementation. It is not an add-on. This native support for Dual Play is a first.

[emphatic]

Explaining Duality ZF's Dual Play takes too many words for it to be accurately marketed without boring people, so we leave the details out. Duality ZF is the first game to natively support Dual Play. Raiden ports are limited to the same limitations as the arcade: 2 fighters maximum, 1 player maximum, controlling their fire independently. Duality ZF has native support allowing all 4 players to control dual-fighters, without stealing fighters from other players wishing to join. Reserve fighters are handled appropriately. The firing mechanism is linked to reduce the barrier to entry as low as possible. The entire game is structured around this native implementation. It is not an add-on. This native support for Dual Play is a first.

Is it possible to play all single player mode with an arcade joystick? How many buttons does this game need?