You Will Die - XBLA Indie game

[postman]

Warning Forever clone that uses dual stick to move/fire........not bad, and only 80 points for the full game.

Mods: How about a dedicated thread for all 360 indie shmups? It would make it easier to find stuff............

[szycag]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkxNmsGqW_g found a vid
Horrible design sense, I wouldn't play this for free. "Warning Forever clone" got me excited too, but there doesn't seem to be any real charm to picking those bosses apart, at all.

[Udderdude]

Mods: How about a dedicated thread for all 360 indie shmups? It would make it easier to find stuff............

I'd like this just so we don't have a new thread for every 360 indie crappile that comes down the pipe. If there was a thread for every one of those things, you'd be picking them out of your teeth.

[Schrodinger's cat]

Just played it. It's definitely not a terrible game, but Warning Forever is more fun than this.

[orange]

Mods: How about a dedicated thread for all 360 indie shmups? It would make it easier to find stuff............

I'd like this just so we don't have a new thread for every 360 indie crappile that comes down the pipe. If there was a thread for every one of those things, you'd be picking them out of your teeth.

[originalz]

Gotta love a bullet hell shooter with tons of tiny bullets assaulting your huge hitbox!

[brokenhalo]

this games got a lot of short comings.

1.huge hit-box is huge.
2.enemy ship evolution seems pretty random.
3.enemy hit-boxes are way too small on some attachments.
4.random 2-5 frame freezing hiccups
5.it randomly crashed on me twice in a 30-minute session.
6. bosses get too big too fast. huge hitbox makes dodging some shot combinations near impossible (im looking at you spiral attachment).

stick to warning forever. it's better and it's free.

edit: just remembered

7. no invincibility after taking a hit. you can lose a full health bar in a split second if you get caught by a couple shots at once.

[DJ Incompetent]

#1 in the world bitches. Learn to play ha-HAAAAA!!

[TodayIsForgotten]

It looks sorta cool, but i do see how it can get boring. Perhaps, the title should have been, You Will Die?

[ShmupSamurai]

You will Die...how fitting for such a large hit-box

[derrickh]

Hi. I'm the programmer on You Will Die. Thanks for playing the game and I'm glad that (some) of you are enjoying it. Warning Forever was a huge influence on the game, hell, it's on my app bar right now just waiting for me to start it up. It's not a direct clone of WF though. For me its more of a mix of WF and Defender and Robotron2084

The hit box is bigger than many other bullet-hell games. And thats part of the design in the game. It's called You Will Die for a reason. Its a very hard and unforgiving (even unfair) game. Its not easy, and i would be surprised if people got past level 12 (out of 32). There are no patterns memorize, no safe areas to run to. Eventually, the enemy will win and she wont be nice about it. (more than a few times in testing I yelled at the screen 'That bitch is trying to kill me!')

The crashes suck and I'm probably more upset about that than anyone. Its one of those bugs that didnt show up until the game hit the release build and I've been working almost nonstop since I became aware of it to squash it. Hopefully it doesnt cause too much heartache.

If you have anything you want to know about the game let me know. Or if there are more parts about it that you hate, I'll take that too.

D

[DJ Incompetent]

There a delay or batch update in leaderboards? Mine says I'm in there, but I guess other people don't see it or somethin'.

Anyway, game is really fun for an Indie. Right up there with I Mad3 a gam3 with Zombi3s whatever.
Listen to the posts above for your next game though. You could do great things.

[brokenhalo]

nice to see you on the forum derrickh. there's a good game in there definitely, it just needs some tweaking imo. you mentioned that there's 32 stages, and that you'd be surprised if anybody saw past 12. what do you think is the main limiting factor to success in this game? it would either be number/type of shots or the players hit-box. personally, i like the fact that the screen gets choked with bullets pretty fast, so the hit-box is the problem in my eyes (and seemingly a lot of other peoples). i don't think you should shrink the box down to a 1 pixel hitbox so that everyone can breeze through the 32 levels, but maybe shrink it down so that a great player might see level 20 on a good run.

i like the scoring system in the game, as it forces you to pick apart the bosses one piece at a time starting at the extremities and working your way towards the core to maximize points. one thing i might suggest is maybe a part chaining bonus. i could see good players weakening individual attachments down to just a shred of health and then killing a bunch in rapid succession for extra points. could be cool.

as far as the crashing bug, both times it occured when after a game i hit the (either x or a, cant remember which it was) button to go back to the main menu. a system box popped up saying game could not continue and took me back to the dashboard. not a huge issue as it didn't happen ingame.

and just out of curiousity, do the evolutions happen at random, or are there certain actions that affect the way the boss evolves like in warning forever. in warning forever i could fairly consistently evolve the boss the way i wanted to, whereas this game similar actions yield varied results.

[ShmupSamurai]

That's an interesting question....

Always thought the evolution of the bosses in WF was a neat idea.

[derrickh]

The bosses develop somewhat randomly. I didnt want to copy completely from WF where the enemy grows based on what the player does because as you said, it becomes possible to manipulate the enemy. In YWD, the enemy just wants you dead.

Here's my feeling on it. You'll really be able to tell the good people either way. If the majority of people got to level 20, then the specialness of getting to level 20 is wasted. But if no one can get to level 8 and 2 people hit level 12, then you know they're really good.


**********************
This just in.... From Derrick's Roomie...

I believe that the whole purpose of being Special is somewhat relatable to Mario on Super Mario Brothers. When mario does something super cool - he gets bigger, but if he doesn't - then he dies....

Also - in comparison - in Galaga - on the first level - you are only offered one space ship. But as you get to the next levels - you can have a super space bug fly down and put the force field around you so hopefully - you can get DOUBLE spaceship power.

Again - special comes by way of harder levels.... DUH...

over and out - DMAN...
************************

Ok, I'm back. See guys, thats proof that attractive women know about video games. (And they dont hesitate to push someone off of the keyboard to make a point)

The high scores work on a distributed basis because XBL Indies doesnt actually allow you have real leaderboards and this is the best workaround. So it may take a day or so for your score to get passed around and populate.

D

[postman]

Just bought it, got real far into the first game (must have been like level 15ish), and noticed my score kept resetting when I hit left trigger (or is this the peer to peer leaderboards updating)? Either way my 2 mil plus score got wiped, then I got a Code 4 error and my game ended.....

What a waste of a dollar.........

[TodayIsForgotten]

Just bought it, got real far into the first game (must have been like level 15ish), and noticed my score kept resetting when I hit left trigger (or is this the peer to peer leaderboards updating)? Either way my 2 mil plus score got wiped, then I got a Code 4 error and my game ended.....

What a waste of a dollar.........

Left trigger repairs your ship and diminishes your score. Right trigger puts up shield and diminishes your multiplier.

[ShmupSamurai]

Just bought it, got real far into the first game (must have been like level 15ish), and noticed my score kept resetting when I hit left trigger (or is this the peer to peer leaderboards updating)? Either way my 2 mil plus score got wiped, then I got a Code 4 error and my game ended.....

Ouch...

[derrickh]

Just bought it, got real far into the first game (must have been like level 15ish), and noticed my score kept resetting when I hit left trigger (or is this the peer to peer leaderboards updating)? Either way my 2 mil plus score got wiped, then I got a Code 4 error and my game ended.....

What a waste of a dollar.........

Using your shield 'Right Trigger' costs points. Using Repair' (Left trigger) costs even more points (starts low and the cost goes up each time you use it). It sounds like you were hammering that repair button throughout the entire game to the point where repairing costs a few hundred thousand per health point.

D

[ShmupSamurai]

sing your shield 'Right Trigger' costs points. Using Repair' (Left trigger) costs even more points (starts low and the cost goes up each time you use it). It sounds like you were hammering that repair button throughout the entire game to the point where repairing costs a few hundred thousand per health point.

AUGH! What kind of idea is THAT?! I don't wanna have to LOSE x amout of hard-earned points to use a bloodly shield!

[Jeneki]

That's about as evil as the suicide button in Bullet Candy. Nice job.

[Udderdude]

sing your shield 'Right Trigger' costs points. Using Repair' (Left trigger) costs even more points (starts low and the cost goes up each time you use it). It sounds like you were hammering that repair button throughout the entire game to the point where repairing costs a few hundred thousand per health point.

AUGH! What kind of idea is THAT?! I don't wanna have to LOSE x amout of hard-earned points to use a bloodly shield!

It sounds like a penalty for using your shield repair. So if you don't need to repair, you end the level with more points.

Of course negative reinforcement like this doesn't work that well. And it certianly seems more like a punishment for poorly designed enemy shot patterns.

The best solution would be to not have any repair, and just give a bonus for any shield you have left at the end.

Then again, we're entering "This should be in Development" territory. ;P

[derrickh]

The penalty for shield and repair was in the plans from the start. The player has to decide whether to use the shield and lose points or try to dodge the bullets. And on top of that, how much shield to use. You can try to time it so you only have it on for a split second or you can just hold it and take the score drain.

When I was making the game, I didnt think 'how can I make it so the player can get past this'. In that respect, i intentionally went against the standard in shooters. I thought, if she's really trying to kill this guy, then she's gonna really try to kill him and not just shoot predicatible patterns.

That was a design decision and I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I know its not going to be popular with everyone, but the game is called You Will Die. The fact that its extremely hard, even unfair, was part of the design.

[Udderdude]

but the game is called You Will Die. The fact that its extremely hard, even unfair, was part of the design.

BUH BUH BUH .. I MADE IT INTENTIONALLY BAD!

Come on. We've already got RHE around here for that sort of thing. Don't steal his gig.

[system11]

I haven't had it crash but sometimes the between level speech is corrupted/garbled.

[derrickh]

No, i'm not excusing the game. If you dont like it, then you dont like it. Nothing wrong with that. But I will defend it because I disagree that its a bad game. Its hard, it doesnt follow a lot of normal shmup conventions, and if you're used to a certain style of game it's probably not going to be for you. But I like it and I'm glad that some other people do too.

[brokenhalo]

The bosses develop somewhat randomly. I didnt want to copy completely from WF where the enemy grows based on what the player does because as you said, it becomes possible to manipulate the enemy. In YWD, the enemy just wants you dead.

Here's my feeling on it. You'll really be able to tell the good people either way. If the majority of people got to level 20, then the specialness of getting to level 20 is wasted. But if no one can get to level 8 and 2 people hit level 12, then you know they're really good.

your assumptions are wrong. the best run i had was because the boss ship kept adding straight shot attachments. i was simply tap dodging up and down the screen letting streams of aimed bullets whiz by my. the ship added some spiral turrets and the patterns became impossible to dodge thanks to my massive hitbox. so a great run is less down to players skill and more to getting a good dice roll between every round. you seem to think that unfair patterns are "fun", but they aren't. if i'm going to invest time into learning a game, i want to feel like i've made progress and that my skill is improving. you can't learn how to deal with an avoidable pattern,.so when i come up against one it's game over? thats just awful game design. if the whole point of your game is "the enemy ship really wants to kill you", you might as well throw in unavoidable full screen lasers.

[Udderdude]

A strange game. The only winning mov::ERROR GENERIC QUOTE DETECTED CONNECTION LOST::

[TodayIsForgotten]

I do agree with getting the good version of the game. Bullet patterns even with the hardest spiral turrets are still rather predictable. I do understand why no one would see level 32. The ship gets so fucking big that you don't have any room to move and at this point every pattern is unavoidable. I too question whats the point of making the game so unrewarding that no one would ever see the last level? or any level in the 20s. It's almost like an oxymoron where you make a game very unfair but you'll never see the ending anyway.

Overall, i think the game has potential and it is fun. But, im easy to please unlike many here.

[derrickh]

Its a good thing I pulled the full screen lasers from an early build, or i'd -really- be taking a beating in here. About the ship getting big, the camera will eventually pull back to give you some more room to move.

But I think I understand the reactions now. Many people play games to complete them and get to the end and win. Thats never going to happen in You Will Die. For a second I was confused with the question 'why make a game where no one will ever see the last level' because the games I grew up playing were exactly like that. And thats partially what You Will Die is influenced by. You'd never get to the 'end' of Defender. You cant 'beat' Robotron 2084. Asteroids, Missle Command, Galaga, etc, just kept getting harder until you died. When playing a game like that you cant base your skill in a game by if you get to the end, but by the score you have when the Game Over screen pops up.

Its a different philosophy (probably outdated) but thats how I see games.