Project Raiden - FINISHED

[monkeyman]

Project Raiden

No prizes for guessing this is a SHMUP based on Raiden!

Features:
-8 stages
-2 varieties of Spread shot and Beam shot (6 lvls of upgrade for each)
-Smart bombs
-Secondary missile weapon (either rocket or seeker depending on the ship you use)
-A whole host of different enemy types
-Four ships
-Redesigned graphics based on original Raiden sprites

EDIT:[lots of rambling about it being a demo deleted]


Download

Project Raiden




Thanks for reading this, and enjoy the game...


EDITS:
Extra Ships added
New Spread and Beam type
Heli(?) enemy movement edited
Boss 2 edited
Name changed from Raiden X
Flying bomb hitbox changed
Power ups move in a circle
NEW UPDATE:
Red Shot type 2 has new fire pattern (comments please - better/worse?)
More original graphics
Added special skull medal for making all reg medals appear in level (no need to collect though)
Changed 1up score requirement
6th LEVEL ADDED
other minor stuff
Finished Version
Missile sub weapons added
edited power up placement
Sniper tanks (and boats) cannot point blank player
8 full levels
Removed bugs
Help screen added from menu
Various other things I can't remember


EDIT: After letting this sit on the shelf for over a year, I thought i'd better tie things up so it can be considered finished.
Game has 4 ships. Each with different combinations of weapons and eight stages.
Scoring is based around collecting medals and end of stage bonuses, nothing too fancy really. Hit box is probably larger than most of you will be used to, but there are far fewer bullets flying around than most modern shooters so this shouldn't be an issue, in fact, if you can get a few power ups without dying, the game gets quite easy. While I am not likely to be making any gameplay changes to this game (as I have other more interesting projects on the go) I would still appreciate your expert feedback so i can apply any lessons to newer projects. That said, if you find any major bugs, let me know and I will go back and fix those.


Happy hunting...

[Zebra Airforce]

Okay, first off, there's already a Raiden fangame called Raiden X, so you might want to change the name (strangely enough, whoever made it seems to have a fascination with monkeys as well).

On to your game! My first issue is that it take a few too many shots to defeat popcorn enemies at the lowest level of power. You could remedy this by increasing the speed of bullets, or the number of them allowed onscreen at any time, or by decreasing the amount of damage it takes to destroy popcorn enemies.

The next is that because of the tremendous amount of horizontal scroll, it is easy to get sniped by an enemy that you couldn't even see by moving to the side.

Another issue I noticed was that the hitboxes of the bombs (the ones that shoot suicide bullets) were very large, and it was very difficult to judge when you could move past them -- the hitbox doesn't need to be nearly as tall as it is, seeing as your bullets can only travel upwards anyway. I would say to let the hitbox end before the spinny-thing on the back of it.

As for a scoring system, I suggest you look to the Raiden Fighters series for inspiration in that area.

[joshuasmyth]

Personally I don't like it when games use ripped sprites - Although if you do make a fun game you can always take it to an artist to reskin. But I won't be playing it until then.

[monkeyman]

Okay, first off, there's already a Raiden fangame called Raiden X, so you might want to change the name (strangely enough, whoever made it seems to have a fascination with monkeys as well).

Raiden X is only a working title, will come up with another pronto.
That other game is quite fun btw, thanks for the link

On to your game! My first issue is that it take a few too many shots to defeat popcorn enemies at the lowest level of power. You could remedy this by increasing the speed of bullets, or the number of them allowed onscreen at any time, or by decreasing the amount of damage it takes to destroy popcorn enemies.

I'm tinkering with the balancing, I don't want the player to feel too underpowered at any point but on the other hand I don't want it to get too easy once you're tooled up. This may change yet.

The next is that because of the tremendous amount of horizontal scroll, it is easy to get sniped by an enemy that you couldn't even see by moving to the side.

Maybe it wasn't a good idea to emulate the hori scrolling of the version I played. Will look at a firing delay when enemies appear from the sides, hopefully that should prevent any cheap deaths.

Another issue I noticed was that the hitboxes of the bombs (the ones that shoot suicide bullets) were very large, and it was very difficult to judge when you could move past them -- the hitbox doesn't need to be nearly as tall as it is, seeing as your bullets can only travel upwards anyway. I would say to let the hitbox end before the spinny-thing on the back of it.

Will look into all the hitboxes...

As for a scoring system, I suggest you look to the Raiden Fighters series for inspiration in that area.

Will have to do some extensive research into this!!

Thanks for the feedback.

Personally I don't like it when games use ripped sprites - Although if you do make a fun game you can always take it to an artist to reskin. But I won't be playing it until then.

Can't fault your principles I guess...

Do you know a good place to find people who could contribute to the graphics/sfx?
As I said in the original post I will probably reskin it myself in the long run bet it probably won't look great, will be sure to let you know if/when this happens.
>EDIT< Have attempted a few sprites of my own - shown in the 1st post

[null1024]

Ooh, I really like those ships you made. I love the second one most.

[monkeyman]

Ooh, I really like those ships you made. I love the second one most.

Thanks, I'm quite pleased with how they all turned out though ship3 looks a little out of place in the game so I may have to change it.

For those that are interested, here's some shots of some new levels.



While I'm still using ripped sprites for the new stuff I'm also working on my own sprite work which will begin to replace the original raiden stuff, though bosses are proving incredibly difficult to get right!

Scoring system is beginning to take shape, will provide details once I've nailed it. Also I've added the missile weapons, though all weapons still need balancing. (and if anyone has any comments on the current line up of weaponry then i'm all ears.

Thanks

[FSR]

Hi, I test played the Demo here are my thoughts
Sorry if this post turns out a bit messy, I’m in quite a hurry

- make the sea in stage 1 scroll a bit
- explosion sounds start playing a tad too late
- bosses could uses some more patterns
- there doesn’t seem to be a dead zone, suicide bullets always appeared, no matter how close I was to the red or green bombs. The same goes for the tank’s turrets and their aimed shots (maybe this is OK for a Raiden game, I’m not very familiar with the series)


Don’t worry too much about the weapon balance at this point, finalize the score system before you start tweaking or changing weapons.
I’m writing this because I want to prevent you from making the same mistake as I did ( <--spent quite some time on a homing shot, just to find out that it was too effective for the score system)

Your game seems to be extremely well coded, from a fellow GM user’s point of view.
I failed to discover any bugs, and no error messages popped up. Also, good job on preventing milking and on the interface in general

[monkeyman]

- make the sea in stage 1 scroll a bit

I did do this but it turned out to be jerky and looked worse than it did static! For now this is the lesser evil

- explosion sounds start playing a tad too late

That's the problem with ripping the sounds directly from the game. I have found a sound program so hopefully the new sounds will be in synch.

- bosses could uses some more patterns

Once I've finished other aspects I'll review the bosses and see if IU can make them more interesting.

- there doesn’t seem to be a dead zone, suicide bullets always appeared, no matter how close I was to the red or green bombs. The same goes for the tank’s turrets and their aimed shots (maybe this is OK for a Raiden game, I’m not very familiar with the series)

This is the sort of feedback I'm after! To be honest I hadn't thought of adding this but was trying to find a way of avoiding some cheep deaths. I will certainly look to add a dead zone to the ground based enemies.
Oh and don't worry about whether something is in the original Raiden or not, I'm more concerned with making a good game than a good raiden game.

Don’t worry too much about the weapon balance at this point, finalize the score system before you start tweaking or changing weapons.
I’m writing this because I want to prevent you from making the same mistake as I did ( <--spent quite some time on a homing shot, just to find out that it was too effective for the score system)

Thanks for the advice, I'm just fine tuning the scoring now.

Your game seems to be extremely well coded, from a fellow GM user’s point of view.
I failed to discover any bugs, and no error messages popped up. Also, good job on preventing milking and on the interface in general

Thanks for taking the time to test it as thoroughly as you did!


On a seperate note, I'm making a lot of progress with my own sprites - the screens below should give an idea of what to expect. (backgrounds are still from Raiden Trad for the moment). Obviously if it looks horrible, then nows the time to tell me!!

[monkeyman]

New version has been posted:

Most of the sprites and BGs are now original.
Original sound and music.

Scoring system is now more or less in place. If anyone has any comments or ideas on the scoring then I'm all ears.
Basic are:
Level bonuses based on -
Lives remaining
Bombs remaining
Boss clear time (needs tweaking)
Medals collected

Medals:
Like Raiden DX the value of medals goes down the longer they are there
The end level bonus depends on the medals collected without dying

Have also implemented missile weapons into the game.

[Udderdude]

It seems YoYoGames is down at the moment .. WTB alternate download link

[monkeyman]

Was beginning to worry no one was interested for a minute there!

I would put it on shmup-dev or 64 digits but I'm not sure if that would clash with their policies on ripped sprites (there's only a handful left but they're still there). Of course once I've got rid of the last of them I'll upload the game and add new links.

If you know of any reliable hosting sites I'll give them a try.

Oh and yoyo seems to be working again.

[Zebra Airforce]

The new red weapon for planes 2 and 3 isn't very useful. Have you thought about a faster, forward shot, maybe 4 columns wide?

I'm also a little confused about medalling. Are you supposed to pick them up when they flash quickly?

[monkeyman]

The new red weapon for planes 2 and 3 isn't very useful. Have you thought about a faster, forward shot, maybe 4 columns wide?

I'm also a little confused about medalling. Are you supposed to pick them up when they flash quickly?

I thought about having a wider forward shot for red type 2 but I figured that would work too much like the blue weapons.
Though I guess it would work if the shots were far enough apart....

Thanks for the idea though, I'll look at some other firing patterns for red2 and see how they work.

As for the medals, they go through the following stages:

Platinum=500pts
Gold=400pts
Silver=300pts
Bronze=200pts
Iron=100pts
Flashing=1000pts

So yeah, get them when they flash.

[Udderdude]

Pretty neat Raiden clone .. a few things though. One is your bomb stock does not replenish when you die. That kinda sucks .. Another is the FPS seemed to be quite choppy. You should make it run at 60 FPS. I don't think you have to worry about slowdown with a 2d game like this ..

And it seems you are allready working on it, but .. get rid of those ripped sprites

[Zebra Airforce]

Hmmm. Well, you could change the laser for those ships as well. Maybe change it into a homing laser, or a spread laser like this?

You should probably add an onscreen indication of the value of the medals so that players will have an idea of what they're doing. Just a little "1000", "2000", etc. text coming up when you grab one.

Another thing is that the black ships fire too close to the bottom of the screen. If you want them to fire more, you should slow their descent, but don't let them fire once they've reached the bottom third or fourth of the screen.

[monkeyman]

a few things though. One is your bomb stock does not replenish when you die. That kinda sucks .. Another is the FPS seemed to be quite choppy. You should make it run at 60 FPS. I don't think you have to worry about slowdown with a 2d game like this ..

I did originally have your bombs replenish when you die, wasn't really too keen on how it worked though (especially since there are score bonuses based on carefully preserving bombs), guess people will have different opinions on this though.
Will look into the FPS thing, I'm not too sure on how you change this with GM though. Either way, after messing with the room speeds this seems to work the best.
EDIT: Just checked and room speed IS FPS, which means if I change the FPS to 60 the whole game goes into overdrive, everything runs twice as fast. Silky smooth? Yes - Fun? No!

Hmmm. Well, you could change the laser for those ships as well. Maybe change it into a homing laser, or a spread laser like this?

Actually I've had a mess around with some bullet patterns like the one you mentioned earlier and credit where it's due, it works better than expected.
Of course it may make the beam type underpowered so I there's still work to be done!!

You should probably add an onscreen indication of the value of the medals so that players will have an idea of what they're doing. Just a little "1000", "2000", etc. text coming up when you grab one.

Yeah that could work!

Another thing is that the black ships fire too close to the bottom of the screen. If you want them to fire more, you should slow their descent, but don't let them fire once they've reached the bottom third or fourth of the screen

A lot of the enemy firing needs clearing up in one way or another, the black ship firing too low is one of many things I intend to work on.

Thank you both for the feedback, it's always good to get another viewpoint on things!

[Udderdude]

EDIT: Just checked and room speed IS FPS, which means if I change the FPS to 60 the whole game goes into overdrive, everything runs twice as fast. Silky smooth? Yes - Fun? No!

This is what happens when you change a game's frame rate like that. You would have to go back and change all the speed values to be based around 60 FPS. The end result would be smooth and playable.

Since it seems you're going from 30 FPS to 60 FPS, it shouldn't be too tough. Just divide all speed values by 2.

It's also possible to increase the FPS just to make things more challenging. I've added a feature like that to XOP.

[ForteMP3]

TIP:Cavadius uses a dual framerate setup to bypass this problem of Room Speed. You should do the same. (I should note I mean the current re-write of the game that's not publically availble, not my public, outdated demo)

Set the game's speeds up around the 30FPS/roomspeed setting.

Then you can use a global variable to modify the game's speed for 60FPS. Example:

if the framerate is 60, set global.framerate=2 and then...
if it's 30, global.framerate=1

Then...
object.speed=5/global.framerate

For time based stuff, multiply by the global.framerate value.

Voila, your game now supports either framerate reasonably well without going into overdrive.

[monkeyman]

I've finally decided tie this project up so I have taken what I had with this and made it into something I can call a finished product. While the only changes I am likely to make are bug fixes from here on in, I am still looking for feedback on this so I can apply any lessons / ideas to my new project and any future projects i may start.

Game features:
8 Stages
4 Player Ships
2 Types of Beam weapon and 2 types of vulcan
Rocket and homing missile sub weapons
Smart bombs
Scoring based on medal collection and end of stage bonuses (lives left, bombs left, medals held onto without dying etc)
Original artwork based off the original Raiden

Things to note. The game still runs in 30fps. looking through what i had already programmed, changing the game to 60fps would have been more work than I was willing to put in for what would have been (in my opinion) a fairly small payoff. (Bear in mind I started this using the D&D system in GM and have been learning as I went so the quality of programming / coding varies greatly from one aspect of the game to the next).
Hitboxes are smaller than the ship sprites but still larger than modern shmups. That said, this is not inspired by a modern shmup and this certainly isn't bullet hell, so once you get used to it the game is actually quite easy.
Bosses go down quickly if your fully powered up. Through testing I realised that if you went at them with a peashooter they took forever, so designed them with mid power in mind (since most players would probably clock up a death or two in the level). I guess it may have been worth giving the bosses variable hit points (and also score value) so that the fight was satisfying whatever state you were in when you got there, but this will probably have to wait for a future game.

I've edited the orignal post to give more details.

And that's about all. It is what it is. I hope you give it a chance and get some enjoyment out of it. And if you do give it a go, let me know what you liked or what you didn't like so I can at least learn from this project.

Thanks for reading.

[Udderdude]

It's pretty good. Not amazing or anything, but still pretty playable.

I'd say the biggest issue is that if you use a ship with homing rockets, they will target and blow up the suicide bomb pods right next to you and end your life rather quickly.

[ED-057]

The framerate is the biggest weakness, it looks fairly choppy even for 30fps. Other than that the gameplay is pretty solid. There is a generous helping of extends. I cleared the whole game on my first credit with a score of 267060. One more thing, it was often predictable after a group of enemies appeared on one side of the screen that a few seconds later that same formation would then show up at the other side

[monkeyman]

Video showing all four ships in action can be found here for those who are interested.

Udderdude -
Glad you thought it was ok. To be honest I will settle for the game being thought of as 'playable' given the standard of a lot of other projects on the go on these forums (Xeno Fighters EXR springs to mind, especially since it also has the Raiden theme).
The homing missile can be a pain when a load of suicide bombs appear (1st half of stage 2) but if your careful it's quite possible to pick them off with your main cannons so you will at least know when to expect the suicide bullets (spread is quite wide so it's not too big a deal to dodge).

ED-057 -
Glad you took the time to play it right through. I figure the game will be considered too easy by shmup enthusiasts and too hard by everyone else, I did try to tread the middle ground as best I could however. EDIT: Looking at the last comment on the game webpage, it's clear I was right about most people still finding it too hard!!
As for the choppiness, I'm not entirely sure why it looks that bad, I've made other games with 30fps and they look a little smoother, I can only assume it's something to do with the scrolling.
Also I'm not sure what it is about me and symmetry but I find it hard not to put a wave on the right once it's gone in on the left! I did try to break this in some of the later levels but you're quite right, for the most part enemy waves are pretty predictable.

Thank you both for the feedback