Space Gate: a retro vertical scrolling shooter in flash

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Play Space Gate at Newgrounds.

Play Space Gate at Odo Games.

[MathU]

I wish this forum had an Advertising section.

[kengou]

I think you got the makings of a really good flash game here. I was pleasantly surprised. Here's a few suggestions:

a) the health bar + lives. You might consider either getting rid of the health bar, or just getting rid of the stock counter and giving the player a game over when their health has been depleted.

b) the hitbox on the player ship is really wonky. It extends off to the right or something weird. Playing on hard mode, there were some clouds of bullets that the ship couldn't fit through at all without taking a hit.

c) the color scheme. green bullets over a green background with a green player ship and green player shots, doesn't work. in dense bullet clouds a lot of enemies like the snakes become obscured, and it's also hard to make out gaps in the bullets without a color differentiation between the background and the bullets.

Other than that, I dig the basic gameplay. Good work!

[CptRansom]

Playing on hard mode, there were some clouds of bullets that the ship couldn't fit through at all without taking a hit.

That's why you have a health bar!

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Thanks for the feedback guys!

Your feedback has been useful and I will integrate some of your ideas into my next release.
Any more comments are muchly appreciated.

Best,
Badger

[kengou]

I'm not going to enter into a debate over hitbox size or health bar vs lives since these are things that are down to taste, and both have been proven to work successfully in other games (ie small/large hitboxes and health/lives). The collision is good enough for me after extensive playtesting, and is not too big which was my main concern.

Just a word on the hitbox: it seems to not be matched up with the player ship. A bullet passing directly to the left of the player's ship sprite (without touching it) will not hit it, but a bullet passing directly to the right of the player sprite will, despite NOT touching the sprite. I encountered this several times. Might be a bug, then? I would also recommend a smaller hitbox in general, because the game shouldn't be DESIGNED with undodgable patterns because of a health bar. But it's your game, of course.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

I'm glad that you recognise promise and potential in the game, and that you ahve played it long enough to experience those aspects of the gameplay even if they're not entirely to your taste.

The hitbox might be off.

EDIT Hearing that is very useful and I may update the hitbox before the game is spread any further.

[trap15]

I'm pretty sided with kengou here. The game definitely shows promise; I enjoyed playing it, for the most part.
But the life bar needs to go, and more importantly, the hitbox needs to be smaller. If you really feel a life bar is a must, then I recommend making it more like Guwange. But the hitbox... yeah. The hitbox is way too big for a ship that small. I hope you the best of luck with this project, it looks like it will turn out as one of the better flash shmups.

[kengou]

Just noticed another little annoyance, you can't fly above the bottom half of the screen. Any particular reason for that? Just seemed odd.

[kozo]

I think you might misunderstand kengou's comment. He's saying the hitbox is off center, off to the right of the ship. I noticed a similar problem when I played it - there were times that the ship sprite cleared a round of bullets but I got hit anyway. I understand you're saying certain things are up to taste, but that sounds like something that should be checked out on a technical level. If we said the hitbox was too large/too small, that's a different story, but it seems to be off to the side of the ship, which I don't see being an artistic choice.

For a Flash shmup, though, everything else was pretty cool. I like the aesthetics.

[BulletMagnet]

Some shooters do have unavoidable bullet attacks which works only with health bar for obvious reasons.

Unavoidable attacks really never work, at least within the context of a shmup. Why, after sticking to the standard "either stay away from this or die, right now" philosophy for the rest of the game, would you suddenly stick in certain spots which take on an inappropriately RPG-ish "I hope you saved up enough health potions" vibe? Making patterns tougher and more demanding is one thing, but making them undodgeable is totally contrary to what the entire genre is about. As you say, it's your game, but if you really want shooter fans to take it seriously (I really don't think a sub-set exists which actually enjoys impossible attacks) I'd definitely recommend changing that aspect.

EDIT: Having had a chance to play through the game itself I concur with most everyone else that this is a nice product in many ways, though I also agree with most of their criticism.

[TMR]

I think you might misunderstand kengou's comment. He's saying the hitbox is off center, off to the right of the ship. I noticed a similar problem when I played it - there were times that the ship sprite cleared a round of bullets but I got hit anyway. I understand you're saying certain things are up to taste, but that sounds like something that should be checked out on a technical level.

Yeah, it's a bug sure enough; the bullets can all but embed themselves into the left-hand side of the player ship but register as collisions upwards of four pixels away from any contact on the right. The actual size of the hit box feels about right, you just have to imagine that the ship is about eight pixels to the right of where you're seeing it! =-)

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Thanks for reinforcing the point - Im definitely looking into refining the hitbox and re-uploading the game.
I will discuss this with the games sponsor tomorrow and see if I can't roll in a bug fix at that point.

[Shatterhand]

Some shooters do have unavoidable bullet attacks which works only with health bar for obvious reasons.

There are millions of shmup fans out there, and most of them know what they like - I cant expect everyone to agree with all the deisgn decisions that I made.

Show me the shmup fans who likes undodgeable patterns and health bars.

I know many shmup fans, but no one who falls under the above category.

Of course, like they said, its your game... but this is a very bad design choice. What's the point in having an undodgeable pattern? Health management is extremely annoying and has no place in a shmup. BulletMagnet hits it on the nail with his post.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

I respect die hard shooter fans and I am taking on board this criticism for my forthcoming vertical shooter which may do away with health bar as this game used to believe it or not.

[Subterranean Sun]

Typical euroshmup is typical.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

The game is also featured on 8bitrocket where I wrote a tutorial to explain how the enemy ships are programmed.

SpaceGate review

[Udderdude]

Shitshmup was better.

[nZero]

Moved from Shmups Chat to Development.

For what it's worth, I found it to be a fun distraction, but I have to agree with a lot of the (constructive) criticism here. Hopefully the off-center hitbox will be addressed, and having both lives (with 1up items) and a lifebar (with recovery items) seems like overkill.

Edit - Wow, huge speed disparity between keyboard and mouse control.

I wish this forum had an Advertising section.

Which is pretty much what the Development forum is used for most of the time.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Thanks for putting the thread here.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Shitshmup was better.

Thank you

[Twiddle]

hrm, let's see, cites an obviously stupid and horribly-designed final boss as unfair shmup design and uses it as an excuse to have undodgable patterns, lenient health bar to mask sloppy and lazy stage design, gaudy faux-retro grayscale color scheme, uses words like "noobness" unironically

also:

I'm not going to enter into a debate over hitbox size or health bar vs lives since these are things that are down to taste

I don't think I have to respond to this in a rather derogatory way since it brings the insults to itself already

you have a wonderful future here, don't leave us

ps. spot the upcoming problem with your high score board

[BadgerManufactureInc]

The stage design is meant to look like Astro Warrior like it says in the games description. 'Gaudy monochrome filter' most games don't bother to have one, mine is textbook monochrome, and most people are actually too lazy to try something like that like you accused me of being.

I do agree with your points above. My next game should be better, thanks for trying this one.

[KennyMan666]

I, personally, don't really mind having both a health bar and lives - sure, it's kinda unorthodox, but why not? It does, however, take away a lot from the difficulty (I assume most people here got a 1CC on Normal first try). I'd consider making the shield a powerup instead.

The enemy bullets could definitely do with being more distinct, especially with the amount of missiles the player ship end up shooting - this was especially noticeable with the homing missiles a lot of the midbosses shot.

Not going into the off-center hitbox since everyone already informed you about that.

But yeah, you definitely have a nice engine going here, and with a few touchups, this has the potential to be great.

[TMR]

I, personally, don't really mind having both a health bar and lives - sure, it's kinda unorthodox, but why not? It does, however, take away a lot from the difficulty (I assume most people here got a 1CC on Normal first try).

[Nods] Managed to 1CC, reaching i think it was ninth on the global highscores and finishing with five lives and everything bar the side fully powered up (it was one short) and i was dicking around trying to see what the collisions would let me get away with at the same time! =-)

But i'll agree with what others have said, it's still a good game and i enjoyed playing through it.

[BadgerManufactureInc]

Whoever got 6,000,000 here is even better than my pb, but your name was too rude so I deleted it!

You have skills though.

Thanks for the other feedback, I will definately be making my next game so it has no life bar and perhaps think about the bullets being dodgeable

[nimitz]

This game a horrible pile of dogshit that doesn't deserve anybody's time.

Also everyone else is not providing enough criticism for you to identify and correct the game's faults.

1) The 5 stages are basically mirror images of each other for the most part. The enemy formations are the same, and the bosses are the same. The enemy formations and bullets also happen to be incredibly uninteresting.
2) There are ads on the website. When combined with everything else that reveals how half-assed the game is, this becomes extremely disrespectful to anyone who actually plays shooting games.
3) There are practically no aimed bullets. This is a joke. That basically means there is practically no dodging, because there will inevitably be safespots everywhere.
4) Mouse control allows for extremely fast movement that allows the player to destroy everything in seconds. If you have to dodge bullets, you are playing the game incorrectly. Obviously the bullet problem can become an issue if the control issue is balanced, but as of now, anyone who complains about this is not playing this game properly.
5) The hitbox is not correctly placed, as others have mentioned. This reveals incredibly lazy design, since basically all you did was attach the right edge of the ship sprite to the hitbox.
6) The end of stage bonus display is incorrect. You only get about 1/3 of the end of stage bonus added to your score for stages 1-4 on hard mode. Another indicator of lazy design, since the actual bonus was not multiplied by 3, but the displayed bonus was.
7) There are way too many extends and the healthbar is dumb. Do you know how many hits you can take? You start with 5 lives, and you get 7 more on a score run, and there are health pickups. 12*5 = 60 hits, and add in the health pickups and you can take in excess of 70 hits. Also, it actually doesn't matter if you take hits, since there is no penalty of any kind (scorewise or otherwise) for it other than a game over if you lose all your lives.
Healthbars are also incredibly lazy because 99% of the time, it says that the game designer was too lazy to actually playtest the game or create reasonable bullet formations for the player to navigate through. It implies that it's ok to have horrible bullet patterns and horribly designed enemies with too much health because having a healthbar makes up for it.
8 ) The highscore board is a joke. Survival mode scores are allowed. So basically you can just get infinite score in normal or easy mode survival and submit your score. (max in arcade is 4.3M btw)
Obviously it will be easy to discern who did this from them having 000 or 500 at the end of their score, but this reveals yet another horrible oversight on the part of the designer, and more importantly, indicates how little he understands about shooting games when combined with all the design and mechanical flaws within the game itself.

By the way, go play some real shooting games. If you compare to almost any arcade shooter you will see just how awful your game is by comparison. Bosses and midbosses that repeat the same bullet sequences every 2 seconds for more than a minute? I know you can do better than that.

[Udderdude]

Here we have yet another example of someone who doesn't understand or play shooters, trying to make one and getting his butt thoroughly handed to him by people who do.



loooooooooooool :O

[BadgerManufactureInc]

1) The enemy formations arent the same. I made differences on all 5 levels.
2) Why shouldnt it have ads?
3) Why shouldnt only the bosses have aimed bullets?
4) Mouse control is in a lot of flash games. I can tell you arent a flash gamer.
5) The entire game is blit based so there arent any hitboxes, get your facts straight. If you are going to be technical with your criticism at least get it right.
6) Not sure what you mean there, I dont think what you said is true in fact.
7) It is a casual game. I know you guys are hardcore now you making me remember stuff I should have realised better from my game playing.
8 ) Dont compare it to arcade shooters its a different type of game and I dont make that sort.

I do agree with most of what you said. I've still got a lot to learn about making shooters but at least some people enjoy the game and I appreaciate all the feedback even the criticism as I am not ignoring it or arguing with it, only taking it in and striving to do better next time.

The game has a lot of features that arent designed to deliberately annoy shmup veterans but only there because of time restrictions or limited ability to create the ultimate shooter like I would have wanted to.

[Zeether]

1) There's less than 10 different enemy formations in the entire game, and about 5 of them are repeated heavily. The order that they come in varies slightly, but not enough.
So it's extremely easy to deal with everything if the formations are the same.
also, my post included these words: "for the most part"
2) It sends the wrong message for a first post.
3) Why should there be bullets or hit detection at all? Why should there be enemy ships?
4) And I suppose in every single one of them mouse control allows you to move across the screen at unbelievable speeds and is vastly superior to the keyboard option.
5) Right, because hitbox can't possibly be shooting game terminology. Its meaning totally depends on how the game was developed.
6) Right, so it's perfectly normal for it to read 318k on the screen then only add 106k to my score.
7) Well basically it's not meaningful to play through with that much room for error, even for a "casual" player. At least not compared to other games.
8) Well basically score becomes meaningless when it's easy to get infinite score.

btw there's too many powerups (max powerups makes your ship like 20 times stronger or something ridiculous)
Which makes the enemies die too quickly later on when using mouse control.