My GM shmups - Last Chance,MEGATANK, Flying V, XYX, ZPF

[ShmupSamurai]

Whoa, faux-tate on a netbook??

That's badass!

[Rozyrg]

Yup! All I need is one of those fancy rotating monitors and I'm set.

As for progress, I've been getting Flying V up-to-date as best as possible (control config...yay!) One thing, though, I've noticed there's a HUGE difference in scores between the old modes and the new Medal mode. They're pretty much unhinged as it is right now... you get the enemy's set value multiplied by a tenth (or less in some cases) of the current combo, which gets ridiculous very, very fast.

Basically, a similarly good run of level 1 (the tweaked one in my unreleased v.) can easily turn out like this:
MEDAL : 1,400,000
MEGA : 9,000,000

I'm just wondering if yall (anyone who's played the game thus far) prefer the crazy jacked-up scoring. Otherwise, I'm about to go in and make it a bit more sensible... well, at least enough to better even it out between the different modes.

[ShmupSamurai]

I personally think crazy-jacked-up scores are awesome.

[Rozyrg]

Duly noted.

I've tinkered with the medals some (unhinged them possibly..lol) and you get roughly the same amount from a good run now, give or take a million. Here's what they look like, by the way :


I finally added some music - I made a half-decent boss theme in Garageband and a friend graciously allowed me to use some of his unfinished tracks, although I still don't have anything for the actual stages yet.

Anyways, if any of yall happen to have some music 'just lying around' I'd like to have something fairly good in there before I put the new demo out. I would say at the minimum, it needs to upbeat, exciting, at least a minute long and loop-able. Other than that, I'm not too picky about style. >_>

[Rozyrg]

New version of Flying V up. Now up to 3 levels, all with bosses. It's still a bit on the rough side, though.

Performance notes:

For lower spec systems (ie netbook), set fx to no blur or minimum, set debris off, music off. Medal mode might also cause a hit from the higher instance count. None of these have a *huge* impact on performance; but it's enough to help.

'No blur' gives the game a slightly sharper look, too. I think I prefer it slightly.

Random stuff/glitches/ little crap I forgot to fix:
- small medals are occasionally counted twice at the end of a stage
- if you change weapons while a powerup is moving towards you, it will keep moving
- snake segments sometimes won't die with the head section
- train sections sometimes take longer to self-destruct than they should

[raigon50]

I thought I recognized the games when I played a few of them. You made some of them on Blast Works didn't you? I remember playing them.

[Rozyrg]

Glad someone noticed.

Yup, I definitely carried some ideas over from them. I loved Blast Works and I do kinda miss it; but it was pretty limiting at times. Once I moved on (only took a year...lol), I thought I could better realize some of those ideas.

Super V > Flying V
Zp > ZpUltra > ZPF
YXIII > YXIV (when I was still playing with Dezaemon 2) > XYX

The Helltiger ship (shot included), Big Tiger (level 2 boss), Manta and a few smaller enemies come straight from YXIII.

Right now I'm thinking about recreating a few enemies from Gorygyx for one of ZPF's more futuristic levels. Like those weird skull train things with the hearts. >_>

On the subject:

[raigon50]

I loved Blast Works

Yeah, It was pretty good. Your games were probably the best up for download. Anyways, I'm looking forward to seeing more stuff from you.

[Rozyrg]

Thank you!

Just finished this guy:

Don't even want to think about coding him now though...lol.

[null1024]

Thank you!

Just finished this guy:

Don't even want to think about coding him now though...lol.

Woah. That's some of the nicest spritework I've seen in a while.

[Rozyrg]

Wow, thank you!

A few new screens:

'City' level backgrounds are pretty much finished

This will be the background for the 'Bio' stage, I just need to make a few more with gore/alien goop dripping off of everything. <_<

edit : different, unscaled screens

Here's the top one scaled 2x and sharpened. Any better?

[Herr Schatten]

Those screens look nice. However, they look like they have been scaled to an odd size, as some pixels appear bigger than others. How did they look in their native resolution?

[Rozyrg]

Yeah...I just scaled the screens to 1.5x their default resolution (304x224.) It looks funky because I had previously switched off all of the scaling filters in IrfanView.

I figure it's either that or a not-so-nice looking blur effect. *shrug* Probably should've at least gone up to 2x, though. I'll fiddle with it some and see if I can get some better ones.

[SenpaiSamaKun]

First time caller here.
I'm just here at the moment to do some updating for ZPF.
Improvements/Additions since the earlier build

- Tank in the city level now has dust effects
- Bio level now has biometal "Facehuggers" and "Xenophobes" and more features in the background
- HUD borders for futuristic ships has changed
- The last few seconds of the forest and city enemy patterns have been altered.
- The small grey ground support ships now drop in at and out the top of the screen in the city level





The new alpha can be downloaded @
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ECQ6SI13

For gameplay, a current preview is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgfisBkgWRQ
While a slightly earlier build from Rozyrg himself is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FfaP7QJDEo
(From the both of us, they're honestly not the best showing of our skill.)

The known problems are :

- Late start glitch when you continue or start a level shooting
- The demonstration's high score counts as a real score.

[Rozyrg]

Hey...nice of you to drop in.

(Yeah, if you're going to do R-Type inspired stuff, you have to throw in at least one Alien lookalike. It is LAW!)

Recording that video, I was playing at it's actual resolution to keep the recorder from lagging. My poor withering eyes are going as it is...lol.

...and if anyone is interested, the highest score I've gotten with that version is just above 10 million.

[emphatic]

Very cool.

[raigon50]

Sorry, I had to take a short break from doing the music so I could finish an album I had setting around. I've finished the bio/alien stage song and (I know I've said this tons of times already) I'll TRY to remember to send it to you. I'll start on the cyber city stage next.

[Rozyrg]

Cool, no problem. Can't wait to hear what you've got so far.

In the meantime, I've had a spurt of energy. Between working on 50 or so unrelated art projects, I've been tinkering with XYX some more: I finally broke down and put in a key config, and I made few emblems for each pilot/ship. I'd say it's a just boss away from a new demo, too.

[S20-TBL]

I've toyed around with both Flying V (huh, reminds me of "V-Five"..."Flying V", "V-Five", you get the idea, but then again you're Toaplan-inspired...) and ZPF.

Concerning Flying V, those are some amazing visuals you've got there. Flying V would pretty much look at home on an arcade machine. It looks like a Guilty Gear-ized version of a Toaplan shooter. The controls are solid and the over-the-top weapons are fantastic.

My one complaint would be the enemy bullet coloration and animations--some of them pulsate from a very dark color to a very light one so quickly it's hard to make out their exact outlines. This makes them very hard to see especially when my own shots are extremely bright in comparison. It's not uncommon for me to suddenly die by colliding with an unseen projectile to my side.

EDIT: There is also a glitch regarding the Dual Shot (which IMHO is the lowest-tier weapon in the game due to its relative lack of firepower and inability to point-blank enemies right in front of your ship). When I either hug the edges of the screen or get close to it, my offscreen (or half-offscreen) gunpods stop firing. Do you deactivate those instances once they're outside the view, or have you coded the bullets to be destroyed outside of the main view?

Regarding ZPF, some bugs and other miscellany complaints I've noticed:

• On levels 2 and 3 the farther background layers scroll much faster than the nearer ones. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

• Also, tapping X during the game resets my firepower to base level. So when I'm at max power, pressing X to shoot suddenly causes me to drop down to level 1. Is this button supposed to be mapped to something like a bomber which causes the weapon power to decrease?

• Lastly, I suggest toning down the backgrounds and increasing bullet visibility. Currently it's very hard to see stuff, especially with the speed the game is running at. For example, those level 1 alien bullets (which pulsate between dark blue and gold hues) are very hard to spot, along with the level 3 tank bullets which are tiny, fast, and somewhat dark colored.

[Rozyrg]

Thanks for all the input! Looks like I have some serious bug squashing and tweaking to do.

Glad you liked Flying V. That was definitely my intention for the game.

Flying V - It's just that the bullets terminate depending on how far outside the screen they are. That's easy enough to fix; but the targeting behavior of the pods.. not so much. That's the closest thing I have to AI in there and it's pretty sad...lol. Gotta start somewhere I guess.

ZPF - Yeah, the thing with X button is a problem that keeps coming up in slightly different forms. Basically, it's what I get for being lazy and not rewriting the firing script when I added MAX mode.

I know what you described can happen when you start another level... I ran into it about a dozen times the other day. I'm pretty sure I squashed it last time I was working on the game; but I'll experiment some more.

[S20-TBL]

Thanks for all the input! Looks like I have some serious bug squashing and tweaking to do.
...
ZPF - Yeah, the thing with X button is a problem that keeps coming up in slightly different forms. Basically, it's what I get for being lazy and not rewriting the firing script when I added MAX mode.

No problem. I actually love ZPF, and I have high expectations for the final release. It's shaping up to be a solid shooter. And yes, I only discovered the MAX mode shot ability for the X button after you pointed it out, my bad. It does, however, end up resetting my shot power when I hit it before the next level starts.

One request I'd like to make is a rebalancing of Stage 1. At its current stage in development, the Biohazard area far outclasses the other two levels in terms of difficulty, which sort of kills the expectations for an introductory level. Now, it's certainly not impossible to no-miss this level, but on a regular run I tend to die here around 2-3 times before I get it right (which in turn takes about 5-10 tries). Below is a specific list of things I found to be either really tough or bordering on unfair:

• * The bullet speed and visibility. This takes the number one spot on the roster as I have to rely on a modicum of luck just to ensure survival on Stage 1, due to the insane bullet speed. For example, Level 2's enemy bullets are far more vivid and substantially slower compared to the first stage, making both survival and medal chaining much easier, despite enemies there using a lot more patterned attacks than in Stage 1. The biggest offender in this regard is the xenomorph thing that comes out of the holes in the background--it's VERY hard to dodge its spread shots without something bad happening.

• * Enemy wave speed, at least for the smaller ships. It's bad enough that they have fast bullets and can tank quite a few shots, but them moving at that speed while I'm distracted by both the background and another set of enemies tends to result in death by collision, especially in tandem with the below item.

• * The face hugger things. It seems you've set them to burst out of their pods after a randomized amount of time (and set them to spawn a randomized amount of facehuggers too--nice touch BTW), since no two Stage 1 runs are the same in those sections. However, sometimes they end up bursting right before exiting the screen at the left, ending my no-miss attempts pretty early by backstabbing me. Perhaps you could set the egg pods to trigger via proximity to the player ship, e.g. by using point_distance, or reduce the maximum amount of time it takes before they start bursting (or perhaps make the pods destroyable, albeit tough to kill). This is because they can take quite a bit of punishment, which leads to them killing me while surrounded by the above small ships from time to time--especially when they spawn somewhere around the far left side of the screen.

Another request would be the Sword weapon (blue powerup). I feel this is a bit underpowered compared to both the Arrow (pink powerup) and the Orb (green powerup) for some reason, since Orb makes mincemeat out of everything in front of me, and the Arrow pretty much sweeps the entire screen clean. Blue can't seem to catch up to Green in terms of power and they both have the same functionality, so I was wondering if you could give it some kind of extra ability, like a lock-on feature similar to the Sapphire ship in Flying V?

Anyway, thanks for taking my earlier comments into consideration, I'll be sure to keep an eye on this game along with Alluro's.

EDIT: Clarified some statements above; just making sure I'm not misunderstood or anything.

[Rozyrg]

Thanks again, I've been trying out some of the stuff you mentioned... dunno why I never thought to make the eggsacs burst on proximity to your ship. (I tried quite a few different things with those buggers, too!)

I've also finally broke down and started drawing some bosses, as well as a few other things..

[raigon50]

Love it. It looks great.

[SenpaiSamaKun]

Now that I think about it, ZPF's bullets didn't contrast with the background enough to dodge on reaction.
I wouldn't go the CAVE route and make them extremely bright. Though making their shading style different than the rest of the sprites could work.
And its not a real problem, but I never see a purpose in using straight shot patterns (Vulcan and such) given the survivability rate the levels have.
Could you script to have better MAX shot meter gain than the others or something else to balance it?

[S20-TBL]

My mistake - The blue Sword powerup is actually a lot stronger than the green Orb shot, probably around 30-40% stronger--but only noticeable at higher power levels since it's hard to hit things with it.

[Rozyrg]

I'll look into those, thank yall. :3

For the time being, I've just added an extra outline for all enemy bullets (they have one light and one dark now.) I also increased the vertical spacing for the Sword to see if a few extra pixels worth of reach will help.


First boss

FINALLY got this bastard in-game. (background goof, though... sorry)

[S20-TBL]

Is that the Level 1 boss? Teh awesome. I can't wait to take that creep down.

BTW, I have a question. Will the player ships/characters have some character-specific specials? I had been wondering because of the Sword Knight character.

[raigon50]

Oh my! There are bosses? I need to do a boos song then! (Yeah, I get to do hardcore!)

[Rozyrg]

Oh my! There are bosses? I need to do a boss song then! (Yeah, I get to do hardcore!)

Yep, feel free to make it as intense as you like ,too.

The only other thing I can think I might need (before I start on level 4 that is), is maybe a jingle for the game over/continue screen and something for the title; but I wouldn't say either of those are particularly vital right now.

BTW, I have a question. Will the player ships/characters have some character-specific specials? I had been wondering because of the Sword Knight character.

Right now the only difference are the weapon/shot sprites. Like the Gladius and Gold share the same weapon gfx, I was going to make another ship that used the one the Knight has. There will be at least one more after that, I want a fairly creepy character to go with the horror themed level.

I'm not sure what to do as far as making them unique beyond that, though... I'm open to suggestions.

edit: I've thought about it some and came up with a few ideas.

MAX Beam - similar to what's there now; but the effect is dependent on ship/character rather than current weapon.
MAX Bomb - uses half or third of bar, damages all enemies on screen, different for each ship.

I'd like to have both available; but I'm not sure how to approach this. Not sure I want to add a third button, and switching in-game isn't really an option (I know since X used to only activate MAX mode and it was pretty godawful that way.) Maybe pressing both buttons does one and just the secondary alone does another?

edit 2: Already implemented.

Stage 1 is getting there, BTW, here's some stuff I added to the background for the second half.

Everything now pulses in a creepy way... not quite as cool as the one in Wings of Wor; but I'm proud nonetheless.

[S20-TBL]

MAX Beam - similar to what's there now; but the effect is dependent on ship/character rather than current weapon.
MAX Bomb - uses half or third of bar, damages all enemies on screen, different for each ship.

I think this may be good enough, provided MAX mode gets offered a decent amount of times. You could tie it into a special scoring multiplier for MAX beam, or increase the number of medals gained when using a MAX bomb--or switch the two around.

Stage 1 is getting there, BTW, here's some stuff I added to the background for the second half.

Everything now pulses in a creepy way... not quite as cool as the one in Wings of Wor; but I'm proud nonetheless.

Great alien level. Although IMO, the near-RGB magenta color scheme really hurts the eyes. Maybe you could go for a slightly darker, less-saturated pink on the flesh blobs (plus it helps make them look more organic that way).

Here's the same shot. I tweaked it a bit using HSV and Color Balance: