Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

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nZero
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by nZero »

A. :P
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ZarroTsu
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by ZarroTsu »

A.

Why is there even a option at all in this scenario? Is it really that commonly assumed that hormones are more persuasive than brain activity?

Incidentally, before I actually download the game; is there any way to change the [almost pointless] side panels to blank images? What exactly is the point of the pin-up art outside of dialog exchange, anyway? Legitimate no-offense-intended questions, by the way.
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pieterator
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by pieterator »

Thanks for all the feedback.

Across all the forums I posted, everyone unanimously chose Costume A, so that will be the costume used in the final version of the game. Thanks again for the input.
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Rozyrg
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Rozyrg »

I would've picked B, personally. Then again I don't tend to assume every inclusion of T&A in media is a cynical, calculated appeal to the lowest common denominator. I know from experience tits are as fun to draw as they are look at. >_>

Anyways, I like all of 'em. Great job on the character art. :)

I really like the in-game graphics overall, too; but I feel they could be more consistent in places. Some of the smaller/mid-sized craft and the yellow turret tank things look amazing; but the bosses don't quite do it for me. Is it me or do they have kind of an EGA look to them?
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Herr Schatten
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Herr Schatten »

Rozyrg wrote:I would've picked B, personally. Then again I don't tend to assume every inclusion of T&A in media is a cynical, calculated appeal to the lowest common denominator. I know from experience tits are as fun to draw as they are look at. >_>
Aw, I totally missed the costume voting. Is there a way you could make type B visible again? :oops:
Rozyrg wrote:I really like the in-game graphics overall, too; but I feel they could be more consistent in places. Some of the smaller/mid-sized craft and the yellow turret tank things look amazing; but the bosses don't quite do it for me. Is it me or do they have kind of an EGA look to them?
I noticed the same thing. The colour choices seem odd in places, and overall, there's not really a consistent mood/theme present in the levels. I also feel that many of the objects look a bit static. I'd definitely add banking animations to the player ships (I know those are a pain to draw, but it's totally worth the hassle). Additionally, I'd try to make the enemies move less 'linearly' and maybe incorporate some subtle curves into their movement to make it appear more organic. Look at the enemy movement in (Do)Donpachi to see what I mean. You could also try to break up the bosses in 2-3 smaller parts (like body and wings) and make those move with a (very!) slight delay. The result will give the bosses more "weight" and make them appear more threatening. You could also speed up the scrolling of the background at the bosses, which would automatically make the fight seem more action-packed, even though you don't really change a thing.

Otherwise, I'm totally digging your cartoony art style. It's very unique and pleasing to look at. I feel you could emphasize it even more. The explosions, for example, look a little un-flashy, although their animation is fine. I'd rather expect something like this (without the text, obviously), though. Another example: The level result screen looks good, but it looks too realistic compared to the rest of the game. Try avoiding those inconsistencies and you'll have a real winner. The yellow tanks could use a little more depth. Try working on the shading, and make the front bit much darker than the top area, so the tanks look more solid and less flat.

One comment on the gameplay: I found the game much easier to play with Satsuki Ako. Her spread shot is much more useful for crowd control, and Asuna Sayo's shot isn't powerful enough to compensate for the lack of screen coverage. Plus, unless I'm missing something, the game doesn't really encourage precise shooting, so the narrow shot is really no realistic choice unless you want to make the game harder for yourself.

Overall, I'm pretty impressed. I enjoyed the demo a lot. I'm really looking forward to the next version. Keep up the awesome work.
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Zeether »

Ah, so you are a Negima fan! 8)

Gotta try this game out, looks pretty good...and I don't just mean the girls :wink:

EDIT: Tried it, great music and graphics but the controls were slightly awkward. I'm used to the arrow keys and Z/X and holding down numpad 0 to fire caused the diagonals to get locked out on my keyboard. I guess I should try with a gamepad?
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Ixranin
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Ixranin »

Herr Schatten wrote: Aw, I totally missed the costume voting. Is there a way you could make type B visible again? :oops:
I'm guessing type B is this, though not sure: http://pieterator.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2uqmgq

I think it'd be nice if the bosses moved a bit when shooting some of their patterns, since some of the patterns can get pretty static. (Such as Boss 2's 3rd pattern, the one with all the circle bullets moving outwards from the boss' central fire point, or Boss 1's random direction bullets.) The Magus battle music feels a liiiiittle out of place too. But the game's definitely got lots of potential.

Looking forward to a key config. My right hand on the arrow keys with my left hand reaching over it for the numberpad is getting clumsy, heh.
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pieterator
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by pieterator »

I bid you welcome after my extended absence :)

Aero Flux has just moved into Beta. You can download the newest version here.

Feedback and suggestions welcome.

Here's a partial change list:

Visual Changes
*Enemies now flash pure white when hit.
*Revamped Main Menu.
*Added Extra Effects (Preliminary, might get dropped).
*Added tons of new HUD sprites. (Power bar, Bomb bar, portraits etc.)
*Lots of enemy and player sprites.

Gameplay Changes
*Added new enemy that doubles its score each time its destroyed.
*Added new scoring mechanic by removing "Max Bombs" limit.
*Added 1ups. Get your first at 750 000, then every 2 000 000. These values are multiplied by the difficulty multiplier for each difficulty.
*Bosses now have a timer (Yellow bar). The Boss dies when it's depleted.
*Added name entry for High Scores.
*Added very basic High Score viewing.
*Added 'Difficulty Multiplier' which is multiplied with the normal score multiplier.
*Balanced the scoring: 1/4 For the stage, 1/4 For the boss, 1/4 For end of stage bonuses, 1/4 For Bonus enemies.
*Added Stage 3.
*Added 2 New Boat Enemies.
*Difficulty now affects all enemies.

User Interface Changes
*Added Music On/Off option.
*Added Sound Effects On/Off option.
*Added Key Configuration option.
*Screenshots are now saved to their own directory. Press "o" during gameplay.
*Screenshots are now saved each with a unique name.

Game Engine Changes
*Externalised a lot of assets.
*Cleaned up code.
*New Sound Engine (Thanks to SinBass).
*New Ini saving routines (Miles faster than Game Maker).
*Vastly reduced game size by using mp3's
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RNGmaster
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by RNGmaster »

A few thoughts:

- Please take out autobomb. Don't use this as an excuse to turn down difficulty, though!
- Grazing is pretty much broken, since you can use certain points to get like 2 or 3 bombs minimum (Start of Stage 3, for example).
- Most patterns don't change that much when you're on Bullet Hell difficulty.
- Huge lag on the Stage 2 boss for some weird reason.
- Most popcorn bullets are about 1/2 to 1/3 as fast as they should be. Sometimes I bump into them just because I feel sorry for them for being so easy to dodge.

Other than those gripes, this game is actually much more enjoyable than I imagined. But please, please, add an option to turn off those sidebars. It's distracting, and I don't want any onlookers to think I'm a weeaboo.
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by mjclark »

Yeah- I enjoyed playing this and pretty much agree with RNG:
1)At least make autobomb optional
2)Bullet patterns are a bit dull
3)Gameplay seems slightly too slow
4)Different options for the sidebars/wallpaper
5) Maybe some kind of extra scoring mechanic to add a bit more depth (but not polarity!)
This looks very promising and graphically it's great so please keep up the good work :D
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BPzeBanshee
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by BPzeBanshee »

About time I input my thoughts into this.

Regarding the Autobomb, it strikes me as a bit tacked in for the sake of being like Dodonpachi. People have suggested to make it optional or cut out entirely, I think it should be optional depending on the difficulty, or at least not as making-me-invincible as it is now. I'd go with either forcing it for lower difficulties and making it optional for higher difficulties only, or keeping it as-is for all difficulties but make the autobomb deplete your entire lifestock - this way it still serves the same purpose but it's not overpowering or anything like that.

I'm not quite sure I agree with all of the sentiments about the bullet patterns. Has everyone been playing it on the default mode? If so I can see the 'dullness' - it feels like a hybrid of Touhou stupidity and Raiden goodness on sleeping pills, but Bullet Hell difficulty is a bit more like Cave. I have some gripes with how the stuff currently works - I'm not exactly a Dodonpachi expert but didn't the suicide bullets cancel out if you killed said objects that emit those at certain radius from player? I felt like it should considering the way this is made. That said I am liking the way some of it's done so far - I certainly wouldn't mind making an arrange mode for this game where it's like Normal mode on speed and a few Raiden Fighters-inspired scoring mechanics thrown in. Hell, I might even a go at rank. :D

Another idea in regards to the whole slowness feeling though this is pretty much all aesthetics here - in the first stage I expected the ship to move around a bit and the stage to go fast or drop into a cliff or something, but it just sat there. Same with the other bosses. Maybe make some looping background that speeds up for bosses and make them move around the screen a little bit (like side to side)?

As for TATE, it is possible to do with Game Maker and depending on how you've coded the game very possible to do even with 640x480 aspect. In fact, it seems that 640x480 is preferable considering Shining Armour did it perfectly, and with some changes of how you handle the HUD and a few lines of code you may very well be able to implement it perfectly in a similar manner (my project GMOSSE has TATE support but due to how Game Maker handles window scaling and the game having a strict arcade resolution results in some distortion at best). While I'm at the talk of the HUD, the pictures of the horny pilots while nice to look at and wank over really should have an on/off switch.

Some bugs to report - going into Extras, doing a boss battle and getting a Game Over results in the Game Over music looping over everything else. I'm guessing you got the music from one of those generic free content websites I hear some go to for everything since its the exact same as Magic Broom Shooting along with some sound effects - I recommend 'sfxr' for coming up with neat simple sound effects should you consider bothing to replace them.

One last thing - why the need to press the player button at the character select screen? That didn't seem to make sense to me unless you were going for an arcade-style demonstration mode, which is lacking demonstration-mode-like features.

Overall there's a few issues there and some criticisms and some nitpicks but I'm glad you're still working on this and making progress. Keep it up! :D
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Rozyrg »

Nice to see you're still working on this! :)

It's definitely more sleek and polished now and I think the overall feel is just better, too. I really like the new level (always been a sucker for an air/sea battle stage), IMO it's the most fun so far.

Kinda disconcerting hearing the Magus fight theme for the bosses, though. :lol: I can understand the need to use whatever you can find, still... and for what it's worth, it works.
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by O.S.Tawhiri »

Nice game i like it! :)
Rly nice work man for a beta build ive got alot of fun,
Btw any plan for controller suport or difficulty lvl ? :)

Gl Hf
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Udderdude
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Udderdude »

Cleared Bullet Hell difficulty on my first try w/o dying. It's boring as hell and the revenge bullets are easy to avoid.

I have no clue how to make the multiplier go up, I'm assuming it's just based on enemies destroyed?

Full-screen mode just stretches the window and it looks awful. All your pixel art turns into stretched out crap.

My suggestions: Make the revenge bullets a different color and much faster, and make more of the enemies actually shoot at you.
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pieterator
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by pieterator »

Ok! Firstly, thank you very much for all the feedback. I will be taking all of it into consideration with the next update.

Secondly, I would like to make it very clear that this game was created to showcase my artistic abilities first, my game design abilities second and my programming skills a distant third. I love shmups, but I suck at them. How some of you cleared the Beta on Bullet Hell, without dying, completely boggles my mind. I CAN'T EVEN CLEAR THE BETA ON BULLET HELL USING ALL MY CONTINUES! And you say make it more difficult. How the hell am I going to test that?!? I'll do my best by making bullets faster and add some more patterns, but from this point forward I'll need you to tell me if a particular portion is to hard or impossible (because it's all impossible to me :shock:).

Auto Bombing
Again, because of the sucking, I rely on this to help me get through the levels. Maybe having it clear only the shots in a small radius around the fighter with a much shorter invincibility. Reducing or resetting the multiplier is also pretty harsh. Keeping the feature in for the easier difficulty levels is perhaps the best compromise.

Bullet Patterns / Suicide Bullets
I will try and make the bullet patterns more varied and entertaining. I will also speed up the shots of some of the bigger, badder enemies. All enemies have a dead zone around them in which they will not fire or release suicide bullets. The dead zone decreases in radius with difficulty, so on Bullet Hell you have to be on the enemy to have it not release its suicide bullets. I agree with making them a different colour.

The Pilot Portraits / TATE Mode / Full Screen Mode
So yes, the girls, the most common "complaint". Like I said, I'm an artist (in particular of sexy girls), but I can understand that it may offend some people, so I'll include a SFW option in the next update. Together with this, I'll look at creating a TATE mode for the hardcore-monitor-on-its-side fans. Just thinking of how in game character select will work is hurting my brain... Oh, and full screen is what it is, Gamemaker sucks at up-scaling. I tried pixel perfect up-scaling. It sucked. I gave up.

Controller Support
Got it. Will be in the next update.

Scoring Mechanics
The multiplier is based on enemy kills. This gives popcorn enemies a high priority, as they are important for building your multiplier.
Bullet grazing is not broken (He says boldly). As bombs count towards your score at the end of the stage, stocking them to blaze through the bosses is one option, but you'll get a lot more points if you let the boss timer run out while grazing bullets for extra bombs. Is this a good scoring mechanic? Worked in Super Stardust HD.

Sound
I have no excuses. It's a borrowed schizophrenic incoherent mess, and will probably be the last thing that gets overhauled. If anyone would like their name in the credits (Or maybe a skills trade), I would really welcome help on the music and sound effects.

Thank you O.S.Tawhiri, Rozyrg, mjclark for all your encouragement, and a special thank you to BPzeBanshee for his comprehensive write up on the Beta, I appreciate the effort. :D

Shoot the core!
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RNGmaster
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by RNGmaster »

I'd be glad to playtest further versions and work with you if you need help.

And I get that bullet grazing isn't broken, per se, it's just that you can stockpile so many bombs just by tapping away from bullets that
are moving your way that it becomes really hard to actually lose a life.
All the suicide bullets are precisely aimed rather than roughly aimed (see Ketsui Ura for an example of the latter), which makes them kind of dull. There's much more dodging to be done if the bullets aren't so easy to misdirect.
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Udderdude »

Also the suicide bullets don't even appear if enemies are lower on the screen.

A proximity bonus would be a nice addition, IMO. Just give the player more points for shooting the enemy closer.
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RNGmaster
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by RNGmaster »

Just played again. Got 16 bombs by the Stage 3 boss. This wasn't a refined run, since the difficulty is so low as it is that there's not much to refine. Give autobomb a heavy scoring penalty at the very least, please.
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Rozyrg
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Rozyrg »

Some advice I can think to give when it comes to difficulty is testing in small sections... strictly specific enemy combinations if necessary. As long as there's a decent enough gap between that and the next section and the rhythm mimics that of the actual game well enough, just seeing if it's possible, even after many tries, ought to do the trick.

Granted, I suck pretty hard at shmups too and the ones I make tend to reflect that; but still, I've made things in the past at least one other person has told me was too difficult and that I've gone back to unable to beat either. In the midst of heavy testing, somehow the seemingly impossible became possible. >_>
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BPzeBanshee
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by BPzeBanshee »

pieterator wrote:Ok! Firstly, thank you very much for all the feedback. I will be taking all of it into consideration with the next update.

Secondly, I would like to make it very clear that this game was created to showcase my artistic abilities first, my game design abilities second and my programming skills a distant third. I love shmups, but I suck at them. How some of you cleared the Beta on Bullet Hell, without dying, completely boggles my mind. I CAN'T EVEN CLEAR THE BETA ON BULLET HELL USING ALL MY CONTINUES! And you say make it more difficult. How the hell am I going to test that?!? I'll do my best by making bullets faster and add some more patterns, but from this point forward I'll need you to tell me if a particular portion is to hard or impossible (because it's all impossible to me :shock:).
Artistic abilites here are definitely WINNING in that regard, and the basic idea of the game design involved in Aero Flux has seen here is tried and true methods *almost* done right. Us Shmups Forum guys have a tendency to want difficulty but that's only okay as long as its 'fair' - ie you know where and how you died so you can learn to not repeat the mistake. Getting this downpat isn't easy and that's what this subforum is for. :)
pieterator wrote: Auto Bombing
Again, because of the sucking, I rely on this to help me get through the levels. Maybe having it clear only the shots in a small radius around the fighter with a much shorter invincibility. Reducing or resetting the multiplier is also pretty harsh. Keeping the feature in for the easier difficulty levels is perhaps the best compromise.
The way the autobomb mechanic currently works is mostly fine (so I'd probably be against altering its bullet clearing as such), the key issue that people are complaining about here is the amount that you get to use - exploit bullet grazing enough and you get something ridiculous in terms of bomb count. You've mentioned the bomb counts getting added to your bonus at the end of the stage which is a fine way to do it but it's not getting across to us as being the main emphasis of the game. I'm not sure whether I should be grazing for bombs and killing off the boss at the last possible moment or killing whatever as fast as possible. It doesn't feel like the mechanics are one and the same, but rather you not being able to make up your mind as to how the scoring's going to work. Maybe that's just my taste though.
pieterator wrote: Bullet Patterns / Suicide Bullets
I will try and make the bullet patterns more varied and entertaining. I will also speed up the shots of some of the bigger, badder enemies. All enemies have a dead zone around them in which they will not fire or release suicide bullets. The dead zone decreases in radius with difficulty, so on Bullet Hell you have to be on the enemy to have it not release its suicide bullets. I agree with making them a different colour.
I'm not so sure about having the deadzone decreasing in radius. I didn't even realise there WAS a deadzone to be honest since no matter how close I was to an object it just shot suicide bullets even if I did appear to be over the top of it. I'd recommend trying to keep hidden details like that consistent, ie the player ship's length.
pieterator wrote: The Pilot Portraits / TATE Mode / Full Screen Mode
So yes, the girls, the most common "complaint". Like I said, I'm an artist (in particular of sexy girls), but I can understand that it may offend some people, so I'll include a SFW option in the next update. Together with this, I'll look at creating a TATE mode for the hardcore-monitor-on-its-side fans. Just thinking of how in game character select will work is hurting my brain... Oh, and full screen is what it is, Gamemaker sucks at up-scaling. I tried pixel perfect up-scaling. It sucked. I gave up.
Udderdude yet again failed to realise this was made in Game Maker, and that the result of GM games in fullscreen depend not on the programmer but the end user. :P
Depending on your graphics card settings running this in fullscreen either will or will not blur pixels. Personally I like the blur myself, especially for MAME games in DirectDraw. The best you can do is add an option for setting the fullscreen resolution of the game so it will force the desktop to run at the resolution of the game and hope that it successfully reduces the need for upscaling.
For TATE, if you want code to see how it's done for a Game Maker game with sidebars look no further than Shining Armour in this very subforum. If you're using views for the main gameplay part of the screen it can in theory be easily rotated with little to no issues.

I'm glad I can help with this either way. Next time I'm mucking around with making music I'll see what I can do about replacing some of your audio material.
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Moniker
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Moniker »

The freaks are rising through the floor.
Recommended XBLIG shmups.
Top 20 Doujin Shmups of ALL TIME.
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Ixranin
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Ixranin »

There might be a bug with the key customization: Setting any of player 1's keys to WASD causes them to stop working for me, even if player 2's movement keys are changed.

Sorry I don't really have anything else to add, but good to see you're still working on it. :D
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by BPzeBanshee »

Moniker wrote:You got indiegames'd: http://indiegames.com/2011/09/demo_aero ... l#comments
LOL @ those silly comments;
Why the low/vertical screen estate? It's not a console port, nor a conversion, then why copy stupidity?

Like others I'll never understand these "sidebar illustrations", especially not with slightly erotic cartoons, but hey, probably I'm just getting old...

bakaohki | September 26, 2011 6:59 AM
:roll:
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RNGmaster
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by RNGmaster »

BPzeBanshee wrote:
Why the low/vertical screen estate? It's not a console port, nor a conversion, then why copy stupidity?

Like others I'll never understand these "sidebar illustrations", especially not with slightly erotic cartoons, but hey, probably I'm just getting old...

bakaohki | September 26, 2011 6:59 AM
:roll:
Oh yes, those people are such jerks. The don't understand the artistic value of cameltoe.
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BPzeBanshee
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by BPzeBanshee »

RNGmaster wrote: Oh yes, those people are such jerks. The don't understand the artistic value of cameltoe.
If you're referring to the erotic picture complaints, I couldn't care less about that, they've been said enough here on this thread alone. But since when did 'low/vertical screen estate' equal to stupidity?
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Rozyrg
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Rozyrg »

I could understand asking the question, the differences can be subtle and not all that apparent if you're more acclimated to console/computer-specific shooters; but yeah... :?

Not the tone to take if you genuinely want an answer...
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Udderdude »

Obviously you need to make the girls animated now, just to piss those guys off :P
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by lilmanjs »

trying this out right now and quite loving it!
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pieterator
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by pieterator »

Thanks for all the advice and support. With the feedback from this forum I believe I can make Aero Flux into the Shmup it should be.

For the next update I'll hit bullet grazing with the nerf stick, and see if this balances things a bit. I have a new idea for the bomb save as well, so we'll see how that turns out as well.
Udderdude wrote:Also the suicide bullets don't even appear if enemies are lower on the screen.
A proximity bonus would be a nice addition, IMO. Just give the player more points for shooting the enemy closer.
I'll lower the cutoff mark at the bottom of the stage. I really like the idea of a proximity bonus.

Thanks for the testing tips Rozyrg. Expect big revisions in the next version.

Thanks for the kind words on my art, BPzeBanshee. And again, thanks for the comprehensive comments :D. I think your comments on the varying deadzones is valid, I will look at implementing a standard distance. Another issue with full screen modes is LCD monitors, where if your not running at the native resolution, all pixels bleed. When I started writing this game I had a CRT monitor, so I never envisioned this problem. You live, you learn :D
Moniker wrote:You got indiegames'd: http://indiegames.com/2011/09/demo_aero ... l#comments
Thanks man, Moniker FTW! :D
Ixranin wrote:There might be a bug with the key customization: Setting any of player 1's keys to WASD causes them to stop working for me, even if player 2's movement keys are changed.
Thanks for making me aware of this. I have fixed the error, but some tweaks still need to be made so the keys display correctly in the configuration menu.

Seems the girls are getting a lot of the attention :D I predominantly like to create provocative art, but I know I'm walking a fine line, so some of the comments aren't entirely unexpected. I tip my hat to the more open minded and accommodating members of this forum. Writing a game is a form of expression, and I feel my game should reflect who I am.
Udderdude wrote:Obviously you need to make the girls animated now, just to piss those guys off :P
I immediately thought of the "jiggle physics" from Dead of Alive ;)
The whole idea of having the side portraits was to fill the sides with something, instead of having it blank (This was before I knew of TATE modes). I mainly looked at how console games handled this and copied them. So yes, this design decision has its roots in consoles orientated shmups. But don't worry though, a TATE mode is coming.

Thanks again for all the feedback, and keep the comments coming.
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Re: Aero Flux - Bullet Hell Shooter

Post by Udderdude »

If you're still going to have bombs, it would be nice if it capped at a reasonable value like 3 instead of 15 or whatever it is.
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