Mactabilis released!

[ItBurn]

Blazing Bit Games has released their new PC indie game, Mactabilis!

The game is available today from Impulse Driven and Desura: http://www.blazingbitgames.com/en/mactabilis

A new launch trailer was also released: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJAE_2TDbKc

A demo has also been released and is available on the Mactabilis site: http://www.blazingbitgames.com/en/mactabilis

Also, come see us at PAX East 2011!

[Despatche]

This seems more appropriate in the Shmups Chat section.

This looks poorly made, and the opening statement is offensive. Stick to Gradius.

[Udderdude]

Yeah, my eyes fell out of my sockets from rolling so many times after I read the crap in the trailer. OMG OUR GAME WILL SAVE SHMUPS FROM BEING LAME .. and then it's the same boring, rehashed euroshmup ideas that sucked 20 years ago and still suck today.

The depth idea seems neat though, and in the hands of a competent designer, you might even get something cool out of it. But as it is in this game, switching depths seems to put you in front of more of exactly the same enemies you were fighting on the other layers. And there's no time-out restriction for switching layers, so the player can just go nuts and never have to stick to anything.

[ItBurn]

Wow, harsh

Sure, a lot of the elements are similar to other shmups. It's a shmup after all. I don't remember seeing a shmup where you can craft your own weapons, replay the game endlessly and switch depth.

I assure you that the mechanics are solid and balanced and that just going nuts will get you killed
Try the demo.

[mjclark]

Well that video says "This is a shmup for people who don't like shmups"- dickheads

[Udderdude]

Sure, a lot of the elements are similar to other shmups. It's a shmup after all.

Oh, but I thought you were revolutionizing the genre? I thought this was SHMUPS IN 2011 and all other shmups were boring and stale? :P

I don't remember seeing a shmup where you can craft your own weapons, replay the game endlessly and switch depth.

Making your own weapons is just another gimmick, it doesn't actually add anything except something to screw around with until you find the most overpowered combination. And yeah, I'm 99% sure there's some overpowered combination that can be made that completely breaks the game. There's just too many options for it not to.

The replay value from shmups comes from replaying it in order to get a higher score, I'm not sure what you mean when it comes to your game, but you're probably wrong.

As I said, the depth switching would be cool if it was done in such a way that it required some sort of strategy.

I assure you that the mechanics are solid and balanced and that just going nuts will get you killed ;)
Try the demo.

I will try the demo, then report back.

[drei :3]

Next time you make an ad for a shmup, start with these words: THE WORLD'S FIRST SHMUP FOR NON-PEDOPHILES! I'm sure people here will appreciate it

I don't remember seeing a shmup where you can craft your own weapons, replay the game endlessly and switch depth.

The level of detail in weapon modification may set this game apart, but there are of course many shmups that allow fiddling with the weapon setup in some way or other. I don't remember having to put coins into my cartridges for replaying, though I guess by replaying endlessly you mean something like playing a level again. You can also select levels in Noiz2sa and many other shmups that weren't developed for the arcades. Switching depth was possible in B-Wings (arcade, 1984) and Vertical Force (Virtual Boy, 1995) and I'm sure there are a couple others, I admit these are fairly obscure titles though.

[ItBurn]

After completing the game, you keep your weapons and upgrades and are sent back to the first mission. Enemies are then tougher, but also give more rewards. You can do this for as long as you can meet the challenge. This is the case in all game modes and difficulties.

[doctorx0079]

After completing the game, you keep your weapons and upgrades and are sent back to the first mission. Enemies are then tougher, but also give more rewards. You can do this for as long as you can meet the challenge. This is the case in all game modes and difficulties.

In what ways are the enemies tougher?

[Udderdude]

After completing the game, you keep your weapons and upgrades and are sent back to the first mission. Enemies are then tougher, but also give more rewards. You can do this for as long as you can meet the challenge. This is the case in all game modes and difficulties.

So you get weapons and upgrades, which allows you to .. get more weapons and upgrades? That sounds a hell of a lot like RPG grinding. Is this the revolutionary new genre-changer for shmups? :P

And what does scoring have to do with any of this? (Nothing, I guess)

Edit: Tried it out. Switching constantly pretty much makes you invincible to the asteroids in level 1, since when you try to switch when you'd appear right into another object it says 'blocked' and saves you :P

Edit 2: Seconding the comments that the graphics are a god-awful blurry/filtery/glowy/photoshopped to all fuck mess. BUT HEY IT'S HD, SO THAT MEANS IT'S AWESOME AMIRITE

[Drum]

It's scrolling the wrong way, that's pretty revolutionary.

Makes me want to go play Balloon Kid. I think I will.

[drei :3]

Making your own weapons is just another gimmick, it doesn't actually add anything except something to screw around with until you find the most overpowered combination. And yeah, I'm 99% sure there's some overpowered combination that can be made that completely breaks the game.

There are ways to deal with different configurations without requiring exponential development time:

Imagine you have a straightforward arcade mode with a fixed ship setup, you have a shop mode where you can buy upgrades between stages with a score penalty and upgrade prices are fixed; and finally you have an "evolving" mode, which is just shop mode with prices adjusted at regular intervals, upgrades frequently bought in the highest-ranked playthroughs of that mode get more expensive in the next period and other upgrades get cheaper. In that mode, you would get a new highscore table with every iteration (though it's possible to copy those ranked in the last top 5 to the top 5 of the next table in the same order, but with modified scores). IMHO the formula setting prices for evolving mode during the next period should use a little bit of randomness, so it doesn't just stop if an equilibrium is found, which I think would be boring. One could add such a mode to just about any 1-player game with a shop system.

I would stick with playing arcade mode.

[Drum]

I ended up playing Kolibri instead. idk why.
Did some or all of the same folks work on Bio-Hazard Battle? Two games have a lot in common.

[Elixir]

Sure, a lot of the elements are similar to other shmups. It's a shmup after all.

revolutionary

alternatively, contradictory

[austere]

That intro is by far the most hilarious thing I've seen in a while. The fact that you think shooters are "all the same", really says you have no idea how to distinguish between them -- there's no way you can build upon them, in that case. You think your euroshooter is better than DOJ? You think Ketsui is "shallow"? Mushihimesama Futari is "frustrating"? DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu BL is "redundant"? It seems that "indie" game makers have to be repugnant, mocking great work in order to make their pathetic abortions more palatable. Since you've decided to compare yourself to the rest of the shooters, I'll give you my criticism.

I played through the demo in "arcade" mode. Heh, it has a health bar, that should tell you enough about the design. The ship can't move to the edges of the screen. It has an "energy" bar which runs out (pointlessly, because it fills right back up again) and stops you from shooting. Tip windows pop up every now and then, thwarting any chance of immersion. A hipster greets you every now and then with messages you can ignore. Changing depths might be interesting, maybe, but not in the manner that it has been implemented from the levels I saw.

SHIFT-DELETE

Basically, this is a bit worse than the games I wrote when I was 14, except with additional lighting effects. I know this seems cruel, but it's fair.

[Ixranin]

From playing the demo, here're my critiques: (not in any particular order)

1) Way too much anti-aliasing in the effects, resulting in lots of glowing fuzzy things onscreen. They're easy to pass off as cheap Flash-style graphics, and it makes the enemy bullets hard to see at times because their blurred edges don't stand out very well. Lots of the player bullets being soft and fuzzy doesn't imply much strength behind them either. It works in the space backgrounds though.

2) The weapon customization is underwhelming; probably under-researched/developed. For one of the game's main selling points, it's just not very impressive. I would've looked around for more weapon examples in games like Raiden Fighters and Super Aleste, as Mactabilis' current offerings don't really explore the options that are possible in terms of weapons.

From fooling around with the editor, the best weapon is probably something that shoots large bullets with some delay. (Such as the last weapon on the 2nd row, which might be the second-best default weapon in the game.) Most of the pre-made weapons have pretty poor damage output, and the rapid-fire ones are glaringly bad. Bigger bullets = more damage doesn't seem like the most balanced approach, as bigger bullets also mean more coverage without having to sacrifice as much accuracy as the various spread options. (It can also lead to obnoxious bullet sizes.) Some of the options are plain useless too, just taking up space in the menu to give the illusion of more choice. An example are the rotating shots, which would need to act more like Axelay's rotating gun to be somewhat useful. There're other issues with "The Formula" as well, such as reducing Delay costing a lot of money, but your DPS is about the same as at a higher delay that costs a fraction of the price.

Also... the very last pre-made weapon is not only ridiculous, but if you're shooting it on the front layer then switch to the back layer, the player ship is completely obscured by the explosions for a while. (And probably all the enemies, bullets, and such too.)

3) The weapon energy mechanic is a redundant effort to get the player to combo, and an annoying one at that because of how it works. Shouldn't it just lower your rate-of-fire when it runs out, instead of completely locking up your weapon? It seems to arbitrarily punish some weapons more then others too, meaning the energy consumption of weapons hasn't been balanced.

4) Speaking of energy, is there any particular reason the HP, Shields, Energy, and stims aren't displayed at the top or bottom of the screen? They can be prompted to appear above the player ship for a couple seconds, but then vanish again. This can get annoying with the energy bar, which I seem to recall not appearing very often when it was running out during actual gameplay. (In testing mode it seems to always appear when your energy goes below a threshold though.) The between-levels menu has a display at the top of the screen with weapon selection and energy on it... but it doesn't show up during the levels themselves.

5) Is there a particular reason for including critical hits? Is there a mechanic built around them, or were they tossed in just to spice things up?

[TMR]

Wow, harsh

Sure, a lot of the elements are similar to other shmups. It's a shmup after all.

So you took elements from games your trailer describes as "shallow, frustrating and redundant" then... that's a worrying implication in itself.

I don't remember seeing a shmup where you can craft your own weapons

It's not the same of course, but there's a massive amount of flexibility in the X-Out (Amiga, ST, 8-bits) shop for example so having an involved shop isn't a USP as such.

replay the game endlessly

Many shoot 'em ups don't stop after the first loop so it's hardly groundbreaking, loop mid 1980s coin-ops and home computer games and quite a few will keep going with the difficulty where you left off.

and switch depth.

Parallax, a C64 game from 1986 has depth switching and although i can't immediately think of an older example (two slightly newer ones would be W.A.R and Implosion, again on the C64) i'm positive there's at least a couple. Even the reversed scroll direction has been done on multiple occasions, with Airwolf 2 on the 8-bits as another random example from the 1980s.

[mjclark]

If only the demo video had begun:
"Shmups have continued to be one of the most exciting and compelling video game genres over the past 30 years. We are proud to be part of this noble heritage and salute shmups as the choice of handsome, sophisticated and intelligent gamers everywhere."
Then maybe we'd be more sympathetic to this shit lol

[Alec44]

Then maybe we'd be more sympathetic to this shit lol

Oh, i think it won't hurt much this forum but the administrator can erase my account....

Farewell and goodbye !

[emphatic]

Then maybe we'd be more sympathetic to this shit lol

Oh, i think it won't hurt much this forum but the administrator can erase my account....

Farewell and goodbye !

[Udderdude]

[drei :3]

I hope they read and think about these comments if they want to update their game or make a new one.

Switching constantly pretty much makes you invincible to the asteroids in level 1, since when you try to switch when you'd appear right into another object it says 'blocked' and saves you :P

This doesn't sound good...

Let's think about movement-layer concepts.

First of all, consider what you want to accomplish with an idea and what possible problems it entails. My answer is that I want layers for dodging some attacks and I also want that there's stuff that is hidden, and that the player can't reveal all the hidden stuff in a level in one run. The problem is how to make transparent what can hit the player and what cannot.

Considering both questions together, it becomes clear that we shouldn't hide stuff that kills the player through the face when moving into that layer. The only stuff that should be hidden, if we hide anything, is score items. Making non-colliding stuff fuzzy is really irritating, so I wouldn't do that and just make some stuff always top-layer, so it soon becomes obvious to the player. Flying behind something big is also annoying, so the level design should completely avoid such situations. If you can move between 2 layers as often as you want and what is in each layer is transparent all the time, that's basically Ikaruga. Let's do things a bit differently:

Imagine a vertical-scrolling game with a cutesy animal that swims through the ocean. You can push and hold a button to dive, that means you instantly switch to the bottom layer. You have an oxygen bar that automatically refills by spending time in the top layer and you can only start to dive once it's full. If your dive is short, the bar only gets partially depleted. However, no matter how short your dive is, there's a good minimum chunk of the bar that always gets taken out when you start diving.

Enemies attack you with 2 shot types, bullets (very common) and torpedos. A bullet can only hit you while you are in the top layer. A torpedo cannot be dodged by switching layers. All enemies and their attacks are perfectly visible all the time, their shots are coloured in stark contrast to the background and drawn on top of everything, and there are no soft-focus or zoom-around shenanigans.

While diving, there's a cutout in the water texture around you that reveals score items that you can only collect while underwater. Some underwater score items always wait in the same places, but killed baddies also drop score items, which swim for a moment and then sink. Bullets and score items are placed in a way that different players have incentives to dive at different places, noobs dive for survival and pros for score.

Doesn't this sound better? Any takers?

[doctorx0079]

@ ItBurn: This is how you do it.

@ Alec44: If you want to make good shmups, reading this board is a really good idea. But of course it's your choice. It is quite possible to make good shmups without reading this board.

[ItBurn]

Hi there.

We've just gotten back from PAX East. Tons of awesome feedback and it was a lot of fun.

Thanks for all of your comments. I realize that the game is very different from gradius, but I assure you that it's solid fun.

The dodging does NOT make the game easy. If normal difficulty is too easy, or if you don't like the health bar, completing the game unlocks hardcore mode. In that mode, you die in a single hit and you MUST get a perfect grade at the end of the level to continue on.

As for the weapon editor, yes, for the most damage on a single target, a big and slow bullet is the best option, but that will get you terrible scores because levels are filled with hundreds of enemies and bullets that you must destroy quickly. There's a weapon for every situation.

Also, the video wasn't meant to piss you guys off, but you have to understand that shmups nowadays have a hard time of going mainstream and we tried hard to make something refreshing, in a good way.

To finish, we plan on supporting the game for a long time and will add the features that the fans want.

Oh, and one more thing. Why is it a problem if the ships goes left? Anyway, in Mactabilis, some levels go left, some right, some switch direction in the middle and some are completely different from the others.

[Udderdude]

We've just gotten back from PAX East. Tons of awesome feedback and it was a lot of fun.

I can assure you that almost any feedback you got from the non-shmuppers at PAX whatever is useless. 99% of modern and even older gamers have no clue what makes a shmup work.

Thanks for all of your comments. I realize that the game is very different from gradius, but I assure you that it's solid fun.

Yes, Gradius is actually a good game, and a classic to boot.

The dodging does NOT make the game easy. If normal difficulty is too easy, or if you don't like the health bar, completing the game unlocks hardcore mode. In that mode, you die in a single hit and you MUST get a perfect grade at the end of the level to continue on.

I would play it on hardcore, but it's locked and going through normal mode to get to it sounds boring. Unlock it for me. :P

As for the weapon editor, yes, for the most damage on a single target, a big and slow bullet is the best option, but that will get you terrible scores because levels are filled with hundreds of enemies and bullets that you must destroy quickly. There's a weapon for every situation.

lol. So your scoring system is "Use wide shot". Awesome.

Also, the video wasn't meant to piss you guys off, but you have to understand that shmups nowadays have a hard time of going mainstream and we tried hard to make something refreshing, in a good way.

BACKPEDDLING AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT!

People here are well aware it's hard for shmups to go mainstream, they will forever be consigned to a niche. But you know what? That's ok. Because the more mainstream the genre becomes, the more watered down and crap it will become as well. Hence your game with it's varying levels of poor design.

Nothing in it is refreshing in a good way. If you knew ANYTHING about the shmups genre at all, or even read posts by other people in this thread, you'd realize all the ideas you "came up with" to "bring the genre forward" have already been done before, and been better implemented to boot :P

And, seriously, you think this is how shmups are going to go mainstream? You're going to have to do a lot better than this. It looks like a two year old slapped it together in photoshop. http://rydia.net/udder/!crap/mactabilisShitBoss.png

[ItBurn]

@Ixranin I assure you that the weapon damage/energy cost/price is balanced. All the ship stats are only shown when needed because it clears up the screen and really, with all the action there is, you don't have time to look at your health bar. The critical hits are just to spice things up.

[drei :3]

Holy shit, you came back to the thread! Kudos!

If normal difficulty is too easy, or if you don't like the health bar, completing the game unlocks hardcore mode.

A shmup isn't hated for giving you lots of extra-lifes, the reason health bars in shmups aren't popular is not low difficulty. For skilled players there's something called scoring, after all.

There are 2 reasons why the player having an energy bar is not very popular in shmups (or run'n'gun games):
1. It's an omen of shoddy game design, a "fix" for laggy controls or unfair situations, though this doesn't have to be true.
2. It makes the game feel imprecise when something as basic as whether getting hit by a certain attack will make you blow up isn't immediately clear to the player.

One can "fix" the 2nd issue by making the game slow enough that the player has time to make such estimates, but you can bet that's not a popular idea around here. A fix that might actually work and is very easy to implement is to give the player a short time of invincibility after the energy bar is fully depleted. After that, anything is deadly.

If an energy bar is used at all, better use one with a few big chunks instead of one where each pixel represents a unit of health, unless you want players to pause and bust out their magnifying glasses whenever an enemy attacks. If you think such a change is too fundamental at this point, at least use segmentation, because it makes it easier to estimate the quantities at a glance.

you have to understand that shmups nowadays have a hard time of going mainstream and we tried hard to make something refreshing, in a good way.

(...)

Anyway, in Mactabilis, some levels go left, some right, some switch direction in the middle

You can also switch direction in Choplifter (1982), and the other innovations have about the same age. [edit: How could I forget Defender? Defender had done it before, in 1980.] Anyway, the composition is more important than the parts.

with all the action there is, you don't have time to look at your health bar.

Why not leave that decision to the player? Besides, whatever genre we are talking about, there are of course other ways to inform the player than displaying something at the edge of the screen — a display right on the character/ship, jingles, rumble.

[ItBurn]

Yeah, don't worry about me. I'm a harsher critic on my own game that you guys can ever be :p

The reason for the health bar is to make sure that people survive the crazy action. I don't see it as a problem. It's fun to be able to say that you survived whatever crazy thing just happened. In this game, it doesn't really matter if you know your health or not because any damage will lower your score. Stats are displayed right on the character ship actually, but only appear when they're changing. There's also a clear sound and visual effects when you take damage. Customizing it is a good idea tho.

Also, this isn't a triple A title. This is a very small indie company and the game is just 10 bucks.

Oh, and if you don't like the art, it's all easily moddable.

[eebrozgi]

The reason for the health bar is to make sure that people survive the crazy action. I don't see it as a problem. It's fun to be able to say that you survived whatever crazy thing just happened.

I personally think it hurts the "craziness" if you can just let it hit you without killing you; passing through a bullet swarm and succeeding to dodge it all brings a better "HOLY SHIT I TOTALLY SURVIVED THAT"-moment. This can be achieved more easily by shrinking the ship's hitbox. I don't know what kind of hitbox it has now, though.

Edit: I meant a swarm of one-hit-kill bullets, of course.

[ItBurn]

The hit box is already shrunk. But you're right in a way, it's even more cool when one hit kills you, but then the act itself has to be a bit less crazy.