Under the Lotus !

[JonnyM]

Hoi^.^

Does someone of you know this game? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gcLpUIabM4 looks quite nice ans it got nice musik^^

By the way, the guy who is playing got some other nice looking games on his channel !

greets

[Despatche]

This was posted a while ago.

GloriousLight is a Pretty Cool Guy, this game is not.

[Udderdude]

nice musik

You miss-spelled "Atrocious". And music. >_>

Also what's the point of all the bullets if the player can just clear right through them like they don't even matter? Looks silly.

[JonnyM]

ohh^.^ i thought all of you like games with 1 trillion bullets in it

[Udderdude]

It can have 100 trillion bullets and it won't matter if the player just makes them all dissapear w/o even trying.

[Vyxx]

ohh^.^ i thought all of you like games with 1 trillion bullets in it

Needs some quality tho

[JonnyM]

ohh^.^ i thought all of you like games with 1 trillion bullets in it

Needs some quality tho

hhm ok maybe i just "buy" it and test it myself^.^

[Observer]

Well, GloriousLight is my youtube account if you guys were wondering, heh.

And you better don't bitch about this, I even asked deathpiyo to incorporate a keyboard+mouse layout, which I tested in another video.

Those are very, very (and I mean very) early test versions, the game is still under development and might be for a long time since he lives precisely in the Fukushima prefecture, was locked and isolated for a while because of the radiation, lack of fuel and more so, well, there are other issues that need to be addressed first. Add to that he also suffers a pretty complicated disease and was hospitalised. If anything, I hope he will be able to reach his vision and finish the game as well as controlling the disease.

Speaking of which:

The core of Under the Lotus is that if you die ONCE (1), you are dead for real. Game over, bye bye. From Russia with love. No continues, no nothing. Kinda like Gradius III but doable. That's why you have to "travel" between safespots (by carefully placing your second ship) and teleporting there once you are about to be overrun by bullets. While doing so, you also clear all the bullets in a straight line for loads of point items. Sounds easy on video but when you have to dynamically switch all over the place in milliseconds, it's far from easy... it also makes you look all over the screen.

You can increase your firepower by picking the coloured items that appear now and then, which also control the rank and make things increasingly harder by adding extra flak or more enemies.

The whole thing is being reworked though so the videos might soon be outdated (stage 1 was the most complete but he reworked it entirely but couldn't release it so far), don't take them as reference. Contact him too if you want, he's open to suggestions and speaks english! (try to be as clear and simple as possible though)

edit: and it has TATE ffs!!!!

edit2: I don't want to mention Ikaruga but the word "switch" always brings Ikaruga to people's minds. I can read that little sentence, "It's like Ikaruga but you switch ships instead of colours". Right? Mwahahaha.

edit3: There is also a lot of playing with synchronisation and I hope that will be expanded in the next versions.

[Udderdude]

It's unfortunate the poor guy had to deal with all that. Traveling between safespots sounds more like teleporting. I guess. I'd have to see the newer revisions.

[Observer]

Agreed. One bad thing is ok, but he had like a complete series of unfortunate events... Talk about mischief/bad luck, argh. Adding insult to the injury, the recent strong aftershock put everyone in panic-mode in his area. The worse: I kind of made him use Steam and he ended up buying Fallout 3/New Vegas (I also linked him to the joy of mods for PC games, heh) and, well, the Fallout: Fukushima joke was inevitable.

Back to the switch mechanic: you essentially control two ships at once, but only one of them is offensive. The other can be placed all around the stages and moved independently to find the right place to switch (that way, ship1 goes to where ship2 is) while giving a slight (nearly a blink) of invulnerabilty during the switch/bullet cancelling and auto-collection of point items, quite helpful to assess the situation and see if it's better to dodge (guess it'll be changed but there are moments where you have to use a combination of dodging with fast switching at the same time) or find a better place to re-position and keep attacking.

I'm pretty sure he will be able to polish and flesh out the scoring system, weapons and other mechanics as well as the stage designs. It might take a long while though but I really loved the crazy art/approach (with some priceless boss warnings) and the music. Lucky I'm patient, heh.

[Udderdude]

If there's one thing you can convince him to do .. pleaaaaaaase get some different music.

[AntiFritz]

If there's one thing you can convince him to do .. pleaaaaaaase get some different music.

I quite like the music.

[JonnyM]

Sounds awesome !! I knew it

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Wow he's not a lucky guy. Having an dodgy thyroid and living in Fukushima

[Observer]

Ok, guys, a small update.

I asked him to post a blog entry so at least we could have his current status:

http://zerobyteorbit.blog135.fc2.com/blog-entry-16.html

So, development was indeed halted but might resume soon with a brand new version! After this, he might start working on a 3D action game.

[mjclark]

How do I get this to install? Can someone talk me through it please
I've got NET Frasmework and XNA but it still gives me error right at the start.

[Observer]

First and foremost: do you have a 360 USB pad? (seriously, not the wireless) Or do you have a USB mouse/keyboard (seriously, not wireless) and you don't mind tricky controls?

If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, I will PM you some instructions and tricks/tips. If you guys need to ask more stuff, just post it here, deathpiyo is an awesome, friendly guy and his english is quite fluent too! (of course, don't go Shakespeare =P)

[mjclark]

First and foremost: do you have a 360 USB pad? (seriously, not the wireless) Or do you have a USB mouse/keyboard (seriously, not wireless) and you don't mind tricky controls?

If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, I will PM you some instructions and tricks/tips. If you guys need to ask more stuff, just post it here, deathpiyo is an awesome, friendly guy and his english is quite fluent too! (of course, don't go Shakespeare =P)

Yes got 360 pad but my error occurs right at the NF 3.5 SP1 screen

[Observer]

Oh, I misread things then.

You are getting an error during the installation right? Did you try just cancelling or overlooking it and continue? (I think I also had an error previously) Else, you'll have to install the .NET Framework manually from the Microsoft site, it's a requirement for XNA games (Zeit2 did this to me after downloading it via Steam and infecting me with TAGES). It wouldn't hurt to also install the XNA runtime, which will go through anyway.

If you still can't install, I'll check if I can unearth one of the earlier versions with the bigger videos.

To anyone trying to install: don't desperate if the .NET crap takes an era to finish installing, it sometimes does that, just be patient.

Good luck and hope you can work this out! (If you can, remember the game does not know mercy, one death = game over.)

[mjclark]

Yep- this definitely won't work for me even with NET Framework and XNA Framework installed. I'm on XP SP3 with latest DirectX.

[Observer]

Yep- this definitely won't work for me even with NET Framework and XNA Framework installed. I'm on XP SP3 with latest DirectX.

Check this thread and see if this helps. It might be some corrupt thing or whatever Microsoft does to f%$& things up each time a new version of something comes out.

Good luck and I really hope this works!

[mjclark]

Yep- this definitely won't work for me even with NET Framework and XNA Framework installed. I'm on XP SP3 with latest DirectX.

Check this thread and see if this helps. It might be some corrupt thing or whatever Microsoft does to f%$& things up each time a new version of something comes out.

Good luck and I really hope this works!

Thanks! Got it working on one machine by updating DirectX, other machine it installs but encounters a problem and crashes when I run it.

Really like the graphics on this but that switching mechanic I'm not so sure about.

[JonnyM]

I really like the whole style of the game, but it takes a while to get used to the switching and then its awesome and very unique !

[mjclark]

My crashes are fixed!
On the tate setup, UTL crashes if I'm using nVRotate to rotate the desktop but the game runs fine as long as the desktop isn't rotated.

@Observer: If you're in dialogue with the developer maybe you could let him know this as a bug report.

[Observer]

My crashes are fixed!
On the tate setup, UTL crashes if I'm using nVRotate to rotate the desktop but the game runs fine as long as the desktop isn't rotated.

@Observer: If you're in dialogue with the developer maybe you could let him know this as a bug report.

Ok, I'll let him know ASAP. He officially resumed development today... after clearing Fallout New Vegas and the DLC. If you wonder how a japanese viciously played a game on Steam, yeah, I made it happen. And I'm about to do the same with another one, I just need to set up the terrain.

Let's hope the new version of Under the Lotus comes more brutal and kickass than ever. For a change, it seems he entirely reworked the way enemies and patterns show to make it even harder.

As for the switch mechanic, it takes time to get used to it but once the adrenaline is pumping and you know one hit equals game over... Being at the edge is quite fun, heh.

edit: and you don't need to rotate anything since the game comes with TATE mode.

[mjclark]

Ok, I'll let him know ASAP. He officially resumed development today.
Let's hope the new version of Under the Lotus comes more brutal and kickass than ever. For a change, it seems he entirely reworked the way enemies and patterns show to make it even harder.
As for the switch mechanic, it takes time to get used to it but once the adrenaline is pumping and you know one hit equals game over... Being at the edge is quite fun, heh.
edit: and you don't need to rotate anything since the game comes with TATE mode.

Yeah- I'll really give this a serious go now.
The machine I use for gaming has the monitor permanently tated so I like to rotate the desktop so I can go online and post etc. without having to change machines or crick my neck. I'm guessing that problem has an easy fix though cos everthing else tateable doesn't mind nVRotate at all.
Glad developement's resumed too

[mjclark]

Given this a spin now and the switching mechanic is starting to make sense- it's really useful for teleporting into gaps in dense bullet patterns and jumping over bullet chains.
Controlling two ships at once is a whole new skill set and it's gonna take a lot of practice.
It's even more complex than Raiden III Double Mode cos here when you switch ships then the stick you control the ship with switches too.

[Observer]

Given this a spin now and the switching mechanic is starting to make sense- it's really useful for teleporting into gaps in dense bullet patterns and jumping over bullet chains.
Controlling two ships at once is a whole new skill set and it's gonna take a lot of practice.
It's even more complex than Raiden III Double Mode cos here when you switch ships then the stick you control the ship with switches too.

I'm glad you are starting to enjoy it and I bet deathpiyo will be glad too, heh. I love the boss messages and crazy texts that pop up... Maybe we should advise to add more of those on later stages? I agree it takes a lot of practice to control the switch mechanic as well, the game can be really tricky and be warned that the newest version appears to have increased difficulty, on top of rank control/weapon power by picking the falling items.

For the control thingie, see if you can disable "Switch assist" in the options menu. This should leave ship one locked to the left stick and ship two locked to the right no matter if you switch them. That was one of the many control experiments done last year to see how we would apply keyboard+mouse control and comfortable pad controls.

By the way, he has started working on some new tunes as well as reprocessing Stage 00 song (it's the same, but it sounds more powerful). There is already a new song I hope will be part of the Extra or stage 04 or something, it's quite fast paced but has an entrancing rhythm, appropriate to test synchronized enemy formations and stuff.

This, along with Stella Vanity (now with Crimzon Clover inspirations instead of Touhou!), ring^-27 (brutal awesome low-res Cave-like shooter of glory) and RefRain (really varied and the trial I got showed a lot of nice progress and improvements) are pretty much the four remaining "big" shooters I'm looking forward to. Of course, let's hope more stuff will show up.

[Never_Scurred]

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Crimzon Clover blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

I was skimming through this thread and just as I was about to leave, you got my attention.
Tell me more, please.

[Observer]

You meanie. Let's just say Tris-Gram decided to ditch the boring Touhou-like "nothing happens" background for a "yay, let's go Crimzon Clover/CAVE and have ground enemies plus BUREIKU MODO!". And so that happened. With a trial coming soon... if he can actually accomplish the set deadline. The entire scoring system was changed to resemble more the original one (0.10, the one I loved, not the gem-exchanging Progear wannabe loli mess that 0.20 was). Anyway, unearth the Stella Vanity thread and stop spamming here!

As for UTL, maybe I can see if some sort of surreal sky platforms with turrets and multiple targets could be added on later stages for variety. Gonna ask deathpiyo about the feasibility of this.