HEAVEN VARIANT - (NEW SEPTEMBER 2011 ALPHA VIDEO)

[zanrai]

NEW ALPHA VIDEO SEPTEMBER 2011 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epeTMdQAXDU


(pre?)ALPHA GAMEPLAY VIDEO HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBB-2iT0-N8
Please have mercy on us for the roughness at this point. We're still implementing core systems and we are sans 3D artist. (though our search is almost finished)

Howdy! I'm representing a small indie team called Zanrai Interactive, and we're trying to spread the word about a game we're currently developing. We're still establishing base components that we want in here, but we're at the point where we want to start spreading the word. We're developing it in UDK, which gives us a lot of cool toys to play with, but at the same time we want to avoid the floaty, indie Euroshmup stigma that a lot western shooters tend to materialize into. We recognize that trend where developers focus on components outside of the actual gameplay and shooting (like gravity, boring enemy repititions, and all that jazz) and we're actively pursuing the tight controls and gameplay found in classic Japanese shooters. We aren't really intending this to be a bullet hell shooter. Anyhoo, this is the first of probably many posts by me in this thread to keep tabs on our progress. We have a website if you're interested in following our dev blog, again, I'll keep posting any big developments in this thread.

DEV BLOG : http://www.heavenvariant.com/

We're aiming to release for digital purchase, and we have registered a company and everything, so this is a serious endeavor, but it stems from a genuine love for pure thrill of shooting enemies on a 2D plane.

The Alpha video is mainly a demonstration of a few main features and the general style. Again, we do not have a 3D artist and all the models in the video are placeholders (our search for a 3D modeler is almost over though). The video shows some of our gameplay, effects style, and weapons. Its mainly just a showcase of a few components that are a little technical. Particularly spawning enemies that we can easily animate (they're not doing much in the video admittedly), shooting down enemies, and scrolling through a 3D stage.

Extra Stuff:

(Note: A sample music track is available on our dev blog!) Just click the link!
(Note: Some of these pics use our old logo. We've replaced it since with the one at the top of this post.)

Character avatars such as these will be used to identify friendly and enemy characters that are speaking over the radio during gameplay. They will be key in not only informing the player where enemies are coming from, but in relaying the simple story. The story definitely takes a seat to the gameplay at all times though.


alpha screencap:

This is tentatively the player ship. It will go through a few revisions, surely. The rotating "weapon axle" is the power up slot. The player can manually aim this weapon and precisely aim at enemies at will, but in doing so, will sacrifice agility. The player's main laser weapon that is always equipped will always fire straight ahead, and this gives us some higher level gameplay scoring mechanics to implement, including allowing the player to line up in the right region of the screen to shoot at two enemies at once. We are being mindful of being fair as well, because while enemies can theoretically come from any direction with this mechanic and we intend on making sure that the flow of the enemies coming at the player ensure the player moves to the right areas as needed. Worst case scenario we use a warning indicator arrow. This allows us to do some cool stuff, like chase sequences (enemies from behind), or even limiting the player to shooting at enemies below him in ground vehicles.


Our explosions are animated with a little bit of an anime look/style. We layer it with traditional particle effects for smoke to help it fit into the 3D world. The alpha video shows this best probably.


This is just a background test. It probably won't be used, but who knows.


One thing not shown here is our armor system we're using for enemies (medium, to larger enemies that is). You will be able to pick apart and shell enemies to a core. Admittedly a lot of games have done this, but we intend to add -a lot- of parts, practically designing our enemies from the inside out so that the player can pick them apart. This ties into the scoring system also.

We're on Facebookand Twitter too, if that's your bag, and again we have our Dev Blog, too. We'll keep this thread up to speed too as we update and add significant stuff.

Anything you have to say is welcome. We're happy to take any questions you might have.

Cheers.

[relminator]

Wow! GFX looks fantastic dude!

[zanrai]

Ah, thank you very much, our team still has -a lot- of work to do, but it's encouraging to hear positive feedback in this early stage.

That's very kind of you. We appreciate it. :]

[Rozyrg]

Love the logo and the test art! The game footage looks promising, too.

[Udderdude]

So it's pretty obvious you're going for some sort of Einhander style thing, except Einhander had some pretty fucking amazing stages and bosses and setpieces and music and etc.

Hope you can at least come somewhere close to that :p

[Blackbird]

I like what I see so far. Is this your original music playing? I really enjoy it. It's pretty rockin'. I also like what I see going on what the character portraits and the art asset tests. If you can get that level of aesthetic detail going for the whole game, then I have high hopes for this.

I think you are utilizing your 3D well, that depth of field effect is really exciting.

Points of criticism:

I realize that this is an alpha mockup, but the ship looks just a little bit sluggish to me. I'd like to see it have just a little bit more zip.

The mock up of the player ship also looks a bit bulky atm. I realize that it's not final art, but the placeholder reminds me more of a heavy stealth bomber than a maneuverable, high speed fighter craft at this point. The player's hit box is unclear at this point.

[zanrai]

Einhander is definitely a big influence aesthetically, but its not the only influence. As far as shmups go, Einhander has aged really well, and we think the style we've chosen will hopefully peak the interest of the broadest number of gamers in the end (and hopefully the press!!!!!), perhaps pulling in some people that are too intimidated by bullet hell shooters. As far as bosses and set pieces go, we've really been studying how Square did what they did, and how they put their bosses together. If we cannot hit the standard they created for their awesome bosses (or at least something close) then as far as I'm concerned, we're dead in the water. We're also looking at the way Treasure designed its bosses in a number of its games. It's a hard standard to live up to, we realize, and skepticism is warranted. With that said, the UDK toolset offers us a lot of ways (and flexibility) to get interesting set pieces and bosses in game and moving rapidly which will give us more time to perfect these aspects.

To look at this as an Einhander clone though is a little misleading imo. Einhander definitely is an influence, don't get me wrong, but its not the only influence, nor does it fully encapsulate some of the gameplay aspects we want to do. We're not necessarily trying to be older games, and while comparisons are natural, we're hoping in the future to show how our variation on gameplay will make us different (in a good way).

Fair enough about the ship reference picture. I think the 3/4 view is a little deceiving in its bulkiness. The main central wing comes up from the top and bottom symmetrically, the side wings more or less line up with the angles created there. From its intended side view though, its shape is more of a wedge. With that said, the hitbox should nestle inside comfortably in a way that's understandable and allows for dodging. Again, the design isn't final by any means, it will need tweaks in the end (like most game components). Part of the reason for the weird design is also because we wanted that manual aiming system implemented on a ship that might be recognized as a more traditional ship. It's a little weird, but we'll keep at it until we get it right. I'm really not very happy with the side wings, near the rear; they will be adjusted.

EDIT: I just realized you were referring to the 3D model in the alpha video. Damn it! I just wrote a paragraph about your concern over the ship except instead of the 3D ship, I was talking about the the concept art pic. The 3D model in the alpha is nothing more than a stand in. Something to shoot bullets and receive bullets. It will receive the first changes probably before everything else! In fact, all of the 3D models in the alpha video are standins. They will all be replaced, every single one of them.

As far as ship maneuvering goes, it quite frankly has not been messed with yet as our team had momentum getting a few components in place and I didn't want to stop it. haha. Mind you, control is vitally important, but its just a few variable adjustments and tests. If the ship isn't responsive (and similar to getting damn good boss fights in game), if we don't have them in there we'd might as well not even be bothering.

Thanks for the kind words with regard to the level's depth. We really want to emphasize depth, and make it have a key role the way levels are aesthetically designed. We're hoping with modern graphical capabilities that we can really make the game shine.

Anyway, in conclusion... skepticism: warranted. I know how many bad shmups show up around the internet. Our team knows the best games are carefully and methodically adjusted and balanced, and we are hand animating and placing each enemy that the player encounters, and carefully balancing their movements and appearance to make sure that everything fits and that, more importantly, the flow of the game feels right. We're working damn hard on that.

Oh... before I close this giant post. The music is in fact original. The game doubles as a homage to what we loved of old shooters and sci-fi animes from 1980s and 90s. The game's tone is markedly different from the seriousness of a lot of shooters and the soundtrack is an attempt at a modernized retro throwback from those old school shooters. We aren't going for hardcore military sci-fi; we've allowed our game's universe to be a little over the top with that regard. Its not nearly as hard lined as other serious shooters, but its not entering DeathSmiles aesthetic freedom though either, haha. It's all about the fun, and we want to create a party like atmosphere when the player is in-game. I know that sounds a little weird. As much as I love playing Einhander, the game's tone is -really- serious and cool... always. It's a slippery slope for our team because we plan on having dialogue and radio chatter. If its too serious and no one cares, the overall effect comes off foolish and clumsy. But if you look at a game like Starfox 64, you have no intention of taking what the characters are saying entirely seriously right from the get-go. The game's aesthetics and general tone is a lighthearted one even when bad things are happening. Starfox might be a bad comparison, because Heaven Variant's characters are relatively normal looking human beings and as such our atmosphere requires a little more reality, but not much. I know this is kind of an esoteric... err rather obscure topic that really is explained best by seeing it in action.

Oh, and in addition to the original music, all the sounds have also been engineered by our team from high quality effects, modified to sound somewhat retro with a lot of pitch bends for that oh-so-good Japanese sound. It's all about the audio friction that Japanese devs are really good at producing, and we're producing audio hopefully to capture a retro yet modern sound that feels right. :]

Sorry for the giant post. Thanks for the comments!

[burgerkingdiamond]

the einhander references probably come just because of the way that the powerups appear on screen and such. It was the first thing I though of when I watched.

I would also like to see the ship smaller, and a little faster.

[Blackbird]

Yes, I was indeed referring to the 3D model in the video. I do like the 2D concept of your ship, but I'll need to see how the concept translates to a 3D model first before having a complete opinion about it. A lot of times, the nuance of the concept art gets lost in the transition. I would spend a lot of time refining the player ship until it's perfect. After all, it's the one graphical object that your player will look at the most!

Regarding your commentary on the tone of the game, radio chatter/dialog, and the like: You could have fooled me. I would not have pegged this game to be somewhat lighthearted like Starfox 64 based on what you've presented so far. Looking at the concept art for the pilots, they all look pretty serious. All of the human characters have grim expressions, and one of them is in fact a floating animated skull (and not the funny kind like Morte). None of these characters strike me as a "Slippy" or a "Peppy", haha. Now, you could make this humorous by having everyone -appear- to be overly grim and take everything a little too seriously (when the situation doesn't really call for seriousness), but I'm just saying the humor isn't necessarily expressed in the art if that is what you're going for.

From your artwork alone, I probably would have guessed you were shooting for a distopian future such as the ones presented in Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell. I think it might have been the giant advertisement panels that made me think that, or how the female pilots look a little like the protagonist from GitS (I think her name was Motoko?).

Regarding the commentary on graphics: I think the best way to develop a game is to balance the graphical complexity with the gameplay. Many newer games rely too heavily on extreme graphical detail and special effects gimmicks. However, this comes at the expense of development time and refinement for the basic gameplay. Additionally, graphically intensive games may even negatively impact the performance of the game by making it run slower (fewer fps) or respond sluggishly.

In a shooting game, I think it is extremely important (perhaps the most important?) that the controls be precise and responsive. Movement needs to feel good, because moving and dodging bullets is part of the core appeal of this genre (the other half of the core appeal is shooting things and destroying them in a really awesome way).

I applaud your effort to move forward with the graphics, but balance it well with a strict policy that the controls always remain precise and responsive.

I'm not saying that you haven't considered this point thus far, I think it just bears reminding since you are developing a 3D game with the potential for a lot of polygons/graphical overload going on.

Edit: That sample track on your blog as awesome, lol. Have you played Thunder Force V? It really reminds me of that Technosoft feel, haha.

[zanrai]

Haha, fair enough. As far as tone goes, again, Starfox might have been bad comparison, though I used it just because its an extreme example. Heaven Variant is decidedly darker than that, but the we aren't trying to bludgeon the player to death with the darker tone either. For instance, look at the game Borderlands that came out a year or so ago. It has a more serious aspect to gameplay, but the characters take everything in stride... even design is a little larger than life for some enemies the player encounters. If I had to draw a comparison to movies I might say Kill Bill 1 where you had an over the top aspect to reality, or the Scott Pilgrim movie.

And the skull character pic. Right now that may or may not be used. We were milling over the idea of having a super quick animation for when you shoot down an enemy pilot that's on the radio, when they die. It would only flip in for a brief fraction of a second as the radio went dead. We're still thinking it over.

You're right. A lot of devs either focus too much on graphics early on, trying to make them high detail. In my opinion, the highest detailed games from 10-15 years ago look the worst today, while those that retained a stylized approach tend to age better. Most shmups have aged pretty decently in comparison to most first person shooters. We're aiming to have more of a stylized look ourselves because on a practical level we can keep our polygon count low while still pushing the visual ideas we want to communicate. Don't get me wrong, graphics are important to catch people's attention, but it really needs to take a backseat to the gameplay, and ideally extend the gameplay's ideas visually. Plus we can rapidly get things in game and changed as necessary. Momentum I'm finding is really quite important with development.

Thank you very much for the compliment on the music track! I -love- Technosoft, and for you to even mention that one of our tracks has a similar feel to Thunderforce is more than a big compliment. And I hate to bring tone back up again, but the style of music plays an important role in that, too.

Now I have a bad hankering to listen to all of the Thunder Force soundtrack on Youtube now. haha. So good.

[Blackbird]

If I had to draw a comparison to movies I might say Kill Bill 1 where you had an over the top aspect to reality, or the Scott Pilgrim movie.

Ah, I think I grasp the feel you are going for now. Yeah, I think that could work pretty well in a shooting game.

If we're talking videogames, I might think about the Advance Wars series. Lots of characters in an apparently real-world war setting, but nobody seems to take the war overly seriously (or give any consideration at all for casualties, lol).

Edit: Come to think of it, the pilots with the "bubble helmets" kind of remind me of the Black Hole infantry units from Advance Wars 2, lol.

I kind of dig the idea of some kind of "death animation" happening if someone on the radio gets blown up. Sort of like how they cut to those shots of the pilot getting engulfed in flames in the Star Wars dogfights. Could be an interesting bit to up narrative ante, as it were, but at the same time I think it would definitely tip your game further into the "grim" territory.

I any case, I look forward to seeing how this game develops. Keep at it =).

[zanrai]

Haha, yeah Advance Wars is really quite awful if you look at it closely. haha. Oh, sanitized war. I guess the game would really lose its fun quality if you had to deal with the atrocities of war... hell, much less the civilian impact. I know a lot of games skirt those issues. I do have a lot of enjoyable memories playing through Advance Wars though.

Yeah the Star Wars "Ahh!" screams when they're in their cockpits! It'd be just like that! It would be a -little- grim... but ... we'll see how it looks. It's not so grim that its like the melting faces or anything at the end of Indiana Jones though. lmao. That would be shocking if that just happened. Haha. Someone would have to come on the radio and be like "Yeah, that just happened."

Glad you're digging everything. Thanks for the comments. I'll hopefully post some new info/pics eventually.

[BPzeBanshee]

Regarding the skull, I think having it as a playable character/ship with appropriate nuances would be excellent! It'd have to be quite unconventional somehow (in Deathsmiles for example, Rosa's shot mechanics are reversed compared to the other character) and it could turn out badly if done wrong but having a 'twisted alternative' in the form of that skull thing could turn really cool if its unique enough compared to the other pilots.

[zanrai]

Haha, that would be pretty cool. For now its just a possible death animation for people on the radio, but hey who knows. The stuff you described could be pretty wicked.

[tiaoferreira]

I liked the appearance of smoke.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Any plans to have a cool arcade attract opening sequence and/or FMV clip to drawn the player(s) into the awesome world that is Heaven Variant?

If you look at the opening intro shown in the classic Neo-Geo MVS/AES versions of Blazing Star (circa 1998), it has a legendary world-class cool opening intro/attract screen utilizing a combination of both 2-D hand drawn sprites + rendered FMV scenes to spice things up. Still rocks to this day.

Rather than having a static title screen, I think one with a cool stylized animated title logo would be cool to see implemented (with some cool animated background scenery would be ace in my book). Plus a few sample different demo runs to showcase what can be done for the player(s) to pull off and an obligatory high score screen with all the usual stats + full high score name entries (rather the usual traditional three alpha-numeric high score entry slots typical of the old-school arcade shmups PCB era) would be a nice touch as well.

Are there plans to release this HV indie shmup as a 360 indie game as well? I'm sure HV would play quite well on the 360 console platform with an Hori produced Real Arcade Pro EX-SE (Seimitsu) arcade stick for that proper authentic Japanese arcade control feel/vibe. My suggestion is to implement all digital based controls (rather than using an analog stick scheme) so such cool 3rd-party 360 produced arcade joysticks such as the aforementioned HRAP EX-SE could be used with it indeed.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[zanrai]

NEW ALPHA VIDEO :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epeTMdQAXDU

@PC Engine Fan X

Right now anything is on the table and may be a possibility for title screens and whatnot. We haven't quite decided how we'll tackle that. And with regard to other platforms, if we're successful enough on PC we'll consider other platforms. Until then though, I can't promise anything. Only lots of explosions.

EDIT: ALSO, the intro to Blazing Star is amazing!!!

[Observer]

As long as it goes to PC too (since it's using Unreal engine, you could consider leaving things open for ship modding at a later stage) you can release it on the Atari 2500 if people want it, heh.

Anyway, I posted it on youtube, tweeted about it but I'm loving the way this is going so damn much. Musically, it hits all the right chords. I want the OST now! I'm glad western games are starting to lay off the BGM as just a decorative 'loopable' feature and making it an integral part of the whole thing. Every video posted so far has some of the best stuff I've listened to recently, game and feeling related. Pure '80s awesome, keyboardy driven stuff, pianos, guitars, etc. All great! Unique theme bosses also help (and that's where I feel CAVE fails, just reminding the awful Espgaluda boss theme I want to cry).

Visually, well, it's using Unreal engine so it's bound to look great. I'm liking the constant Macross reminders of the background explosions. Needs more Macross-like smoke trails and lock-on guided laser missiles and I'm sold but so far so good. The sword weapon is awesome. Kind of a mix of Einhänder and Radiant Silvergun but shinier.

If you are gonna make an opening video, the second song of the OST is screaming to become the title/OP song. People just won't quit the game to listen to it, lol.

I know you guys are looking for a modeller, in any case, remember to keep the ship size a bit smaller, perhaps adding a speed control ala Thunder Force or a speed selection before starting. Same with the enemies so you can play with bigger and complex formations in the vein of, say, Ether Vapor (take a look at some of the flashy movements from stages 1, 2 and 4) or Alltynex2nd (ships that come banking/rotating and firing on Stage 1, etc.). Engaging enemy formations are what make 3D shmups stand out and take advantage of the fact of being, precisely, 3D.

Loved how the music was timed with the opening of the stage, those neat details are the kind of stuff that adds polish.

Bosses will of course need those over the top warnings full of flashy text and flashy flashes. Probably more missiles.

Anyway, like I commented, at 1:07 you have this part with loads of people ejected to the vacuum Starship Troopers-like and, while an awesome effect, it totally cuts off the action. If you check most japanese shooters, those people just don't have mercy. I would rather see a more brutal move, like having something in the background or a mid-boss (people seem to forget of cool mid-bosses, they are just as important as the regular bosses) breaking the havoc and contributing to the madness. A big missile barrage can always do the trick as well (sorry, I'm just so "Macross-lized", "ALERT: Long Range Missile Volley Inbound!", gotta love messages like that)

I see what you guys meant with the announcer. Personally, I would have both options, a male or female like some old games used to. I would totally pick the dude one if it has the echoey Gradius V-like style I love so much.

Either way, good luck with this, it's seriously looking great! And I definitely sign in first for a beta test and multilanguage support, heh.

Oh, guys, here is the approximate katakana spelling for Heaven Variant if you want to make it flashy and promote it to the nihonjin/japanese (no, I'm not, I'm actually spanish if you need multilanguage support, but I'm studying the language, heh):

「ヒーベンーバリアント」

[Udderdude]

Engage Udderdude rant mode

It looks way to visually cluttered. Hard to tell what's going on even when you aren't playing it. Way too much crap all over the screen. You need to go back to the drawing board on that.
The 30 seconds or so of shooting at pods and seeing bad 2d texutres of people fly out into space is just beyond stupid. I really hope that doesn't make it into the final game.
The constant chatter and wisecracking is just annoying as hell. I had to mute the video to watch the rest of it.
Why is the player ship so enormous, as well as all the popcorn enemies? They're huge.

[mjclark]

The constant chatter and wisecracking is just annoying as hell. I had to mute the video to watch the rest of it.

Yeah- those fuckers talking through the game make it look and sound like it was designed for three year olds. As well as disturbing my concentration they would also make me ashamed and embarassed to play this when someone else was in the room. Please please please please please get rid of this.

The overloaded visuals on the other hand I really like. They make the whole thing seem hectic in a good way and, if anything, I'd like even more clutter with brighter colours to go for some synaesthetic trippiness.

Clearly it's early days yet but when can we expect a playable demo?

[mice]

The chattering is great. Superbly realised and the voice acting is amazing.
Cross hair style of games is not my cup of tea, though.

[BPzeBanshee]

Why is the player ship so enormous, as well as all the popcorn enemies? They're huge.

We're still implementing core systems and we are sans 3D artist. (though our search is almost finished)

The other enemies models are placeholders using the player ship's own model.

I'm with mjclark on this one. If you're going to have voicing over and try to spudge a story into this make it optional.

My other concern is with the crosshair weapon thing. Is that mouse-controlled or automated? I think either way you should have some control scheme options for this function along with configurable buttons for the rest of the movement.

Beyond that, looking forward to an alpha release of some kind for us to really pull the game to pieces in terms of actual gameplay. We wouldn't want this to go euroshmup-style bad now would we.

[Sumez]

Are those explosions pre rendered or hand drawn, or are they actually rendered realtime?

edit: Just saw the video and they don't look like the pictures above. Seems like a simple (but neat looking) 2D decal thrown in, right?

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I just saw the alpha on YT and was impressed in its pontential, so ive popped in here to give my two cents. I know im 6 months late but youre still updating your blog, I like the pic of the ship

L-O-V-E the music and voice chatter, you have some fitting voice actors. Except the guy who tells you theres enemy coming from behind, I cant make out what he's saying, you want to change that.

The major issue I have with is with the players turret fire, imo it takes away from the gameplay not adds to it. As since there wont be many bullets to dodge youve got to give the player a reason to move around the screen, rather than just staying in one spot spraying the screen with fire. Imo cut it or use it as rear turret only. I feel the enemy ships are too big, better to make them smaller so there more to shoot and are harder to hit, plus you will have more room for creative freedom in enemy placement. Some of those stacked enemies rush into the players line of fire, I hope you wont use many of those.

Take a leaf out of einhanders book and have groups of enemies that after a couple of seconds rush towards the player, rather than those pedestrian bullets.

About the shrapnel, I can live with it if youre using slow bullets, but pls dont make it too bad

I look forward to your next vid I hope you have been taking notes from oldschool enemy rush type shooters and can creative enemy waves that challenge the player without been cheap.

Im guessing youre already quite far into making this game, but I love the audio plus the fact youre making an oldschool enemy wave style shmup that I felt I had to chime in

[mice]

Just looked at the latest vid, just super!

This game is going to be a blast!
Best of luck to you!

[mjclark]

Yeah- that new vid is astonishing! Pleeeeez let there be an option to turn the dialogue off cos this is looking Einhandertastic. I wanna play it now!

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Oh! The new vid is much better both in art style and gameplay.

Your enemy placement of those cars makes using the turret fun, im still concerned that at a player can still just spam the screen with fire if the game gives you enough ammo to do so. Do you plan on using 360 deg angle for all the weapon pickups? If so you could introduce a heat mechanic ( or charge) so the player can only fire it in bursts

Im looking forward to playing the final version

[Udderdude]

It looks cool, even though the constant chatter is still annoying. Honestly, it looks so much like stage 1 of Einhander that I'm kind of feeling more of a ripoff vibe .. >_>

[Aconcit]

It looks very stylish. Though I think it would look better with a better frame-rate.

[Formless God]

Heh, I absolutely adore UDK, I can't wait to see how this is gonna turn out. From the previews it already looks pretty darn impressive though.

And I'm with Observer on the music. Every track gives me goosebumps.