Waves - New Steam Arena Shmup

[mjclark]

Anyone seen Waves yet?
As discussed in the Scoregasm thread, as far as arena shooters go they all seem the same to me and from Mutant Storm onwards I don't see any real progress til Geometry Wars which, in contradiction to many on this forum, I still think is absolutely awesome.
Recently i've also been enjoying Kent Cho's Mazer Mayhem which is the Revolver360 of arena shooters- you rotate the playing field for abstract excellence.
Anyway, this here Waves has captivated me for no apparent reason (possibly just cos it's new) although I expect I'll get bored of it in twenty minutes once it's released

[mjclark]

Demo's out now: http://www.squidinabox.com/games/
Had a problem launching it cos the default resolution was too high for my flatscreens, but reset it to 1024x768 on a CRT to get it up and running.
I wasn't instantly grabbed by it cos it's purely abstract and I've been spoilt by Scoregasm, but after a couple of plays really got into it and couldn't put it down after that.
Nice soundtrack, nice graphics and a decent scoring mechanic! Who could ask for more?
I'm just torn between obsessing on this demo and the full version of scoregasm now

[Observer]

Twinstick shooter at its finest. Looks pretty damn good with great music though, I hope the Qualia devs learn from this guy and try to optimise things as much as possible.

I recorded a small run with the 30fps stuff enabled:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf4pD9Wl20o

Now, the bad:

a) Inertia (I think it's inertia, the controls feel a bit clunky, something that was eliminated from Beat Hazard, another twin stick shooter that hopefully became awesome after the ULTRA expansion)
b) 30fps (solved by turning off all the options, wish this could be the default, the game runs much more fluently that way)
c) Weird as hell install where it asked which user you want to run the game with, throws a license agreement, good lord, Unreal Engine has changed since I played Ut2k4... It crashed on me several times. Now it works. There was a hole here. It's gone now. (going to be solved in a fixed installation)
d) Hope there is a way of improving firepower, me needs some moar shootan'. I was hoping with a more playful synchrony of the enemies with the music, Beat Hazard really spoiled me in that regard since all the flashes and shit are tied to your song and techno punchi punchi stuff offers the best synchrony.

Still, I will get it as I want to support more shooters on Steam/PC, etc.

small edit:

After crying aloud at the developer in Twitter I found out the 30fps issue was caused by the graphical options. Turning off all that fancy stuff put me back to clear view and solid 60fps. The admin issue is going to be fixed too. Now that was swift.

If it goes for pre-order, I'll do that. If it just goes for sale, I'll get it.

[mjclark]

Full game released today - fucking brilliant!

[Special World]

Eh, it's okay. Still no Geometry Wars 2, or Robotron 2084 for that matter.

[Jeneki]

When I go into the controls section, it lists button config for slowdown/bomb/etc on the keyboard but not for dual analog. Anyone have a list of button controls when using a dual analog game pad?

[Special World]

RT is slowdown, LT is bomb, IIRC

should be under default controls

[Jeneki]

Ok found it, thanks. Hmm, I wish I could remap that to the bumpers instead of the triggers. Analog triggers are always a tiny bit slower to push than a digital bumper, I remember back in the GeoWars days I had many fewer "death right as I pull the trigger" moments when I switched from triggers to bumpers.

[Jeneki]

Hmm, looks like the scoring system totally brakes down in the higher levels. Check out the global leaderboards, you'll notice multiple people with 2^31 points. Someone set the cap a little too low, hehe.

Also, the combo system maxes out at 999. Now, most games with a multiplier system have an upper cap, so normally this would be no big deal. However, since your combo is no longer rising, you no longer get any bombs. And if you're playing the game at level 40+, bombs are really important to staying alive. So basically you have to intentionally break your combo at this point just to survive.

[Udderdude]

Another crap arena shooter on Steam? Color me surprised.

[Jeneki]

I wouldn't say it's a crap game.

The scoring system has some decent risk/reward options. You can use slomo defensively to keep yourself alive, or you can use it offensively to set up grand bombing death blossoms for double points. You can use bombs aggressively to dash to the center and destroy pretty much the entire arena, however this will almost certainly break your combo and reduce your score; it's much better to use them in a fashion that leaves enough enemies on screen to continue raking up combo. The tactics involved in scoring well are a huge step above boring "just stay alive to increase multiplier" junk like Geometry Wars.

Also most game modes have a time limit, so you'll never reach any caps in those. The combo and score glitch is only a big deal in survival mode.

But yea, a patch is very needed here.

[mjclark]

Another crap arena shooter on Steam? Color me surprised.

Another negative comment about a game from an indie developer who's getting some commercial success? Color me surprised
Actually no- it's really rather good. The mechanics are deep enough to get into and stylistically it's excellent. Also a truly fine soundtrack.
There's a lot of shit games on Steam but this isn't one of them.
You should try it sometime.

[Udderdude]

Har har. Maybe that comment was rushed, but I don't see myself playing this (or any arena shooters) any time soon because I still can't stand abstract wireframe/blob/particles everywhere visuals.

And I have given compliments to one indie shmup(s) on Steam - Gundemonium Collection. :p

[mjclark]

...I still can't stand abstract wireframe/blob/particles everywhere visuals.

And I have given compliments to one indie shmup(s) on Steam - Gundemonium Collection. :p

Fair play then! Personally it's them ASCII shmups I can't stand...
...I'm really hung up on Atomhex at the moment and that's weird cos it's got intricate crabs and wasps mixed in with the abstracts:


and also struggling for the correct phrase for "opposite of abstract" in this context. "Concrete shmup" just sounds stupid...

[Udderdude]

and also struggling for the correct phrase for "opposite of abstract" in this context. "Concrete shmup" just sounds stupid...

I think the terms you're looking for are "Realistic" and "Representational"

[Jeneki]

I got a reply from the developer over on the Steam forums. It sounds like the 32-bit integer score max is a limitation of Steam's leaderboard system . So this will not be fixed.

Sigh, there goes any incentive for me to play Survival Mode.

... or am I looking at this the wrong way, and I should feel awesome that I actually counter stopped a game?

[SquidInABox]

... or am I looking at this the wrong way, and I should feel awesome that I actually counter stopped a game?

Go with the second one. You are one of the elite 0.5% that was able to Counter Stop the game in Survival.

I wish you'd been part of the beta test then maybe this wouldn't have happened. Although my options boil down to 3 solutions:

- Cap the combo meter lower (X300)
- Add enemies that cannot be killed by bombs
- Make the score a float in game and have the lowest value enemy be 0.1 rather than 1 and strip everything after the decimal point when submitting to Steam.

The last one is my favourite but would require a complete leaderboard and stat wipe for the game which is something I don't want to do. I'll definitely be doing that in any future score attack games I make.

[kid aphex]

Option 3, please