[GM] Lunacy Star Second (v. 0.72 demo)

[Taizen Chisou]

Oh, it's that guy again with his horrible bullet-hell games

The first entry was more or less dropped, seeing as it already has six working stages and mess and I was bored of it

DOWNLOAD VERSION 0.72
Version 0.72 (32.7 MB)

DOWNLOAD VERSION 0.7
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/48264981/LSS%200.7.zip (13.7 MB)
(but it requires version 0.6 first)

Version 0.6:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/48264981/LSS%200.6.zip (21.4 MB)

DOWNLOAD VERSION 0.4
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/48264981/LSS%200.4.zip (16.7 MB)

Arrows to move, Z to shoot, Shift to focus, X to bomb.

The engine was built from scratch this time, so go easy on the technical details this time!


I have no spriting experience~~~
The bosses in the game so far are all trapezoids that read "Placeholder Boss Sprite."
Can someone please come up with some spaceships for it? Thaaaaaaanks~
(there are only three, two are bosses and one is a midboss)

Since the game only has five stages, I'm terminating the demo at the end of 2-2.

The game will be both polished and severely unpolished.
I realize how that sounds but bear with me.
It was started from scratch a little under a month ago, and I've never had the development cycle go this fast.

YouTube videos (slightly old) :

Random runs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frg9QReuyyw
Stage 1-1, 1-2, and first boss:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSKavO2s2as

Screenshots of what is to come:

[RNGmaster]

I love it! Very fun to play for score.

Can anyone beat 39,293,300?

[Taizen Chisou]

I think I struck out 39.4
I did mine on the easier difficulty though :<
I'll have to check. The game leaves screenshots of your last performance in lieu of a leaderboard.

As for the scoring, I'm surprised. I left out the balls-ridiculous scoring system this time around (lol LS1 system)

The only difference between the two difficulties would be that end of stage bonuses are 4x on Hard. Otherwise:

Green boxes = 1000 * multi
Yellow stars = 2000 * multi

And stars also add x0.02.
It opens up ridiculous scoring practices like "collect blue, then stars, then green for BEST SCORE"

Dying sets you back some power and a fourth of your multiplier.
Also cuts into your stage bonus, which is based on resources, stage, and graze.
Someone should check for how much multiplier you can have if you don't die. I died once and had x17.1 or so.

Oh, but that's enough on scoring.

Thank you for playing my game! I appreciate it~

[BPzeBanshee]

I didn't get any screenshots for me (does it save in the same folder as the EXE?) but I think I got something pathetic at 20 mil when I last looked up on the board.

Simpler scoring definitely = better in this case. The graphics and gameplay while not OMG HD CAVE WOAH are definitely consistent and very, very, very nice to look at in motion. I worried a little bit about how small the enemies were but the main shot's homing removes any issue of being unable to hit anything. The bosses (even though the pictures are templates) are hittable and timed just right.

Will we see backgrounds implemented ever or are you going to keep it black? I can understand either way, just curious.

Overall, definitely liking this. It's a huge improvement over the first. Going by your 'demo' mention before I presume you're selling this as a product when it's finished?

EDIT: one tiny nitpick. That sound that plays when the white non-bordered orbs are shot feels just a bit too loud. Any chance you could turn it down? Other than that the sounds are great too.

[mjclark]

Wooh! This is the dog's bollocks! (thanks for the heads up BP)
From your post about scoring, does collecting stars increase the multiplier and does grazing do anything apart from give you an end bonus? It would be interesting if grazing brought some kind of other advantage like increasing multiplier or filling a bomb gauge...
...anyway lovin' it, really lovin' it

[Taizen Chisou]

I didn't get any screenshots for me (does it save in the same folder as the EXE?) but I think I got something pathetic at 20 mil when I last looked up on the board.

Screenshots are saved in the working directory.
Also, I dunno what the theoretical maximum score is, but 20m definitely ain't bad.

Simpler scoring definitely = better in this case. The graphics and gameplay while not OMG HD CAVE WOAH are definitely consistent and very, very, very nice to look at in motion. I worried a little bit about how small the enemies were but the main shot's homing removes any issue of being unable to hit anything. The bosses (even though the pictures are templates) are hittable and timed just right.

That's odd, I was itching for more complicated scoring. But oh well, if the shoe fits.
I'm not sure if OMG HD CAVE WOAH can be expected out of a 16-year-old in one month.
The boss sprites should be around that size, sooo

Will we see backgrounds implemented ever or are you going to keep it black? I can understand either way, just curious.

Of course. They'll just take me seven months like LS1.
For an idea of what/where the backgrounds will emulate, the second line of the stage headers is the location of the stage.

Overall, definitely liking this. It's a huge improvement over the first. Going by your 'demo' mention before I presume you're selling this as a product when it's finished?

"Demo" sounds better than "trial," but it'll be freeware when it's done.
If I go OMG HD REMIX in a different language, maybe then.

EDIT: one tiny nitpick. That sound that plays when the white non-bordered orbs are shot feels just a bit too loud. Any chance you could turn it down? Other than that the sounds are great too.

Of course. Saeiretore, right?

Wooh! This is the dog's bollocks! (thanks for the heads up BP)

Dog's bollocks...? (There was a heads-up?)

From your post about scoring, does collecting stars increase the multiplier and does grazing do anything apart from give you an end bonus?

Stars add 2000 * multi, and then raise the multiplier by 0.02. Grazing gives you ten points :V

It would be interesting if grazing brought some kind of other advantage like increasing multiplier or filling a bomb gauge...

I was planning a modified Charge system that used graze as the centerpoint, but it was scrapped. I'll probably fall back onto something like 5 graze = x0.01 multiplier. That way, getting 9000 total graze (as was typical in LS1) would have added a total ~x20.00.
Multiplier is capped at x99.99, to note. If it is at maximum, then the multiplier orbs will be point items instead. Consider maxing it out

...anyway lovin' it, really lovin' it

Thank you very much!

@RNGmaster

I certainly hope that wasn't on Advanced mode
My high scores:
Standard: 37,118,420
Advanced: 33,044,660

[mjclark]

Dog's bollocks...? (There was a heads-up?)

"Dog's bollocks":http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... 20Bollocks
BPzeBanshee gave me a heads up about this thread cos he thought I'd like the demo...and he was right!

Stars add 2000 * multi, and then raise the multiplier by 0.02. Grazing gives you ten points :V
I was planning a modified Charge system that used graze as the centerpoint, but it was scrapped. I'll probably fall back onto something like 5 graze = x0.01 multiplier. That way, getting 9000 total graze (as was typical in LS1) would have added a total ~x20.00.
Multiplier is capped at x99.99, to note. If it is at maximum, then the multiplier orbs will be point items instead. Consider maxing it out

Sounds like "just the ticket":http://idioms.yourdictionary.com/just-the-ticket

Please keep up the good work cos this is great!

[Taizen Chisou]

I think I'll implement the graze augment, and that'll be it :V
Thank you very much for the positivity.

Also, new highscore, from a different forum.

42,773,390
(I find it ridiculous)

[RNGmaster]

I certainly hope that wasn't on Advanced mode
My high scores:
Standard: 37,118,420
Advanced: 33,044,660

Yup that was Advanced. Much greater scoring potential there with all the grazing.

I see that you've made a TVTropes page to advertise your game. Sorry, but I can't support you.

[Taizen Chisou]

Ah, okay.
The TvTropes page was for the first game, though. It's out of date and shit.

It'll mostly just be there to keep track of the entire series further down the line. A third installment has ideas already, and it'll be a major departure from the norm. But that'll be for later.

[BPzeBanshee]

Dog's bollocks...? (There was a heads-up?)

"Dog's bollocks":http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... 20Bollocks
BPzeBanshee gave me a heads up about this thread cos he thought I'd like the demo...and he was right!

Yeah, I thought I'd give this title a bit of support since it's leagues ahead of the previous one which I kinda ripped to pieces.

I played this at school today and everyone was mindblown by the trippy colours and stuff. I don't think they're used to hundreds of rainbow bullets cramming the screen.

Will we have a proper hiscore support, or at least a random screenshot name generated so it doesn't overwrite previous plays?

By the way, my personal best is just short of 35 mil on Advanced. I don't like grazing much myself, but if an additional weapon was added that was used upon grazing I can see it becoming a more obvious tool for scoring/survival. It also kinda sticks out of the side of the screen into the playing field too, but I'm just nitpicking/throwing ideas around here.

[mjclark]

And gamepad support pleez

[BPzeBanshee]

And gamepad support pleez

This too.

As to how to actually get it done, look no further than GMOSSE's own scr_inputs which supports various controllers. You may want to add the rebinding of the joystick/gamepad inputs/configurable deadzone via config as well though.

Also, before emphatic does, TATE plz.

[Taizen Chisou]

You ripped the last one to pieces?
That's the standard reaction

Of course there will be high score support... Unlike the original, there aren't 36 boards to keep track of this time, so it won't take so long to save either...
Since there are only two difficulties + Extra this time, and three shottypes, there are only 9 leaderboards.
The original first release of LS1 only supported one highscore, so I guess it is somewhat of a step back this time.

Grazing is just there
As for the HUD, I'm working on it today. Once again, absolutely no information whatsoever is going to be in the sidebar- it all is going into the frame.

Eventually.

And good news!- I didn't hardcode the movement programming into the keys this time (AND INTO EVERY PLAYER OBJECT UUUUUHHH), so when I add reprogrammable keys, you can set them to joystick inputs.

And you'll have to explain to me what TATE is?

[BPzeBanshee]

TATE's basically screen rotation to allow for the game screen (the actual game screen, not including the sidebars) to fit perfectly (or near-perfectly) on a monitor. Since your game was made with sidebars to begin with chances are the actual game screen size may make that difficult especially if any kind of zooming is required - I attempted to implement this in Aero Flux and I couldn't get it perfect in a way that allowed for all kinds of monitors but got somewhere close. GMOSSE does it perfectly thanks to being a 240x320 game to begin with besides the distortion which is an unfortunate result of view manipulation which can't be avoided in GM, which is why I recommend looking there if you have no clue as to how to go about coding it in.

Three shottypes you say? I thought there was only one ship with its weapons to begin with, did I miss something or is there/will there be others to pick from?

[Taizen Chisou]

Oh. I can see if I can put together something like that, but I wouldn't count on it :I
Thank you, though.

As for the shottypes, there's only one in 0.4. I've added the Solar Hydra to the current build, too. The third I'm still working on.

Oh, and I just got 56,761,010.
But that's with the new Stage 3-1 :<

Also:



Oddly, this was easier to put together than the old menu in LS1.


these lasers are broken as shit

[BPzeBanshee]

Looks good!

With the lasers, since you say they're broken implying they need to be nerfed, you going to just reduce the damage, or the range/amount of lasers in question? I can see a limited-range laser with awesome point-blank strength being quite an interesting ship to play with but I tried this with the current ship and the patterns kinda force you to the bottom of the screen in some spots, so it could easily turn into something completely useless. Just throwing some ideas there.

[Taizen Chisou]

I mean to say that they sweep.

At one point, they're all off in different directions.
At another, all five are pointing directly upward.

At full upgrades, one laser puts out about 100 damage.
Five would be 500.
Since they sweep, you have to shotgun the boss for a continuous 500dps from your alt-fire.
Combined with your standard shot, that can take down for instance Proteus's first attack in eight seconds.
But if you don't shotgun, it'll still deal about as much damage as the first ship.

The third shottype is the gimmicky one.
If unfocused, the shots go in all directions. If focused, they rain down from the top of the screen to hit enemies up there first.
It also has a nonstandard "normal" bullet, and once again, the third shottype gets the coolest bomb.
But you'll have to wait until 0.6 to see it. 0.6 will be out at the completion of Stage 3-2, and 3-1 is done already.
After that, 0.8 at the end of the game, and 1.0 after Extra.

Thank you for your support!

[Taizen Chisou]

Sorry for double posting :I

Lunacy Star 2
Since the 0.4 release, I've added

-high score boards (with real saving and loading action)
-multiple player characters
-Stages 3-1 and 3-2, 3rd boss
-external music loading (so the initial load isn't balls horrible- the music is 23MB so far but the actual game is a little under three)
-new game over screen (the game doesn't up and reset)
-new HUD (your stock is a set of icons, your power is a meter)
-some extra effects pertaining to numbers that appear on the screen and the game over animation
-some altered bullet images
-a pause menu (Resume / Restart / Quit, much better than "any key to resume, ESC to quit")
-I forgot for a second, but there are extra lives now. First extend at 10 million. Second extend at forty million. Hundred million. Two hundred million.

Masagara, the third boss, is almost complete. 6 out of its 8 patterns have been implemented. Almost all of them involve multitudes of lasers.
[Col=red]Still looking for ship sprite donations.[/col]
I only have two tracks to MP3-ize for this version left. And after all that...

...Version 0.6 release with all of these additions perhaps sometime soon?

[BPzeBanshee]

What did you have in mind for the ships? I don't see anything terribly wrong with the current ones.

Don't worry about double posting either - this is Development, no one cares, and I'm a lot worse than you in my GMOSSE thread anyway.

All those features sound extra good! Hope to try them out soon.

[mjclark]

Lunacy Star 2
...Version 0.6 release with all of these additions perhaps sometime soon?

This just keeps getting better!
Please keep up the good work

[Taizen Chisou]

Thank you both.


@BP
I meant the Placeholder Boss Sprites. :V
I also have the same ship graphic in use across 3-1 and 3-2, though.

@no one in particular

With the addition of Stage 3, gametime raises to about eleven minutes (opposed to 6 in 0.4)

3-1 plus the midboss is about two minutes, 3-2 is 40 seconds, and the third boss is about three minutes.
It looks like an issue with the music is holding me back now, however. For some reason, hitting "Retry" won't play the 1-1 theme :I

Also, assuming you don't die and don't bomb (ha!), you miiiiiight crack 100 million now. I don't quite know.
I no-deathed the Standard mode and had an ending multiplier of x30.85.
Capping it at x99.99 might be possible *shrug

I ended with a 3-2 bonus of 2.5 million, which would have been 10m on Advanced.
I got 80 million at the end :I

[Taizen Chisou]

Fuck, I died to the third boss final.
Other than that, no deaths.
(this is standard mode orz)


AAAAAANNNNYYYYWWWAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

0.6 is done (almost)
just one thing left to do (not counting replacing the Placeholder Boss Sprites which may or may not happen because I cannot graphics)

and you can expect it in a couple of days



Also, all of the attacks are named now (like spell-cards from Touhou) except there is no bonus for them (unlike spell-cards from Touhou)

[BPzeBanshee]

The new interface looks good!

I'd submit some sprites but I'm hella busy as it is. In terms of art direction I recommend some line-ones similar to your first player ship but bigger. I might come up with something in a few weeks time if they're still placeholders by then.

[Taizen Chisou]

All right, here we go~

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/48264981/LSS%200.6.zip

(will post screens of 3-1, 3-2, and Masagara eventually)

[BPzeBanshee]

Quite an improvement!

A few suggestions/random tangents though:
- can we get the fullscreen/screenshot buttons back? I liked being able to switch between fullscreen/windowed on a whim and wanted to take a screenshot of the statistics that pop up after the game's done. By all means have the INI function there for startup defaults but keep the toggles as like a switch that doesn't remember its settings.
- do we really need a Touhou-like person in this? I thought this was going to stay as being like tanks and stuff till I picked the third ship which feels OP compared to the other two and is a flying witch person with uberbrainmilkshake of a bomb no less. Totally doesn't fit in with the rest of this game's aesthetics even if the mechanics/sprite sizes are influenced by the series.
- excuse my ignorance but do using bombs hurt your score by usage? I had a hard time noticing if it decreased my multiplier or not, but I think that bombs should have no affect on such stuff. In this game particularly it strikes me as an excellent offensive/survivalist tool that could actually give you a neat variable to play around with. Unless you've got something else in mind for the second mode maybe a mode where well-placed bomb usage as an offensive tool could be the key to scoring in Extra mode.

Really really liking this now. I'll pass this on to mjclark too in case he's not viewing since the admin decided to ban him 2 years late for something he got punished for 9999999999999999999 times.

[Taizen Chisou]

I don't see why not.
I'll use F4 for fullscreen and F5 for screenshots.


She's just in from the first game, if you'll remember.
There's actually people as the fourth boss (actually- they're five-year-olds)
Lunacy Star 1 had a mixture of ships, people, and weird things.
There isn't nearly as much people in this one, which is why it might feel weird.


Bombs are factored into your end-of-stage bonus. The difference between 0 bombs and 4 bombs might constitute up to 15% precent of it.

Advanced Mode, Perfect 1-1 Bonus: ~810,000
No Bombs, 1-1 Bonus: ~700,000

(Do consider that the stage multiplier is 1 for 1-1, and, say, 7 for 4-1, and that graze also factors.)

Other than that, there is no penalty.

Extra is just a bonus stage :V
I might include some different mechanics though...

As for bombing for score, I typically bomb at 2-1 intro- destroy enemies who fly too fast, and 2-2 at the end, so I can collect the items those bubble enemies drop without having to run around/POC in the middle of the fire.
And sometimes, 3-2, because I tend to get caught by the laser/bubble combo. (Also because those enemies are worth a base 12,000 points and getting to 3-2 with 30x multiplier hasn't been unheard of)

Oh, I hate how I have to reply to everything with a wall >_<
Sorry~

Thank you for playing~!


As for mjclark, what happened?

[BPzeBanshee]

I don't see why not.
I'll use F4 for fullscreen and F5 for screenshots.

F9 is usually the default for screenshots in most programs I've seen, if you make a custom event for F5 for outputting screenshots you might run into issues coming up with random names (or using one name and having multiple screenshots overwrite themselves).

She's just in from the first game, if you'll remember.
There's actually people as the fourth boss (actually- they're five-year-olds)
Lunacy Star 1 had a mixture of ships, people, and weird things.
There isn't nearly as much people in this one, which is why it might feel weird.

I don't recall seeing her in the first one. Guess that was part of the 'woah how do you pick your ship' thing I had to begin with so I always picked the first couple.

As for mjclark, what happened?

To put it simply he pirated a game of which the developer is a member here about 2 years ago and is blamed/punished by the rest of the forum infinitely for the game's poor sales despite his positive contributions (I think it's more likely it was a poor game/poorly distributed anyway), and just recently pissed off the admin of this forum by calling MAME devs chickenshit regarding the removal of the Cave SH3 title support. Mr. System11 took his sweet time acting on the matter but after reading a discussion between mjclark and Haze (a MAMEdev) in the Too Close For Comfort thread he decided to go ahead abuse the banhammer. The 'Too Close For Comfort' moral meme struck yet again. Don't worry about it too much though - that's the shit that's part of Shmups Chat which usually never enters here.

[Taizen Chisou]

I'll name screenshots after what date and time it is.

She's the third stage midboss
If you'll notice, during the player select screen in LS2, her shot styles are listed as "Entombing Circle," her bomb and "Starry Trap," her unfocused shot. Those were her 'spellcards' in the original.

Oh, that's a shame. I've not been to the social boards here, so I dunno :/
Sorry for him...

@no one in particular

Two things added.
One is a display that reads "High Score."
It'll blink out with another display that reads "Next Extend-" provided you are close enough to it. (If you are over 10,000,000 points under the next extend, it'll just read "High Score.")

The other is bomb extends.
Extra bombs are linked to your graze. There's a little meter that, when filled, will give you another bomb.
It's fairly easy to fill it up- the first threshold is 500 graze. The last is 9000. (3,000 graze by 4-1 is typical)

That means there are four extra lives: 10m, 40m, 100m, and 300m.
And four extra bombs: 500, 1500, 4500, and 9000.

Since there is no other means to get extra resources, that means you get a maximum of 8 lives and 36 bombs to beat the game.
(Four bombs per life, eight lives, four extra bombs)

I can hardly beat Masagara with any spare resources at all on Advanced mode.
Things aren't looking too good for me.

[BPzeBanshee]

You can actually get to Masagara? Well bit of a leap above me.

With the bomb graze meter, is that actually displayed anywhere? I couldn't see it. If it's not visible it might be a good idea to make it visible in that gap under the power meter (using a different colour of course) so that it's actually possible to at the very worst case scenario figure it out by accident and at the best of times pretty much be figured out straight away.