Megaship: Super Boss Eliminator

[Shatterhand]

I've been working on this game for God knows how long. Herr Schatten has made the graphics. (The ugly texts in the sidebars will dissapear with the finished product, of course. Those screenshots were taken with a "beta-tester" version)

It's basically a 5-minutes time attack game with 3 different levels, and an endurance mode where you can play all 3 levels in sequence. The game has 3 different score modes which you can choose before starting the game (A very simple one, a complex one and one for players who enjoy chaining whole levels in Dodonpachi and other games like it). It also 2 different difficulty levels.

I'm looking forward to release this before 2013, and I am looking for some beta testers

Also I've been thinking to port it to Android devices in 2013, but I am not still sure about this.

[ciox]

Hmm..."Buzz" you say? Would love to see some video of this game.

[Shatterhand]

I'll try to post a video later in the week.

But the buzz mechanic is very simple, it doesn't add a lot to the game to be very honest . It's no Psyvariar for sure. It's more like the buzz mechanics in Radiant Silvergun...

[Rozyrg]

The graphics are beautiful, that's for sure. Love those little orange tanks... Twin Cobra influence perhaps?

[Shatterhand]

Not all tanks are this color though

[BPzeBanshee]

I'm interested. I think we all are if you decided to go with public betas, just don't be too surprised if we rip this thing apart.

You mention an Android port - is this being coded with GM or C++/your own engine?

[Shatterhand]

I'm interested. I think we all are if you decided to go with public betas, just don't be too surprised if we rip this thing apart.

You mention an Android port - is this being coded with GM or C++/your own engine?

GM. Why?
Even with GM, I would have to change a lot of stuff to make it work with Android properly.

I am not too much confortable with public betas for now, though I really would like if a few regular shmuppers could playtest this. When you are making a game, there are a lot of things you may not notice that other players will quickly notice. Balacing the difficulty level is also another problem without proper testing.

When I have a more complete "product" which I feel it's complete and good enough to be released, I would surely like to hear criticism from a lot of people and change the game accordingly.

[BPzeBanshee]

I'm interested. I think we all are if you decided to go with public betas, just don't be too surprised if we rip this thing apart.

You mention an Android port - is this being coded with GM or C++/your own engine?

GM. Why?
Even with GM, I would have to change a lot of stuff to make it work with Android properly.

GM:Studio allows for Android porting given the Android module, however that is quite an expense for small developers - but with GM at least I can help from a programming perspective in terms of knowing what's required for the backend. I like to ask stuff like this to see how developers are making shmups you see.

I am not too much confortable with public betas for now, though I really would like if a few regular shmuppers could playtest this. When you are making a game, there are a lot of things you may not notice that other players will quickly notice. Balacing the difficulty level is also another problem without proper testing.

Fair enough. I've heard of devs distributing Private Betas to crush down critical issues before release leaving the remaining complaints as non-issues. I send occasional proof-of-concepts of the next GMOSSE release to some people that happen to have a particular viewpoint or setup that I want to test a current piece of core code on myself.

I'm biased in my support for GM, but I think you definitely went to the right place for GM/shmup advice. I'll be happy to help in any way.

[Shatterhand]

GM:Studio allows for Android porting given the Android module, however that is quite an expense for small developers - but with GM at least I can help from a programming perspective in terms of knowing what's required for the backend. I like to ask stuff like this to see how developers are making shmups you see.

I got GM:Studio with the android module 3 days ago. Bringing the game to GMStudio seems to be a good idea even if I release the game only for windows, since it's very noticeable how faster the apps made with it runs compared to GM8.1 . And, of course, Android support

[BPzeBanshee]

The apps actually run faster now? Quite a change from what I saw in the Betas. I've been sticking with 8.0 myself based on the lack of benefits versus the introduced bugs from the backend changeover. When I finally managed to get GMOSSE to actually load and get somewhere with Studio (ripping out all externalisation and sound-related stuff) it performed worse and did something weird with spacing of the fonts.

If it's not too early to ask, what have you got in-game in terms of sound and music? Unless I've been behind on this department as well GM's been pretty terrible for it's internal sound handling. For all I know you might blow us all away with just what you can pull off with the GM:Studio. I'm certainly looking forward to what you've managed to pull off even from a technical standpoint.

[Shatterhand]

The apps run faster, stuff that used to slowdown in my netbook isn't slowing down anymore (To be honest I only tested one game, and tested it pretty quickly, but the way it was faster was very noticeable), but the compiling time is a LOT slower. It seems they are still going to update Studio on this, and they are promising in near future games running even faster, they are talking about 10x faster than now.

With GM8 I use a .DLL to handle music playing. Check out my other game Operation Gaex at

http://shatterhand.beatthgame.net

But they are promising better sound handling in a near update, with oficial OGG support, change of frequency and speed in real time, pause and resume sounds and some other stuff.

The thing is that Game Maker 8 and previous versions were made only by Mark Overmars, with some ocasional help from other people. Now Studio is being made by a team of programmers, and they are really trying to make it as professional as possible. I am really surprised, it's a lot better than I expected. There are still some minor issues, but they are updating it constantly.

The price is a bit steep though for sure, I just bought it because the school where I work actually paid me to buy it, study it and see if its interesting to use it in our classes. We already use Game Maker 8.1 lite there to introduce them to programming, but the possibility to develop for android devices made everything even more interesting from an educational point of view

I've been using Game Maker for 10 years now. I can code in Java, C#, C++ (Well, just a little bit), Basic (and Visual Basic ), Object Pascal/Delphi and PowerScript/PowerBuilder, and I still prefer to use GameMaker for game development. As I do it just for a hobby, not professionally (And now use it to teach kids how to program), I think it suits my needs perfectly, it speeds up development a lot. But with GM Studio, I have a feeling I could go semi-professional with it and do it finely if I wanted to.

Coding for Android in the traditional way can be a pain in the ass sometimes... if GM Studio proves to be stable and have a performance good enough for it, it may be an excellent way to make Android apps. And so far, it seems it can do the job nicely.

[BPzeBanshee]

Wow, certainly a lot of experience behind you there. I envy your position: the schools here want nothing of Game Maker. It's not listed as credible for some reason meanwhile we're stuck with Adobe Flash CS3 or something for Year 12 Game Development. I used to occasionally go back to my Middle school as my Multimedia teacher liked having me there to teach advanced GML to students when I had nothing better to do but said person is no longer teaching, so I've hit a wall in terms of academic value.

I know of the Yoyogames promise which has been repeated for a while now - I'll believe it when I see it, but hopefully the improved runner and the Android runner will prove successful for you. There definitely will be a lot of modification involved (hi-res to low-res which Y2135 of Shining Armour fame is in the middle of doing now for Jackal and Hound Inc, which is better for performance on PCs and a must for mobile phones).

If Operation Gaex is anything to go by this will be pretty damn sweet for functionality - fullscreen toggles, sound control, rebinding options. I notice you use the method of stalling everything and waiting for user input for the keyboard rebinding stuff though which could look a bit odd (which I made a different method for), but if the background isn't animated in the options menu no one will be the wiser.

Edit:
Since this is a vertically-oriented game (at least in the gameplay screen area) will you implement TATE? And maybe a FPS display for one to tell how fast the game's running? From the last time I tried things in GM:Studio's beta just making use of the view was riddled with issues, but maybe now that things are improving it may be possible?

[tiaoferreira]

Graaaaaaande Rafa!

Sou mais que voluntário para testar o jogo, irmão!

Manda pra cá!

[Shatterhand]

will you implement TATE?

For now the answer is no. I would have to change the way the score, combo, chain etc info is shown on screen and I can't be bothered to do this. If (And that's a big IF) I really port this to Android, then I'll certainly will want to do it in portrait mode... which will force me to change the way stuff is shown on screen. And if I do it, then I'll certainly add the option on the windows version... but for now, I don't want to mess with it.

I notice you use the method of stalling everything and waiting for user input for the keyboard rebinding stuff though which could look a bit odd (which I made a different method for), but if the background isn't animated in the options menu no one will be the wiser.

Yeah, I was never too happy with that... but in Megaship the background isn't animated in the options screen, so that's not a problem.

I am still rethinking if I'll let the game change your system resolution when you switch to full screen. I always did this with my previous games, but it seems some people don't like this... and it also seems this function was removed from GMStudio to comply with Android/iOS way to make things work. I really don't like to see the GFX of my games being scaled up, but I guess that's what I'll do for now on (and if I add a Tate mode, that's how it would be anyway).

(Not that Operation Gaex has good graphics, they are actually horrible )

Tião, don't post in portuguese dude! I'll talk to you later about beta testing.

[BPzeBanshee]

will you implement TATE?

For now the answer is no. I would have to change the way the score, combo, chain etc info is shown on screen and I can't be bothered to do this. If (And that's a big IF) I really port this to Android, then I'll certainly will want to do it in portrait mode... which will force me to change the way stuff is shown on screen. And if I do it, then I'll certainly add the option on the windows version... but for now, I don't want to mess with it.

I see. Most of us guys at the forums have already got our games in portrait mode while I'm working on the HUD for Aero Flux (which originally ran at 640x480). Fair bit of work, I can see why you want to avoid it till later on if at all.

I am still rethinking if I'll let the game change your system resolution when you switch to full screen. I always did this with my previous games, but it seems some people don't like this... and it also seems this function was removed from GMStudio to comply with Android/iOS way to make things work. I really don't like to see the GFX of my games being scaled up, but I guess that's what I'll do for now on (and if I add a Tate mode, that's how it would be anyway).

(Not that Operation Gaex has good graphics, they are actually horrible )

GM's upscaling doesn't look too bad depending on your OS and graphics card settings. The biggest complaint other than graphical concerns is that GM's resolution changing does things with the icons on the desktop and color settings, and if it's a low-res game it forces the OS to a size smaller than it can handle (fortunately my hardware is old and doesn't behave too badly, but stuff like Project Raiden are terrible for this).

Oh, and I gotta agree with you about Operation Gaex, but I wish I had the idea for a moving gradient when I made Eonis Crystal back in 09, it would've looked so much cooler at the time.

[Shatterhand]

Just finished "porting" Megaship to GMStudio.

There are still a few graphics bugs to iron out, but the game is working perfectly.

And, BPzeBanshee, I am posting this specially to you, since you were interested.

The game indeed is a *lot* faster now. There were places in the game where a bomb would bring the framerate from 60 to 35-30 fps in my computer... and now it doesn't do any slowdown.

In the other hand, places where the FPS would go down to 20-15 fps, the game COMPLETELY freezes for half a second, and then keeps going at 60 fps (even though the amount of stuff on screen didn't get any lower)... which is very weird. It's something I'll look into. Maybe it does have trouble creating a lot of instances at the same frame (which is what its doing when it freezes).

But generally, peformance is really a lot better. And they are promising it will get even better.

[BPzeBanshee]

Very interesting, and quite a leap from my experiences in the beta where GMOSSE failed to run fullspeed thanks to the 'new and improved' runner.

With the half-second freezes, it could be the instance count if you're using something shocking (GMOSSE never goes over 300 deliberately because that's the legacy PC's sweetspot for slowdowns, and good bullet patterns can be done with +20 or +50 anyway). I wonder if the vertical sync settings/fullscreen handling might have anything to do with it too as I've seen performance issues like weird stuttering arise from not only excessive use of Draw events but from just having Vsync turned on.

I almost wish I had the cash for GM:Studio now.

[Shatterhand]

In the other hand, the game ran pathetically slow in my Samsung Galaxy Ace. Guess my phone isn't up to the task... which is kinda pathetic indeed, since it can run some modest 3D games with a pretty good speed.

I'll test it in more powerful devices to see how it performs. My only Android device is that phone.

[BPzeBanshee]

If the resolution of your screenshots is what the game is running in on the phones, it's probably doing scaling *down* in addition to running your game at the original resolution to make it display on the phones. I hear they're rather small res - keeping the game low-res is how Rozyrg managed to get his HTML5 games to run fullspeed on at least the iPhone or some such device.

[Shatterhand]

Hmm, maybe that could be the case. I'll make a few more tests later.

In the other hand, I tested the game in a Galaxy Tab tablet, and it worked perfectly.

[BPzeBanshee]

How peculiar. I'm not familiar with Android devices but it seems to me like the Windows vs Mac argument but Smartphone edition: one can tier it toward working on many PCs with widespread problems, or on Macs with very few thanks to a specific hardware set.

Either way, if you're going to go the full length with Android port support you're probably going to be in for a considerable headache (and that's assuming it runs fine on most PCs too which due to screenshot size I'm still a little skeptical on). I feel for you bro.

[Shatterhand]

why you think the game would have trouble working in most PCs?

Its 640x480 resolution, that's a pretty common resolution for games.

[BPzeBanshee]

I just like to go by the term of 'I'll believe it when I see it' when it comes to statements regarding speed, that's all. I don't think that most PCs will have issues displaying it (although I've heard of newer computers have problems when forced to a 640x480 res, they'll work fine with GM's default upscaling I'm sure) - but running fullspeed is something I'm a bit hesitant about. It's a common res yes, but in my experience with GM the higher the res the worse performance you'll get overall.

Obviously there are other factors as well (surfaces have issues in some machines, for example, and forget GM's particle system which Yoyo themselves have said is terrible) but more often than not the high-res games have an exponentially heftier requirement just to display stuff on the screen than something of smaller size (ie. 240x320). I don't think I've seen a single GM game with 640x480+ res running fullspeed on anything less than a dual-core 2.4+Ghz machine, which is IMHO mid-tier range for 'current' computers I've seen for sale. Certainly not everyone on this forum has such hardware.

[Shatterhand]

I see. That's why I want to test it in many different setups.

[BPzeBanshee]

Yeah man. My plan of attack for my project is pretty simple: if it isn't running 60 FPS on my P3 1Ghz machine it's not good enough. This works well most of the time, except some modern netbooks actually run *worse* than anything pre-XP. Maybe Studio might provide an edge for you on products like those.

[Shatterhand]

, it's probably doing scaling *down* in addition to running your game at the original resolution to make it display on the phones.

Spot-on mate.

Made a test with a game running at the native resolution of the cell phone, it worked at full speed even while throwing lots of instances on screen.

It probably worked well on tablet because it didn't have to scale down, but to scale up the graphics.

[tiaoferreira]

I'm volunteer to draw OPERATION GAEX's graphics.

Talk to me on MSN, if you have interest.

[Herr Schatten]

If absolutely necessary, I could prepare a second set of graphics for a 320x240 version of the game. Scaling them down and then cleaning them up should be easy enough. Maybe you could run a system check on startup and make the game run in the lower solution if the hardware is not up to the task of running the 640x480 version.

I don't know much about GM. Would something like that even be possible?

[Shatterhand]

Yep, it is. I still have to test a few things with this new GM Studio, but I've already read thats possible to do.

That's how many Android games work anyway, they check out the native resolution of the device they are running on, and then load the appropriate graphics for it.

If you could do this work, I think I could easily make a version for cell phones that would be playable. I just have to figure out a good control scheme for it... I've tried the 1:1 method and didn't like it, it doesn't feel much natural (Plus keeping your finger on the ship is very silly). Tilt controls are not precise enough... I still think the virtual stick/dpad would be the best solution, but it seems many people are against it.

I honestly still am very doubtful cell phones are a appropriate device to play shmups. Simple games like Angry Birds work well on them, but shmups need precise controls and good screen viewing, both things are very hard to achieve in a cell phone.

In the other hand, I believe Tablets are good enough for them, because of the bigger screen (Which allows for better control setups too)

I actually still have to code a lot of stuff in the game (Like, all the remaining levels ), I probably should finish all this before messing with an Android port... but I was just top eager to try it

[BPzeBanshee]

I've yet to have heard of a good solution to the control 'issue' beyond doing what Cave have done in their games, especially coming from the select few in this forum that bitch about it. Personally I think it's better that way but also allowing for relative movement - if the finger is pressed on the pad and it then moves the ship should move but not necessarily home in onto where the finger is (like you said, having the ship under your finger is just no good).

I'm fairly certain it's possible to do in GM but may take a little bit of trial and error with mp_linear_step. Virtual D-Pads definitely do not work - while GM makes it easy to implement such functions (or so I've heard, they've gone to some length to make relatively easy GML commands for it) it's generally not the best way to operate these sort of games on the smartphones.