My GM shmups - Last Chance,MEGATANK, Flying V, XYX, ZPF

[Rozyrg]

Yeah, balancing isn't so easy. It's certainly tempting to just add a set amount of damage with every power up; but that can go awry.

It starts off fairly weak, yeah; but just becomes near-unstoppable at a certain point. Out of the 4 ships, it's the only one I could clear multiple loops with (granted, there's only a handful of levels at this point; but still) and I managed to rack up a score of 26m in one run.

[BPzeBanshee]

Maybe that's why then. I can't survive long enough to even get a damn powerup. On the few occasions that I do I last for a while longer. Explains why I got so frustrated picking up those stupid Compile-version upgrades.

Clearly I suck and need to l2p some more before I can be much more specific.

[Rozyrg]

I've put it off long enough, might as well bring this one into the fold officially too.




I swear I can't stop tinkering with this stupid thing.

edit (7/31/12): added very simple bosses (see above), .ini highscore saving, more secret stuff and a few more tricks to hopefully keep the difficulty ramping up nicely.

[Rozyrg]

*minor rant ahead*

Having had ~0% luck with screen recording in the past, I recently got a little converter box so I could just output the video to an external DVD recording device (which a friend of mine happened to have, luckily.) I *was* planning on using this setup for doing a big demo reel with all my games; but as always, luck is not on my side. >_>

First off, the box introduces some weird split-second delay, automatically making any gameplay I want to show noticeably worse. Also, the recorder didn't like the particular brand/format discs I had. Then, when I find some that it deems usable, it decides to go goofy after an hour of recording and the process is interrupted mysteriously, coasterizing the disc. Later still, when everything seems to have gone fine, it outputs discs nothing else can read, and sometimes, can't even playback correctly itself! I lost about half of last night (not to mention a small pile of DVD-RWs and lot of good footage) tangling with this crap. -_-

Granted, the results were about 100x better than any of my past attempts at using FRAPS, etc.; but seriously, what happened to just popping in a tape and hitting record?

[BPzeBanshee]

VirtualDub, dub dub dub dub VirtualDub. The new cutting edge releases have screen recording functions that I swear perform better than that performance-hog piece of shit FRAPS or anything else anyone on this forum has recommended, and like anything I use and recommend, it's free. The only problem is it's a little difficult to setup but it must surely be easier than tinkering with recorder boxes and shit. Get the XVID codec setup, screen capture and done. I can provide more detailed instructions if you decide to go ahead with this.

By the way, been on a Toaplan rush lately. I can see where you get your influences from - except for the eyefuck graphics of Flying V and such (and ZPF is broken as hell).

[emphatic]

I can provide more detailed instructions if you decide to go ahead with this.

Yes, please. Does it work with older MAME releases as well?

[Rozyrg]

I've used Vdub before (SSK recommended it to me), mostly for stuff like animated gifs and making minor video edits, etc.; but I honestly didn't know it had any screen recording functions, I'll have to look again. Of the SR programs I have used, Dxtory is by far the best; but it still doesn't run particularly great on any of my crappy PCs and I have to turn off sound capture to get anything close to a steady framerate. (Also, it has a habit of making frighteningly large video files after only a few minutes or less of recording.)

Anyways, I went ahead and ordered another DVD recorder on the cheap, hopefully that will at least be up to the seemingly simple task of you know, recording things. The one my friend loaned to me was fairly old to begin with, anyways. It doesn't recognize + discs at all.

(and ZPF is broken as hell).

Yes, yes it is.
I made a minor update awhile back dealing with some speed issues; but never bothered distributing it. Along with all the obvious stuff that needs fixing, I have a MASSIVE backlog of ideas for it. Unfortunately, it all must wait as I now have a set deadline to meet. >_>

[BPzeBanshee]

I can provide more detailed instructions if you decide to go ahead with this.

Yes, please. Does it work with older MAME releases as well?

I did a record test of Raiden in Shmupmame just now and other than a minor FPS fluctuation (no change to sound) it appears to work fine. Certainly displays unlike what FRAPS does.

VirtualDub didn't used to have a recording function but it's in the newer releases (I initially found it in the 'experimental' one provided). The trick to video file size is appropriate compression, install XVid and use a quantizer setting of 4/8 you should be allright.

I'll write up in more detail when I actually refresh myself with it and see what that FPS fluctuation is about (fairly certain it's the graphics card being weird as it was doing it albeit not as often even when it wasn't recording, maybe a Shmupmame thing).

[Rozyrg]

I did a brief test with it earlier and I'm pretty impressed. The version I have is quite fiddly about what part of the screen it will actually capture, though, so it took an annoying enough amount trial and error just to get everything positioned correctly. Also, I did notice some severe framerate drops off and on; but that could just as well be this old POS fighting against itself as usual. I'll have to try it again on my laptop when I get back home to know whether it'll be a big problem or not.

Overall, better and lighter than others I've tried at least. It leaves me wanting to punch babies a bit less than my other SR experiences have. >_>

[BPzeBanshee]

Yeah, it could be a lot more friendlier about what part of the screen it wants to capture, but it'd be less of a pain if your program would actually stand still instead of going to the center of the screen all the time in Windowed mode.

For the record, the newer videos of GMOSSE are recorded with VirtualDub. The MK-VI video has the blue line because I was one pixel off, but the next one afterwards was pretty flawless.

Filesize if done right is good too - my 60 FPS recording of Raiden in Shmupmame is 36 MB and runs for 2:17. My better vids of GMOSSE and XF-R only hit the 100 MB mark when going towards the 6-10 minute range. A lot better than newest action movie 'Hard Drive Space: Gone In 60 Seconds'.

[Rozyrg]

Yeah, I noticed that too... sorry. It has to do with the window scaling and all that when the room is reset; but I'm sure you're with familiar enough with it.

Then again, it's hardly the normal way you'd play anything that low resolution. My eyes are bad enough without having to squint to see what the hell I'm doing *grumbles.* If it's not screwing up the framerate or audio or filling up your hard drive to the brim, it's interfering with how you normally play your games, bloody screen recording....

I could so go on a cranky old man rant about technology right now; but I think I'd be better off just having a few drinks and going to bed.

[BPzeBanshee]

Now you know why I was so keen about getting input replays in GMOSSE working to begin with. Pretty sure my newest vids was making use of those too, like any MAME user recording their run and putting it on YouTube should be doing.

I totally know how you feel though man. Savour those drinks and have a good night.

[Lord Satori]

hey, are you the same guy that made similar levels for the "Blast Works" game for the Wii? if so, congrats!

I'll definately have to try these out one day.

edit: just tried them out. I suck too much to complete any of them.

[Rozyrg]

@Satori

Another person who knows about Blast Works, awesome. Glad you enjoyed my levels. I do miss BW's fast turnaround (1 month is pretty fast for me); but it's really worth it to have full control over everything and not have a bunch of funky, arbitrary limitations to tangle with. I certainly don't miss the ungodly wrist strain from using the Wii remote an absurd amount hours each day, though.

Don't worry about the difficulty too much, I'm always feeling out what's 'right' (at least for me), sometimes I maybe try too hard to match up to the proper quarter thieving arcade level. Thanks just for playing anyways. Hell, some of my old BW stuff just outright crushes me (ie Ruthless), I wonder how I even got through testing them sometimes. >_>

@BPzeBanshee

While we're talking about it again, do you have any specifics on ZPF's brokenness? I finally have an excuse to tinker with it again now that I'm going to be getting footage of everything, I can probably get a few things smoothed out at least. I do know of some minor stuff off the top of my head; but any extra insight would be quite helpful.

[BPzeBanshee]

@BPzeBanshee
While we're talking about it again, do you have any specifics on ZPF's brokenness? I finally have an excuse to tinker with it again now that I'm going to be getting footage of everything, I can probably get a few things smoothed out at least. I do know of some minor stuff off the top of my head; but any extra insight would be quite helpful.

EDIT:
I couldn't find the copy of ZPF that I had so I redownloaded and turns out you've updated from the version I had, so a lot of what I wrote just went down the drain. What I got below still applies tho:

The menu behaviour was a bit annoying as I didn't really realise you had different ship choices until you hit left/right at the menu by accident - a new user could completely skip the idea of having multiple ships to choose from. I felt like I had to explore and wander a bit to figure out how the hell to actually play despite the tutorial (which appears after a certain level of inactivity).

Also the bullet sprites are the old kind-of-hard-to-see ones like what XYX had before you updated that one.

The screen behaviour was a bit odd too, at first it wasn't scaling up when going fullscreen but I eventually figured out that the S key was the one for screen (in XYX it's like, O or something). Now it completely disappears when it gets windowed and appears fine in fullscreen.

A considerable lot of enemies appeared directly on the screen when they spawned instead of moving into the view from outside the room. (EDIT2: The powerup module, while no longer harming you which is good, likes to do a loopy-loop, which when placed on the lower half of the screen results in it going outside of the screen just at the moment you need it.)

S20 or someone complained about the game not being G-rated enough a while ago and I think there were some people who didn't like the music (I don't either but it doesn't really matter for me - it fits therefore it's good enough).

Finally, performance seemed a lot better but please add a FPS display so we can be sure. It used to be pretty terrible on most machines I tried it on. (EDIT2: I did notice ?=1 in config enabled a testmode options which in turned enabled a debug display of sorts but I couldn't see a FPS display in that.)

[Rozyrg]

Thanks a lot, man. I can actually knock out a good bit of that. ..and yeah, pretty much the stuff I figured.

Since I uploaded the last one long long ago, I've redrawn all of the enemy bullets to have outlines - mainly so I don't have to take the performance hit from each bullet drawing them on their own. It worked as a fix for some of the speed issues; but it's still not perfect concerning their visibility.

I definitely forgot how much of a mess it was in there, though. Ahh, musty old code.

[BPzeBanshee]

A couple of other simple things I noticed:

- I'm not exactly sure how the medal system works but I'm guessing it's about chaining them, which leaves me confused as to why I get a 'medal down' whenever the Stage 1 midboss dies and flies upwards and at the end of the stage.
- F5/F6 (save/load state) should definitely be removed, it can only lead to cheating and/or program issues.
- the mouse cursor should be hidden, as not having it hidden does actually affect performance.
- the animations for some of the ships appear to be either broken or a little slow. Bat takes a little too long to bank and I have no idea what the go is with Ko.

Not exactly critical but I guess now is the time to put these across while you're at it. By far my biggest concern is just how the menu works and the simple things to improve visibility/performance. There can be an awesome game out of this one yet!

[Lord Satori]

XYX is sideways for me. not sure if its my computer or what, but its really bizzare.

[Rozyrg]

@BPzeBanshee

Thanks again, I always forget about default-enabled stuff like the cursor display and Save/Load functions.

I've honestly forgotten how then medal system works, too. That was infuriating me a bit when I finally got to record some footage earlier this week. I'd be doing great but still losing out on the bigger medals somehow. I know it has something to do with how many you let leave the screen and whether you've destroyed/hit an enemy within a certain timeframe. I might just simplify it for the sake of instant gratification... if nothing else, it'd be consistent with my general game design ethos. >_>

...speaking of footage...

@Lord Satori

You might have accidentally changed the Rotation setting in the options menu (it's there for people who prefer a more traditional vertical screen orientation), set it back to 0 and all should be well.

I also might have left an ini with that particular setting in the zip file, too though.

[Lord Satori]

no, it was like that the first time I ran it, but your fix worked. love the "if you are playing outside of this place" message.

[BPzeBanshee]

That's what I thought too Rozyrg. I think what's happening is the Stage 1 midboss is actually spitting out medals after it leaves the screen which causes the Medal Downs. Maybe that might help.

What did you end up using to record the vid?

[Rozyrg]

Laptop>Converter box>DVD recorder (via S-video)

The quality isn't perfect; but it does look better with more visually interesting stuff, more or less like it would being played on an old CRT television, which I'm perfectly fine with. All I had to do to keep the video output delay from effecting gameplay was set it to 'dual display' and just pay attention to the laptop's screen rather than the tv's, can't believe I didn't think of that before.

Getting the footage into a usable format for editing was a whole other can of worms. VLC took about 1/3 a day just ripping the hour I had recorded and I didn't realize until afterwards that it had encoded the damn thing in a way that seemed to make every other existing video program cranky about even touching it. Live and learn I guess. : |

love the "if you are playing outside of this place" message.

I had way more fun than I should've with those.

[BPzeBanshee]

Good to hear man. I hope we get some good videos of your other games up soon.

I don't suppose you feel like (once the others are out of the way) recording a bit of GMOSSE by any chance? I'm interested to see how it looks with the 'old TV' look and I can send you an indev build if needed.

[mice]

Gamemaker for Ouya? GM Studio have a export to Android. So it could maybe be possible?
That would be a dream come true, playing your stuff on it.

[BPzeBanshee]

Gamemaker for Ouya? GM Studio have a export to Android. So it could maybe be possible?
That would be a dream come true, playing your stuff on it.

Assuming Ouya's modified version of Android is compatible and an update to GM:Studio for the actual Ouya controls happens, it'd be very cool. Trick is, would anything run full-speed on it.

[Rozyrg]

I don't suppose you feel like (once the others are out of the way) recording a bit of GMOSSE by any chance? I'm interested to see how it looks with the 'old TV' look and I can send you an indev build if needed.

Sure. I can't promise I'll be any good at it, though. That's always a chance you take with someone else playing...haha.

Ripping/editing/etc. is far far far far more time consuming anyways. Not sure when I'll even have time to chop and splice the 30+ minutes I have of ZPF alone, so it might be awhile.

[BPzeBanshee]

Yeah, I know what you mean. Difficult indeed - at least GMOSSE has input replays (although they still don't work with Swordfish for reasons unknown) so you can record your run beforehand to avoid that paying-attention-to-screen-not-tv thing. I imagine doing your own games without that must be quite....something else.

[Rozyrg]

On second thought, don't get your hopes up.

Somehow Youtube took the already low-mid quality footage and made it significantly worse.

The only chance I have for any of the vertical games (including GMOSSE) would be to somehow record in TATE mode and use something like Vdub to un-rotate it later; but if it's just going to turn to complete poo once it's up online, what's the point? Also, the last time I tried using Vdub to edit any of the footage I had recorded, it knocked the audio out of sync by more than a second, so that might be out of the question anyways.

*looks around for something to smash*

[BPzeBanshee]

Ouch. I thought something was a bit off.

I notice your posting times on this forum and therefore your times online aren't too far off from my own (then again I'm all over the place), but if our times are the same maybe this Saturday we can get on IRC or something and I can talk you through getting VirtualDub to work?

Not a guaranteed chance of success but then again we're running out of options for your recording problem. Otherwise I could just follow my previous word and try to write some instructions down for setting it up - at the very worst we'll either be able to see performance drops immediately and give up or get some high-quality (see my vids) vids working.

[Rozyrg]

Well, I've managed to calm down (a few hours of Zelda before bed did the trick nicely), so I'll give it one more go and then we'll try the Vdub capture method again. Thanks in advance for any help.

Speaking of Vdub, I did play with it a bit more and got it's rotation filter to work without the audio de-syncing or any other nastiness, so that's encouraging at least.

If I can just figure out how to keep Youtube from completely butchering the quality, I think I'll be ok. If I could get it 1:1 with how the ZPF stuff looks, that'd be perfect, honestly.