Hydorah - indie shooter that actually does things right

[Herr Schatten]

A good euroshmup...

You don't seem to have played many of those, if you label Hydorah that way.

[TMR]

A good euroshmup...

You don't seem to have played many of those, if you label Hydorah that way.

Depends if he's using the "got energy bars coming out of it's ears and inertia" definition or the "shoot 'em up made in Europe" one really... that possible double meaning is why i occasionally throw my rattle out of the pram and vainly try to persuade people to use a different term for the former. =-)

[nimitz]

Let's see

-No boss timeout, meaning infinite milking, rendering score meaningless

-Heavy overuse of environmental inertia (stuff that makes your ship move without user input)

-Generally underpowered ship, compensated by very small amounts of enemies

-General lack of enemy bullets on screen

-Tendency to make enemies take too much hits before dying (or underpowered ship)

-Lack of an arcade mode (ability to save between levels)

-Ability to play levels from separate path in the same credit

-Overly long checkpoints

-Insta-death traps


The term euroshmup means an attempt at making a shmup by people who don't fully understand what makes 'em good or fun. So saying it is a "good euroshmup" is somewhat of an oxymoron meaning that even though the developers clearly don't understand the genre, the final result is still somewhat playable, that being said that is mostly because the game often blatantly copies parts of well-known series...

[ZarroTsu]

Clearly you've never played... (No other term I can think of for it) a "casual shooter".

Seeing as I played this over the past few days as per stream, allow me to deconstruct your silly critique.

-No boss timeout, meaning infinite milking, rendering score meaningless

Great to hear. How's that milking going? What's your high score? May I see your 10 hour video proof?

-Heavy overuse of environmental inertia (stuff that makes your ship move without user input)

It's called variation. It keeps the game from getting boring. It was NEVER annoying, and it only happened twice in the game, three times if you count the gas spore boss nerfing your yellow/blue powerups.

-Generally underpowered ship, compensated by very small amounts of enemies

Clearly you've never played the games this is tribute to. It's quite obvious by this bullet that you're a danmaku-(profane extension goes here). This is not THAT type of game.

Furthermore, your ship starts underpowered. As you beat levels you get new weapons. As you destroy key enemies, you get power ups to improve these weapons. Full power Vulcan is an effective 5-way fan of bullets in front of you. I fail to see your complaint.

Small amounts of enemies? I'll conjunct that point with your next bullet:

-General lack of enemy bullets on screen

: It astounds me that you never realized that your whole ship is your hit box. This is even more conjunct with your danmaku-(happy funtime)-dom. I'd like to remind you that this is not Zunstun Power's junkheap, it was made under the intention of capturing nostalgia while presenting a very fun game, and one playable by all audiences. (Which is instantly conflict in, say, the water level, where I cry in pain)

-Tendency to make enemies take too much hits before dying (or underpowered ship)

Yes, because when ruler of an alien army, you shall ensure all your men have aluminum foil for shielding! Let's see those earthlings stop you now!

Even from a game standpoint, I never saw this as a problem. Did you never level up your weapons? Did you even get half way through the game? It's clear that you did from your above observation of "too many weather events", so I really fail to see your problem here. Did you play the whole game with the starting equipment? Even so, did you never use the missile?

-Lack of an arcade mode (ability to save between levels)

You. Have. saves. between. every. level.
You have, what, 4 saves when you start the game? You get another after each event stage? It's at this point now, that I wish to grant myself clearance to call you a total idiot, but then the admin would rip me a new one, so let's just move on.

-Ability to play levels from separate path in the same credit

....Are we talking about the same game here? Did your arrow keys lack functionality at the map screen?

-Overly long checkpoints

So... wait, what? You complain about a lack of difficulty in screen dedication, yet a lack of player ship power, and yet now the increment of time is too long... What?

-Insta-death traps

Oh yes, those foul everything. How they kill you so.

The term euroshmup means an attempt at making a shmup by people who don't fully understand what makes 'em good or fun. So saying it is a "good euroshmup" is somewhat of an oxymoron meaning that even though the developers clearly don't understand the genre, the final result is still somewhat playable, that being said that is mostly because the game often blatantly copies parts of well-known series...

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Look. You did not play this game. I'm out and saying this after reading your post, you did not play the game. There is a disconnect somewhere, clearly.

This game is a tribute to several early shooters. Timeless shooters. They are reviewed if you get the good ending (And you didn't! You didn't even beat the game! You didn't even play the game!), and it is CLEARLY the intention to make a game in both tribute and dedication to those games. Your smug complaining has literally no business being in this, or any topic. Go back to your sheltered corner, and please at least read up on how to make coherent and justifiable criticism.

[Observer]

Well, the game technically is an euroschmukmup. It was made in Spain, joder!

(I know, I know, bad attempt at comedy at the wrong moment...)

How can anyone criticise a game where you have a freaking heavy metal hand doing the horns, where the OST is pure '80s power, almost Vince DiColaesque tunes, is beyond my comprehension. Especially when it's freeware. Especially when there are far worse things being charged for money. All mechanics and design choices aside, it's damn solid and, let's not forget, done for a home device (the PC), not the arcades so, well, a tribute might take its liberties.

And it's a huge proof that, with enough determination, Game Maker can be taken seriously despite its flaws.

Etcetera, etcetera.

And the spanish voice acting owns.

[Dale]

\

-Overly long checkpoints

So... wait, what? You complain about a lack of difficulty in screen dedication, yet a lack of player ship power, and yet now the increment of time is too long... What?

The game should be challenging in a fair way checkpoints in shmups(this sentence is just wrong) and power downs suck the fun out of many would be awesome shmups. Check Point systems are the fucking devil in any 2-D game genre though.

This game is alright a few parts frustrate too much and I refuse to save. Looks damn good.

[nimitz]

ZarroTsu: First off, personal insults may be valid and valuable assets to arguments where you come from, but here it only shows your immaturity.



You unfortunately failed to understand any of the points I made (which says a bit about your understanding of the genre). I will point out a few that you not only misunderstood, but got completely wrong...

-A shmup should not let you save between levels, nor let you backtrack in the same credit. That was the criticism, not the other way around. Same with the ability to play different paths, a bad thing. Either make all levels follow each other with a user chosen order or have different paths to victory with no backtracking.

-How long it takes to infinitely milk a boss is irrelevant, the point is that comparing scores becomes meaningless. Might as well have no score counter a all.

Clearly you've never played the games this is tribute to. It's quite obvious by this bullet that you're a danmaku-(profane extension goes here). This is not THAT type of game.

-I will turn that around and say you never played high rank or high loop Gradius, it becomes true bullet-hell and is an integral part of the game. Heck, by the time you reach stage 3 in Gradius 1 (1985) it's already bullet hell provided you didn't die.

-All the points I made about power balance (player weapons, enemy health) can be grouped under a big umbrella term called pacing. It is one of the most important aspect of a shmup, and one of the strong point of the Gradius series. Failing to pace a shmup correctly has huge repercussions and quite a few shmups suffer from this. Hydorah lacks severely in that department, like most euroshmups.

-Do yourself a favor and go read the glossary, I'm pretty sure there's an entry regarding death traps.

I really don't want to waste time and answer all your points one by one, especially considering that all of them are tainted by a shared problem. A complete lack of understanding of both the concept of a shmup and the scope of my criticism, making a distinction between bullet-hell and old school shmups proves it, they both share the same "rule-sets" that make a shmup a shmup. Some people might say that a few "true" shmups use gimmicks reminiscent of euroshmups, but it is never so overused or unilateral that it denatures the game, euroshmups on the other hand cross that line.

Finally, my criticism is unrelated to the target audience of the game (or how casual the game is). The only thing I am saying is that the game is indeed an euroshmup, a good one even.



P.S. Gradius is indeed timeless, what's sad though is people calling it timeless when they don't have any idea of why it is so great.

[Herr Schatten]

-No boss timeout, meaning infinite milking, rendering score meaningless

I agree that the game would have benefitted greatly from boss timeouts.

-Heavy overuse of environmental inertia (stuff that makes your ship move without user input)
-Overly long checkpoints

I wouldn't call two small bits in a game "heavy overuse". I'm not a fan of any kind of inertia, but it really isn't the least bit of a problem in Hydorah. And while it's true that for two or three single stages (like Path of Scylla) the checkpoints are painfully long, the vast majority of the checkpoints throughout the game are actually very short. You're exaggerating. A lot.

-Generally underpowered ship, compensated by very small amounts of enemies
-Tendency to make enemies take too much hits before dying (or underpowered ship)
-Insta-death traps

Design flaws like these usually drive me mad, but I can't actually remember encountering any of these things in Hydorah, and I've put a lot of hours in the game by now. Enemies in Gradius take no less damage than those in Hydorah. Locomalito copied the Gradius series quite accurately in that regard.

-Lack of an arcade mode (ability to save between levels)
-Ability to play levels from separate path in the same credit

I fail to see how these are detriment to your fun. No one hinders you playing the game on one credit and without backtracking. On the other hand, others might enjoy practicing later levels more easily (save feature) or having a choice between just getting to the end and finishing with the 'good' ending.

-General lack of enemy bullets on screen

There are plenty of bullets on screen in later levels. It might come too late in the game for your taste (it's really only in the last 3-4 stages), but it's there.

The term euroshmup means an attempt at making a shmup by people who don't fully understand what makes 'em good or fun.

So I guess X-Dazedly Ray and Curse are Euroshmups now? Those have very clearly been made by people who have no idea what makes shmups good or fun. It's really time people stop to use the term to describe anything, as it only leads to confusion and ultimately pointless discussions like this one.

I do think you're being way too harsh on Hydorah, and you're exaggerating its (few) flaws, though, but, well, whatever.

[nimitz]

I guess i might have exaggerated a bit on some aspects, but any inertia is overuse in my book.

Some checkpoints are overly long, not all of them, sure.

Hydorah is not a big offender in terms of underpowered weapons, but it's there, no doubt. Same with pacing problems, not huge, but annoying.

The problem with the lack of an arcade mode is that it prevents having a standard play mode to compare runs with others. Saving is ok I guess, but it screams euroshmup.

I guess the lack of bullets complaint could be replace by a lack of rank one, rank is a very important part of Gradius and omitting this is like a ddp clone without chaining.

Bad shmup does not equal euroshmup, euroshmup usually means design flaws, while a bad shmup can be anything.

[linko9]

Some of those are valid complaints, but the only ones that really make it feel at all like a euroshmup to me are the saving and the (somewhat) meaningless score. However, I would never classify this as a euroshmup, as it lacks most of the defining characteristics of that (albeit ill-defined) subgenre-- no healthbar, no inertia (aside from the few instances that you mentioned), no awkwardly-sized sprites, no hard to see bullets... I'm sure there are a few I'm forgetting. Anyway, this game, despite those few obvious flaws, is much, much closer to a Gradius or a Hellfire than a Soldner X or a Jets n Guns.

[daikaiser]

I think I found a solution to "no music" bug. The game can't locate the music directory when the operating system is set to Japanese Unicode. It has to do with how \ are changed to ¥. Changing the region back to English will solve this problem.

[BPzeBanshee]

Seriously? Being made in Game Maker that shouldn't be a problem. I've run GM games just fine with language changed to Japanese.

[Rupert H]

almost Vince DiColaesque tunes

My frothing demand for this game just increased.

[Friendly]

Very nice game, I'm impressed.

Whoever rates this 5.5/10 is clueless.

[replayme]

Just downloaded and played the game. Pretty good. Certainly an extremely polished title, and I wouldn't have guessed that it was made using Game Maker.

Need to seriously think about investigating that tool.

[Cagar]

Runs in slow motion...

[replayme]

Well, the game technically is an euroschmukmup. It was made in Spain, joder!

(I know, I know, bad attempt at comedy at the wrong moment...)

How can anyone criticise a game where you have a freaking heavy metal hand doing the horns, where the OST is pure '80s power, almost Vince DiColaesque tunes, is beyond my comprehension. Especially when it's freeware. Especially when there are far worse things being charged for money. All mechanics and design choices aside, it's damn solid and, let's not forget, done for a home device (the PC), not the arcades so, well, a tribute might take its liberties.

And it's a huge proof that, with enough determination, Game Maker can be taken seriously despite its flaws.

Etcetera, etcetera.

And the spanish voice acting owns.

My mind exploded when I saw this Mario Kart "clone"... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_SUXVmKpCM

Certainly an extremely powerful piece of software in the right hands. What's to say that a decent Contra or even an Axelay-style game can't be made?

I interviewed the dude behind this little number a few years ago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 3oLX_u375k) and Hotline Miami (the new indie favourite) is also being made using Game Maker.

It's a really interesting time to be an indie developer. People talk about the iPhone, but the future's really on PC (only because of the control mechanism - incl 360 controller). And Game Maker is certainly looking to be the tool to give competent developers the means of making SNES style 2D games. Heck, I saw that GTA clone which I have linked to above, and all I thought was "WOW! How is that even possible?!?!"!

I mean, people love talking about using Final Cut as being the only tool that is capable of cutting movies with, but I have seen some really impressive work by some people who have used iMovie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14BH8idkfr8&feature=plcp), and that program's really basic. Which just goes to show that it isn't the tools, but the pedigree and skill of the workman utilising them that one should be looking towards - ie a bad workman always blames his tools.

[BPzeBanshee]

Runs in slow motion...

Restart, or get a better computer. I believe we've had this conversation before.

Just downloaded and played the game. Pretty good. Certainly an extremely polished title, and I wouldn't have guessed that it was made using Game Maker.

Need to seriously think about investigating that tool.

I'm glad some people are starting to actually realise just how good GM is. When used correctly it's quite powerful.

I'm starting to get really sick and tired of hearing nothing but people dribble shit about it when they haven't even touched the program or coded something for it themselves. It's not perfect (nothing is) but it certainly a lot better than the negative rep here would have you believe - replayme's hit it right on the hammer in regards to the 'developer, not the tool'.

[Obiwanshinobi]

You don't hear people who make games for a living talking shit about other devs' work. They are probably too busy to even read internet beef.

[Udderdude]

You don't hear people who make games for a living talking shit about other devs' work. They are probably too busy to even read internet beef.

I think he's talking about Gamemaker itself, not Hydorah.

And in any case, I don't think Gamemaker is the devil. Hell, I use Flash, which is arguably even slower and more inefficient. It definitely has issues though, and they start to crop up rather quickly when you make something more complex with it.

[BPzeBanshee]

Udderman, I can agree with you on that much - GM makes things easier at the expense of limitations to complexity (and while GM Studio's sound engine got improved recently, the original sucked), and it certainly isn't the most user-friendly when you get to stuff like 3D.

More often than not though I'm seeing more crap given to it than it deserves that isn't actually constructive, which is my main beef, and is why I'm all for people appreciating stuff like Hydorah. People just don't realise because they hear crap and write it off as "oh it's made in GM therefore it sucks" before they even try it. If one's going to pick on a devkit do it with first-hand experience and not off outdated hater trashtalk. Every devkit (including Flash I daresay) has its positive points and negative points, and for the purposes of game production I think GM is more than suitable for game development.

You don't see me talking about how bad C++ is for example, because I have no experience with it, ergo any view I've got on it is going to be unreliable and useless. So when a particularly favoured member of the forum puts stuff like "gm blows" all over the place and doesn't even know how to open a GMK, naturally it's going to get on my nerves a tad bit. I respect everyone's views to a certain point but I'll call them out for talking bullshit if I feel the need and I expect nothing less from anyone else in this forum towards myself (and I have been called out for such before, didn't see system11 censor THOSE posts).

[trap15]

[Udderdude]

You don't see me talking about how bad C++ is for example, because I have no experience with it, ergo any view I've got on it is going to be unreliable and useless. So when a particularly favoured member of the forum puts stuff like "gm blows" all over the place and doesn't even know how to open a GMK, naturally it's going to get on my nerves a tad bit. I respect everyone's views to a certain point but I'll call them out for talking bullshit if I feel the need and I expect nothing less from anyone else in this forum towards myself (and I have been called out for such before, didn't see system11 censor THOSE posts).

Why mention me, though? I mentioned Hydorah in an interview (positively). I even supported your GMOSSE project, which was made in Gamemaker, if you've forgotten. Come on, man :p

[BPzeBanshee]

Point taken, man. My main beef has been stuff I've seen you post in OT/Development earlier on, and more recently it's been trap15. I think my overall point however is quite valid with or without the namedrop which is probably why system11 censored it (I have a few bones to pick with him too, but that's for another day).

If you don't mind me putting it across as constructive criticism I'll send some pointers through in PM so I can get appropriately grilled without anymore thread derailing/mod intervention.

[Raytrace]

this looks ace, Imma check when I get home

[Obscura]

Is it just me, or is the speed power up even more troublesome here than in Gradius?

Since you can't select how to allocate power ups, it frequently feels like dying a few times and losing all of your turbos = game over.