Thunderforce zero

[railslave]

lemme know what you think

Sort of feel like starting from scratch and keeping it strickly to 320 x 200 res

http://www.kongregate.com/games/railsla ... force-zero

[BPzeBanshee]

Hi railslave,

I think you already know just how much is wrong with this game, so I'll put down some dot points should you decide to go from scratch or work on a new game (I've started from scratch a few times myself, nothing wrong with it at all):
- 320x240 res (perfect 4:3 ratio for these sort of games)
- get rid of the Thunder Force trademark, make your own creation!
- emphasis on enemies and level-based obstacles rather than bullets (TF by gameplay, not name!)
- read this
- maybe read this too
- optional: remove the loveydovey heart stuff/Bible pushing
- optional: ditch Flash (performance requirements for Flash suck, IMO you can get stuff done better and faster using GM but that has its own setbacks, food for thought)

We've seen several Thunder Force-wannabes over the years, with varied success, and as a result most people that are familiar with the series are going to look at your game, even if it is good, and just go 'Oh it's another guy trying to do Thunder Force, skip plz'.

I'm not trying to sound mean, its just it'll be better off for you in the long run if you reboot the whole thing (reusing some of the code of course, ie. creation of enemies), make it your own title etc and when it's out and it's good, people will look at it and go "Hey, I saw this neat flash shmup on Kongregate and it kinda reminded me of Thunder Force! I should tell more people about this".

[n0rtygames]

Also, your drag to move... Make it playable on a keyboard. If you're doing a study in to touch based games then I can see why you'd go with this but your approach is wrong.

You should detect when the player presses on the screen and when they release. On the initial press, store this as 'lastframepos' - then so long as the button is held down - the direction the mouse or finger is dragged is your movement vector.

Normalise it to a unit vector and then multiply by your speed. Or use the magnitude of the vector you just got. Set an upper limit so the ship has to travel and can't teleport through bullets.

Vector2.normalise(destpos - currentpos) * velocity

Play with that and see how you get on. Listen to banshee, he talks words of wisdom...

[railslave]

Thanks for your replies and constructive crit. Nice to have a real review actually i trust you guys!

i Made it alot easier by having destructable bullets for people on touch screen phones. it was pretty challenging, try get to 1000 points, things start hotting up a bit


- (320 x 240 res)yeah, just worked this out, if i keep strickly to ,say, sega megadrive specs, things will look less stretched and more consistent. Still learning this.
- Kind of enjoyed expanding on the Cenes Crawford Character from Thunderforce 5, nothing else is realy anything to do with it, i wouldnt dare. This is more or less my first playable game
- Just wanted a fun little hiscore office lunch break type thing
- will read,thanks
-will read, thanks
- Bible pushing?, i thought that was an awesome quote considering the fact your controlling an "orn" android thing ? Hearts is There to emphasis the female thing.
- Using HTML5, in constuct 2, performance is probably down to my sloppy programming..not very systematized atm.
- Hey i hope it gets more people to play thunderforce, especially 2 and 4 id be happy if they made more fans. Guess i could put people off (with great power comes great res...)

- drag and drop just made it a bit easier to approach on kongregate, people dont like keys on them sites..the frame rate kind of destroys that though. Ill have to look into the stuff you mention n0rtygames, im still very much a beginner (atm)

oh well i enjoyed making the sun rise over the mountains to the best soundtrack of all time

[BPzeBanshee]

I say bible pushing because that's the impression I get when I'm faced with a Jesus quote without even being explained what to do next to play it.

So you say this is a HTML5 game eh? Interesting, I honestly thought it was Flash. It's possible then that the performance of the app is tied to the browser as that generally does change things. Also explains why I didn't hear that much music when playing, Chrome's audio handling for it sucks. Not sure whether Tululu Game Maker would be any better or worse than Construct but at least it allows some amount of cross-compatibility between the official YoYoGames Game Maker and that, so there's another option.

One type of game for you to investigate, considering the 'lunch break' kind of duration you have in mind, is what I believe is known as a Caravan shmup: no lives, only a time limit and you have to score within a set amount of time. You could mix that with TF-style gameplay by doing something like Thunder Force II's first stage, which in itself used time taken as a factor in scoring.

[railslave]

Thanks "caravan shmup" never heard of that style but ill look into that , i dont have the skill or buget for anything else tbh
im making one hell of a game right now, with a flying pirate ship all in very strick resolution framework, looking tight!! in an amstard cpc kind of way .

My biggest complaint with contruct 2 is that triggering music isnt as straightforward as it should be , but otherwise, its got me this far.
Thanks again for feedback, hard to hear at first but , i will learn from it . Coming on here has set the bar alot higher than where i was.

Any caravan shmups you can recommend for research ?
i love thunderforce 2 , so intense and the music !! (oh no, here i go )

[BPzeBanshee]

Summer Carnival '92 Recca has a Time Attack mode, probably okay to start. I think there was 'Time Extended' as well but I can't recall that many off the top of my head. Hope that helps!

[railslave]

looks cool, you ever played verytex on the sega megadrive, reminds me of that(not as fast ), doesnt look like much but its hard and it has some of the best music on the system , real undiscovered gem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7SsEHUOyn0


Im planning on making a vert game soon, not for the unreligious, its going to be like elemental master but starring Jesus vs the world military(tanks, helis ect.) ..he fires the hebrew alphabet at them (looking forward to making that one)

[BPzeBanshee]

LOL! Looking forward to that one especially if it's more polished than your previous work!

[n0rtygames]

Im planning on making a vert game soon, not for the unreligious, its going to be like elemental master but starring Jesus vs the world military(tanks, helis ect.) ..he fires the hebrew alphabet at them (looking forward to making that one)

Make it ultra fast, like you were playing Sonic the Hedgehog on amphetamines and then call it "God Speed"

[railslave]

a little rough thing i did today (very rough i dont claim to know bullet pattern algorithms or anything, still learning)
like my Jesus animation ??? image points a bit out i know.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajX7NBXi ... e=youtu.be

[n0rtygames]

Make those Jesus Bullets look like Shang Tsung soulballs!!!

(wait.. what?!)

[railslave]

Make those Jesus Bullets look like Shang Tsung soulballs!!!

(wait.. what?!)

will do, im pretty up for this , its going to be a massacre. Wading across oceans , everything


Researching caravan games, anything you can tell me about them, so far all i see is that there time based get the most points..cant be that simple though.