Abmneshi: The Prophecy

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Pteriforever
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Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Pteriforever »

DOWNLOAD LINK 1: http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/2095 ... 69832ac04b
DOWNLOAD LINK 2: http://www.forgottenplanet.com/caillan/ ... ophecy.rar

I've been meaning to join this site for a while but kept putting it off until my game was done.

This is a game I've been working on since the beginning of August. It's a 2D vertical-scrolling danmaku shmup programmed in GM8 and based around the more obscure parts of the Ben Drowned universe. This probably wasn't the best choice of theme, but I assure you that knowledge of Ben Drowned is not necessary to enjoy the game.

Image

The game is split into 7 stages; 5 normal stages which always appear regardless of difficulty, and up to two EX stages which are tacked onto the end at higher difficulties. They're not really Extra stages in the sense Touhou uses them; they're more like EoSD's final stage; it just isn't there on Easy mode for whatever reason.

Part of my motivation behind making this game was to create a game which subverts some of the more annoying conventions of the genre while maintaining the same core gameplay we know and love. Now, this stuff I'm about to talk about might seem a little intimidating or offputting, but please bear with me here.

Firstly, the game's stages aren't played one after the other but rather through an overworld; lives are refilled between stages and your character changed, and they can be played multiple times if you wish. I'm interested in what you think of this, as I might include the idea in future games. :)

This game has no conventional bombs. I dislike them because either they're lost when you die making them frustrating, or are used as autobombs making them pointless. Replacing them are the Hyper and Shield systems. They work similarly, probably more similarly than I'd like, with the main exception that shields last longer, hypers enhance your attacks, and shields change up constantly whereas hypers need grazes to charge. This is something I would change in future games, as it put a cap on my creativity in terms of what bullet patterns I could put in. Perhaps if it charged more like Trigonometry Wars 4's graze shield it would've worked better.

The scoring system is kinda a mash of various Touhou systems. Blue items are worth points and work towards extra lives, as indicated by the Extend bar. Rainbow items fill the Multi bar; when it's full the multiplier increases by 1; this affects most of the game's scoring, although the blue items are the main source of score anyway.

There are 3 playable characters, they're described ingame, but anyway:

--Jadusable is slow, has a good variety of attacks, and has a longer invincibility after death.
--Ryukaki is fast, has only forward attacks, and charges his shield faster.
-- BEN has only spread attacks, and gains extra lives sooner.

The game also has configurable controls, just thought I'd throw that out there.

I included a secret TLB, there's a video of that coming soon.

So, yeah. Have fun.

Image

Thanks to SuperX46, for assisting with the artwork and giving me advice which hugely shaped how the game turned out.

Thanks to FlickerFlyTheSeventh, for also helping with the artwork.

Thanks to everypony I stole music from without asking for not suing me, even though I don't really give a damn about any of you.

Thanks to Soradash64, RoyalRagequit, ThatYellowShyGuy, Conic_twist, DarkLinkWP, Lukass-stoll, Sonic_dasher, H3llhound360, and so on and so forth for being supportive and stuff.
Starhall || Abmneshi || Starhall 2
RegalSin wrote:The art in my opinion is quesitonable, because it looks like it relies on computer art
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Lord Satori
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Re: Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Lord Satori »

ben drowned "universe"? unless your talking about a different thing, memes aren't exclusive universes.
BryanM wrote:You're trapped in a haunted house. There's a ghost. It wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat. When forced to decide between the lives of your friends and the chastity of your kitty, you choose the cat.
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Pteriforever
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Re: Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Pteriforever »

...

No, really, there's a whole wiki. http://jadusable.wikia.com/wiki/Jadusable_Wiki
Starhall || Abmneshi || Starhall 2
RegalSin wrote:The art in my opinion is quesitonable, because it looks like it relies on computer art
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Lord Satori
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Re: Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Lord Satori »

:shock: wow. I guess I stand corrected.

edit: this game is pretty cool. and using flandres theme as a stage theme? how exotic! I'd like to point out though that stage's 3 and 6 have the same song.
BryanM wrote:You're trapped in a haunted house. There's a ghost. It wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat. When forced to decide between the lives of your friends and the chastity of your kitty, you choose the cat.
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Giest118
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Re: Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Giest118 »

So I like this game, even if I think stage 7 is completely impossible. The shield and hyper mechanic is reasonably nifty and makes for some interesting strategy-building to get through some of the harder bullet patterns. I also like the differences in the way the ships work; makes each one useful in different ways.

Having said that, the green ship is WAY more powerful than the other two ships. I think you underestimated the usefulness of having a powerful hyper; with the green ship it allows you to basically hax your way through an entire boss bullet pattern. I kind of think every ship should have equally powerful hypers, or at the very least their powers should be ordered differently. Since the green ship gets more extra lives anyway, there isn't a single reason to use one of the other ships for survival play.

It's also really weird to have a stage select with unlockable stages... but if you put down the game and come back later, they're all locked again. I'm not sure what the intention was there.

I have issues with some bullet patterns on an individual basis too, but that'd get a bit wall-of-texty if I went into it. The above two things are of greater importance anyway.

As I said though, I like it. Feels kind of like what you'd get if a bullet hell was made with certain SNES sensibilities. :V
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Re: Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Pteriforever »

Huh. I thought they were all fairly balanced? Hmm. It does appear the green one is a little OP.

Although I do find the red one fairly useful for taking out the Invisible Stage.

Anyway, I would like to know what the problems with the bullet patterns are so I can tell in future how to avoid doing that, since I'm not sure what's even wrong :/ I know the difficulty does have a few funny spikes, like the Stage 5 boss's third-to-last attack. Ulch.
Starhall || Abmneshi || Starhall 2
RegalSin wrote:The art in my opinion is quesitonable, because it looks like it relies on computer art
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Lord Satori
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Re: Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Lord Satori »

they seemed balanced to me. the green one does play a bit wierd though. and the issue with the map mentioned earlier.
BryanM wrote:You're trapped in a haunted house. There's a ghost. It wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat. When forced to decide between the lives of your friends and the chastity of your kitty, you choose the cat.
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Giest118
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Re: Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Giest118 »

Pteriforever wrote:Huh. I thought they were all fairly balanced? Hmm. It does appear the green one is a little OP.

Although I do find the red one fairly useful for taking out the Invisible Stage.

Anyway, I would like to know what the problems with the bullet patterns are so I can tell in future how to avoid doing that, since I'm not sure what's even wrong :/ I know the difficulty does have a few funny spikes, like the Stage 5 boss's third-to-last attack. Ulch.
One general issue is randomized bullet patterns. You CAN use randomness, but you need to pay attention to the possibilities created by it. If the randomness in a bullet pattern can generate undodgeable walls, for example, you need to do something different. Another example: There's an attack the stage 5 boss uses where it basically just shoots a bunch of really slow bullets at you, and these octograms appear that cause the bullets to move much faster. This can lead to seriously unpredictable results, such as a bullet deciding at an inopportune time that it wants to move four times as fast and hit you in the face before you even know what's happening.

I also found it strange that stage 6 has a "TLB". If you do well enough to get to it and game over while fighting it, you don't get stage 7. If you do bad enough and don't fight it, you get to go to stage 7. Not sure if you intended that, but it's a strange quirk. It actually has the effect of making stage 6 much easier than stage 5, since you can basically skip the last quarter of the boss fight.



EDIT: Okay, this is a minor point, but it's easy to implement/fix, so yeah. Add a windowed mode please.

EDIT2: Okay, specific pattern complaint. The stage 2 boss's second attack on Haunted difficulty (the rainbow one) starts by tossing a wall at you. There are ways of dealing with it with proper positioning if you know it's coming, but that's just it: you need to know it's coming to deal with it at all.

EDIT3: Another general pattern guideline - bullets spawning near the player is usually a bad idea. Once again this goes back to how you use randomness, and there's quite a number of patterns where bullets shoot other bullets, and yes, this happens. There ARE ways of using this that aren't obnoxious, but the point is that you can't react if a fast bullet spawns ten pixels away from your hitbox.

EDIT4: The stage 6 boss's final attack (that is, the regular boss, not the TLB) on Haunted mode is another one which I'm not sure you tested. It's possible that I suck too much to figure it out, but it does seem pretty frigging crazy. EDITEDIT: Oh hey, I figured it out. It's just really narrow, but definitely doable.
Last edited by Giest118 on Sat Dec 22, 2012 10:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Lord Satori
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Re: Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Lord Satori »

there also needs to be a way to save your progress.
BryanM wrote:You're trapped in a haunted house. There's a ghost. It wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat. When forced to decide between the lives of your friends and the chastity of your kitty, you choose the cat.
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Giest118
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Re: Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Giest118 »

Okay, so, I beat stage 7, and therefore, the entire game.

I found Drowned's last three attacks to be really underwhelming, which is really weird considering that for the stage 5 and 6 bosses, their last three attacks were basically their hardest. The stage 7 boss's last three attacks, on the other hand, didn't hit me once; I used a shield and a hyper, and those got me through the attacks completely.

Yeah, it probably sounds like I'm contradicting myself since I previously told you that stage 7 was retarded hard and you subsequently nerfed it a bit (and overall it is a more fun sort of difficulty now), but the last three attacks were something of a reverse difficulty spike.

Meh. Was a fun ride though. :V
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Lord Satori
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Re: Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Lord Satori »

well, you're a lot better at the game than I am. I can't even get past cultist Kelbris.
BryanM wrote:You're trapped in a haunted house. There's a ghost. It wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat. When forced to decide between the lives of your friends and the chastity of your kitty, you choose the cat.
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Re: Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Pteriforever »

Thanks for all the feedback!!!

Now I know what to do when/if I make a similar game in future :)
Starhall || Abmneshi || Starhall 2
RegalSin wrote:The art in my opinion is quesitonable, because it looks like it relies on computer art
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Lord Satori
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Re: Abmneshi: The Prophecy

Post by Lord Satori »

so... you aren't gonna make any of the suggested changes? :|
BryanM wrote:You're trapped in a haunted house. There's a ghost. It wants to eat your friends and have sex with your cat. When forced to decide between the lives of your friends and the chastity of your kitty, you choose the cat.
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