Introducing Chacker, The Angry Mockingbird

[SandtouchLC]

Having the delay to keep up with the cursor is just bad. That said I'm aware of the dual controller configuration idea; IMO you folks should pick a single control setup and stick to it.

We put the delay in there because we were afraid the game would be too easy if Chacker perfectly tracked the mouse--plus it would make the speed-ups pointless.

An alternative could be to have Chacker track the mouse, but have the cursor's speed depend on your power-ups. Would that work better?

The flicker is indeed invincibility time, and doesn't seem really smooth.

We'll change it to a palette swap, then.

The thing I forgot to mention about the processor usage before the FAIL is that it remains high. I'm playing on a C2D E6600 here; there's no reason this thing should be using half a core's time (at minimum) in a new game.

This is the problem with Java, everything eats 3x the CPU it normally would. But blaming the runtime is a cop-out. We can do things to make it more efficient and we will look into it.

Feathers...I don't see how I'm supposed to get a single powerup before the first boss. I pick up a feather (usually yellow) at the beginning, and then there's all sorts of random ones after that. I've seen two of the same color come one after the other, but only two before the boss. That first boss so far is a wall for me (although I've only tried it twice), not sure how I'm supposed to squeeze between two dog bones, and it looks like it'd take forever and a day to wear down its health anyhow.

Here's how to beat the Shih Tzu. Remember that you can shoot the bones, or wing flash, to cancel them. Charged shots are directional, so you can simultaneously hit the Shih Tzu and the bones. Failing that, if you can beat the first form with 3 lives left, you can just hover over the Shih Tzu and autofire and whittle away her life while invincible. This assumes you are at seed level 4 or higher. If not, collect every seed on stage 1-2 and you should get there before the boss. (Your seed level survives a FAILure, but the seeds collected since the last level up do not.)

Every 4th bird drops a feather, so if you can shoot every enemy bird, you should be able to get a Vine Shot before you fight the first boss. With the Vine Shot, you will do around 2x damage to the Shih Tzu.

With all that said... we have played around with the idea of totally revamping the powerups. Here is how Plan B would work: Instead of collecting 3 feathers in a row, each feather would immediately take effect. However, you would be limited to 3 feathers total, and a 4th feather would replace the first one collected. Of course, we could make the capacity something other than 3, or tie it to the score the way max life is, etc. What do you think?

[Ed Oscuro]

Having the delay to keep up with the cursor is just bad. That said I'm aware of the dual controller configuration idea; IMO you folks should pick a single control setup and stick to it.

We put the delay in there because we were afraid the game would be too easy if Chacker perfectly tracked the mouse--plus it would make the speed-ups pointless.

An alternative could be to have Chacker track the mouse, but have the cursor's speed depend on your power-ups. Would that work better?

It would, but let's step back a second and ask if speed-ups are really necessary. Gradius has them and it's been the bane of that series right along. Most of the good arcade shooters don't have them at all.

I'm my view - of course you may see it differently - the whole point of a game like this is to get the player familiar and comfortable with the mechanics first, and then test their ability to move around in that context.

As big as everything is in this game, the higher speed is indeed necessary but it's too easy to bump into stuff regardless. You're forced to nerf the speed of enemies to make up for the reduced real reaction time of the player (since it seems that when the big birds appear they're already 1/4 across the field of view).

With all that said... we have played around with the idea of totally revamping the powerups. Here is how Plan B would work: Instead of collecting 3 feathers in a row, each feather would immediately take effect. However, you would be limited to 3 feathers total, and a 4th feather would replace the first one collected. Of course, we could make the capacity something other than 3, or tie it to the score the way max life is, etc. What do you think?

I've seen that system enabled before. Shatterhand for NES is sort of along this line of thinking, but I've seen something do this more directly - unfortunately I don't remember exactly what.

What I think could work would be a system where each feather "slot" tracks a specific spot, or perhaps the first, second, and third feather do, where it either puts a specific shot type in an area, or adds to the level of the shot. I know that's vague as heck so here's two examples:

Slot system: If you had (left to right) yellow, blue, and red feathers, you'd have a yellow-themed shot going upwards, a blue shot straight out, and something red going below - however you wanted to divide this. Not sure if you want to have a "bomb" type that makes Chacker seem to have some diarrhea; then again, his stomach is definitely upset by all those nuts.

Shot level system: If you had yellow, blue, and yellow feathers, it'd be a level 2 yellow shot and a blue one.

Mainly I think I could use a wider shot type to make up for the range of motion.

Of course, once again I think that the idea of "eat the enemy or let them shoot" is more interesting. If this were a caravan shooting game like Hudson made, I would say that it would be interesting to be able to eat the bullets enemies throw out, or just go for the enemy itself. I'm not sure. Needs more consideration.

I find the idea of eating some enemies (or shooting them) to be pretty interesting; actually, I think the Shmups favorite "Chimera Beast" (find it on MAME) shows the way with this concept, somewhat. Instead of the speed system, make eating an enemy change Chacker's offensive capabilities - now that'd be rad.

Here's how to beat the Shih Tzu.

Whoops, me and my old-fashioned reluctance to use bombs. It might be better to put the wing flash on a timer and make it so that the player won't feel they have to hoard them, or get to the boss fight and be somewhat screwed if they were using them. I think you folks wanted to showcase the flash so you might as well make it clear it's OK to use it. Edit: Again, another arcade game comparison: Metal Black by Taito has this stuff you can pick up throughout levels, and it powers a sort of "super laser" attack. A possible way you could use the "eating stuff" system would be to power the wing flash.

[SandtouchLC]

It would, but let's step back a second and ask if speed-ups are really necessary. Gradius has them and it's been the bane of that series right along. Most of the good arcade shooters don't have them at all.

Gradius has useless speed-ups, though. The problem is that Chacker's speed-ups are actually useful, as when they are paired with the autofire or charged shots, they allow you to move in a sine pattern and paint the screen with fire. This nerfs the whole game. Hence, we make you work for it.

I'm my view - of course you may see it differently - the whole point of a game like this is to get the player familiar and comfortable with the mechanics first, and then test their ability to move around in that context.

Agreed--at least that is what stage 1-1 is supposed to do. Which is why we only throw bees at you at first. Then their hives, and then some popcorn birds (sparrows and kiskadees).

As big as everything is in this game, the higher speed is indeed necessary but it's too easy to bump into stuff regardless. You're forced to nerf the speed of enemies to make up for the reduced real reaction time of the player (since it seems that when the big birds appear they're already 1/4 across the field of view).

Or we could downsize the enemies, and Chacker as well, to give you some more real estate. That might be more likely to solve the problem without messing up the difficulty balance. Agree?

What I think could work would be a system where each feather "slot" tracks a specific spot, or perhaps the first, second, and third feather do, where it either puts a specific shot type in an area, or adds to the level of the shot. I know that's vague as heck so here's two examples:

Slot system: If you had (left to right) yellow, blue, and red feathers, you'd have a yellow-themed shot going upwards, a blue shot straight out, and something red going below - however you wanted to divide this.

Not sure if you want to have a "bomb" type that makes Chacker seem to have some diarrhea; then again, his stomach is definitely upset by all those nuts.

Already got that, that would be the Pigeon Bomb.

We could make this system work. However, we were thinking of implementing what you put next:

Shot level system: If you had yellow, blue, and yellow feathers, it'd be a level 2 yellow shot and a blue one.

This is how it is now, actually, except that you must get 3 feathers to turn on the powerup. We would eliminate that and limit you to 3 powerups at a time.

Mainly I think I could use a wider shot type to make up for the range of motion.

You do know about the charged shots, right?

There is also a Spread Shot which you get from the Grackle (3 black feathers).

Of course, once again I think that the idea of "eat the enemy or let them shoot" is more interesting. If this were a caravan shooting game like Hudson made, I would say that it would be interesting to be able to eat the bullets enemies throw out, or just go for the enemy itself. I'm not sure. Needs more consideration.

I find the idea of eating some enemies (or shooting them) to be pretty interesting; actually, I think the Shmups favorite "Chimera Beast" (find it on MAME) shows the way with this concept, somewhat. Instead of the speed system, make eating an enemy change Chacker's offensive capabilities - now that'd be rad.

....

A possible way you could use the "eating stuff" system would be to power the wing flash.

Or give you a wing flash for, say, every 3 bugs eaten?

[SandtouchLC]

We posted Chacker Build 17 today, after taking a long look at Ed's comment:

I find the idea of eating some enemies (or shooting them) to be pretty interesting; actually, I think the Shmups favorite "Chimera Beast" (find it on MAME) shows the way with this concept, somewhat. Instead of the speed system, make eating an enemy change Chacker's offensive capabilities - now that'd be rad.

So: Chacker can now use the bees he eats as torpedoes. Eat a bee (or a whole bunch), then use shift key/left mouse to shoot torps. They cause a small explosion and can be used to take out bee hives, doves and bosses. Hint: Autofire (space bar/middle mouse) always fires seeds even if you have torps, so use those keys to conserve the torps.

Hopefully you all will find the new weaponry to be pretty cool.

[SandtouchLC]

Chacker Build 18 is now out, and the major new feature is discrete difficulty levels. If you found the game too hard, you now have Normal and Easy modes in addition to the original ("Hard") mode.

The powerup system works differently in Normal and Easy mode. Only one colored feather is needed to activate a weapon. Note that if you FAIL a stage on Normal or Hard modes, all of your weapons go down one level, to keep you from becoming too cheesy. Hard mode still has the original powerup system (3 like feathers are needed to activate a weapon), and if you FAIL on hard mode, you also lose the last 3 feathers collected.

The penalty for lowering the difficulty is that the bonus you get for streaks also gets lowered. Here is what else gets changed in each difficulty level:

[null1024]

Eengh, what happened to the speed? The game runs horribly on my machine... [1.8GHz Pentium M, 512 MB RAM, 64 MB Intel integrated graphics], older releases were at least playable...

[SandtouchLC]

Null,

That completely sucks.

Here are links to the last 2 versions, build 17 and build 16. Can you clear your Java cache and then check and see if these run faster on your machine? RAM and CPU usage data would be helpful too.

For now, we think it's running slower for lack of RAM--probably because of the new stage 1 pano set. Maybe we have forgotten to unload some bitmaps somewhere. We will look into it, but your test results will help us get there faster. Thanks.

(note to posterity: the above links are not permanent)

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Edit: After first glance it appears to be a problem with runtime resizing of the sprites. We will try some fixes.

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Second Edit: Here is build 19. It has an interim fix for the resize slowdown. Hopefully this helps, if not completely solves, the problem (but we're calling it interim in case it introduces new bugs.)

[null1024]

Ok, the game's back to playable speed in build 19.

Also, please put in a more standard ZXC based key assignment? Ctrl is awfully far from the spacebar...

[SandtouchLC]

Here is Chacker Build 20 and a ton of improvements and bug fixes:
- Chacker & his hitbox are smaller (thanks Ed)
- Collision detection is faster (thanks Pixel_Outlaw)
- New optional lefty keyboard controls. The old ones still work too.
(thanks Null)
] - Z: Fire/Torp/Charge
] - X: Autofire
] - C: Wingflash
- Ringneck doves now carry bee hives on stage 2
- No more hole in the sky in stage 2
- Seed shots are 50% faster
- Vine shot animation improved
- Spread shot is now a trident pattern
- Width of charged shot beam now depends on seed level (you now need to be level 10 or higher to spam the whole screen)
- Maxed-out weapons have their powerups replaced with crowns (medals)
which are worth 2500 points each. Kingbirds also wear and drop them.
- Wingflash now damages bosses (not by much--it's still meant for
cancellation)
- No more immortal robins in Extra Mode (we think)
- Pause button works again (you can also press enter)
- Game knows not to enable mouse when you click on music/pause button
- Invincibility time after being hit is now tied to difficulty level
instead of always being 3 seconds (1 second on hard, 2 on medium, 3
on easy)
- Points needed for extra berry is too.
] - Easy: 100 000 (original)
] - Medium: 200 000
] - Hard: 300 000

This will be the last update for a while because we need to make stage 3! That's going to take some time. In the meantime please keep the feedback going (even if it is cruel!) They say it is impossible to please everyone--that is, to make a shmup that will make both the danmaku fans and your grandmother happy. But we want to make a game that is as fun as possible and the only way to do that is to keep on listening to what you want to see. Thanks as always.

[SandtouchLC]

Here is Build 21, and here is the obligatory feature list:
- New soundtrack!
- New Stage 3 -- The Lake.
- New Stage 3 Enemies: Dragonflies and Ducks. Kingbirds also make their first non-Extra Mode appearance.
- It is now possible to fire a charged shot without firing a torp first (hold Shift or Z instead of tapping it)
- Pigeon Bombs may now be auto-fired
- Pigeon Bomb + Hive-Bearing Ringneck = 100 Streak glitch no longer works. Sorry
- Neither does becoming immortal by achieving negative life (e.g. get hit by a pigeon bomb with 1 life left)
- Sonic Coo works with Click keyboard layout (Shift and Space Bar) as well as Z/X and mouse
- Chacker's hit box is smaller to accommodate more manic gameplay
- New Dragonfly Torps (Stage 3+ only)
- Bug fixes to Homing Firefly (work in progress. It cannot currently be auto-fired, this will be fixed next time)

So, if you didn't like the music, it's time to give it another try.

Also, for test builds ONLY, there is a stage select. At the title screen, pick your difficulty and then press one of the following keys instead of the fire key or clicking:
1 for stage 1-2
2 for stage 2
3 for stage 3 (the new one)

Warning: The later stages are hard without powerups. If you like danmaku shmups, try playing stage 3 with no powerups. Oi.

[nimitz]

bump, the link is down. This game should be preserved for future generations.

[Udderdude]

http://web.archive.org/web/200902061737 ... touch.com/