New NEOGEO / Dreamcast game: "NEO XYX" NG: DEV.TEAM 2013

[KAI]

Sounds like Rafael Dyll.

[emphatic]

The scrolling seems way too fast judging from the trailer.

Agree.

[psoslayer]

graphics are MASSIVE

[trap15]

- The explosions are weak.
- When you pick up items, they just sort of disappear off the screen when you're pretty close to them, it doesn't feel like you're actually collecting them.
- Not sure how to describe this, but the ship looks sort of floaty, especially when weaving through bullets.

The explosions definitely do feel really weak, and the item pickups also feel off. The giant medals also feel off, in that they are partially player-seeking, but not entirely. The seeking algorithm looks far too basic, and feels low-quality.
The floatiness is probably caused by what BareknuckleRoo points out:

Is it just me or does the ship move so quickly that the screen scrolling horizontally doesn't actually keep up with the ship, so when the ship suddenly moves to the edge of the screen, the stage itself has to 'catch up' and scroll to the side even if the ship stops moving. Looks a bit more disconcerting than standard shmup movement where any screen scrolling happens relative to player movement, and the screen only scrolls horizontally if the player is actually moving, relative to the player's position on the background. Am I the only one noticing this?

You're not the only one. I swear I complained about this on the last trailer (what, 4 months ago?), so I'm pretty disappointed that they didn't change it...


Another issue I've noticed is that when bullets are "out of view" [hidden behind the horizontal scrolling], they are still "alive", contrary to most STG. Judging from the trailers, this isn't a significant issue as enemies don't seem to shoot from that area, but if you are moving into that area and there was a bullet there... OOPS, you're dead, good luck, have fun.

[THE]

The explosions definitely do feel really weak, and the item pickups also feel off. The giant medals also feel off, in that they are partially player-seeking, but not entirely. The seeking algorithm looks far too basic, and feels low-quality.

Yeah, the medal stuff is on my to do list. It's just copy'n'paste stuff and will be changed.
It will get some kind of collect animation too.

The floatiness is probably caused by what BareknuckleRoo points out:

Is it just me or does the ship move so quickly that the screen scrolling horizontally doesn't actually keep up with the ship, so when the ship suddenly moves to the edge of the screen, the stage itself has to 'catch up' and scroll to the side even if the ship stops moving. Looks a bit more disconcerting than standard shmup movement where any screen scrolling happens relative to player movement, and the screen only scrolls horizontally if the player is actually moving, relative to the player's position on the background. Am I the only one noticing this?

You're not the only one. I swear I complained about this on the last trailer (what, 4 months ago?), so I'm pretty disappointed that they didn't change it...

We actually changed it. In the last teaser hori scrolling was very fast, faster then player movement. Now it's 1:1. There isn't scrolling without player movement though. Not sure where you guys see this?

Edit: ah found it, okay in some occasions it adjusts after the player stopped.

Another issue I've noticed is that when bullets are "out of view" [hidden behind the horizontal scrolling], they are still "alive", contrary to most STG. Judging from the trailers, this isn't a significant issue as enemies don't seem to shoot from that area, but if you are moving into that area and there was a bullet there... OOPS, you're dead, good luck, have fun.

It just looks like it, the trailer is missing 8 pixel on each side, those where cropped out. Bullets die outside of the viewport.

[psoslayer]

Another issue I've noticed is that when bullets are "out of view" [hidden behind the horizontal scrolling], they are still "alive", contrary to most STG.

What? No STG cancels those bullets.

[trap15]

I think you might just not notice it. Tons of them do. All Yagawa games do it, and I think most Ikeda games do.

[psoslayer]

Well, if you was trying to the that enemies won't shoot from off-screen then, yes, you're right.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Well, if you was trying to the [sic] that enemies won't shoot from off-screen then, yes, you're right.

This wasn't what he was saying at all. It's difficult to see because bullet velocity is so fast, and scrolling in Cave games relatively small (it's really hard to find a spot to see this in DoDonPachi, DaiOuJou, etc), that it's hard to get a bullet to move off-screen horizontally, then scroll the screen to a point where you would be able to see the bullet again before it went away completely out of the play area you can move into.

There isn't scrolling without player movement though. Not sure where you guys see this?

Edit: ah found it, okay in some occasions it adjusts after the player stopped.

This is somewhat worrying, especially considering it's easily visible throughout the entire trailer.

[system11]

Aside from the slightly strange catchup on the horizontal scroll (it's better than from the first trailer at least), and the way the medals seem to vanish as soon as they touch any pixel of the player craft, I think this looks fantastic. Looking forward to getting mine.

[Jeneki]

Fun looking trailer. Now this is how you get someone to preorder a Dreamcast game.

[THE]

This is somewhat worrying, especially considering it's easily visible throughout the entire trailer.

Well I was not looking at the trailer, just at the game and I moved too artificially/controlled to see it (like a coder not a gamer). After switching to gamer mode I saw it

The video was made before beta testing, so it's still on the ruff side. There will be massive changes for sure after Plasmo and other BTs get their hands on it...

But thanks so far for the feedback, it already improved the game

[emphatic]

I forgot to add that it does look very nice and I want to play it. I think it scrolls way too fast though and that kinda cheapens the look of the whole game, as you can't let your eyes linger on the beautiful graphics. Especially since the game let you scroll the screen left to right so much, you have no chance to destroy all enemies, something that will be an annoyance I'm sure if the final product end up like that. Please make sure that this will look and feel 100% like a real arcade game.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

It looks cool. I would add more detail to a few parts like some explosions, a few enemies seem to disappear awkwardly and around the 2:20 area with the water crafts, looks weird that they don't have any affect on the water. They should have a wake trail or something. I hope that doesn't sound harsh. It does look cool.

[chempop]

I like the graphic style a lot. Really nice work on the sprites and backgrounds! Only one shot type? I'd like to see either multiple ships or a variety of weapon power ups (spread, concentrated, homing, etc).

[system11]

At 01:00 the crater graphics just vanish - presumably the memory/sprites are needed for the boss that rolls in - you should let them scroll off screen before he appears as it looks pretty jarring.

[Hagane]

Looks very good. Only negative thing I could point are the giant medals. They should be smaller IMO.

Also, do they seek you automatically or based on the player's actions? If they auto seek, I'd suggest making them seek you only if you release the shot button a la MMP, and have some sort of proximity requirements. Also don't know if medals increase in value, but if they don't you could add that (and reset them if you miss one as in Yagawa games).

Other than that I'm looking forward to playing this!

[trap15]

Well, if you was trying to the that enemies won't shoot from off-screen then, yes, you're right.

The easiest place to see this is in Ketsui, since that does have bullets that move "organically". If you scroll a bullet off the viewport, it gets deleted.

[spadgy]

Hopefully all this issues are things that can be ironed out as the code nears release. Most of them seem like things that could be tweaked away (still a grand effort, I'm sure), rather than needing an insane gutting of the code.

Fingers crossed the NG.Dev team are keeping an eye on feedback on the trailer.

[BPzeBanshee]

Regarding viewport deletion of bullets, pretty sure Raiden Fighters does it too in addition to not shooting if offscreen.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed the floaty (if that's any way to describe it) wobble scroll, but I'm a little more concerned about some of the enemy design. Having played the original XYX the enemies seem to somehow move less, from less places, and that later stage looks kinda like a clusterfuck of randomness rather than actual bullet pattern design - I imagine if there's any issues with it Plasmo and co will help iron it out though.

[EmperorIng]

I'm sure you've noticed that at some points, the craters left by the exploding enemies disappear, so hopefully that will be fixed as dev-time moves forward.

Looking good so far, though I will agree with trap15 in that the large-medal path looks a little rough and could be polished up a bit. I'm looking forward to the release!

[dark]

Having played the original XYX the enemies seem to somehow move less, from less places

In original XYX, the enemies could be quickly scaled to different sizes, implying that they were rising up to attack you from a lower to a higher altitude. Additionally, turrets or popcorns could smoothly rotate 360 degrees.

I noticed in the first teaser that neither this size scaling nor smooth 360 motion was in the neo geo version, and I'd assume for both of these, that the neogeo simply doesn't have enough memory or processor power to scale and rotate to this degree. It was a little bit unusual to see in action, as this type of smooth scaling and 360 rotation is more often seen in flash or java games as a shortcut to making additional sprites, and was probably way beyond the capabilities of a lot of early 2d arcade hardware in the 90s. It did help to make things seem a little more animated though. It would be a complete headache to do for not much gains imo, but I suppose one could just screencap the single sprite being manipulated in these ways, and then stick them in the game as multiple sprites to have the animations - akin to all the pre-rendered 3d sprites and animation in fast striker or other similar games.

[KAI]

I love this game already.

[trap15]

Yeah, I thought that speech bubble was fucking hilarious. Laughed several times

[null1024]

Having played the original XYX the enemies seem to somehow move less, from less places

In original XYX, the enemies could be quickly scaled to different sizes, implying that they were rising up to attack you from a lower to a higher altitude. Additionally, turrets or popcorns could smoothly rotate 360 degrees.

I noticed in the first teaser that neither this size scaling nor smooth 360 motion was in the neo geo version, and I'd assume for both of these, that the neogeo simply doesn't have enough memory or processor power to scale and rotate to this degree. It was a little bit unusual to see in action, as this type of smooth scaling and 360 rotation is more often seen in flash or java games as a shortcut to making additional sprites, and was probably way beyond the capabilities of a lot of early 2d arcade hardware in the 90s. It did help to make things seem a little more animated though. It would be a complete headache to do for not much gains imo, but I suppose one could just screencap the single sprite being manipulated in these ways, and then stick them in the game as multiple sprites to have the animations - akin to all the pre-rendered 3d sprites and animation in fast striker or other similar games.

I know Blazing Star uses multiple sprites to do things being scaled up [as the Neo can only scale down in hardware!]. Realtime rotation is outright impossible on the Neo.
The biggest limiting factor to doing prescaled/prerotated things is ROM space.

When I used to do GM5 things, I'd use 36 pre-rotated sprites [because there was no rotation support]. If you wanted it to be smoother, 72 would be fine, but that would cost a lot spacewise [for a ROM based game that is, and I'm pretty sure we're not dealing with the absolutely massive ROM size Fast Striker used], especially for all the different ship varieties.

[Ed Oscuro]

TUUUUCK!

The friar is in that big machine? Or is somebody getting ready to have a ham sandwich?

Looking pretty good in that shot.

[Paradigm]

The fact that people are willing to plonk down €400 for a game of this quality absolutely blows my mind.

If there's one positive thing (and that's a big if) I can say about NG Dev Team, it's that they've done a wonderful job finding a niche market to exploit.

[BPzeBanshee]

Having played the original XYX the enemies seem to somehow move less, from less places

In original XYX, the enemies could be quickly scaled to different sizes, implying that they were rising up to attack you from a lower to a higher altitude. Additionally, turrets or popcorns could smoothly rotate 360 degrees.

I noticed in the first teaser that neither this size scaling nor smooth 360 motion was in the neo geo version, and I'd assume for both of these, that the neogeo simply doesn't have enough memory or processor power to scale and rotate to this degree. It was a little bit unusual to see in action, as this type of smooth scaling and 360 rotation is more often seen in flash or java games as a shortcut to making additional sprites, and was probably way beyond the capabilities of a lot of early 2d arcade hardware in the 90s. It did help to make things seem a little more animated though. It would be a complete headache to do for not much gains imo, but I suppose one could just screencap the single sprite being manipulated in these ways, and then stick them in the game as multiple sprites to have the animations - akin to all the pre-rendered 3d sprites and animation in fast striker or other similar games.

It wasn't so much the visual stuff although that does help, but the general movement of enemies. You see a bit of it in Stage 1 here with the medium-tier enemies but most of the movement behaviour is quite generic.

[psoslayer]

The fact that people are willing to plonk down €400 for a game of this quality absolutely blows my mind.

If there's one positive thing (and that's a big if) I can say about NG Dev Team, it's that they've done a wonderful job finding a niche market to exploit.

Get a job.

[trap15]

The fact that people are willing to plonk down €400 for a game of this quality absolutely blows my mind.

If there's one positive thing (and that's a big if) I can say about NG Dev Team, it's that they've done a wonderful job finding a niche market to exploit.

Best post all week.