My GM shmups - Last Chance,MEGATANK, Flying V, XYX, ZPF

[Rozyrg]

Thanks for the feedback and bug reports, guys.

• - The Metal Black style firing is "press" autofire
  
  - You need to press left or right on the 'change keys', as that actually indicates what the next "page" is. I'll probably put an arrow there to make it more clear. (edit: DONE)
  
  - To get the bonus ship (G/Y), you just have to clear the bonus stage, you don't have to fight the secret boss or anything. There's several ways to reach it- either get very high numbers of something or something else or kill a particular something (special sub-boss which appears randomly) without dying. The only restriction is you can't reach it at all in Novice.
  
  - not surprised about the snake bug, there was something similar in there before. Pretty sure what the issue is, though. I've known about the menu alpha thing, too... just been too lazy to fix it. (edit: both DONE)

And the 13min stage is just ridiculous.

O_O?


edit: The above bug fixes are now live. I was going to wait on more feedback to update; but I'm lazy and impatient, so screw it. Finishing the secret mode will now unlock the other ship, although I think you'd have it long before that point (I haven't even beat it yet!)

[Rozyrg]

Finally got back to Last Chance for a bit. I might be getting soft in my old age; but the last time I picked it up, some things did seem pretty... extreme. At most, that'll mean a fractional decrease in bullet speed, though. It needs a fair bit of tweaking overall before I even start on filling out the stages with fresh enemies, too. Also, the old XYX soundtrack might end up getting cannibalized for use with LC... heck, I'm already using the boss theme. They're just too good to go to waste.

I might not get too much time to it, though, as I agreed to do a quick, 'fake' run and gun style game for a friend (advertising his dental business); but there's $$ involved at least.

As for Fire Arrow, I made a minor update recently (see the post above); but I'll be open to suggestions/tweaks/fixes for a bit before I set it on the shelf forever >_>

[railslave]

hey id love to try making some tunes for that game..as its been a huge inspiration artistically and stumbling block ..If your ever stuck for tunes!!

[Rozyrg]

Ok.

If/when you get time to whip up a short test track (a minute long or less is fine), I was originally going for something a bit like what you hear in Raiden Fighters. Basically, something really fast and intense and threatening, keeping pace with the game in speed and general relentlessness.

[mice]

a bit like what you hear in Raiden Fighters.

Best tune ever.

[BPzeBanshee]

[railslave]

Ok.

If/when you get time to whip up a short test track (a minute long or less is fine), I was originally going for something a bit like what you hear in Raiden Fighters. Basically, something really fast and intense and threatening, keeping pace with the game in speed and general relentlessness.

Fast intense threatening...no problem, 160 bpm is pretty cool for that , i have a bit of a fetish with hyper speed 80s slapbass atm as well lol

And thanks, great stuff!! i think the 16 bitness of my stuff will realy fit

[Rozyrg]

So, has no one got Model G/Y in Fire Arrow yet? I'm definitely willing to make the unlock requirements more sensible or intuitive if necessary. No point in having fun secret stuff if the player's long gone before they can get to any of it. >_>

Oh yeah, I've uploaded the full original XYX soundtrack to Youtube if anyone's interested.

[railslave]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/84483952/rozyrg.mp3

[BPzeBanshee]

I for one hope you do end up being able to finish XYX. No way any silly clause with a company known for outputting less-than-great material should stop XYX from coming out into the light as a finished product!

That's probably Raigon's best work out of what I've heard in your games too.

[psoslayer]

I for one hope you do end up being able to finish XYX. No way any silly clause with a company known for outputting less-than-great material should stop XYX from coming out into the light as a finished product!

That's probably Raigon's best work out of what I've heard in your games too.

Neo XYX looks way better than XYX imho.

[mice]

I for one hope you do end up being able to finish XYX. No way any silly clause with a company known for outputting less-than-great material should stop XYX from coming out into the light as a finished product!

That's probably Raigon's best work out of what I've heard in your games too.

Neo XYX looks way better than XYX imho.

All I see is beauty.

So, has no one got Model G/Y in Fire Arrow yet?

No, no one has managed to get the Model G/Y. I answer for everyone.
But tomorrow night, I will make it happen!

[Rozyrg]

Thanks, guys.
I do hope to finish it (if only because it's much closer than anything else I'm working on); but I dunno about re-drawing those sprites a second time. It'd be hard to go back.

G/Y: I think I figured out a big part of the problem. While it's much easier to get it on a 3min run, if you missed it there and had already moved onto challenging 5min, the chance diminishes noticeably as it's much harder just to complete, and even more so with also having to meet some secret objective(s).

I'll make it so that you get credited in some way for just meeting them, so that even if you don't finish the stage, just having a certain number of these credits will automatically unlock the secret ship. Doing other things will likely add to the credit pile as well.

The old requirements will definitely stay in place for reaching the bonus stage, however.

[BPzeBanshee]

Neo XYX looks way better than XYX imho.

Looks =\= plays. The graphics are IMO the same (very good) on both titles but whereas XYX looks well designed in positioning/pattern/entrance/exiting of enemies, Neo XYX looks like a sheer random clusterfuck.

I do hope to finish it (if only because it's much closer than anything else I'm working on); but I dunno about re-drawing those sprites a second time. It'd be hard to go back.

Why a redraw? What's wrong with the existing graphics?

[Rozyrg]

Well, either they'll stay just as they are now or they'll be redrawn again. I just want it to be perfectly clear that it's a different game from NEO, I'm not trying to compete with myself if that makes any sense.

I updated Fire Arrow today.

The game checks to see which game modes you've completed and will credit you towards the unlock for any of them. The special attack (X+C) has been changed so that they follow you like the bits in Gradius rather than just 'sticking' to you.

I'll preemptively demystify some of the stuff that nets you unlock credits:

• - Getting the "Secret Activated" notification
  - Clearing any mode, Novice only counts if you do it first (and only once)
  - Getting 1st in Novice/ 1st or 2nd in any other mode
  - Killing any boss (except the secret third one) without dying.

[Rozyrg]

Finally building some new stuff for Last Chance. I basically rebuilt the vertical trains from FV for it; but those were always my favorites, anyways, they were gonna come back one way or another. Assuming GMHTL5 doesn't go completely goofy on me, I could probably add a stage worth of stuff, minus backgrounds... it is throwing an error I haven't seen before, though. :/

... and as of now, Fire Arrow is officially on the shelf. Unless someone finds some major bugs, it's done.

[BPzeBanshee]

I thought you had GM:Studio? Did GM:HTML5 not allow for upgrade to GM:S with HTML5 module?

[Rozyrg]

Much like GM8, I never updated it. I wasn't having any real problems (other than stuff I simply needed to get acclimated to, like the 'treat variables as zero' thing not being there), so I never saw the need.

All I can figure is it's some kind of online verification process going awry due to it being an out-of-date version; but I don't understand why it would happen just now as they've long since moved onto Studio.

The weirdest thing about this is that post-error it loads everything except scripts and rooms, meaning I can't even copy it straight over to GM8 if I were desperate enough to do that. -_-

[BPzeBanshee]

Odd indeed. I guess it really is a buggy piece of crap.

Treat Uninitialised Variables as Value 0 is a bad design choice anyway: if you're a good programmer you can keep track of your own variables and declare them properly. something = 0; in create event, it's not hard.

[Rozyrg]

The plot thickens.... it loads all of my other stuff fine! No mysterious error messages or anything. WHAT THE FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

*stops self from snapping laptop in two*
*takes deep breaths*

OK, I've found I can at least copy the GML straight from the stuff in the project's scripts folder as it opens in notepad fine. Graphics, sounds, objects will be quite a pain to transfer; but it's... doable I guess? *sigh* Not sure there's enough liquor in the house... county...state to fully sell me on this idea, though. >_>

[BPzeBanshee]

Does it save to GM81? I swear one of the GM:HTML5 betas I had a play with last year or so had that.

If you can at least get to there, then opening that file with LateralGM will allow for resaving as a gmk. Good luck!

[Rozyrg]

Thanks.

The problem is it won't even open the project completely, so saving it from there at all would be baaad. Thanks to an old backup and GMHTML5's lovely habit of storing GML scripts and other assets externally, I've managed to move over everything I could without too much annoyance/frustration/murderous rage. The question marks left are which objects had DnD stuff in them that I can't know about from it not caring to load those. >_>

I'm pretty sure it's just stuff for the Opal (2nd unlockable ship), so probably not too much of an issue.

[BPzeBanshee]

And that is why, kids, you should learn2GML.

Glad you managed to figure it all out. I just found your grid dot example and am currently trying to make sense of it with some success. Random counters and timers everywhere....

[Rozyrg]

Yeah, but you can't be *totally* free of DnD as things stand now. Sometimes I get lazy and just leave stray bits of code in the events rather than writing a new script. That was what I was mainly worried about; but it thankfully wasn't the case and supergluing everything back together wasn't a major hassle.

As for the timer thingie:

The most important bit is building the basic grid (simple array stuff), then making all xy points relative to it's center using point_direction and point_distance. Then, when you go to draw it with lengthdir commands, you can multiply the distances by variable(s) that scale between 0 and 1 to get the cool shrink/expand/rotate effects.

The number characters themselves are just a list of binary 'this grid point has an image, this doesn't' arrays. It's probably the most tedious part of the whole thing.

Code: Select all

 if count=0
 {
  grid_s[0]=0;grid_s[1]=0;grid_s[2]=1;grid_s[3]=1;grid_s[4]=1;grid_s[5]=0;grid_s[6]=0;
  grid_s[7]=0;grid_s[8]=1;grid_s[9]=0;grid_s[10]=0;grid_s[11]=0;grid_s[12]=1;grid_s[13]=0;
  grid_s[14]=0;grid_s[15]=1;grid_s[16]=0;grid_s[17]=0;grid_s[18]=0;grid_s[19]=1;grid_s[20]=0;
  grid_s[21]=0;grid_s[22]=1;grid_s[23]=0;grid_s[24]=0;grid_s[25]=0;grid_s[26]=1;grid_s[27]=0;
  grid_s[28]=0;grid_s[29]=0;grid_s[30]=1;grid_s[31]=1;grid_s[32]=1;grid_s[33]=0;grid_s[34]=0;
 }

[BPzeBanshee]

Yeah, I'm starting to get the general idea. I'm gradually refactoring the format of the code into something I consider easy to read, splitting those array numbers into scripts and create/draw events back in create/draw events and not in a single script. If I get anything particularly interesting going based on it you'll be the first to know.

[Rozyrg]

Cool.

I'm not opposed to doing a whole alphabet for, say an even flashier hiscore display sometime in the future, either. I'll definitely share that too if it's of any use to yall.

Also, new screenie!

[DocHauser]

I unlocked Type G and Y ships on Fire Arrow! Very cool too. I've managed to clear Novice and 3-Minute, still working on the 5-Minute clear. Haven't seen any bonus rounds yet, either.

[mice]

I unlocked Type G and Y ships on Fire Arrow! Very cool too. I've managed to clear Novice and 3-Minute, still working on the 5-Minute clear. Haven't seen any bonus rounds yet, either.

What did you do!? This game hates me. But XYX even more so.

[BPzeBanshee]

I actually found XYX easier last time I played it. Clearly I need to check my difficulty settings again.

[DocHauser]

I unlocked Type G and Y ships on Fire Arrow! Very cool too. I've managed to clear Novice and 3-Minute, still working on the 5-Minute clear. Haven't seen any bonus rounds yet, either.

What did you do!? This game hates me. But XYX even more so.

Uh...good question. I think it was maybe killing some of the bosses on 3-minute mode without dying, plus clearing 3-minute mode. Something like that.