Snops Attack! XBLIG in Development

[DJ Incompetent]

Oh yeah definitely. 'Controls great. It's just kinda easy and has Compile stage padding.

It's weird, they got BulletML running in there yet I dunno why they didn't go nuts with it.

The text cutscenes are pretty chuckleworthy.

[Alfred]

This game is fun! Extreme mode is the way to play it I feel

No high scores though?

I'd be happy to share my peer to peer high score code with you!

Please do this Snops. Thank you n0rty

[Alfred]

So how are the controls, D-pad included I hope?

Yes to the D-pad, It feels just right.

[Rozyrg]

Crazy game, had to snap this one up right away. I love the massive flashy effects and gigantic text displays. It definitely has that loud, obnoxious 'grab your eyes from across the room' arcade quality to it.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I like the razor-sharp arcade-spec 60fps framerate overall presentation of this Snops Attack! shmup. It has that unmistakable doujin danmaku feel/vibe that's ace. Will see how it fares running on my low-res 15kHz arcade monitor setup despite it's 720p widescreen format. An option to turn on or off "scanlines" would be ace in my book for completeness.

Helpful suggestion: Just add some cool semi-animated speed lines to some of the cool artwork panels between stages to emphasize/enhance them and consider them done.

This particular XBLIG shmup title does beg to be played with a proper 360 Hori Real Arcade Pro stick for that slick Japanese arcade controls feel/vibe.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[denpanosekai]

Downloaded the demo -- played one level -- BOUGHT!!!

Doesn't get much better than this as far western doujin SHMUPs go.

[n0rtygames]

Please do this Snops. Thank you n0rty

I just sent a PM to see if I can get him to come check the boards.. hopefully he'll get an email notification!




hmm... I wonder if I can talk Snops in to collaborating on something mixing the Snops art with the Chronoblast engine once I release for extreme TATE sexyness..... Do want.. >.>

[Matskat]

Thanks Snops! for a great game.
My only complaint:
Please allow control remapping. Playing with an arcade stick is difficult and uncomfortable because of the static button config.

Otherwise, AWESOME Compile-like game...great fast paced fun!

Also...the comment above from norty....maybe? One can always hope!

[n0rtygames]

Seconded on the controls, even if you just put a screen in between hitting Start and going to the game to allow us to quickly remap controls. I've take the SF3:3S Online approach which gives the player an opportunity to rebind their controls after having chosen a character on the select screen. Fits in seamlessly and doesn't really require you to break any sort of arcade menu flow you have going on.

Have a look at the way Jamestown did it - that worked pretty well for control remaps on the fly, so long as you remember to store to a file and poll this upon launching the game


Also...
y u no scoreboards?

[SnopsGames]

Hi everybody! I apologize I haven't checked back in a long while. Been trying to catch up on all those things you neglect when you make a game on your free time (like family, friends, and cleaning up the house!).

Everyone has good points and suggestions. I did get local leader boards in (will be in the update), but the peer-to-peer boards are problematical. Microsoft doesn't make it too easy for Indie devs on that account. I mean, I could throw them in there, but they are not the most robust things in the world. This is something I want to work on much more before just releasing it just for the sake of releasing it.

Since this is my first game, I have learned a lot (and I'm the only person!). I am slow, and I take my time (this game took me 1.5 years), but I should be mush faster for future releases since I kinda know what I'm doing now. Unfortunately, since this is my first game, they way I wrote the code would make some seemingly quick fixes actually take longer than one would suspect. Quite a bit of retooling and re-plumbing would be involved for some "simple" things. Improvements that don't appear in the update would be put into future releases since I would be re-writing pretty much everything anyway, (since learning a lot, I know I can do some things much better next time).

That being said, here's what I have been working on and that should appear in an update: a harder difficulty mode (maybe more than 1), a special mode (maybe more than 1: different level enemies/timings), local leader boards.

That's the definite stuff that shouldn't take too much work right now. If I have additional time i would like to work in some control mapping and some slightly modified enemies with additional bullet patterns (in addition to BulletML, I wrote my own bullet code, so that is why you don't see much BulletML - I was experimenting with my own a lot. Next game should have much more of both). I say additional time since I do have a lot of things going on in my "normal" life coming up that will limit my programming time (that family/friends bit I mentioned in addition to my "real" job).

Things that will involve a little more plumbing, I am going to just save for the next games, since I will re-write my code from scratch based on all the knowledge I've gained. I appreciate your patience with this, because I too have many things I would like to do with Snops Attack! but it would be incredibly time consuming to gut out chunks of it for proper rewrites when the time could be better invested in rewriting a better game engine for future titles.

Over all, I think I accomplished most of my goal for the first game which was the most important: the feel. This took a long time, and that time did eat into other things, but that was my main goal - to make something that felt good to play and felt like what I think a shooter should feel like. I know everyone has their own opinions and favorites, but I hope at least when someone plays the game they can tell I did put in some extra effort in this regard. Ultimately, I wanted to make a game I had fun playing and not a money grab (hint: if you're an indie and want to make money on xbox live, DO NOT make a shooter - make a minecraft clone or anything involving avatars!). Do I want to make improvements? Sure! Do I have some crazy ideas I wished I implemented? I think of those all the time!

I want to thank everyone who has tried out the game, all the opinions and suggestions are very valuable and I've read them all over the internet. At some point you should see something from SnopsGames coming down the road, since I'm already planning the next 2 games (a sequel, and one that doesn't involve flying at all!).

Follow my twitter account (snoppies) for updates!

Thanks!

Mike Walz
SnopsGames
Twitter: snoppies

[n0rtygames]

You sound exactly like me....

The peer to peer class that I have will basically run automatically, it's neatly wrapped up with try/catch where appropriate (So your game will NOT throw a code 4 due to a networking issue) and it basically just runs in the background on its own thread. I've put in additional code so that it doesnt run during gameplay so there's no unnecessary disk I/O to slow your game down.

If you've got local scoreboards done - the P2P element will sit on top quite nicely. It's literally as simple as doing this:

* Alter the BuildScoreList method to pull out details from your own scoreboard
* Change the variables that the score manager transmits and receives to match your own score class
* Tell it to throw data at your own scoreboard upon receipt.

Dropped you a PM with my email address. There's no rush - if you ever want to hop on gtalk, msn, steam or something I'll be more than happy to go through it with you whenever you're ready to actually implement it.

(hint: if you're an indie and want to make money on xbox live, DO NOT make a shooter - make a minecraft clone or anything involving avatars!).

It might surprise you to learn that I was, (until recently - due to a severe disagreement over precisely the "Passion vs Money Grabbing" you've mentioned) actually contracted to the FortressCraft team to work on some other smaller projects...

The age of minecraft clones is honestly gone now. Those games weren't successful because they were necessarily good - they were entirely driven by controversy and controversy ALWAYS brings media coverage.

I believe there is money to be made in shmups - however the money is only going to be made if we maintain the kind of attitude that you already have... which is putting the love for the game before the financial goals.... You can't sell a sucky shmup!

There have been quite a few XBLIG shmups already, which if you don't mind me saying so - are much less enjoyable than Snops Attack - which have fetched 5 figure sums in a short space of time... so I really think with a bit of an extra push on the marketting side you could really do well from the Snops series. Apart from the feedback regarding mechanics, graphically it blows pretty much any other XBLIG shmup out of the water. My own one included! It's visually quite stunning.

I completely *HATE* the points based purchasing system as it's absolutely unfair on the people who buy the games. People will see a game on steam for £5 and think nothing of buying it through Paypal or CC. But because xbox points have to be purchased in bulk, 240 points (which equates to $3) is actually perceived as quite a large percentage of peoples points. So most casual customers just wont go for it. I bought your game at 240msp, a lot of the guys on here bought it... but we are the hardcore niche after all who happily spend £70+ on an import.

To be honest, as a technical accomplishment I am quite proud of the fact I'm fitting what I believe to be a fairly decent game in to a 80MSP package - but I honestly do think there needs to be a point where customers start realising how much piss they're actually taking out of developers. When an individual puts up to 2 years of their life in to making a game and there is an expectation that the developer should only be paid 0.70 USD per copy - it's a little upsetting to say the least...


Keep up the awesome work man, the fact that you genuinely love your game shines through. I wish there were more games like it on XBLIG.

[n0rtygames]

Oh by the way, I genuinely think you should probably avoid patching your game further after this.

If I were looking at this from a purely business perpsective, I'd suggest: Dropping the price tag to 80MSP (If it will fit) a while after you deploy this patch and then for future amendments just release big feature changes in an 80MSP bundle.

The Mushi Futari Black Label DLC was, if I recall about 1200 points.

I would pay you again for a Snops Attack - Furry Label. I think you deserve it.

[SnopsGames]

n0rtygames:

Thanks for the kind words! Coming from another dev, that means a lot! Yes, I'm going to work more on the whole P2P bit after I get the game finished for IGF (which is due really, really soon), it doesn't appear to involve too much work. I'll let you know if I run into wacky issues. Local boards are working now and will definitely be in the first update, though.

Microsoft point system is ridiculous. Even worse, 240MS is the lowest I can price the game since Microsoft policy is: if the game is larger than 150meg the lowest price point is 240MS. Snops Attack is 196meg, so I am already pricing it as low as Microsoft will allow me. I didn't want to compress the game so much i lost a lost of quality, so it's a pretty big download (while keeping the quality I wanted). Like I mentioned, I did learn quite a bit from this game, so maybe next time I'll be able to squeeze it under 150meg, so I can hit 80MSP.

You hit the nail on the head: people perceive 240MS as a lot of money, when in reality a lot of casual users will not stop and think twice about getting a useless prop gun or outfit for their avatar which costs 240MS or more! How long did it take that modeler at Rare to make that avatar item? Less than an hour? Lots of Indie devs spend years making a game, and for the vast majority it isn't about money. I wish Microsoft would let me charge less since it's not about the sales or money for me, it's about all that lost audience that could have had fun with my game but thought 240MS was way too high. I even had someone who sent me a twitter DM that basically said: I loved your demo, game is great, but I am not buying it because 240 is too high. What can you do?

My fear is that the Xbox Live Indie games may not survive the next console. There has been rumblings that Microsoft only has one part-time dev taking care of the Indie games section for Live, and that they want to kill it. Their emphasis is on Windows Phone. I actually like paying Indies on the Xbox, sitting on the couch. I hope they keep it. Good part is, there's always the PC and other platforms...

[n0rtygames]

Microsoft point system is ridiculous. Even worse, 240MS is the lowest I can price the game since Microsoft policy is: if the game is larger than 150meg the lowest price point is 240MS. Snops Attack is 196meg, so I am already pricing it as low as Microsoft will allow me. I didn't want to compress the game so much i lost a lost of quality, so it's a pretty big download (while keeping the quality I wanted). Like I mentioned, I did learn quite a bit from this game, so maybe next time I'll be able to squeeze it under 150meg, so I can hit 80MSP.

Well, if you were to identify the largest files - or certainly the largest textures - is it possible that you could turn on dxtcompression for some of your larger graphics and basically try to chip away at the file size to try and bring it in to check?

I assume that you're talking about the .CCGame package - which means *compressed* your game is a whopping 196mb! Doesn't sound like you've got an easy task on your hand by any means

[Enemy]

Great news about the local scores. As soon as its in I will purchase this little gem. Hopefully you will be able to get the online leaderboard sorted in the future.

[emphatic]

Just got around to try this game. Really pretty and controls are nice. Just one big no-no. Remove the need to have a Back button, please. I don't have a Back button on my arcade sticks or on the padhack I use in my cabinet, so I have no way of using Back. Please consider adding the B button to this function, like "Press Back or B". This really pissed me off.

[shaowebb]

Just stumbled across this on a youtube vid, browsing xblig folks mentioned here and was blown away. I picked it up and this game is great. I did you a little write up over on shmups-gaf on the neogaf boards. Hopefully you get a few more sales that way.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread. ... st58038454

Great game. What was your process on setting up some of your in game graphics like shots and backgrounds? Looks like a lot of HD texturing went into those. I was very impressed.

[railslave]

:O that is beautiful!!! shockingly beautiful...