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

[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.

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.

That I've done. Next suggestion.

[DocHauser]

Oh...in that case it might be one of the mid-bosses that doesn't appear all that often.

[Rozyrg]

Glad someone finally did it.

Yeah, there's two different 'King' block forms that appear semi randomly (semi as in there's no way to fight them on your first go.) Killing either without dying gives you a shot at the bonus stage; but also points towards the unlock, like I detailed a few posts back. All of that's new to the last update (dated 4/18/13), though. Get it if you haven't already, as you'll get credited for any modes you've already cleared, making the unlock significantly easier.

I really should start doing proper version numbers for these. >_>

[Matskat]

FUCKING SHIT DUDE!

You know I'm a big fan of your work....I've been away from the forums for a bit - just moved inot a new place.

Getting my gameroom set up , was playing some Flying V...decided to check if you'd updated it since I last downloaded it (you didn;t).

But what I DI see was "FIRE ARROW" !

HOLY SHIT YOU DID IT AGAIN!

Awesome graphics, feels great to play, works on my cabinet. FUCKING AWESOME.

Now....

How much monmey do I need to send you to get a nice boxed copy of Flying V , XYX, and Fire Arrow....maybe on a CD perhaps. Maybe FULL GAMES?

DUde your stuff rocks. If you'd finish XYX, or FLying V, or Fire Arrow, you'd have a PRODUCT on your hands. XBLA or Steam or Humble Bundle or somebody would pick that shit up.


No pressure though man

Just wantewd to encourage your AWESOME work. You really do capture the essence of early Toaplan games like Tatsujin Oh, Vimana, V-V.....


Please make "Fire Arrow" inot a full game.

I'll pay.'

SRSLY.

[mice]

What he said.

[Rozyrg]

@Matskat
Thanks much for the encouragement! I honestly feel bad about taking anyone's money before I know I can see a big project through to the end. Having boxed copies on the shelf would be damn sweet, though.

Do you think FA would work with a more standard stage progression, though? The pseudo caravan setup I have is pretty much all that sets it apart from my other shooters. I guess an 'Ultra' version isn't totally out of the question as I've got a few stages worth of stuff in there as it is.


Not shmup related; but on the topic of things that aren't likely to be finished this century:

I've been playing lots of faux-retro RPGs on my tablet and, as good as they are (Kemco's stuff particularly.. so damn pretty), I kept noticing certain minor things seemed to be consistently.. off. Negative inspiration always gets me started on stuff, I swear. >_>

The Conan/Ax Battler clones are there just for testing various things. I'm basically seeing how many assets each character will require before I make a bunch of different ones (and I'm planning to do a lot.) The other project came to halt when it got time to do anything resembling a world map/field, and the same could happen with this; but I think I've got enough ideas to keep going this time.

[railslave]

Nice Sprites, well, not just good, they are authentic/worldclass ... reminds me so much of some of the final fight baddies and fist of the north star, late 80s arcade in general

As an artist, im dead in the water


im guessing that wasnt done with a pen but pixel by pixel ?

How can you sleep at night knowing you can draw better stuff than whats in revenge of shinobi lol

[emphatic]

Yeah, that's fucking bad-ass.

[mice]

You can't go editing posts like that! People will miss awesome stuff.

[Rozyrg]

im guessing that wasnt done with a pen but pixel by pixel ?

How can you sleep at night knowing you can draw better stuff than whats in revenge of shinobi lol

Now if I could only get someone as badass as Sonny Chiba to pose for a title screen.

Yep, I never start from pencil sketches or anything like that, just one more unnecessary step IMO. If I already have the look of something worked out and I can't get to a PC at that exact moment, I might get the idea down on paper while it's fresh in my mind, though.

As for art in general, I'd just say don't worry and just keep at it!

@mice
Good excuse to post these, then.

(sorry about the mosaic, precautions and all that >_>)
The game itself is nothing to get excited about, though. WYSIWYG and in the stage I left it in, it's... very basic (and boring.) I think I got as far as getting a simple inventory system working and being able to save/load it between fights. I couldn't settle on a style for the non battle stuff at all, though. I had wanted to do a pseudo 3D maze ala Wizardy or the first Phantasy Star; but I happened to play something with a similar maze system soon after and immediately decided against it. I sorta settled on doing something like Ys instead; but I thought I might as well just do a fast-paced ARPG with shmup elements in that case, so no.

In the end, I just procrastinated and worked on other things. >_>

[PC Engine Fan X!]

The more-than-ample rackage on the femme fatales are quite something. How about an insider joke amongst the enemies fighting their female foes just to spice up the banter?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[nasty_wolverine]

If you dont mind a question:
How is your normal workflow for creating art? do you start with a concept on paper or tablet, do you use something like illustrator to work out shapes or straight into photoshop with brushes. or is it something more awesome like going down to each pixel?

and to add: really nice racks on the heroine

[Rozyrg]

The more-than-ample rackage on the femme fatales are quite something. How about an insider joke amongst the enemies fighting their female foes just to spice up the banter?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Glad you approve. It's pretty much a rule for me at this point. Every time I think about lightening up on it, there's another silly outrage over evil, child corrupting boobies in games... after which the moral high horse riders gallop off in unison to defend the high artistry of sawing people's faces off in the latest oh-so-wholesome AAA slaughter fest. (ie the recent hoopla over Dragon's Crown, and some other game )

...but not that I'm opinionated or anything. <_<

Most of what I had planned was definitely leaning on a lighter softcore/ecchi side of things, so comedic stuff like that would've been likely had I continued with it. For instance, one of the bosses would be an evil slime queen; but instead of the fight leaving her injured or dead, you'd simply be 'removing a curse', reverting her back to human form (in what state I'll leave up to you to imagine.) The equip screen was going to be like a little dress up doll, except, naturally, the better the armor, the skimpier it would be.

I'm a complete pig, I know.

@nasty_wolverine

For pixel stuff, I usually just start from a rough idea, then go straight to GIMP and work out basic colors and shapes first. For 'normal' digital or traditional art, I'll do the whole pencil/ink/color rigamarole, with a few exceptions... like my avatar pic. I haven't actually done any like that in awhile; but I'd pretty much do the same thing, just putting down simple shapes, blobs of color and going from there.

[Rozyrg]

@railslave

Don't know why you deleted your message; but it is something I can try.

edit: I got roughly 3 hours of stuff this morning, now I just have to go through the annoyance of ripping/converting the footage and chopping it down to a reasonable length (~30 minutes looks likely.) I decided to do one of the last 2 pilot portraits in Last Chance rather than say, enemy/player/fx sprites; but considering the way I have to record (VGA>SVideo>DVD recorder), something bigger was preferable anyways.

[Rozyrg]

Finally got off my ass and finished the video. It might be too sped up/have too poor video quality to be any of use/entertainment to anyone; but I tried to pick some decent music at least. >_>

[railslave]

Finally got off my ass and finished the video. It might be too sped up/have too poor video quality to be any of use/entertainment to anyone; but I tried to pick some decent music at least. >_>

oh well done i look forward to this, i did mean in relation to the ships and mech stuff you do ,i struggle a bit with stuff like that .


Nice one though
maybe some kind of a battle cruiser next

i see you filmed above the waist , keeping that "camel toe tech" close to your chest lol/

love your command of colors, thats over half the battle i guess.

[Rozyrg]

Thanks. It's kind of weird to me, though... for years and years I only drew in ink and pencil and never worried about color at all. I only started to really figure it out when I got some prismacolors (lovely, high quality colored pencils that blend beautifully) on a teacher's recommendation and a bit later when I started doing stuff digitally in PS/AI.

I'm going to do a bunch more stuff shortly, maybe not 100% shmup related; but definitely smaller in scale, so expect a 2nd attempt soon. (probably won't use up 3 DVDRs on it this time, though.)

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Those prismacolor color pencils are legendary, it's just buying a full boxed set (48 pencils or more in the entire rainbow spectrum) that's a bit pricey these days but worth it if you want to add some much needed color to your artwork. Accept no substitutes.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Rozyrg]

Damn, I didn't realize just how much I'd bottomed out on game dev stuff the last few months. -_-
(I can blame DD: Dark Arisen for some of that at least)

I want to get a Last Chance update out before too long, though. I'm even thinking about adding yet another playable ship.

[BPzeBanshee]

What's that? Don't feel like coding at the moment?

How about betatesting?

[Rozyrg]

Wellll, if I was having ideas and drawing new stuff (non Neo related at least), then I'd probably be coding like crazy working it into something, as that's my general dev process; but I've just been parking my lazy ass in front of the 360 more often than not. Big, scary chimeras and griffins don't slaughter themselves, you know... >_>

I'm game to do some testing for ya while transitioning out of gamer sloth mode, though.

[mice]

Isn't neo xyx done, yet? Much for you left?

[Rozyrg]

No idea on the programming end; but I've been animating a ton of stuff (be afraid!) the last few weeks, presumably because we had the time to. Hopefully the game didn't get pushed back from me being a completely lazy ass, though.

[mice]

So, you're doing these for Ouya now, yes?
Or don't you have GM studio (or some excuse like that)?
Saw they have some examples up: https://github.com/ouya/ouya-sdk-exampl ... /GameMaker

[Rozyrg]

Not yet; but I really really want one for that reason. Even if I can't get ridiculous speed/performance out of it, at least I know there's no aggravating question of it potentially playing better or worse on someone else's machine, like was consistently the case with my mobile/html5 experiments. I never had a proper way of testing those myself either, so simply having something right there I can mess with on the spot is a big plus too.

Might have to get one (and a upgrade to Studio, if necessary) when I finally get paid for Neo. >_>

[mice]

Proprietary hardware ftw!

when I finally get paid for Neo

You should ask for an Ouya as a payment in advance. Yes, that's it.
<Arnie>Do it now!</Arnie>

[Rozyrg]

The fun part now is getting my HTML5 license swapped over so I can shave even a little bit off of that hefty Studio + Android export option cost. Naturally I hit several annoying snags right away and cannot proceed until someone from YYG steps in. :/ All credit to them, though, I'm amazed they still allow for the transfer/discount after all this time.

I'm hopeful this will turn out better than my last attempt at branching out; but I really, really, really hope the performance is better than HTML5's was/is.

[BPzeBanshee]

I've heard good things since the unstable piece of shit that was GM:HTML5. Plus unlike the former they're actually maintaining updates for it this time.

Is the license system still stuck to one computer?

[Rozyrg]

I haven't braved fiddling with it in a long time; but when our Vista box was still running, I had the same license for GM8 on that and my netbook. Basically, you just had to talk to SoftWrap about it and they'd reset the key's "uses" or something. No idea what the current situation is, though.

[BPzeBanshee]

Sounds a little finicky, and reliant on them + internet connections on both machines, but at least it isn't impossible.

I may actually end up getting the standard license at some stage soon while I have the money for it - Mac OS X/Windows dual export and keeping up to date with the new changes for $50 doesn't sound too bad at all assuming the update process is constant and they don't go all the way like Adobe.