In Extremis

[helpleo]

Hello, nice people of this forum; a couple of months ago, I asked for you guys advice in making a casual shmup that doesn't suck. Now after some time of quick-fire prototyping, and loads of technical reading, playtesting, and research in shmup mechanics, I present you my little project, In Extremis:









And the most recent trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rpvlXisraM

And the most recent version:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/umfb3923rvc9a ... BGames.exe

In Extremis is not a bullet hell-styled shooter per se, but it has a more diverse and thematical approach in stage design, encompassing several different influences, not only in the realm of shmups but also in others genres of games. There is also a wide variety of weapons (called "aspects" for narrative reasons), which can be used in several different manners, through combinations of button presses and holds, rather than different weapons. In design terms, I tried to make a very pure game, without power-ups or any sort of collectable items (this will probably denounce me as big Treasure fan).

The game's main mechanic is the "drive" mode; destroying enemies fill up your drive bar, and when that one is full, you can activate drive mode: said mode is a cross between Hyper and Kakusei mode, as it dramatically increases yours aspects powers and range, and also slow down bullets to half speed. You can also cancel drive mode to use a more conventional smart bomb effect (cancelling bullets and dealing damage respective to the amount of drive you have left in the bar). You usually can use them around 3-4 times per stage.
The score system is as simple as it gets; hit enemies to raise your multiplier, destroy enemies to get points. Don't hit enemies for long, and the multiplier falls down. During drive, the multiplier locks, and cancelling drive resets the multiplier to 1. I think the closest relative to this score system is the one in Einhander.

There are seven available weapons so far, with twelve expected in the final version: they are:

Force of Many - the generiblaster, that transitions between a spread and a more focused shot depending if you mash or hold the button.

Oblivion Drum - a area-of-effect bomb, that you can control the detonation by pressing the shot button (think the side bombs in Radiant Silvergun)

Hunger Burst - the good old DDP beam (hell, I even based my code on a tutorial form this site, and this version still has the placeholder graphics from that tutorial). But this beam has a twist; the more enemies you destroy, the thicker and more powerful it gets (as the beam being pink and phallic already wasn't enough...). This makes the beam better to crowd-control popcorn enemies, and them dish out punishment to the larger ones. On this game version, it is still a bit bugged, not fixing on a target, but this will be corrected in the future.

Aura of Fury - creates a circle of damage around the ship, that gets more and more powerful per second; though when it get on the maximum point, it also destroys your ship, making it use a risk-reward proposition (the explosion from this suicide, though, is the single most damaging entity in the game, a clue I got from Battle Garegga).

Sword of Songs - a shot-range sword, that has more in common with Street Fighter than Radiant Silvergun or Einhander. On your disposition is a 3-hit combo, a zelda-like charge-and-spin, and a stab. This is probable the most fun aspect to use, but is also horribly bugged at this point.

Silent Tear - a piercing shot, that extends as it travels forward, and slows down if penetrating an enemy. Horribly overpowered in this version, you can basically trounce most bosses with it.

Shadowself - the closes thing In Extremis has to option, this aspect creates a shadow clone of your ship, that shoots when you shot your other equipped aspect. It also has charge shot, charged when you do not shoot for a while.

Experienced players will probably want to stick with the Force of Many + Oblivion Drum combo. Force of Many also works well with short range weapons, like Sword or Aura. Silent Tear is also a good match with Shadowself.

This version has three stages so far (the final game will have around 10, plus extras stages and challenges and all that jazz casuals love), with distinct themes already (generic space shooter, jazz, and technology). Right now, the game is a wee bit unbalanced (the first stage is dramatically more difficult than the other two, thanks to my brilliant idea to build the stages using timelines rather than scripts), with no choosable difficulty or rank, but this works as a test bed.

Some extra notes if you're willing to dip in this version:
-This a pre-pre-alpha, so is bound to be bugged as hell
-I'll change some bullets colors in the first stage, in order to have better visual legibility
-There are some weird stuff going on if you shoot in the stage complete screen
-Art is not done yet, and also there are plenty of visual and juice effects (particles, screen shakes) that haven’t been implemented yet

[BareKnuckleRoo]

-This a pre-pre-alpha, so is bound to be bugged as hell

Nothing wrong with that. It's only annoying when a release is hyped and the dev fails to mention/warn that there's several major bugs that aren't yet fixed... Only bug I've noticed so far is that if you get a gameover while using Hunger Burst, it keeps looping the sound effect. It'd sound more laser-y if it used a single constant sound as opposed to that drum I think.

Game-wise, it's a very nice start. The ship itself is a tad icky looking (you did say the art isn't final though) but it's nice to see that the hitbox is quite obvious in its graphic. The tutorial is a fantastic addition, and goes well into depth in the gameplay. This is what good shmups ought to have. The Drive/multiplier/grazing mechanics sound fun, though the lack of any bomb/failsafe when you don't have full Drive will make it tricky I'm sure.

The weapon selection reminds me of XOP, although here you can use both weapons at the same time. The only icky thing so far is the having to tap shot to get Silent Tear and Force of Many to work optimally. Firing rate should ideally be maxed out without having to tap (I know some people like tapping to shoot, but I find it an icky 80's arcade holdover). I notice the Shift key seems to stop you firing if you press it and hold it... not sure if you're reserving it for slowdown speed movement (although using Hunger Burst already slows you quite a lot) but one way to get Force of Many to do stream and spread while being able to hold one button is use the shift key for an 'alternate' firing mode for the weapons it applies to.

Oblivion Drum is cool, but doesn't seem to be too damaging. The fact that it hits on a collision with an enemy renders the whole press shot to detonate kind of moot, and feels more like a simple slow blast weapon like the Bomb weapons in Dangun Feveron, except nowhere near as strong. Maybe make it fly offscreen unless you specifically detonate it? With a small blast radius (maybe even smaller than it already has?) but very high damage, it becomes an extreme skill based weapon. That way it has to be used skillfully or you won't get damage at all! I dunno, but it definitely needs tweaking.

Hunger Burst sucks. It's weak, but more importantly, it's impossible to keep the beam held down like you would in DDP because your movement speed is shot. The reason the Laser type ships in Dodonpachi (particularly A type which has the fastest base movement speed) is that Laser type gets a minimal loss of movement speed (versus Shot type) so you can move around the screen while using the laser at almost the same speed as when using shot. Here, the idea of a beam getting bigger and smaller depending on how well you keep killing is a cool idea, but the low movement speed you get when using it makes it seem highly impractical, especially when popcorn are what really boost its width.

I notice the game detects my Xbox controller... but doesn't use the D-Pad for movement. A menu with control config would be a nice addition and is a must in any polished shmup (there's a lot of good shmups out there that don't have a custom control menu I wish did, their default controls I don't like so much, lookin' at you Touhou). The controls themselves are also icky with respect to the interface. You need to press the Enter key at the "Press Start" screen and ESC to exit, but all the menus after that (including the tutorial one and when you pause the game) only seem to respond to the Z key. Pause the game, select 'Quit to Title' and press Enter... it just unpauses. You gotta be consistent about what buttons do what like select options when in menus because the only way I thought to try Z to start the tutorial, select weapons, etc, was knowing that many shmups have ZXCV for controls by default.

It's a good start, it just needs a few more coats of polish.

[helpleo]

Hey Mr. Roo, thank you very much for your feedback. Most people I showed the game so far aren't really into shmup, so hearing from people that have the same baggage in shmup-lplaying as I do is refreshing, to say the least.

The ship itself is a tad icky looking

Actually, a funny aside; the ship is the only piece of art that I did not do; a friend of mine provided the pixel art for that one (and he was hilariously pissed when reading your commentary). The trouble with the ship design is, since the stage visual styles change very dramatically over the course of the game, finding a design that fits in all if them is no easy task.

I notice the Shift key seems to stop you firing if you press it and hold it

Actually, this wasn't planned at all; it may possibly be some Game Maker-related weirdness, or something in your computer (nothing like that happened here, for instance). And about the mash-buttons thing, I understand this can be quite divisive, but each weapon is mapped to only one button (and the core of my academic work is based on virtual sensation); the alternate firing is a valid possibility, but I'm sure there will be and aspect for those who can't stand mashing buttons.

Hunger Burst sucks.

I hear ya, brother; that seems to be the general opinion in everyone that played the game with it. The slow down when firing seemed to be a good idea, but my tests point that it wasn't after all.And the damage output for H.Burst its actually quite high, but its collision event make it jump back after it hits and enemy, hurting considerably its effectiveness.BUt this is something that will certainly be fixed in the next public build. Same goes to the incoherence in the interface controls (almost all interface interaction were done in half a day - competitions deadlines are a bitch).

Also, if thats not asking much, what did you think about the level design? Personally, that was my favourite part of making this game, as I tried to stay away from common shump tropes and explore some new concepts.