Duality ZF (Xbox LIVE Indie Games) coming soon...

[DeathAxe]

Your game looks great! the more classic shooters the better. It's about time the 360 got some decent indie games.... most of em on there are cheap tat.

I take it your game will be available to UK folk too?

[Xonatron]

Duality ZF has not been our only work... keep that in mind. Just like Duke Nukem isn't a 12 year game. But we are still shooting for XBLA. XBLIG sales are very bad for shooters.

[mugicha]

I love Score Rush, would kill to play Duality ZF right now, you guys do amazing work!

[Alfred]

XBLIG sales are very bad for shooters.

I think Shoot 1UP sold around 30,000.

[Xonatron]

XBLIG sales are very bad for shooters.

I think Shoot 1UP sold around 30,000.

Shoot 1UP had better promotion, thanks to developer (and friend) Nathan Fouts. He and his work was well known before Shoot 1UP and even before XBLIG. We did not receive the same type of coverage. It's too bad. It could be because our games are too hardcore and not mainstream enough, or perhaps we just need to make better games. Who knows.

[mjclark]

It could be because our games are too hardcore and not mainstream enough, or perhaps we just need to make better games. Who knows.

Decimation X3 and to an even greater extent Score Rush are acknowledged on this forum and in other serious shmups communities as being amongst the finest shooters on XBLIG.
If anyone asks just tell them that

There's a good few customers for Duality ZF just in this thread alone!

[Kollision]

My biggest fear is that by the time Duality ZF comes out XBLIG is dead.

[Moniker]

It could be because our games are too hardcore and not mainstream enough, or perhaps we just need to make better games. Who knows.

Believe it or not, Decim X3 and Score Rush are the only two shmups I've been able to get family members to play. My aunt is an old-school atari fan and loved X3; my sister doesn't game much outside of nintendo platformers, but she was shredding it up in Score Rush. Neither of them have an xbox, though. If they were on PC, I would have gifted them long ago. I know you guys got burned by steam (NPI), but have you checked out Desura or IndieCity? What with Scoregasm and the like being added to bundles, you might have a better shot there.

Hopefully the Nyu Media localizations will do some good for popularizing shmups as well.

[Udderdude]

XBLIG sales are very bad for shooters. :(

I think Shoot 1UP sold around 30,000.

Shoot 1UP had better promotion, thanks to developer (and friend) Nathan Fouts. He and his work was well known before Shoot 1UP and even before XBLIG. We did not receive the same type of coverage. It's too bad. It could be because our games are too hardcore and not mainstream enough, or perhaps we just need to make better games. Who knows.

Gimmicky crap like Shoot 1up gets more press attention, nothing to do with it being a better game. That Scoregasm game got a ton of attention as well, even though it's basically watered down crap.

It seems like the amount of attention a game gets is inversely proportional to how good it actually is these days ;P

[spoot]

My biggest fear is that by the time Duality ZF comes out XBLIG is dead.

I can't speak for Zona games of course, but this whole thing concerns me. While I've not released an Xbox360 game, I've toyed with it......I host a bunch of stuff on websites on my dollar which isn't much tbh......I just can't believe MS would be such dinks on space/release that they can't host Duality and sell it for $x amount of dollars and worry about profit.

How big is Duality? A few hundred meg? MS wouldn't have to sell many copies to reclaim their hosting costs. I dunno, just venting I guess.

[Alfred]

Gimmicky crap like Shoot 1up gets more press attention, nothing to do with it being a better game. That Scoregasm game got a ton of attention as well, even though it's basically watered down crap.

Hello, Shoot 1up maybe gimmicky, But it's not crap. Thinking it's crap puts you in a minority. It's good for 80MS and i believe it was his first STG.

Scoregasm is not on Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace and it's arena shooter which i don't like to play. I will take your word that it's crap.

I hope Duality ZF comes out in 2012, The video's of it on Youtube look good. I am looking forward to it.

[ZacharyB]

How big is Duality? A few hundred meg? MS wouldn't have to sell many copies to reclaim their hosting costs.

The Doucette brothers are shooting for Xbox Live Arcade, not Xbox Live Indie Games. If they were going for the Indie Games section, they would have released their product by now.

But it's not just hosting costs. There are contractural agreements and royalty agreements... and who-knows what else. No one except the applicants themselves knows what goes on inside the XBox bureaucracy.

I do know that each game submission for review to the Xbox Live Arcade marketplace costs $10,000. It can be difficult to come up with this sum, especially multiple times. At their core, Microsoft are a business, not a service. They won't do something if it hinders their ability to make money.

I'm still eagerly anticipating this game. I hope it will be released some day.

[mjclark]

Gimmicky crap like Shoot 1up gets more press attention, nothing to do with it being a better game. That Scoregasm game got a ton of attention as well, even though it's basically watered down crap.
It seems like the amount of attention a game gets is inversely proportional to how good it actually is these days ;P

Don't want to start a row or nothin' but...
...Shoot 1up is excellent as is widely acknowledged on this forum and it's a surprise to see you dis it- have you actually played it?
Scoregasm on the other hand is a slightly dull vanilla arena shooter but with superb production values and pretty solid for what it is.
Indie devs slagging each other off isn't going to help anybody- these unfounded torrents of negativity against small dvelopers are unhelpful and becoming increasingly tiresome...
We all like Score Rush though right?

[Kollision]

Score Rush is an indie masterpiece.

And sorry for the XBLIG connection back there, I had forgotten the Doucettes were aiming for XBLA, thanks ZacharyB.

[Udderdude]

...Shoot 1up is excellent as is widely acknowledged on this forum and it's a surprise to see you dis it- have you actually played it?
Scoregasm on the other hand is a slightly dull vanilla arena shooter but with superb production values and pretty solid for what it is.

I actually beta tested both of them. Neither dev listened to my feedback (because basically fixing their games would require an almost complete overhaul of how they played ..) Shoot 1up just turns into a clusterfuck beyond a certian point, and Scoregasm fails as an interesting game first, so I don't care about the shiny visuals. I also found several infinite milking issues, which I'm sure there were more of before I stopped testing.

Indie devs slagging each other off isn't going to help anybody- these unfounded torrents of negativity against small dvelopers are unhelpful and becoming increasingly tiresome...

They aren't unfounded, and you don't even know what negative is if you think that's negative .. :P

[Alfred]

Professional and Indie Devs who make STG's should listen to feedback that members of this site give. I am sorry if i upset anyone. You all made good points. I am looking forward to playing many new STG's in 2012.

[mjclark]

I actually beta tested both of them. Neither dev listened to my feedback...

This explains a lot and may also be telling you something

They aren't unfounded, and you don't even know what negative is if you think that's negative .. .

Fair enough- your opinions are you're opinions and you certainly know a lot more about making excellent games than most people here (myself included)!
I'd hate to catch you when you really were feeling negative though, cos an intelligent and talented man like yourself dismissing other people's widely appreciated hard work with blanket terms like "crap" and "shit" strikes me as being a bit of a downer eh?

[spoot]

I do know that each game submission for review to the Xbox Live Arcade marketplace costs $10,000. It can be difficult to come up with this sum, especially multiple times. At their core, Microsoft are a business, not a service. They won't do something if it hinders their ability to make money.

True, but if they don't release software they can't make money either. I could give a shit about the latest FPS (yes, that's where they make their billions), etc.......I purchased the x360 for it's shmup support......now I have a few x360s, etc to support this "habbit".

[Xonatron]

Thank you for all the support. I think this discussion is great. Great developers listen and appreciate input, especially negative input. There is always constructive criticism found within even the most bashing feedback. That said, there is a difference between not fixing a feature within a game due to lack of understand versus due to calculated risk such as the balance between development cost vs. quality or mainstream vs. true fans. You can never have the best of both worlds, everything in life is about balance and making games is no different. I've come to respect this more now that I have become a developer.

[Kollision]

So....
With the imminent death of XBLIG / XBLA altogether, what's of this old promising project?
Any news on new probable platforms?

[DJ Incompetent]

Well, I read that the new "self-publish" option is expanding to 360 according to the Pinball Arcade Farsight people. Sooooo, ....game on?

[Xonatron]

(I should totally change the title to this thread, but eventually it will become true.)

We are exploring every avenue in which to take Duality ZF. We are looking at bringing the source code to MonoGame that will open the doors to bring it cross-platform (PC, Xbox's, PlayStations, OUYA, even the mobile phones).

Right now we are starting this job with our Decimation X3 and Score Rush games, and then we'll apply what we learn to Duality ZF... which may be split into a few games to make the release more likely. Start smaller, kind of thing.

I'm hoping the indie support of Xbox One and PS4 is great. They need to have good tools or have support for industry 'standards' (like MonoGame), allow us to develop on their consoles without needing to purchase $5..10k dev kits, and have proper support on their digital storefront. That last one was the only thing that failed XBLIG, which we tried to rectify with our Xona Proposal: http://xona.com/proposal/ XBLIG could have used leaderboard and achievement support too, but it was secondary to the failure of the storefront.

Anyways, long story short, we are still moving ahead with Duality ZF, but we learned long ago to never make promises! We appreciate the continued interest!

It's funny, but as time goes on, nobody really steps in and fills the hole we are trying to fill. Very few studios really do 'retro' right. I know you guys hate calling shmups retro, but you know what I mean! I guess my point is, Xona Games still has its place in the industry.

[emphatic]

Please make a vertical 1-player Danmaku version with TATE support for XBLIG.

[Weak Boson]

Love Score Rush. In fact I was just playing it now on turbulenz. Legitimately excited for Duality! I really hope you guys can work something out.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Score Rush is so much damn fun. And frustrating, so painful to come so close to clearing Godlike...

[Xonatron]

Score Rush is so much damn fun. And frustrating, so painful to come so close to clearing Godlike...

We never intended anyone even to unlock Godlike, for what it's worth. I got to the final boss in INSANE mode once and died a cheap death. It wears you down by the time you get to the end. I believe the relentless nature of the game is its only flaw. I don't know if we'll do an endless cascade of difficulty modes like this ever again!

Score Rush's Difficulty Modes:
- Normal
- Hard
- Expert
- Crazy
- Insane
- Godlike

[BareKnuckleRoo]

We never intended anyone even to unlock Godlike, for what it's worth.

Godlike actually feels fine difficulty wise and isn't really any harder than your average arcade game if you're playing with a couple people. The bullet patterns aren't impossible to get through even with the density, the issue is that if you're playing with someone else, the extra firepower helps immensely. In solo, the enemies have so much health that every single boss is like fighting Queen Larsa. Even the final enemy rush before the final boss is flatout impossible without bombing or using lives because you simply can't kill them in a timely fashion. Normal stage segments that would have been easy become a pain because killing that one bigger enemy for the screen shake invuln takes too long to do safely without getting overwhelmed by all the new enemies popping up.

If the solo mode increased health only marginally for popcorn/weak enemies as difficulty goes up, you wouldn't have the problem in Godlike where soloing means the enemies overwhelm you. Boss health is fine to increase because you don't need to worry about being interrupted by popcorn filling the screen (well, normally, your game does have enemies come in occasionally during bosses and they get seriously annoying if you're making micrododges in a dense pattern).

With two+ people Godlike feels quite balanced. Hard, but fun. Alone, it's brutal, as you're too weak relative to the enemies. Some kind of dynamic health system where enemy health is scaled when more players join, or player shots get scaled back in strength the more that join would make it a bit better. That, or cap off the health increases for normal enemies at a more reasonable point and just increase bullet density with difficulty levels, dunno.

[Xonatron]

BareknuckleRoo,

Interesting points.

You jogged my memory. We designed difficulties up to Godlike specifically in case of multiplayer dominance and wanted to see how far a group of amazing players could push it. So it was never intended to be taken solely. That's more accurate than what I posted earlier. So we did intend someone to get to Godlike, just not alone.

Godlike and further difficulties need work because the game moves on if the boss hasn't been killed. It should escape or stop progressing until it was killed. So, really, that's bug you've discovered being such a great player. Kudos!

We've considered not increasing the enemy health at all in later difficulty modes, which might be how we do Duality ZF to avoid the problems you mentioned above. I like your analysis very much. It's very well thought out. Exactly the type of thinking you need to not only make a shmup but make it scalable.

Currently in Score Rush, the enemy health (and shot pattern speed) scale with extra players joining. It does so on the fly, but never settles back to a lower level when extra players die off. So if two players play, or if one player plays and another one joins, the difficulty is bumped up a bit (no where near a bump in difficulty level from the main menu though), and then it stays no matter who dies.

So, we agree with the capping of health, I guess. We might just do it for all enemies in the future.

[Weak Boson]

Just beat crazy on solo

I think godlike with two players is really tough but it should be just about doable. That's a pretty good place for it to be.

Also I just looked at the the grand total score rankings on turbulenz and our godlike runs have pushed Roo and I to 61 and 53 billion points respectively! That's a lot of points.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I think godlike with two players is really tough but it is definitely doable.

=D

lol now all we need is a run where I don't die at the final boss, boson had to solo it most of the way like a pro