Awaken:Underwater Odyssey - ver. 1.0 released

[Cagar]

GRAZING?!
edit: (that is a question btw)

[Tryzna]

GRAZING?!
edit: (that is a question btw)

Hi Cagar, im afraid i dont understand your question (sorry english is not my primary language). However by "GRAZING" i meant situation where a bullet passes through your character sprite but not your vital hitbox

[Tryzna]

Hello friends, supporters, forum lurkers! Today a huge boulder felt of my shoulders and im happy i finaly released updated demo and beta version of almost completed game.

I must say past 10 months been quite a ride as i have learned a lot, met some interesting people, overcame deep depressions and finaly, finished something. Well, talking about "finished" product is a bit early right now, but im sure i ll be able to implement the last game mode, tweak difficulty and rework options screen no matter what.

You can download the demo from indieDB(once the file ll be authorized): http://goo.gl/D8Kw0b
Or you can head to game itch.io page, dowload the demo and in the rare case you ll like the game you can support me by purchasing beta access. Link: http://tryzna.itch.io/awaken-underwater-odyssey

Please note the game is still not finished and its missing couple of features like Onslaught mode or possibility to navigate through hangar using x360 controller but if can live without these for couple of weeks go ahead and get the beta.

Oh and i almost forgot, i released new trailer for those who dont want to bother with downloading withou seeing the game in action first: http://youtu.be/eeYke7vvl4k

[Cagar]

For christ's sake PLEASE remove the inertia. Hasn't this subject been beaten to death in every new developer thread here, yet new devs still never learn?
Inertia is not a good thing in shmup movement and will never be. This is not open for discussion. The movement in your game sucks ass!

I like the visuals, the flashiness. Music was pretty good too and a very non-generic style choice for a shmup.

Regarding scoring though.. I had no idea what the heck is going on. The game doesn't inform you strongly enough about what's going on regarding scoring. There was some combo/chain system? I didn't even notice, and couldn't notice it even when I tried to look for it during gameplay.

My previous question regarding grazing was pretty much fishing for the reason why you added it to the system.
I personally not only hate grazing as a mechanic, but i'm tired of more and more and more games including it in scoring mechanics without a good reason.
Does your game really need grazing? Is the previous chaining system not enough?

[emphatic]

DEATH TO INERTIA.

[Tryzna]

For christ's sake PLEASE remove the inertia. Hasn't this subject been beaten to death in every new developer thread here, yet new devs still never learn?
Inertia is not a good thing in shmup movement and will never be. This is not open for discussion. The movement in your game sucks ass!

Well actualy, theres almost no inertia included in the movement.It takes 0.1 seconds for ship to accelerate to full speed when controller is pushed, but stop is instant when you release the controls(well next frame whitch is 0.016 seconds in case of awaken). What controller are you using? There might be some technical problem im not aware of as its impossible for your reflexes to react that fast and notice one frame delay in case everything work as intended.

Scoring is pretty simple there is big combo number on the left of the main screen(just next to score) When combo ends you receive bonus score (that big number comming from the ship) and then its added to the score. In addition there is red bar next to the ship letting you know how much time u have left to kill another enemy until the combochain is broken. Just click "?" in the hangar and game ll show you description of the hud.

Grazing combos work the same as regural combos. And i added grazing as i want to reward players who are willing to take additional risk in hunt for bigger score as many enemy attacks can be easily avoided, but there is straight through way in most cases so i think its a nice idea to reward players with enought skill

Anyway thanks for feedback, its always nice to have things to think about and consider before the game is finished and everything ll be set in stone.

[Cagar]

I'm using keyboard.
And just to make sure, 0.1 is already at least 6 frames.
If it's supposed to be something that can't even be noticed, why even include it? Right now the movement is absolutely horrible. You sure as hell can notice the inertia when you start moving, so I don't know what you mean here:

as its impossible for your reflexes to react that fast and notice one frame delay in case everything work as intended.

Seriously, just try removing the inertia completely and you'll understand that it's much better.

When it comes to grazing, that is not a very good explanation. Grazing does not automatically mean bigger risk, it might very well have the opposite effect, as now the player has a bigger reason to abuse and learn the enemy patterns. I already did some very very cheesy minimalistic tap-tap-tap dodging that worked, and can't help but wonder if you really want your average scoring runs to look like that. It's boring, it's seen, it forces the player strictly to a certain playstyle.

[Tryzna]

Hi cagar, little inertia when you start moving is present to make a movement and especialy start of movement bit softer, as accelerating to full speed right after 0.01 second tap feels odd. Good example of it Jamestown(dont get me wrong its still one of my favourite shmup game)but there is 0 inertia making soft movement almost impossible for me.

However i would like to thank you as you detected "micro-mechanic" not working as intended and i have to agree with your complaint. The ship has in fact 3 different max speeds. One, the fastest is 35 is used when you are flying your ship in solo mode and firing weapons in normal mode, second fastest is 25 is when you are flying around in squad mode and again fire in normal mode. The slowest one 10 is applied to the ship when you are firing your weapons in siege mode.

The thing is when i was testing the game i spend most of the time in the squad mode, and half of the time firing in siege mode. That means i experienced acceleration to max speed of 35 just in rare cases as i ve been flying in solo mode mostly just during boss fights for torpedo ability and i try to keep movement during bossfights minimalistic so thats why i overlooked this issue. Maybe thats on of the drawbacks of using non shmup players as testers to balance difficulty of the game, as others would probably notice me about this issue earlier.

The ship movement ll be reworked in next build. Thank you for letting me know!
EDIT: Allready applied quick fix and basicaly cut the acceleartion time to half and i have to admit game plays much better and even in solo mode the ship behave as intended.

And while we are discussing one issue, may i ask you what do you think about difficulty as its one of my biggest concerns? The game is meant to be quite easy to just fly throught it, if player do not care about score, but im getting mostly quite oposite feedback.

[Cagar]

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=44687

None of the games listed here have inertia in movement. Inertia sucks, no matter how tiny it is.

The difficulty was very easy to me, however I didn't even finish the first stage because I quit thanks to the inertia.

DEATH TO INERTIA.

[Tryzna]

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=44687

None of the games listed here have inertia in movement. Inertia sucks, no matter how tiny it is.

The difficulty was very easy to me, however I didn't even finish the first stage because I quit thanks to the inertia.

DEATH TO INERTIA.

After double checking your previevous arguments regarding inertia i had to agree with you and apply neceseary fix/improvement. But before stating 0 inertia tolerance and start of the witch hunt for inertia i would recomend to observe ship trails in games where player ships have exhaust trails. If your statement would be right there would be just trails with regulary repeating angles when playing on keyboard as moves in other than 45 degree multipes would be impossible. So why in the shmup games with exhaust trail long enought to observe this while attempting rounded movement is trail more or less rounded and not just under degree multiples mentioned above whitch should ocur if there would be 0 inertia?

Its possible you are still right and im wrong for some reason i did not thought thru as i did just quick research using fraps and came to conclusion above.

But still, i would like to thank you for your input as its very valuable to me even i dont agree with it 100%(just dont agree with absoulte 0 tolerance upon accelerating). Thx to it i was able to fix piece of the game responsible for movement as it was not working as intended.

[Cagar]

Can you give me an example of a game with an exhaust trail like that?
Exhaust trails have nothing to do with the movement of the ship. The trails can of course work completely independently no matter how the player movement works.
Why do you need to watch videos anyways? Why not just play the games yourself and try them out?
Just name some shmups where you think that there's inertia in movement, and I can tell straight away that it is not the case, as I most likely have played the game.
(And not a single shmup that i've played have ANY inertia in movement. Maybe some very bad browser game but other than that, nope.)

Seriously, PLAY MORE SHMUPS to get some very basic knowledge before starting your own game.
That sentence should be stickied here in the development section for people to understand.

[Tryzna]

Hello again Cagar!

Its great to have such dedicated testers like you and thank you for telling me your opinion.

Enjoy new year celebration!

[Tryzna]

Hello everyone!

As version 1.0 ll be aviable probably next weekend i have decided to make one final test and made a build meant specialy for the shmups forum audience.

ver. 0.95 have some more or less important changes and fixes:

- removed grazing mechanics becouse it was too easy to abuse by letting stage boss alive as long as you want till you reached desired score.
-fixed/impoved ship movement, after two days of arguing with Cagar(hi again!;-))i have decided to remove even last hint of friction from ship movement, personaly i liked previevous version more, but if this is what shmup players expect then this ll be left untouched.
-options screen added
-fullscreen filters added

Instructions:

Self extracting archive with game aviable here: http://ulozto.net/xTza2nfV/awakenshmup-exe

Download & let it extract to the desired location. Game is played using X,C,V, SPACE and Arrow keys or x360 controller. More detailed info aviable ingame after clicking "?" icon from hangar menu.

What im asking for is 5-10 minutes of your time to test the game and let me know what do you think. Especialy if you dont like the game take Cagars example and make sure you ll let me know! As while it hurts when someone mocks 10 months of your work listening and considering negative feedback is the only way how to make all that time usefull.

[Cagar]

Alright, completed the demo.
It's sooooo much better now that the movement is fixed, almost like a whole new game.
Now another distraction: the screen shaking.

I don't know how important stylistic design choice, but the screen shaking all the time is a bit too much
For some big enemies, I think it's alright effect.. but for EVERYTHING? (and even just shooting in the squad mode?) it's a little distracting to me.
hmmm. trying to think.

[Tryzna]

Now another distraction: the screen shaking.

Actualy we have been thinking the same today during meeting with soundtrack composer in my living room. And we came to opinion to remove screenshake from regular shooting, but keep it while firing in siege mode as par of the drawback for siege weapon, and i think it also adds more powefull feeling to the weapon.

However its still open and while game is basicaly finished im giving it time of two weekends to fine tune details like this and fix few bugs im aware of before ver. 1.0 release.

My main issue right now is competetivnes of solo mode over squad mode. While torpedoes are nice, especialy during boss fights as they can distrupt enemy bullet patterns i ve got feeling its somehow pointless as all patternes could be flown through without taking damage anyway. Dont know if advantage of faster movement and torpedoes aviable while solo is enought to justify its existence in game.

Thanks for testing and pointing out some important things!

[Kaiser]

So I decided to play the game, it's good! I do have few legimitate concerns that aren't nitpicks, so hear me out.

I think this game needs two things, a HARD mode and a mode that would allow you to play all the stages in one sitting and not let you continue, think ultimate challenge mode in Iridion II for GBA, of course Hard mode could be also enabled for that continous mode.

Now what do I mean by Hard mode? Make the patterns faster, more dense, so I can actually feel threathened because I beat the entire game (as in each available in demo story mission) without switching to squad mode or EVEN using torpedoes ever. Make me use my torpedoes!

The normal difficulty is fine because I know that you want a wider audience to enjoy the game, but for someone like me, both of the possible additions I mentioned would give me more playability.

Now aside my concerns, here's list of GOOD things I noted playing the game:
- Music, it reminds me of Takumi's Night Raid and at the same time, it had this SPACE opera feel to it, which I never thought I would say about a shmup as a good thing but it compliments the gameplay and visuals just darn fine here.
- Graphics, videos cannot portray the graphics accurately, the game has to be played to notice how good they are. They are good and appealing, most importantly that bullets catch my attention all the time so I never would say that I got hit due the game's fault
- Gameplay, it's simple, straightforward, it's fun, I had fun playing this, though hard/continous modes would make it even better .

I certainly didn't waste 10 minutes trying this properly.

[Tryzna]

Hi Kaiser!

Thanks for your feedback! Well the difficulty, i agree with your points however at start of this project i was stupid enought to think one difficulty is enought and the way the game is build does not allow me to adjust bullet patterns and projectiles speed without weeks of additional work as i would have to rework all enemy scripts(at least i learned lesson for future projects).
However the difficulty increases quite bit in next missions and while im just casual shmup player(one credited do don pachi just month ago for first time) i think third and especialy fourth mission should take at least couple of attemps to acomplish.
In addition Onslaught mode gets pretty tight after first two loops.

I know, its not ideal, im an idiot who did not store everything as easy to change variables(hope i can excuse it a little by mentioning this is my first game after more than 15yrs old break), but i hope later stages and onslaught mode ll provide at least moderate thrilling experience;-)

Torpedoes...as i stated in post above, im still unshure what to do with them and its the thing i want to focus on next week.

Thanks for your ideas! I owe you and Cagar little gift for testing the demo so expect download keys in your inboxes when the game goes full as at least little something for your time.

[S20-TBL]

Finally! Been waiting for this.

First off, while I love the aesthetic as usual (and that is a very, very sweet soundtrack you have there!), I don't remember the original version being this bad in terms of readability. It was sometimes very hard for me to make enemies out against the background when both were nearly the same color, and the neon pink haze made things slightly worse, leading to a few collisions with enemy ships. Maybe tweak the enemy colors a bit more so they stand out against the background?

The enemy bullets shrinking down when first fired were somewhat confusing to deal with. It's better to just generate them at the standard sizes rather than add in a shrinking effect, since it makes judging the bullet hitboxes more difficult--especially when you're right next to the target. I understand you may have wanted this to be a kind of "warning" tell that an enemy is shooting at you, but it's better to just add some kind of "muzzle flash" or other burst effect.

Also, I have to agree: the screen shaking for every enemy killed is simply too distracting. Using them for boss or miniboss deaths (or even on player hit) is fine since it does add punch to the death effects, but having the screen shake for every minor popcorn enemy killed is disorienting and even migraine-inducing (at least for me--I have astigmatism which makes gaming a bit difficult and sometimes nauseating). Try limiting it to just bosses, midbosses, your ship getting hit and using bombs--in other words, major in-game events.

I noticed the point icons also shrink down after a while, much like the enemy bullets. Does this have some kind of scoring component?

Lastly, I discovered you could accidentally launch and waste a torpedo during the start of a mission, while you couldn't even move or fire your main cannons yet.

Hope that was useful for you.

[suny]

Tested it, and liked it.

Some remarks :
-I clicked on "toggle" for the fullscreen mode, and it didn't worked properly : the screen zoomed in and I could only see the left half on the screen, and so couldn't even reclick on toggle. I have a multi-screens set up, so I guess you are not using the right screen size (my first monitor one), but the complete one (the two monitors added resolution) to calculate the window size.

-I fully agree about the shaking at every explosion critics.

-One thing I don't like and think could be better : there is no visual clue when I'm hitting an enemy with a bullet, like a sprite effect, or a flashing color on the enemy, or even a small translation animation (like in under defeat). The result is that the shooting lack visual feedback, and feel a little dull. I'm sure a little thing could add a lot of dynamism to the shooting. We need to feel the contact between the bullet and the enemy.

S.

[Tryzna]

Hello again!

Thanks S20 and Sunny for additional feedback! Unfortunatley version 1.0 was allready released and is aviable on itch so i was not able to implement all the improvements you are suggesting however most important features and improvements are there, i ll summarize what was added to the game since shmup forum build release.

- every enemy except "popcorn" enemies and bosses now blink white when hit
- torpedoes rebalanced, now they have more power however they do not destroy bullets anymore as bossfights were too easy in solo mode
- added notification to check the controls when the game runs for first time
- Adjusted HUD font size so now shield level is more visible and obvious
- screen shake when destroying enemies reduced to half. When destroying small enemies its hardly noticable now but still give the game desired feel
- epilepsy warning screen can now be skipped by pressing mouse or space
- various bug fixes

In the end i ve got feeling i rushed the release a bit and now im only waiting for desura to accept the game at their store and the things are going in the right direction negotiating with humble store right now. But still, there was a lot of stuff left to be done but unfortunately i run out of time.
I know my self and im forced to take a break right now and would not be able to come back to this project to finish it couple of months later. Dont get me wrong, im not abandoning this project and im pretty sure there ll be few more patches but i ll dont have time for more than that in following couple of months.
Why? We are moving to bigger place as me and my gf are tired of living on 30 square meters with bunny, 4 parrots and about 200 shrimps. Unfortunately i have to rebuild the new place and repurchase most of the furniture and other stuff, take care of security as we are moving to ground level and in addition im probably getting married.

Hope some of you ll enjoy version 1.0! Thanks again for your support/suggestions/critique!