Would a AAA-like shmup be feasible?

[ciox]

I think a higher budget shmup could find some success, but not quite AAA level because the audience is just not there.
Maybe just try and have some more content than usual to let players explore, add something visually beyond translating objects around to try and capture people's imaginations, like fluid simulations, physics simulations, dynamic destructibility, more complex animations exported from modeling software, even if their interactions with the player are mostly aesthetic and not mechanical.

There was going to be a Game Boy shmup named Triple A at one point. It was reviewed in NP, but very little information is available. The publisher was going to be IGS and the lone screen shot looks very similar to Vattle Giuce.

Same game apparently https://tcrf.net/Vattle_Giuce
Also it's full of golf graphics or something, what is up with this game anyway?

[Xyga]

It's so sad when you think for many years up to some point in the 90's shmups were often graphics and animation beasts, for the time they certainly looked 'AAA'.

[Durandal]

The only forward for shmups is to really look cool. They gotta have super high-detail 3D polygon graphics, and the backgrounds need to be dynamic as all hell. Backgrounds which move forwards in a single straight line? Not in my world. The camera's gotta move all over the place, spin all over the place, enemies need to be shooting at you from the background, you need to be flying at 666 miles per hour with all these buildings whizzing by, boss fights need to have tons of animation and sounds and expression and make you feel like wooooaaaaaahhh. The screen needs to be dense, there has to be so much going on with tons of score pick-ups and multiplier messages as you active your Hyper Climax Breaker Laser. Bullets need to be super fast and patterns need to look suepr pretty while epic music is playing in the background. Just like Ëinhander and D-Garius and Ikaruga Silvergun, that's why everyone remembers them.

[Shepardus]

The camera's gotta move all over the place, spin all over the place, enemies need to be shooting at you from the background, you need to be flying at 666 miles per hour with all these buildings whizzing by, boss fights need to have tons of animation and sounds and expression and make you feel like wooooaaaaaahhh. The screen needs to be dense, there has to be so much going on with tons of score pick-ups and multiplier messages as you active your Hyper Climax Breaker Laser. Bullets need to be super fast and patterns need to look suepr pretty while epic music is playing in the background. Just like Ëinhander and D-Garius and Ikaruga Silvergun, that's why everyone remembers them.

So Eschatos + RayForce + Crimzon Clover + Gunbird + Touhou, got it. Just give me a hundred million dollars and I'll be right back.

[Sai'ke]

EDIT: oh yeah Heaven Variant, kinda Einhänder-like also.

Maybe you already know, but that team is now working on a new one named WestGunne. It looks great! Take a gander here: https://twitter.com/zanrai_int

fluid simulations

Working on one! viewtopic.php?f=9&t=61822 </shamelessselfpromotion>
But I'm still *very* far from anything I'd deem even remotely release-worthy

I don't really think it's an economically viable genre to splurge on in terms of funding at the moment. Hope to be proven wrong by some developer though.

[Xyga]

So Eschatos + RayForce + Crimzon Clover + Gunbird + Touhou, got it. Just give me a hundred million dollars and I'll be right back.

Nah prolly just a million or two at most, which wouldn't be too unrealistic in terms of cost, but nobody/nothing's paying shmups devs that kind of money today or they'd have to be working for big'uns that don't produce that genre anymore anyway.

IIRC Heaven Variant was abandoned due to budget constraints, but I don't believe they were missing a hundred million.

@Sai'ke: I wasn't aware thanks. Not nearly as visually ambitious as HV but it cetainly looks pretty and promising!

[Shepardus]

So Eschatos + RayForce + Crimzon Clover + Gunbird + Touhou, got it. Just give me a hundred million dollars and I'll be right back.

Nah prolly just a million or two at most, which wouldn't be too unrealistic in terms of cost, but nobody/nothing's paying shmups devs that kind of money today or they'd have to be working for big'uns that don't produce that genre anymore anyway.

Yeah I was being facetious, I was just going by modern "AAA"-level budgets (which do reach that range nowadays including marketing).

[neorichieb1971]

Id put shmup stages in a AAA game. If feedback is good make a dedicated game.

[KAI]

Yoko Taro must be rolling over in his grave.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Backgrounds which move forwards in a single straight line?[/img]

I remember DFK was the first shmup I played with enemies on a background where the scrolling wasn't always vertical and I thought it was really rad suddenly seeing the scrolling go diagonal or sideways.

I miss those days.

[BrianC]

I think a higher budget shmup could find some success, but not quite AAA level because the audience is just not there.
Maybe just try and have some more content than usual to let players explore, add something visually beyond translating objects around to try and capture people's imaginations, like fluid simulations, physics simulations, dynamic destructibility, more complex animations exported from modeling software, even if their interactions with the player are mostly aesthetic and not mechanical.

There was going to be a Game Boy shmup named Triple A at one point. It was reviewed in NP, but very little information is available. The publisher was going to be IGS and the lone screen shot looks very similar to Vattle Giuce.

Same game apparently https://tcrf.net/Vattle_Giuce
Also it's full of golf graphics or something, what is up with this game anyway?

Interesting. Thanks for the info. I didn't even think to look at tcrf. The really strange thing isn't just that it has graphics from a golf game, it's that it has graphics from a golf game for a completely different system.

Telling from gdri, the connection between both games is Natsu System, though it's unclear what the full extent of their involvement with the games is.

[LordHypnos]

Backgrounds which move forwards in a single straight line?[/img]

I remember DFK was the first shmup I played with enemies on a background where the scrolling wasn't always vertical and I thought it was really rad suddenly seeing the scrolling go diagonal or sideways.

I miss those days.

I don't know why, but I'm a pretty big fan of scroll direction changes like that, too. Lots of them in Zero Gunner 2, for example (which, to be fair it's an arena shooter, so why not)

[qmish]

Yoko Taro must be rolling over in his grave.

Just give him money to make shmup finally! He just mention it in every interview now that he wants to do vertical scroll shooter but square enix doesnt give budget for it

https://www.dualshockers.com/nier-autom ... ssibility/

Damn game journalists imply that he jokes and trolls about that
Stupid antishmuppers
Nearly first comment on site is "I don't want shooters"

[davyK]

It could be done.

You would need a mission mode with a large number of levels and set pieces with your progress saved. Needs to be graphically stunning - Sine Mora level but needs backed up with interesting play !!

Then you would need an arcade mode with a subet of levels missing the set pieces (which lose their lustre once defeated) and have that supported with score attack modes and caravan modes. Needs to have deep scoring rules and proper leaderboard score tracking.

Maybe a training mode for practicing scoring tricks?

Some sort of challenge mode too - setting mini goals. (with the training mode woven in perhaps)

And having a large variety of ships with various powerups and options to unlock would keep the mainstream happy.

Different shmups have had these ideas:

Sturmwind has a campaign mode and a shorter arcade mode
DDP:SDOJ has a challenge mode
RType Final with the large number of unlockable ships

Plenty of others have score attack modes (per level in Raiden III) and caravan modes (Game Paradise).

Of course putting all that together and then running the risk of it not selling enough to recoup the dev costs means it won't happen

[DialKnight]

Why don't we just harass SquareEnix into another Einhander ?