XOP Ultra and XOP Black Ultra thread

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Couple of minor bugs I noticed in the options menu (appears to apply to all three games in the bundle):

* When you go into the extras options and change Simulate Lag to Off and Show Music Info to On, it doesn't remember these options when you exit the game. You have to set these each time you start the game.

* When you go to config controls, select Change Speed Boost to Focus, then rebind the focus key to anything else and it'll switch it back to Speed boost.

[Udderdude]

For those wondering if/when XOP G is going to get made, the answer is yes and no. I'm using the assets from it to make another shmup with a new name and gameplay style. I think one of the reasons I was dragging my feet on it for so long, is that I didn't ever feel like making another autoscrolling vertical shooter, and the ideas I had for XOP G wouldn't have really worked with that style of shmup. So, here's what XOP G eventually turned into : http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=44495

Also, if you're looking for some other shooter-ish games I've been working on, check these out :

http://rydia.net/udder/prog/twinreaper/index.html
http://rydia.net/udder/prog/sphereshift/index.html

[Udderdude]

So I finished development of Zero Cross. I think it came out pretty well. The speedy development time was mostly due to an already existing Flash framework I made which was easy to modify, and the fact that the art and music were basically 100% complete and only needed to be added in.

This is also very likely the last pure shooter I'll ever work on. All of the next games I'm planning on doing aren't shmups in any traditional sense (although they may have some element of shooting), and I feel like I've said everything I have to say in terms of game design on the subject, if you could bear a labored metaphor for a moment. :p

So there you go .. one last game, and I'm bowing out of the shmup development ring. Have fun!

http://rydia.net/udder/prog/zerocross/index.html

[Udderdude]

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[Udderdude]

Planning some updates for ye olde XOP .. yeah, can't get enough of that shit. No gameplay changes, though .. just some extra stuff.

I want to add a "No borders, no scrolling" mode where the game area fills the entire 4:3 game space and the borders are removed. This mode won't effect the gameplay at all, enemies that are too far from the player won't shoot, just like if it was bordered and scrolling.

Also want to add a different scanline option where it adds the smoothing effect, but not the scanline effect. And the ability to save/load extra menu settings.

Another thing I want to do is add the ability to browse the highscore tables from within the highscore screen, instead of having to go to the options screen and change the mode/skill there first.

Something I might also do is remove all highscore tables from Beginner skill, because really .. just not nessecary.

[Udderdude]

Smoothing and no border .. :O

[ptoing]

What do I have to pay you so you let me overhaul the palette?

[Udderdude]

Feel like taking an archive of all current in-game sprites, and all true color, layered PSDs of the enemies and backgrounds? D:

At this point I think the biggest upgrade I could do is to change the game to true color 800x600, re-export all the enemy line drawings at 2x size and re-do the backgrounds.

[ptoing]

How many sprites are there really? How many backgrounds? How many fonts? I doubt it is that much, and the game does not have massive amounts of animation either.

Unifying the palette into a nicer 256 colours and cleaning up the art in the process where it could need it would not be too much work.

[Udderdude]

XOP Black Ultra has ..

662 game PNGs
90 system PNGs
109 tile PNGs
Total of 861 PNGs ..

For comparison Zero Cross only has 330 PNGs.

[ptoing]

Most of those pngs I assume are fairly small. So all that is relative. Check pm.

[BPzeBanshee]

Nice!

Where exactly can I go to download whatever the latest update is? Is there any effective way of checking apart from the changelog text file?

[Udderdude]

Aside from that, you can check the file dates ..

This update doesn't change the gameplay in any case.

I'm probably going to release it later tomorrow.

You can grab the update from the website, http://rydia.net/udder/prog/xopbundle/index.html

Or if you still have the BMT Micro download eMail, download it again from there. I set the download links to never expire. If you lost the link, PM or eMail me the eMail address you used to purchase it and I can re-send the download eMail.

[BPzeBanshee]

Ah, didn't realise the update link was there. I've been behind a few releases I suspect (I tend to keep multiple copies on my different computers) so I need to do a bit of an update and cleanup. Cheers!

[stuntman]

Or if you still have the BMT Micro download eMail, download it again from there. I set the download links to never expire. If you lost the link, PM or eMail me the eMail address you used to purchase it and I can re-send the download eMail.

I found my BMT Micro email, but keep getting "The password has expired" whatever method I try to download.

I was able to grab the update from http://rydia.net/udder/prog/xopbundle/index.html and I still have the original bundle files, so that's all I need?

Thanks for continuing to tweak XOP, even though I can understand your desire to move on to other things. I'm intrigued by Sphere Shift

[Udderdude]

Yes you can still update manually using the update ZIP.

You should definitely check out the other stuff I made, even though they're quite different from traditional shmups, I feel they've all got some interesting ideas.

Gryzor's awesome art doesn't hurt either :P

[ptoing]

A Huge Battleship is approaching!

[BPzeBanshee]

Ooo that's nice.

[heavystylus]

Reviewed Zero Cross here: http://www.rgcd.co.uk/2013/05/zero-cross-pcmac.html

(and on indiegames.com)

Seriously people, it is a fuckton of fun. Lost a whole day within that deadly arena yesterday. Buy it.

[Udderdude]

Thanks for the review heavystylus.

I've finished the update which adds smoothing effect, no borders mode (XOP Black Ultra only), ability to browse highscore tables by using directional input and ability to save/load extra settings. I've also removed the highscore tables from Beginner, as I said I would.

[cuttingagent]

I got this a couple months ago, I love it.

Great music, really reminds me of Sega Genesis.

The moving letterboxes on the sides are super annoying. I wish there was an option to turn them off. Plain black would be awesome.

And the colour palettes in the first 2 levels of XOP Ultra are just atrocious.

Also I'm not sure why XOP Black has the wide shot button that stays wide when you hold it, but in Ultra it has to be tapped (or set to turbo.)

Can't say I have much interest in the new games as using the mouse kinda ruins shooters for me. I'd love to see you do some nontraditional shooters that use keyboard or gamepad someday, but that's just one man's opinion.

Overall a great purchase with a few bothersome factors. Sorry you couldn't get it onto Steam, though I blame the weird graphics. If it looked like any other game I'm sure at the least they might approve XOP Black Ultra.

Cheers.

[Udderdude]

The moving letterboxes on the sides are super annoying. I wish there was an option to turn them off. Plain black would be awesome.

Grab the latest update, it gives an option to remove the borders on XOP Black Ultra ..

And the colour palettes in the first 2 levels of XOP Ultra are just atrocious.

I might still go back and update the game to 32-bit color, removing the color palette, but it's a long term project ..

Also I'm not sure why XOP Black has the wide shot button that stays wide when you hold it, but in Ultra it has to be tapped (or set to turbo.)

There's still an autoshot button in XOP Black Ultra. Maybe it got reassigned?

Can't say I have much interest in the new games as using the mouse kinda ruins shooters for me. I'd love to see you do some nontraditional shooters that use keyboard or gamepad someday, but that's just one man's opinion.

Zero Cross at least will let you play w/o using the mouse. I may update Twin Reaper to not require a mouse at some point. Sphere Shift would be very difficult to play if all you could do is fire with the arrow keys ..

Overall a great purchase with a few bothersome factors. Sorry you couldn't get it onto Steam, though I blame the weird graphics. If it looked like any other game I'm sure at the least they might approve XOP Black Ultra.

I still have some plans to update the art to 32-bit and higher resolution, although it remains to be seen if I'll get around to it. If I do, I'd probably put it on Greenlight just to see how it does ..

[BPzeBanshee]

Was the remove borders on XOP Black Ultra was supposed to not affect gameplay? I can move the ship all over the place past where the borders would be.

[cuttingagent]

^Yeah, I noticed that too. Probly won't be using that much. I think just having black borders would be fine.

A little word about mouse shooters: through playing some, I've noticed the mouse could almost always be substituted with an analog stick since the only parameter in need of control is *trajectory*. I just played the Noitu Love 2 demo on Steam and was, of course, disappointed. A lot of people don't have gamepads I guess?

I'd definitely buy an enhanced version of the game if it made it past Greenlight. You've obviously put a lot of work into the games and they're a great value for the money, having so many levels.

[Udderdude]

Was the remove borders on XOP Black Ultra was supposed to not affect gameplay? I can move the ship all over the place past where the borders would be.

The entire game area is 400x300, so it's displaying it all at once with no horizontal scrolling. There's no added game area, you're just seeing it all at the same time. With borders, you can only see 280x300 of it at a time.

A little word about mouse shooters: through playing some, I've noticed the mouse could almost always be substituted with an analog stick since the only parameter in need of control is *trajectory*. I just played the Noitu Love 2 demo on Steam and was, of course, disappointed. A lot of people don't have gamepads I guess?

I don't like analogue sticks to be honest. And on that note, I've updated Twin Reaper to allow you to fire using the arrow keys, so if you want, that's playable with keyboard now .. but not gamepad.

To be honest you should probably just get past the mouse-phobia .. it's a great input device, you've just played too many games that were using it wrong, ex. for things besides precise aiming.

[BPzeBanshee]

Ah, lack of wobble scrolling. That explains it. Cheers Udderdude.

[Udderdude]

Here's a quick test of what one of the bosses would look like with true color and 2x resolution ..

http://rydia.net/udder/!crap/black_boss_new.png

And the current in-game art for comparison

http://rydia.net/udder/!crap/black_boss_old.png

[Udderdude]

Yet another minor art update .. I've included a patch data file which replaces some of the art with smoothed out versions, so they better match the rest of the smoothed art. I did this for both XOP Ultra and XOP Black Ultra.

[Despatche]

seems in the last few years this turned into a crazy bundle thing!

did the ultras ever have a sound test? i'm kinda partial to the original xop title theme...

and... can i get an upload of the original xop and black? :3

[Udderdude]

The original XOP menu music is in there, you have to clear the game, and then it'll play.

No, there's no sound test. Sorry!

Here's a link to the original XOP and XOP Black

http://www.sk8tokyo.com/udder/xop.zip
http://www.sk8tokyo.com/udder/xopBlack.zip