New homebrew Shmup compo, lots of new freeware games

Edge · Post by **Edge** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 6:17 am

Shmup-dev's latest coding competition site is up: The Auto Fire 2007 competition.

Among them are some seriously good entries which can all downloaded on the site. You should go and check some out, there are also reviews and screenshots for each game, so that you know what you can get.

http://shmup-dev.com/af2k7/

Have just tried a few games yet, but I can already recommend you to try Force Majeure and Blessed. Gravitron is also very good, but it a borderliner using a thrust feature, a great remake of that c64 game, Thrust.

RotateMe · Post by **RotateMe** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:25 am

Edge wrote:Have just tried a few games yet, but I can already recommend you to try Force Majeure [...]

I don't want to give any disrespect to any of the games that made it (especially since I participated myself and couldn't finish) but Force Majeure disappointed me very much

It's like having the best graphics in a homebrew shmup for YEARS and near to the worst gameplay that could come. It's slow and so unavoidable to die by bullets that are shot about 1 pixel away from you. The great graphics only add to my frustration.

sven666 · Post by **sven666** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:38 am

cool that both of FSfreaks games made the top 5

congrats man.

gotta say that the rewievs are pretty strange tho, doesnt sound like the people that wrote them play shmups at all?

thenoble1 · Post by **thenoble1** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 1:30 pm

I played a few of these and I would have to say my favorite so far is Reversed. Other than the powerups, I can't find anything to complain about.

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 5:03 pm

Mine is in there too.
Overall I think the winners were well picked.
I really wish I could have finished Attack Force Duo, I had to scrape together a qucik little arena shmup instead. (No, not a geometry wars clone with changed graphics)
How many members share both of these forums?

Edge · Post by **Edge** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 5:58 pm

I have noticed a couple from shmup-dev forum members on this site as well, I think 2bears was on this board as well. I wasn't really active on there reccently, but I did join the Horizontal Scroller with Boss competition with the game Vezgard.

Yesterday tried Clean Asia, it was pretty weird to get into this control set up. But once I started to feel a bit more comfortable I can see why they liked it so much. It's pretty much Warning Forever inspired.

Force Majeure isn't so slow, if you keep the fire button pushed your ship will slow down. So do some button mashing to fly faster again. The presentation of Force Majeure is really awesome, though I for my liking I found it a bit too much inspired by Progear. I'd like to see homebrew developers trying more individual games. Not that they need to reinvent the wheel, just some originality. But nontheless a really impressive game.

Have to try out the other games as well, haven't decided which one I like best yet.

RotateMe · Post by **RotateMe** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 6:00 pm

Pixel_Outlaw wrote:How many members share both of these forums?

+1

Followed attack force duo and I'm sad you couldn't finish it

Would have added some oldschool bits to this tourney. Will you redo afd? I'm still working on mine from time to time.

Pixel_Outlaw · Post by **Pixel_Outlaw** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 6:11 pm

RotateMe wrote:
Pixel_Outlaw wrote:How many members share both of these forums?
+1

Followed attack force duo and I'm sad you couldn't finish it Would have added some oldschool bits to this tourney. Will you redo afd? I'm still working on mine from time to time.

Probably not, all thos sprites took ages to do. I am working on two new games both will be released in one collection. Done in true 3D wireframe graphics. Gameplay will be 2D however. I made an early test demo of "RING" from my WIP game "BLOCK & RING". http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=13132

the2bears · Post by **the2bears** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:58 pm

Edge wrote:I have noticed a couple from shmup-dev forum members on this site as well, I think 2bears was on this board as well.

I tend to pop up whenever I hear my name

Bill

Gungriffon Geona · Post by **Gungriffon Geona** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:37 pm

Clean Asia was downright amazing in the long run. I played it the most out of all the games in the competition. (I would've liked for Marvellous twilight to have gotten a place, considering i was testing for it, but even then I didn't quite get a feel of a "grand work" playing it.)
Force Majuere is a right evil game, and I will definitely agree on it being horribly unplayable. just fighting to make it to the shore in the stage is rediculous, and making it farther than that is even more difficult.

P_HAT · Post by **P_HAT** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:39 pm

Cactus are great =)

Only promlem, my ps=>pc joy convector wont work with Clean Asia =(
But is my fault =)))

Post by **Ghegs** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:51 pm

RotateMe wrote:I don't want to give any disrespect to any of the games that made it (especially since I participated myself and couldn't finish) but Force Majeure disappointed me very much It's like having the best graphics in a homebrew shmup for YEARS and near to the worst gameplay that could come. It's slow and so unavoidable to die by bullets that are shot about 1 pixel away from you. The great graphics only add to my frustration.

Gungriffon Geona wrote:Force Majuere is a right evil game, and I will definitely agree on it being horribly unplayable. just fighting to make it to the shore in the stage is rediculous, and making it farther than that is even more difficult.

Worst gameplay? Unplayable? Huh? It wasn't that hard, I cleared the single stage on my first attempt. Mapping the secondary fire button to something you can hold down easily so you can freely tap/hold the main fire button should help a bit.

Gungriffon Geona · Post by **Gungriffon Geona** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 10:22 pm

I don't think the that has anything to do with it. you have to bulldog everything just to do some damage, because holding down fire ISN'T an option. doing so leaves you pretty much defenseless once a single enemy comes in fast at you. controls don't help you if your attack ability is limited hideously. (I swear to god, taking out a small chopper is like... something really freaking tedious and annoying, I dunno.)

Post by **Ghegs** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 10:40 pm

Gungriffon Geona wrote:...holding down fire ISN'T an option.

Sure it is. You hold it down when there's an enemy in front of you, kill it and return to tapping. Worked perfectly for me. I really don't get how the game can be called unplayable.

Also, hm. Are you playing the v0.1 demo that's on the AF2k7 page or the v0.2 demo that's available on Monokey's page? I only played the latter.

Adigun A. Polack · Post by **Adigun A. Polack** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 10:45 pm

Well for my money, guys, I am so glad Clean Asia has won first place... and so rather well-deserved, I gotta add!!! d=

=b Yes, I have had a bit of a hard time figuring out the keyboard controls, but once I started to get used to them, this game REALLY took off!! I was hooked instantly by the “Grab-the-enemy-debris-and-send-it-right-back-at-the-enemy” mechanic, something that has NEVER been done in shmups before... utterly innovative and original!!!

!

As for Force Majeure (compo version), it was just TOO freaking damned difficult for me, mainly because of the much larger hitbox your ship had and was too much “Progear”-like for me to really get into it at all. I mean, look, had the difficulty been a LOT easier in the first place (like a bit less bullets and a *much* smaller hitbox), then this game would surely have been playable, I think! It does shows some signs of promise of improving, however, including easing the difficulty down a little with each new version, and so I will wait and see.

About Marvellous Twilight, I first thought that it should have been in the Top-5, but it ended up placing 7th, which is not bad to me at all.

! Sure it had some great graphics, but the only thing that kept this game from being unplayable was the “Reflector Bubble” that was used on the many bullets by Player-1 to deflect them back at the enemy and the frequency rate at which it is used (based upon your continuous shot firing!)... and that was partially my idea, since I and Relsoft (Richard Eric M. Lope) made the game to begin with.

=b

Those are some of my own reactions here, and my two cents as well.

UPDATE: After playing v0.2 of Force Majeure, I can see that things are *definitely* starting to improve a little bit (like a smaller hitbox), although the bullets have to be toned down a little bit, and the shots of the ground tanks need to be slower to avoid cheap and frustrating hits. Other than that, a good start, and this game has some real potential of being so damn good!!

shmups.system11.org

New homebrew Shmup compo, lots of new freeware games

New homebrew Shmup compo, lots of new freeware games

Re: New homebrew Shmup compo, lots of new freeware games

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