Fren-zE - What you liked/What you didn't like

[chalky]

I am trying to find out what people liked about Fren-zE (http://www.hermitgames.com/frenze.html) and what people didnt like. Also what people would have liked to have seen in Fren-zE.

For example:

Did you like the level of difficulty?

Did you like the pattern based bullets?

Would you have liked to see a mixture of patterns and homing bullets?

How about some lasers?

[P_HAT]

Did you like the level of difficulty?

- yes

Did you like the pattern based bullets?

- not sure )

Would you have liked to see a mixture of patterns and homing bullets?

- Yes

How about some lasers?

- YEEESSSSS

also -

+ 2nd loop or 5th stage.
+ add normal score system

[Motorherp]

How do. Its been a while since I last picked this up, but I'll try and discuss the problems I had from what I remember. Basically the games flaw in my opinion came down to a combination of the difficulty level and bullet patterns. In many sections of the game, the patterns when in combination felt like pure spam which when combined with the high difficulty meant that dodging became very fustrating. When combined with the fact that the bullet clouds played out the same every time due to having no randomness, targetted, or homing bullets, the gameplay was reduced to finding and memorising the safe spots at each point in every level.

I am however talking about trying to get perfect run throughs where you collect all the orbs and use your shield only in places when you know you can absorb enough bullets to claim back the used orb. If you didn't mind sacrifising the perfect score and spamming your shield the chore factor vanished, but ultimately this left you feeling a little hollow. You shouldn't have to sacrifise the fun factor in order to pursue score, the two should work together. Anyway dont get me wrong, I actualy liked this game quite a lot, there's definately a lot of fun to be extracted from it.

I think you know who I am anyway . If you want to talk about it come and find me at lunch time.

[landshark]

My only gripe is that holding the button does not produce as fast a shot as tapping the button. I hate tapping the button.

[chalky]

So patterns that spew less bullets but dont leave any obvious static safe spot i.e. force the player to move around the screen would improve the gameplay?

[worstplayer]

I only played demo.
I like pattern based bullets.
Difficulty: OK for me. (but i suck).
Lasers: Yes, but not instant ones.
Homing bullets: Yes, but not in middle of attack where you can barely move.


What i didn't like:
-enemies pointblank you which is annoying especially for ones coming from behind. Cutoff distance would be nice.
-shield should be displayed directly on ship or at least it should be bar, not a number (having to look away from playfield to see if you can use it sucks).
-there's a lot of slowdown (which is good), but it keeps jumping between slow and normal speed which is annoying and always gets me killed. It would be nice if it slowly accelerated like in ABA games.
-joystick support please

[Motorherp]

So patterns that spew less bullets but dont leave any obvious static safe spot i.e. force the player to move around the screen would improve the gameplay?

Yes .... more or less. The reason I called it fustrating spam fire is because the way the game plays you end up with a lot of bullets all around you moving in all directions with no discernable overall pattern. It wasn't so much the fact that safe spots exist that is the problem but more that you're forced to seek them out in order to survive. In my opinion its much more fun and less fustrating if curtain fire is co-ordinated such that it creates interesting bullet mazes with a strong overall pattern to navigate. Like you say, this is even better when these bullet mazes leave no static safe spots so you cant just by-pass the maze altogether by sitting still. Targetted fire during curtain fire also forces the player to keep moving and hence navigate the bullet maze too which can make things more interesting.

Edit: I just watched the first level replay on youtube and this didn't seem to have any of the problems I've just discussed. I'm going of memory here so maybe its just certain sections on the later levels that gave me the above problems. I'll dig up the game later and give it another play.

[chalky]

worstplayer there was pad support in the last version of Fren-zE but you may want to try the new interface in the recent beta for ease of use -
http://www.hermitgames.com/files/frenze-demo002beta.zip

[Kaspal]

so, i see you're developing a new version of Fren-Ze ...

will we get the upgraded version when it comes out? (i bought the game quote awhile ago) or we must buy it again?... or even better, will there be an exe update only (so that, we just have to change our current main file with that one...)??

i loved your game, but kinda hated certain sections where the other ships pointblank you all the time...

difficulty its good enough for me, even tho, i havent been playin shmups that much lately (hence, i suck)...

and, im all in for lasers and homming bullets or whatever... let them come, but dont make the enemies cheap... that would really suck.

[MattV]

Everyone who bought the game will get an email with a link to the new version of fren-ze when it's finished. I'll make sure the emails go out before I update the version to buy off the site.

We're releasing beta's of the demo version on the hermitgames forum ( http://www.jameswburns.com/hermitgames/forum ) to try and track down bugs and get some feedback.

The new version will load your old frenze.cfg file, just extract the new zip over the old one and it'll still remember your old settings.

[Kaspal]

so... uh... whats really new in the game (appart from the visuals and stuff)?... new attacks? hommin missiles maybe?...

[MattV]

Sorry, I've made this thread confusing. The new version of fren-ze that should be released on Thursday is just an update release, v1.02. It has some tweaks and improvements. It will be free to all previous buyers.

The original reason for this thread was ideas for a new game, a meta-sequel to fren-ze. We're working on it now and won't be ready for a year or so. It'll be a completely new game.

Hope that clears everything up.