Laseroid: Popcorn edition

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 1:07 pm

http://pivostudios.hustej.net/laseroid.exe

Oh no, another random abstract shmup, just what the world needs...

Boring stuff is already done, only (and most important) thing that's still missing are enemies.

But i made a big mistake. Player's bullets don't carry any information who fired them. No big deal, they destroy enemies anyway.
But i don't know how to calculate score when there's more than one player.

Possible solutions:

1. Make enemies drop medals that increase multiplier like in Giga Wing. Destroyed enemies give points to all players, but each has it's own multiplier.
2. Destroyed enemies leave bonuses, which are only way to score. (easy to implement but lame)
3. Completely rewrite everything shooting-related. (oh noooo!)
4. Just have one shared score.

Which one is best? Or is there some other solution i didn't think of?

Post by **Shatterhand** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 1:11 pm

Have one shared score. I think every 2 players shmup should be like that.

If you don't like this idea, then rewriting the shooting code would be wiser. It shouldn't be that hard, just add a flag to the bullet object telling who fired it.

moozooh · Post by **moozooh** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 1:21 pm

Options 1 and 3 are clearly better than the others. Shared score is too much of an easy solution, but you may try to spice it up by something like shared chaining (and put in a decrementing factor that would constantly decrease the score in case no chaining is happening, to make it harder to achieve a single player result).

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 3:41 pm

Ok, rewrite was easier than i thought.

I came up with following:
There are 4 scoring modes now (selectable via config menu)

- shared (default) - all players share both score and multiplier
- individual - every player has his own score and multiplier. Points are given to player whose bullet hit enemy last.
- mixed - when enemy is destroyed points are given all players, but each has his own multiplier
- nearest - like above but points are given to player which was nearest to enemy at the moment when it was destroyed

Good? Bad?

EDIT: Moozoh, I don't know if chaining is a good idea in randomly generated game. I can try it but i don't think it'll work very well.

moozooh · Post by **moozooh** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 5:04 pm

I think mixed is better than shared; also, nearest doesn't seem too fair, maybe it's better to give the points to the player that dealt more damage to the enemy instead?

Post by **Dave_K.** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:05 pm

Shared would be great for tracking score in dual-play mode (one person playing both ships ala Raiden 3).

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:26 pm

moozooh wrote:I think mixed is better than shared; also, nearest doesn't seem too fair, maybe it's better to give the points to the player that dealt more damage to the enemy instead?

lol it would be funny with nearest, both players would race to point blank everything xD

moozooh · Post by **moozooh** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:45 pm

Yeah, and crash into the enemy before it gets killed. :D

That would be really funny with suicide bullets, though.

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 9:53 pm

First public test.
There are still no enemies but i added few inactive (but destructible) targets to try out weapons, collisions and stuff.

http://rapidshare.com/files/79719221/test.exe.html

Please report any problems you encounter.
If everything works i might finally start coding enemies.

Patrik · Post by **Patrik** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 10:41 pm

Hello!

Looks promissing, hope will see more stuff there comming soon. How it is done? gamemaker or c?

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:10 am

Patrik wrote:Hello!

Looks promissing, hope will see more stuff there comming soon. How it is done? gamemaker or c?

Game Maker, but with no D&D actions. Pure GML.

And more stuff is on the way. I just got enemy generator working and now i'm making enemy formations. I try to avoid problem with other randomly generated shmups where enemies come as one chaotic mass.

EDIT:
Test 2: popcorn
http://rapidshare.com/files/79932865/test.exe.html

First two enemies. Looks like my idea with waypoints worked and enemy motion really isn't completely chaotic.

More enemies on the way. Prepare for total bullet hell (As much as GM can handle

).

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:27 am

Two more enemies but they're kinda buggy so no test yet.

And couple more questions.

1: Speed differences between ships: Should all players move at same speed (as they do now)or there should be differences? Is current speed OK? What about making some of them actually move faster in "slow" mode?

2: Balance: I made it so some ships like one with six guns and one with missiles are more effective againist popcorn, while dragon and ship with heavy cannons are better againist large enemies. Good? Bad?

3: Should random shmup have end? I want to make it so when rank reach certain level, huge boss will appear and after defeating him the game just ends. But i don't know if it's good idea as i never played random shmup with end.

4: Extends: Good or bad? Extends often turn game into suicidefest (Garegga) but having three lives and that's it seem a bit unfair.

5: Suicide bullets: Leave them in or turn them off?

Kaiser · Post by **Kaiser** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 10:38 am

About 3, i thought of nice idea, basically after specific number of waves boss appears, basically there will be 8 bosses... final boss after destroying will reveal TLB, it's better than parsec47!

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 1:59 pm

Test3: massive update

- 2 new enemies
- enemies that leave screen return faster
- enemies can't enter screen from bottom
- pointblank distance, enemies that are too close or too fast don't shoot
- completely rewritten particle system - up to 500% faster
- controls - switched fire and slow (touhou style)
- player 3 can now be also controled by WASD+numpad
- launching bomb causes enemies to forget waypoints and run away

- new enemy generation system - more organized
- new class of enemies can have multiple weapons (not used yet)
- improved bullet visibility - they blink and have dark "aura" around them which makes them easily visible in any situation (at least in theory).
- game can be now started by any player's controller - space no longer used
- various bugfixes
- more optimization - game now runs without slowdown even on junk like Athlon 800.

incognoscente · Post by **incognoscente** » Sun Dec 30, 2007 5:25 pm

1. Variations in speed for different ships is good, but please don't make all the ships with wide shot Raiden-slow. If you do alter ship details, please don't touch this one (my favorite).

2. I like my popcorn to be popcorn. I didn't play with the weak-vs.-popcorn ships for long.

3. I would rather not have a game like this end since I like to drive up the multiplier. It's your game, though, and there are ways you can make it work. I don't think rank is a good metric for boss spawnings, though, since it tends to be a hidden value. Score or especially multiplier is a better trigger for a boss. Triggering a boss via multiplier means that sneaky players could rack up points before the boss by strategically avoiding multiplier-items.

4. Extends are good for this kind of game if you want to encourage high multiplier/high score play. Extends at 300,000 points, then at every million points could work, especially if you have disincentives for dying (eg, dying halves the multiplier). Make extends a nice but rare bonus for players that push hard.

5. I don't like suicide/revenge bullets from popcorn enemies, but I like the death spreads fired by medium/large enemies.

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:49 pm

New scoring gimmick:
Player sucks in multipliers but only ones below him and when he doesn't shoot. Sucked multipliers have 3x value.
It's sort of risk-reward system encouraging player not to shoot, stay on top of screen and collect multis indirectly.
Players can also cooperate (one turns multi's into 3x and and other one picks them up).

What do you think about this idea?

You can try it here

Also check out my new enemy generator. I'm really proud of this one. It kinda mimics structure of non-random shmups. It sends enemies in waves, alternates between waves of small and large enemies (but also sends mixed waves), only sends weak enemies in the beginning and leaves stronger units for later, and tries not to overwhelm player until rank gets too high. (if it sends too strong wave it waits longer before new one, if too weak, it'll send additional units).
But it's still kinda buggy and some of those features will only show up after i make more types of enemies.

I also removed some of revenge bullets and made popcorn more popcorny (thanks incognoscente)

And only one new enemy today. I'll try harder next time

incognoscente · Post by **incognoscente** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 4:08 pm

The new scoring mechanic is interesting and fun, but I see two problems in the current version of the system:
1. Rank/difficulty takes too long to increase.
2. Most of the time, new waves of enemies do not spawn until the previous wave has been killed off. Since the player will often stop shooting to auto-collect multiplier items, this means that only two or three enemies are left to shoot on the screen and no popcorn squadrons (the main source of points) are missed. This can make the early game seem empty, but it is a relief after the 10-minute mark.

Neither problem will kill the game if your goals are:
A. a prolonged window of lower difficulty that lets less-skilled players have more fun with the game.
B. all players to score at least a million points.
C. skilled players to have 15+ minute sessions with the game.

If frame-updated rank is based only on game time elapsed, then consider tying rank into the multiplier itself or an adjusted rate of the current multiplier and game time. If you were to implement a death penalty like cutting the active multiplier in half, then respawning would bring a player into a slightly easier game. This is good for a new player that got in over their head, but may be a source of exploits by skilled players. Retaining the game time factor may keep skilled players from intentionally dropping rank for easier points.

If your rank system has fewer steps and you only calculate rank increases once every half minute or minute (eg, if after 360 frames rank++; ), then consider factoring in the multiplier gain per minute (rank = (rank+1) + floor(multiplier_gain_minute / 75); ). The multiplier shoots up quickly in early game, but slows down considerably in the second half. This system would have massive rank increases early for skilled players but slow down difficulty increase significantly by the end. Less skilled players would not see the worst difficulty unless they survived for a long, long time.

Recommended extends for this version: none or 3 million and 15 million only.

Best scoring session of this version:
40,786,992 - x2087 [13 minutes, 25 seconds]
20,000,000+ was attained with the first ship.

Best scoring session of previous version:
4,088,450 - x403 [6 minutes, 53 seconds]

edit: current version: 55,174,488 -x2290

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 10:28 am

New version is here.

- Rank now goes up faster and it's affected by multiplier. Shorter time between waves (thanks incognoscente)
- Another rewrite of particles. Slowdown should now be neglible so set them to extreme, yo.
- 4 new enemies.
- More explosions. Now with 100% more flying crap.
- Made background less obnoxious.
- Removed unused objects (faster loading)
- Fixed idiotic memory leak when starting new game. (Never forget to delete textures you no longer need, kids)

And again, bug reports and general criticism welcome.

incognoscente wrote:current version: 55,174,488 -x2290

Heh, i just got completely pwned in my own game. Nice.

FSR · Post by **FSR** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 5:58 pm

The game runs very smooth on my somewhat old computer. That impresses me, considering all the semi transparent effects, and also tells me that this game is very well coded.

Here are my system specs, might be useful for a minium requirements data sheet.
Pentium 4
1,8GHz
256 MB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440
Windows XP

Please copy&paste Z key action (focus movement) to the Y key. Z and Y are swapped in German speaking regions, and this makes playing a lot harder than it should be.

Post by **Ghegs** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 6:14 pm

Feels and plays rather nice. F-Secure complained that the executable is trying to change something in the system, but even after not allowing it the game plays just fine.

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Mon Jan 07, 2008 9:04 pm

Ghegs wrote:Feels and plays rather nice. F-Secure complained that the executable is trying to change something in the system, but even after not allowing it the game plays just fine.

This is known problem with Game Maker. Some antivirus programs recognize all GM games as win32.constructor or simply malware.gen because they're compressed with ASpack, same exe packer as said virus. I'll unpack next version before uploading (which should also make it work in Vista). It also tries to directly access keyboard, so some stupid programs (including my firewall) think it's keylogger. Try running any other GM game (that wasn't unpacked) and you'll probably see same thing.

Edit: Here's unpacked version:
http://rapidshare.com/files/82159097/laseroid.exe.html

Should be compatible with Vista (Someone please test it, i'll NEVER put Vista on my machine), and antiviruses should no longer freak out.
However, this is NOT a new version, just few small bugfixes (i didn't have much time)
- Y now works as slowdown button (for users of QWERTZ keyboards)
- sucking multipliers is now easier
- game now starts at MUCH higher rank (selectable difficulty coming soon)
- score displays now easier to read

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 11:28 am

Boss test:Get it here

I finally made something that resembless boss. Graphics are just placeholders and there are some bugs, but it works. My random pattern generator is also far from perfect. Sometimes it makes nice rRootage-like patterns but mostly just makes random boring spreads.

NRS · Post by **NRS** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 8:50 am

worstplayer wrote: Should be compatible with Vista (Someone please test it, i'll NEVER put Vista on my machine), and antiviruses should no longer freak out.

Yeah, it runs fine on Vista. I'm running Vista Home Premium, by the way.

It's a certainly a nice game so far. *thumbs up*

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Sat Mar 08, 2008 12:20 pm

I was bored today, so i decided to make a simple edit. I made all bullets 2 to 3 times faster. So if you hate slow bullets, give this version a try

http://rapidshare.com/files/97950898/laseroid.exe.html

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Wed May 07, 2008 5:26 pm

Popcorn edition is here
http://pivostudios.hustej.net/laseroid.exe

Changes:
More popcorn (you guessed it)
Music
4 difficulty levels
Bugfixes

Oh, and moved to GM7 so there should be no more AV false alerts.

EDIT: slightly modified version uploaded. Feeling lucky? Attack enemies with blade for MASSIVE bonus.
EDIT2: If you could de-engrish this file for me, i'd be very thankful.

emphatic · Post by **emphatic** » Fri Oct 24, 2008 12:31 pm

Nice effort. I ended up playing it (popcorn edition)lots of times. Got a Psikyo feel to the enemy fire I think. Although the suiced bullets are really frustrating and kills me the most. Aimed bullets should be faster and suicide ones should be big and slower. Imho.

Emph

lilmanjs · Post by **lilmanjs** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 9:04 pm

could somebody please upload the popcorn edition of this game on mediafire or someplace like that? the download is very slow(gets to 3kb/s).

worstplayer · Post by **worstplayer** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 11:09 pm

lilmanjs wrote:could somebody please upload the popcorn edition of this game on mediafire or someplace like that? the download is very slow(gets to 3kb/s).

http://www.mediafire.com/?oewtddw4jzw

ChurchOfSolipsism · Post by **ChurchOfSolipsism** » Mon Nov 03, 2008 5:15 pm

Checked out a youtube vid, this looks sweet! As soon as I get home (still at uni right now) I'll dl it and check it out. Thanks for posting!

lilmanjs · Post by **lilmanjs** » Mon Nov 24, 2008 9:40 pm

is there anywhere we can get the song from this awsome game?