War on Bugs -Updated 3/3/2010

[agustusx]

War on Bugs
Maniac Shooting Game

Game Description
War on Bugs is a vertical scrolling shooter. You control one of two selectable characters and choose between 3 unique Helper types. This is an alpha version so the game will loop after the 4th stage. More information can be found in game by pressing F1. Runs about 55fps on an XP machine thats about 8 years old with 512 ram and a 64mb videocard.

Core Information
Title: War on Bugs
Genre/Category: Arcade Shooter
Download Size: ~30 MB
Game File-Type: Zip
Suggested Minimum Resolution: 800x600
Resolution: No Change, Windowed
Current Version: v0.77
Written In: :GM7: Registered

Screenshots


More Screenshots
http://chironinteractive.com/component/ ... ,category/

Videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY1VzFW3Ua0

Score Attack update for .58
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnJ0o0u_gpk


Mirrors
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/94232-war-on-bugs
http://www.filefront.com/15735097/WoB77e.zip/
http://chironinteractive.com/downloads/WoB77e.zip


Final Comments
No fancy 3D.
100% Particle system free.
4 Stages for testing as well as Score Attack Mode
Original Music.
3 Difficultly levels each with own scoreboards.
User configurable controls, Music/SFX levels and Video sync.
You can toggle between full screen and windowed modes by pressing the F4 key on your keyboard.

Scoring
Destroying enemies with your main shot gains you points as well as some charge-up items. Collect these for points and so that you can use your powershot. Destroying enemies with your powershot will give you a higher score but the enemies will not drop charge up items. Destroying enemies with bombs gives you less points, but still drops charge-up items.

The configurable buttons are:
Main Shot/Accept -During gameplay this is your primary mode of attack. During menus this will accept the current selection.
Charge Shot - This fires the characters special attack that is more powerful than the main shot. It requires that you have collected some charge items. Your charge inventory is listed at the bottom middle of the screen. You can not collect more than twenty at a time so use this often. Also used in menus to move backward.
Bomb -This will discharge a bomb unique to each character.
Start - Moves you forward in menus and pauses gameplay.

Difficulty Settings
At the beginning of your game you can choose between Larva, Normal or Hard difficulty settings. The higher the difficulty the more bullets, and Hard has a bullet speed increase as well.

Whats Changed for .77
Fixed bug that prevented an enemy from spawning properly
Player will no longer collide with land enemies (excluding the giant worms on stage3)
Gems give you more points the faster you pick them up
Some of the Stage 1 Boss's attacks have been slowed down
Fixed the pause menu bug for keyboard users-Joystick users will still need to use their primary fire button to select "continue" or "exit"
Added 4th stage and 4th stage boss
minor changes to Stage 3 boss head/neck health
Optimized Naomi's bomb, dmg may be slightly different but it is more efficient now
Character speed changes-both characters have less drastic speed differences between firing and non firing
Naomi's movement speed while firing has increased
Sam's top movement speed has been slightly reduced but his firing speed increased
Options are now destroyed when you run out of lives
You can now skip the between stage dialogs more quickly, and the fadei-n/fade-out time has been decreased
Updated charge capacity to 30, this allows the player to store more while still encouraging them to regularly use the charge instead of stocking it for a long time
Fixed a bug where some resources were not unloading
Medals now destroy when off-screen


Known Bugs:
Sometimes sounds do not play when triggered.

As always, feedback is appreciated.

[worstplayer]

This game is fucking amazing!

[EddyMRA]

Screens look amazing! I will try it out when I get home from school later today, and give feedback then.

[Ixmucane2]

Very nice graphics (only the bland fonts should be improved) and, more importantly, very fun to play.
Maybe it could be a bit longer (either one level or additional interesting enemy waves or boss forms to extend the existing levels) and/or a bit more difficult (bullet patterns are mostly benign).

Feature request: selecting primary weapon, secondary weapon and bomb independently would allow many more sensible combination (e.g. straight primary and homing secondary). There would be 24 different loadouts; more if you add weapons (perhaps a continuous beam).

[null1024]

Oh, damn. This is nice. Very nice.
Only things were that I wasn't too sure of where my hitbox was, and the massive speed difference between shooting and not shooting took me by surprise. This looks filled with polish and shine, very smooth and nice.

[emphatic]

When I played it I thought about Dragon Blaze with CAVE mechanics. Pretty game + fun to play. I know it's an alpha version, which just makes it more awesome. Will you please put a TATE mode in when it has full screen support? I'd love to play this in my cabinet as I'm sure it will be all sorts of awesome on my 15 kHz screen.

[agustusx]

Guys, thanks for the feedback. I am anxious to start work on the 4th stage, but I want to take a few days off to build up the passion again I tend to work very seriously for a bit then stop for awhile to clear the mind.

Originally I just made a prototype to prove I could pull of something bullet-hellish and I just kept adding elements until I thought it warranted a larger effort. For humor sake you can see some of the early stages of the game.


worstplayer: Thanks much!

Alluro: I'll be waiting for your input as well. I lurk your XF Remake thread and it seems quite promising. I am not so knowledgeable about the originals so I leave the passionate folks room to speak

null1024: I would definitely like to implement an improved hitbox indicator. Maybe shining star like shiki. The center of the collar is the hitbox, but I know this is not always the easiest to see, especially when moving left and right.

Regarding the speed difference between firing and not, is this something you can adjust to or is it simply a deal killer? This is something that has been tweaked a few times during development. I am quite used to it right now, but I'm interesting in hearing more. Anyone else have this same issue?


Ixmucane2: The game is yet to be completed, so it will be a bit longer. However I don't intend for it to run more than about 15 mins. It may run into the 20 min mark depending on how I feel about stage 4+. There is more to come so feel free to drop in and check progress out in a few weeks.

I appreciate the feature request, but I don't think I will allow the player to select primary, secondary and bombs independently. One of the (intentional) challenges for me in this game is trying to have 2 separate characters that have trade offs. Bottom-line: If I were to let the character select everything the only difference between characters would be speed.

In most situations the bombs are very equal in performance, they just look different.

(Unscientific research shows that beginners pick women first) The appeal of Naomi is that she has the noob friendly attacks. Spread requires less movement and a you can dodge while using the homing secondary if things are overwhelming. But she suffers in speed because of it. I don't think she is ridiculously slow either, just slowish She should not need the speed to be successful. Sam's additional speed can be leveraged by those who enjoy picking their shots. Additionally beginners may not love all the speed that Sam offers.

Certain combination are overkill or would under-perform. Sam + homing + spread or Naomi + speed boost would be overly powerful. On the other hand a slow Naomi + straight shot and cannons= weak.

The goal is that the selectable helpers allow the door to be opened for different play-styles. Naomi can go all spread, or strengthen her forward attack. Sam can get a bit of help from homing missiles, or have the strongest forward attack available.

With my last two cents on the matter, I think not forcing differences in the characters/ships shows the developers lack of commitment to a particular setup (excluding the great Dangun Feveron). I am confident that these setups are fair and enjoyable.

I probably overstated my logic, but Ixmucane2 and anyone else feel free to debate with me.


Thanks again all. More in a week or two.

[agustusx]

When I played it I thought about Dragon Blaze with CAVE mechanics. Pretty game + fun to play. I know it's an alpha version, which just makes it more awesome. Will you please put a TATE mode in when it has full screen support? I'd love to play this in my cabinet as I'm sure it will be all sorts of awesome on my 15 kHz screen.

You snuck in there didn't you It's great you mention Dragon Blaze as its one of my favorite games that I still underplay. The mushroom stage visual was inspired by a stage from Dragon Blaze and a section from Gunbird 2.

Configurable options like configurable controls, audio and sync came out of a personal desire. I would enjoy this on my tated CRT as well. A while back I was in Alluros XF Remake thread and null1024 and others had some suggestions for how to get this working for him. I tried doing some tate, but it failed miserably! I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed so if I could find a tate example for GM I would love to try again. Anybody have some success on tating in GM they would like to share with me? I can send you digital beer

[emphatic]

You snuck in there didn't you It's great you mention Dragon Blaze as its one of my favorite games that I still underplay. The mushroom stage visual was inspired by a stage from Dragon Blaze and a section from Gunbird 2.

This was pretty much why I thought of Dragon Blaze.

A while back I was in Alluros XF Remake thread and null1024 and others had some suggestions for how to get this working for him. I tried doing some tate, but it failed miserably! I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed so if I could find a tate example for GM I would love to try again. Anybody have some success on tating in GM they would like to share with me? I can send you digital beer

Thank you for pursuing this, as I'd love to see it integrated into XF-R as well (if the method is simple enough to be too tempting to leave out).
Edit: Perhaps null1024, Worstplayer or whoever it was suggesting how to TATE GM games will help out with this option if you PM them or create a thread about it?

[Ixmucane2]

The game is yet to be completed, so it will be a bit longer. However I don't intend for it to run more than about 15 mins. It may run into the 20 min mark depending on how I feel about stage 4+. There is more to come so feel free to drop in and check progress out in a few weeks.

Exactly what I wanted to hear. How do you feel about the current difficulty level?

I appreciate the feature request, but I don't think I will allow the player to select primary, secondary and bombs independently. One of the (intentional) challenges for me in this game is trying to have 2 separate characters that have trade offs. Bottom-line: If I were to let the character select everything the only difference between characters would be speed.

Not really: the design space for differences between characters includes speed while shooting, speed while not shooting, inertia, hitbox, helper formations, firing rate, one of the three weapons (presumably the more important primary shot), scoring parameters, special shot capacity (not necesarily 20) and countless subtle features.
Different speeds and hitboxes would be enough for a meaningful choice; one signature weapon (rather than three) should be enough for Sam and Naomi's characterization.
You can also link speed to weapons (rather than directly to characters) in the interest of game balance.

In most situations the bombs are very equal in performance, they just look different.

I agree; switching bomb types is unlikely to be a problem.

(Unscientific research shows that beginners pick women first) The appeal of Naomi is that she has the noob friendly attacks. Spread requires less movement and a you can dodge while using the homing secondary if things are overwhelming. But she suffers in speed because of it. I don't think she is ridiculously slow either, just slowish She should not need the speed to be successful. Sam's additional speed can be leveraged by those who enjoy picking their shots. Additionally beginners may not love all the speed that Sam offers.

This is a good design rationale, but it implies that a middle ground between the current beginner and expert choices would be desirable.
Appearing noob-friendly is one thing, actual power is another thing: do you intend either character of your current design to be more reliable for 1CCing the game? Or likely to score higher?

Certain combination are overkill or would under-perform. Sam + homing + spread or Naomi + speed boost would be overly powerful. On the other hand a slow Naomi + straight shot and cannons= weak.

As I suggested above, you can make characters faster or slower according to their weapon: specifically, faster if they have the straight shot, faster if they have the cannon helpers, and faster if they have the laser bomb (i.e. the most aimed choices).

The goal is that the selectable helpers allow the door to be opened for different play-styles. Naomi can go all spread, or strengthen her forward attack. Sam can get a bit of help from homing missiles, or have the strongest forward attack available.

Selecting weapons and bombs would be even more interesting.

With my last two cents on the matter, I think not forcing differences in the characters/ships shows the developers lack of commitment to a particular setup (excluding the great Dangun Feveron). I am confident that these setups are fair and enjoyable.

With your well designed weapons, other setups can be equally fair and enjoyable.
Customization possibilities show commitment to offering the player flexibility, variety, experimentation; on the other hand I fail to see the value of reducing choices, except perhaps to avoid complication and beginner anxiety (i.e. not knowing what they are deciding about) and to allow more assumptions about what the player can do in level design.

[agustusx]

The difficulty ramp is where i wanted it at this point. In particular the end of the 3rd stage needs some tweaking, but overall I am content. We will see how it goes from here. The fourth stage should present interesting challenges...

[Sidebar] I find the threads on the differences in ships and play-styles in Raiden Fighters , Battle Bakraid or Dangun very interesting, and its the breadth of gameplay mechanics make these games great with long term appeal to a seasoned shmup player. [/Sidebar]

Your thoughts on the differences in characters hold ground and normally I agree with them. I just didn't plan for that sort of depth in this game. I don't think things are broken as they are so I would hate to try to spice things up ultimately to ruin what works. I would be happy making a solid game but I agree adding the additional elements could bump it up a notch.

While there is definitely time for changes I plan to complete another stage and evaluate where things stand. I definitely want to rethink the charge capacity (including cost per round) and introduce a few more enemies. I will be rehashing some enemies that have been under-utilized, but still add some fresh faces on each level.

Helper formations is something I have been thowing around for awhile. I wouldn't want a complex Raizing-styled control system , something really simple. I'll have to keep thinking it over some more.

I want to rethink the scoring mechanics as there is another layer I've been wanting to add. The idea is the casual player wouldn't even notice the system, while those who love playing for score would have something else to strive for. Any thoughts?

[agustusx]

Version Updated to Alpha .58.

What was Done?
Preliminary Hitbox indication
Slight change in player sprite and hitbox position
Added 3 New Enemies in Score attack that we be in stage 4 of Arcade Mode
Added 13 new "waves" of encounters to Score Attack
Fix scoring for destroying worm with charge attack from 100pts to 1000pts
Fixed bug that prevented worm from appearing in stage 3
Corrected a typo in dialog
Tweaked 3 Stage Difficulty
Changed Score Attack Background

New Screenshot for score attack


New Link at Filefront, will update the yoyogames file when site returns.
http://www.filefront.com/14454057/WOBAlpha58.zip/

Also new video with updated score attack demonstration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnJ0o0u_gpk

More soon

[emphatic]

Is that "Bomb get!" text new as well? It's very cool.

[agustusx]

Is that "Bomb get!" text new as well? It's very cool.

It's been there, glad you can read anything with all that text on the screen. Without it its just not the same experience though. As long as you can read the important collectibles text I'm happy (bombs, power ups, helpers).

My hopes is to make more progress on the 4th stage this weekend, the new characters are doneish. I just need to program the mid/end bosses for the stage. I'll prolly put the stage together first and share that, then work on the end boss. I can get pretty picky when it comes to boss patterns.

[Lynx Winters]

Found this through your signature link. This is pretty fun and shows a lot of effort and a good knowledge of the genre. There's just a few things that stand out for me.

For some reason the stage 1 boss seems harder than the stage 2 and 3 bosses. Maybe it's the fast bullets that come out of nowhere, and on hard there were definitely times that things were kind of silly (phase 2 attack where the fast bullets are flying out and a long string of slower bullets covers the entire area between fast bullets comes to mind). Another thing is the small bullets hiding behind larger ones. I don't mind the small bullets by themselves, but there's been a number of times where a small bullet from the other side of the screen gets covered by a cloud of larger, slower bullets moving in a different direction. The end result is me getting hit by a bullet I didn't even know was coming because there was one beetle on the other side of the screen, sort of a Raiden sniper complaint.

The last thing is that for some reason I die when colliding with ground-based enemies. This happens all the time when dodging stuff and I think "I'll just fly over that ground bug and take it out while getting out of the way of this attack" and suddenly I'm down a life. I can't think of the last shooter I played where the player could die from running into an enemy that looks like it's 50 feet below everything else.

Really though, don't take this post as saying this isn't a fun game. I'm having a good time with it for the most part, it's just a few things that happen and I start thinking it was bullshit. Looking forward to how this develops!

[Udderdude]

Great game, I love the "grab ammo for super weapon that lets you score higher" thing. Really addictive.

It could use some proximity bonus for picking up the red chip things (faster you pick them up, more points you get from them). Even more scoring potential is a good thing.

It's also quite easy to get tons of points off of the bosses with bombs. Just drop one when it's got a heavy pattern going on. Not sure if you intended this or not.

The news bulletins were somewhat amusing (especially the headlines) but I wish there was a way to turn them off.

The second stage music has some dissonant notes/chords going on in it. Not sure exactly how to put it, but it was really distracting. Then again I am really sensitive about that sort of thing.

[Ravicious]

As a fellow game developer I've spotted your work on YoYo Games and played your Youtube video many times. I must say I am most impressed with the bullet formations. It inspired me enough to create the same effects on my own game, not to mention gave me more reason NOT to ice my project.

By definition an outstanding game. It is inventive, colorful, and squishing bugs has never been this fun.

[ShmupSamurai]

Looks great so far, can't wait for full version.

Nice title btw.

[agustusx]

thanks all for the feedback, i have been really lazy since futari, dragon age and bayonetta have come out.

@ Lynx I do think the fast bullets on the first boss need reworking.

The ground bugs are inheriting the collision that all the enemies have, easy fix!

@ Udderdude nice thought on the proximity bonuses. Will think about that.

You can speed up the news reports, but perhaps not fast enough. lol They are really just there so i can unload/load resources and i figured I would do something with it.

@ Rav & ShmupSamurai thanks much

I plan to have an update in February. Thanks again for giving it a go and giving me some things to think about.

[Udderdude]

Where's mah bugs update >_>

[agustusx]

Works been killin me but this weekend I'll have the 4th stage to present!

[agustusx]

Update so far:
Added a proximity based multiplier for collecting gems. Gems start red and turn blue when they have "cooled down" and the multiplier has diminished.
Tweaked the first stage boss so it no longer has the extra fast round of projectiles.
Ground based enemies excluding the giant worms on S3 no longer collide with the player.
I fixed a bug that prevented a certain enemy from spawning in the game. Certain areas may seem a bit more difficult now, but the enemy was always intended to exist.
Tweaked the 4th stage enemies a bit.

I'll keep my yapper shut till I can post the updates along with the 4th stage(unless I lose inet and power it will be this weekend).

Since my last update I have worked on a few concept designs and learned a bunch of better practices. Returning to WOB I realize I was a total idiot with some of my coding/design decisions.

Thanks for the nudge guys. More stuff soon...

[agustusx]

Running into a FPS issue that I need to figure out Not sure what I added that is causing the dips/pops. I'll need to review my code and make sure everything is making sense.

Aside from that the 4th boss is done and the 4th stage is getting tweaked. I still need to refine the bg graphics though.

Teaser pic of some of the new boss patterns in the test stage.

[agustusx]

OP updated with links for updated version of WoB.

Here's a screen of Stage 4.


Thanks all for the suggestions, I fit in as many as I could. Let me know what you think.

Edit some links to Stage 4 videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM9XpKUfJ7Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfm0i31QFL4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78TG-07Ys6g

[Udderdude]

I will try it in a bit.

Edit: Oops, I'm lazy and will try it later :3

[Aru-san]

After playing Score Attack on Hard a bunch of times, I came up with some score mechanic ideas...but I don't want to feel like I'm trying to change your game too much.

The score mechanic in question involves multipliers.

[agustusx]

After playing Score Attack on Hard a bunch of times, I came up with some score mechanic ideas...but I don't want to feel like I'm trying to change your game too much.

The score mechanic in question involves multipliers.

Yeah score attack is a bit rough and I never got around to tweaking it as much as I would have liked to before the last update. Out of curiosity how would you implement multipliers into the score attack mode?

[Aru-san]

Yeah score attack is a bit rough and I never got around to tweaking it as much as I would have liked to before the last update. Out of curiosity how would you implement multipliers into the score attack mode?

Have 2 multipliers:

- One will be based on consecutively killing enemies with the power shot. Killing something with the power shot will raise the multiplier by 1 (or 0.1 if you don't want deeply inflated scores, whichever you'd want). Base points from killing enemies, small items, large items, and even power-up surpluses will be affected by this multiplier. The multiplier resets to 1x when you shoot your main shot, use a bomb, or die. It makes for good tactical scoring because you have to think steps ahead to figure out what will give the most points after your power shot run.

- Another will be based on rank. I assume that the stars next to the bomb count are rank indicators, so you can probably have something like this: 0-2 stars = 1x, 3-4 stars = 2x, and 5 stars = 3x (or whatever you might prefer). The multiplier doesn't apply to enemies killed with the bomb (as well as the items that come out from them). I thought it'd be pretty nifty for it rewards people that survive longer.

[agustusx]

Have 2 multipliers:

- One will be based on consecutively killing enemies with the power shot. Killing something with the power shot will raise the multiplier by 1 (or 0.1 if you don't want deeply inflated scores, whichever you'd want). Base points from killing enemies, small items, large items, and even power-up surpluses will be affected by this multiplier. The multiplier resets to 1x when you shoot your main shot, use a bomb, or die. It makes for good tactical scoring because you have to think steps ahead to figure out what will give the most points after your power shot run.

- Another will be based on rank. I assume that the stars next to the bomb count are rank indicators, so you can probably have something like this: 0-2 stars = 1x, 3-4 stars = 2x, and 5 stars = 3x (or whatever you might prefer). The multiplier doesn't apply to enemies killed with the bomb (as well as the items that come out from them). I thought it'd be pretty nifty for it rewards people that survive longer.

I think these are some fun ideas to play with so I may go ahead implement those in a build to see how it feels. The way I have things set up it wouldn't be hard to pop these in. I actually had a rank based multiplier similar to what you describe in for a short time but I pulled it out for some reason.

thanks for the feedback

[Aru-san]

I think these are some fun ideas to play with so I may go ahead implement those in a build to see how it feels. The way I have things set up it wouldn't be hard to pop these in. I actually had a rank based multiplier similar to what you describe in for a short time but I pulled it out for some reason.

thanks for the feedback

No prob, agustusx. I'd like to try out that build sometime when it comes out.

If you want, you can use my first multiplier suggestion in the arcade mode.