Hydorah - indie shooter that actually does things right

[Gungriffon Geona]

Hey this is out now.
Trailer
Main Site with game download

I cut the massive set of paragraphs since they don't offer much anymore. I may as well just say this game is spectacular and you owe it to yourself to play it right fucking now.
If you have audio issues, you may need to make an ffdshow codec exception, as it has a tendency to fuck with the game's music. there's also a few issues with the display, but I assume it shouldn't be too terribly hard to fix them.

So what are you waiting for? go try it!

[Lok]

Game definitely looks fun, I especially like the multi-tiered levels it shows in the demo. Gonna download and give it a whirl.

Edit: Yeah I don't like how the explosions obscure the bullets. Makes for some frustrating deaths but other than that seems like solid indie shooter.

[TodayIsForgotten]

I've always enjoyed these fan inspired projects. I've seen some cool mega man remakes and a really cool ghouls and ghost remake or something of that nature. This, while a bit different than nemesis/gradius definitely looks good.

[Udderdude]

The current demo has some hitbox issues (I already eMailed the developer about it)

It's a pretty good game so far and gets difficult pretty quickly, especially if you can't keep up with killing all the enemies that appear.

[system11]

Hah - that looks kind of interesting!

Someone was a huge Gradius fan of course..

[Iaspis]

The current demo has some hitbox issues (I already eMailed the developer about it)

It's a pretty good game so far and gets difficult pretty quickly, especially if you can't keep up with killing all the enemies that appear.

So, there are hitbox issues, I'm glad it's not just me imagine things. Apart from that, the demo looks awesome, the difficulty level is more than challenging and I'm really looking forward to the final version.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

The trailer looked great, I'll download it as soon as all this pesky christmas business is over...

[Gungriffon Geona]

Hydorah has been released.
http://www.locomalito.com/juegos_hydorah.php

Gotta say that so far this game is quite fantastic. there's a few areas of questionable hit detection, but nothing that's game breaking. There's also an absolutely ridiculous amount of stuff in the game, which I was expecting honestly.

[lilmanjs]

loved the trailer and gonna try this out tonight. I hope its fun.

[system11]

Oh, now this is impressive I may even have to find my PS->USB pad adapter.

[Rozyrg]

music by Gryzor87

Dammit.

Game looks utterly gorgeous, though. *This* is the kind of fan project I like to see happen. Just wish it would happen more often.

[Drum]

I was amazed this got such a positive reception here - the demo had a ton of problems. Excited to check out the full version, tho - all the problems were very fixable and that pixel art is great.

[kengou]

This is certainly pretty good! Clearly a lot of attention to detail and a lot of work went into this. There's some small complaints, but overall worth playing. This is exactly how I WISH all the new commercial PSN/XLBA shmups would be like.

[linko9]

Just played for a half hour or so. Incredible level of polish, much better than many (I might even say most) commercial shmups these days. Truly amazing graphics for a freeware game, and nice music too. Can't say I like the checkpoints too much, but I guess the solution for that is to not die. I'll have to wait around a week to really play this, but I can't wait to do so.

[Drum]

Game is really great. Hydorah <3 <3 <3

[mistcore]

The game plays fine except for the BGM that stutters constantly.
I'm running Windows XP SP3 on a Lenovo netbook.
The game seems to play normally, and sound effects are played normally as well.
Does anyone know if there is any solution to make the BGM stop stuttering?

[Gungriffon Geona]

music by Gryzor87

Dammit.

Not really sure who the guy is, but the music in the game is quite fitting, and at some points pretty damn catchy. Does the guy normally make really bad music?

The game plays fine except for the BGM that stutters constantly.
I'm running Windows XP SP3 on a Lenovo netbook.
The game seems to play normally, and sound effects are played normally as well.
Does anyone know if there is any solution to make the BGM stop stuttering?

could possibly be codecs that are attempting to run during the game. might need to check that. if they are, your codec control panel SHOULD be allow you to make program specific exceptions. try adding it and see if that works.
If not, I think someone else might need to figure it out :/

[Elixir]

Playing the game at full screen is a blurry mess, and pressing F2 doesn't seem to help. Is there a way of removing the bilinear filtering while in full screen?

[Ruldra]

Just played the whole thing, and holy crap it's awesome. It has everything I like in a shmup. Really impressed.

The save feature is kind of credit-feeding though, takes away the whole challenge. But play without saving and it becomes as hard as Gradius III. Should be one hell of a challenge.

Did anyone find the six secrets? I could only find the pink elephant.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I was amazed this got such a positive reception here - the demo had a ton of problems. Excited to check out the full version, tho - all the problems were very fixable and that pixel art is great.

Not everyone is a bullet hell nut and with not many decent classic styled shooters been made I think most gamers are happy just to play anything aslong as its fun.

I havnt played it myself yet since my monitors on its side atm and i can be arsed flipping it atm. Ill save this little gem for the weekend.

[system11]

Playing the game at full screen is a blurry mess, and pressing F2 doesn't seem to help. Is there a way of removing the bilinear filtering while in full screen?

That's very odd - doesn't look filtered at all to me in full screen.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Upscaled looked cack on my CRT (seems to be using the graphics card's upscaling method of choice). Pressing F2 switched it to genuine, sweetly scanlined lo-res (my CRT calls it "new mode"; must be a lot less than p640), maybe slightly deformed, 60 Hz. With an LCD, I guess, you should mess with your video card drivers (disable some filtering enabled by default).
They had better implement nearest neighbour method + scanlines in the final version. For a demo it's not too bad.

[system11]

What is the games native res? Maybe I'm on an exact multiple, it honestly didn't look flitered at all, every pixel is a hard edge.

[Ghegs]

They had better implement nearest neighbour method + scanlines in the final version. For a demo it's not too bad.

This is the full version we're playing now. The demo's been out since a long while ago.

And the full version is damn awesome. Been seriously looking forward to this. I get a small filtery effect in full screen, but it's nothing bad and doesn't detract from the gameplay.

@Ruldra: I wouldn't say Hydorah is near Gradius III (AC) difficulty unless the latter half of stages ramp up the difficulty quite a bit, I made it halfway through the game on a credit after few plays.

[Elixir]

I turned off all of the settings for my graphics card and it's still blurry. Pressing F2 still does nothing.

http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g259/ ... dfsfds.jpg
http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g259/ ... dfssdf.jpg

I suppose it's more of an issue with my card. I'm using a Radeon 4850 card (top of the line). Anyone else?

[Obiwanshinobi]

What is the games native res?

Beats me. My CRT does it, but won't tell me how much it is. Looks a bit like Tyrian 2000 in fullscreen mode (which also seemed slightly deformed), sharp, scanlined, pixellated.

I turned off all of the settings for my graphics card and it's still blurry. Pressing F2 still does nothing.

http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g259/ ... dfsfds.jpg
http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g259/ ... dfssdf.jpg

I suppose it's more of an issue with my card. I'm using a Radeon 4850 card (top of the line). Anyone else?

I'm using Radeon 8500 now and it looks pretty blurry upscaled, pretty sharp in the native resolution. Perhaps you need some third party software, like 3D-Analyze? ATI Control Panel doesn't let you tweak everything you can.
Apparently the game uses Direct 3D.
P.S. My bad, Tyrian 2000 runs in 640x480, bordered yet not deformed. Hydorah is nothing quite like it.

[Ghegs]

The game throws a lot of 1-ups the player's way. After the first three stages I already had 8 lives in reserve.

The upper routes, or at least the first one, are definitely harder...there's one very hard bit in the first upper stage. But the rewards for that route are pretty sweet, and I'm not exactly sure how to make it through a section later on without those. Of course you can take both routes, so I guess the best strategy is to first go through the two lower stages, power up your ship and then tackle the upper ones. Some pretty weird stages in those.

Seems to me the bosses are a notch or two easier than the stages. I've had to try some stages several times before making it, but so far I've managed to destroy every boss pretty easily. Curious to see what the later bosses are like.

I've collected only one secret, saw a second one but didn't know to get it without dying...maybe it just requires sacrificing a shield.

Also, the game does have a bit of rank. Bosses get more complex attacks (4-way shots instead of 3-way, etc) if you don't die.

Pretty amazing that this is free, I would've paid good money for this.

[z0mbie90]

Really nice game. Like it alot. Hope you make some more cool shmups.

[evil_ash_xero]

Hey, looks like Gradius.

I'll download this as soon as I get the chance. Don't want to cross my HughesNet threshold.

[Rozyrg]

music by Gryzor87

Dammit.

Not really sure who the guy is, but the music in the game is quite fitting, and at some points pretty damn catchy. Does the guy normally make really bad music?

LOL, no, I think it sounds great, too. It's just that Gryzor is a handle I like to go by as well... especially as far as anything game creation or shmup related or both together goes.

It's just always weird coming across someone with the same name... moreso when their skills are worthy of your jealousy.
(No musical talent whatsoever here.)