DASH-A-DASH DX

[Necronom]

Couldn't find a discussion about it around here so I decided to bring it to your attention
Presentation is ace and the whole thing is a fresh new approach to bullet hell...without the shooting. Crazy stuff

http://renard.teknolust.org/ddd/

[E. Randy Dupre]

The aesthetics are great, but the gameplay's a complete mess. The joy of shoot 'em ups lies, to a large degree, in the movement of your craft around the screen. The lack of direct control in this is bad enough - it's asking you to compute too much in too short a space of time - but the awkwardness is then added to with the ridiculous cooldown period after every jump.

Looks and sounds cool, though. But then it should, given that its visuals and sound are basically DDR crossed with Dangun Feveron.

[Necronom]

The EX mode doesn't have any cooldown and that's the reason I play EX only. It is chaotic indeed but I wouldn't call it a mess. It's actually quite interesting how it forces you to drop all your shmup and especially bullet hell expertise. In bullet hell shmups I usually concentrate on my ship and its hitzone. This tactic doesn't get you very far here. Concentrate on the travelling line and the pointer and you will get better. Also I don't see this as a shmup at all, it's more like a lightning-fast maze game. Still loving it though I guess it would be cool to have an easy mode where you can't get killed while travelling...in DX mode of course

[renardqueenston]

hey, i wondered when this'd get posted here

The lack of direct control in this is bad enough - it's asking you to compute too much in too short a space of time - but the awkwardness is then added to with the ridiculous cooldown period after every jump.

don't play it like a shooter - concentrate on your trajectory. it's very possible to get a very, very long ways into the game with a bit of practice. also, try EX mode - there's no cooldown and it's just straight-up speed.

it forces you to drop all your shmup and especially bullet hell expertise. In bullet hell shmups I usually concentrate on my ship and its hitzone. This tactic doesn't get you very far here. Concentrate on the travelling line and the pointer and you will get better. Also I don't see this as a shmup at all, it's more like a lightning-fast maze game.

this is pretty much what i was going for - it's more a fast-moving maze/puzzle than anything else.

i know it's not perfect (there are definitely some little bugs here and there), but i'm happy with what i turned out in the week-ish of total work.

[captpain]

Player hitbox is too big.

[renardqueenston]

Player hitbox is too big.

what's the reasoning that it's too big? people on the scoreboards have racked up higher scores than my runs that exceed 2-3 minutes - from what i can tell, it works given the context that these games are not supposed to last very long at all.

not trying to be overly defensive, just seeking more expansive feed back than "i don't think (x) is right"

[captpain]

Player hitbox is too big.

what's the reasoning that it's too big? people on the scoreboards have racked up higher scores than my runs that exceed 2-3 minutes - from what i can tell, it works given the context that these games are not supposed to last very long at all.

not trying to be overly defensive, just seeking more expansive feed back than "i don't think (x) is right"

People will score well no matter what...

It bugs me because the cursor path is represented as a straight line, and it's intuitive to think of the ship as a tiny box traveling across that line.

The patterns are pretty simple and easily-understandable, so it's more frustrating than fun to have to deal with shoehorning a clunky box through them. I'd rather be able to quickly zip around with the clear knowledge that it'll be my naturally missed shot, not the edge of a bullet hitbox clipping the edge of my ship that winds up killing me. It feels like an obsolete thing to be in such an unusual/new game.

[Heartwork]

Played some EX mode...scoring seems off. The pink gems are worth so much that it makes everything else largely irrelevant. You can just ignore the regular gems and dodge dodge dodge until the pink one shows up, rinse, repeat. Score system needs balancing imo.

Currently ranked 89th in EX mode. Come at me bros.

EDIT: 79th in DX now.

[renardqueenston]

Played some EX mode...scoring seems off. The pink gems are worth so much that it makes everything else largely irrelevant. You can just ignore the regular gems and dodge dodge dodge until the pink one shows up, rinse, repeat. Score system needs balancing imo.

actually, getting the 4x and full fevers as the boss is down to the last few seconds racks up your score absolutely insanely as well - a boss run of maybe a million points via pink gems pales in comparison to a run of a few million with fevers blazing towards the end the reason people can climb so high on the boards is because they're getting all the other gems and spacing out the collection of them earlier on to keep their fevers up.

It bugs me because the cursor path is represented as a straight line, and it's intuitive to think of the ship as a tiny box traveling across that line.

a hitbox that tiny makes the game far too easy, though. making up for that with more bullets is certainly not the answer, either. it's a difficult thing to balance in this scenario.

anyways, i kept the dev time short, and it won't be seeing any game-changing updates or anything like that (don't want to wipe the scoreboards on people, wouldn't make sense to leave them after an update like that), so it is as it is while i do other projects, hahaha

[Despatche]

It feels like an obsolete thing to be in such an unusual/new game.

What is this even supposed to mean?

[captpain]

It feels like an obsolete thing to be in such an unusual/new game.

What is this even supposed to mean?

You figure out the trend in hitbox size over the history of STG-style games and then get back to me.

[captpain]

It bugs me because the cursor path is represented as a straight line, and it's intuitive to think of the ship as a tiny box traveling across that line.

a hitbox that tiny makes the game far too easy, though. making up for that with more bullets is certainly not the answer, either. it's a difficult thing to balance in this scenario.

anyways, i kept the dev time short, and it won't be seeing any game-changing updates or anything like that (don't want to wipe the scoreboards on people, wouldn't make sense to leave them after an update like that), so it is as it is while i do other projects, hahaha

Is it certainly not the answer? It certainly might not not be the answer... or maybe not.

But yeah at this point you probably shouldn't change anything. I'm having fun with it anyway.

[Heartwork]

Would've been nice if you could just upload your score to the highscore list directly from the game instead of the copy-paste system in currently has, but maybe I'm underestimating how hard that is to implement.

[Despatche]

It feels like an obsolete thing to be in such an unusual/new game.

What is this even supposed to mean?

You figure out the trend in hitbox size over the history of STG-style games and then get back to me

Hitboxes got smaller, and this needed to be balanced with "too many threats"... which is part of why this genre is so niche. You're complaining about something that's actually sensible.

[renardqueenston]

Would've been nice if you could just upload your score to the highscore list directly from the game instead of the copy-paste system in currently has, but maybe I'm underestimating how hard that is to implement.

i'm not exactly a genius with MMF2, and having to set up a PHP + MYSQL server to take care of all of the updating would've been fairly nightmarish. that + security issues (some commercial anti-viruses (HI NORTON!) already thing MMF2 games are friggin' trojan carriers because of the way the data is compressed and inflated upon execution) just made it really not worth it to go that route.

[captpain]

Hitboxes got smaller, and this needed to be balanced with "too many threats"... which is part of why this genre is so niche. You're complaining about something that's actually sensible.

I'm not going to get into an argument with you about whether or not the trend is "Good" but this game uses DoDonPachi bullet graphics for crying out loud, there are lots of bullets, everything moves very fast, there is crazy stuff flashing on the screen all the time... it's much more in the style of bullet hell than it is in the style of Raiden. That's part of why I intuit the hitbox as being a tiny box in the center of the ship.

[renardqueenston]

I'm not going to get into an argument with you about whether or not the trend is "Good" but this game uses DoDonPachi bullet graphics for crying out loud, there are lots of bullets, everything moves very fast, there is crazy stuff flashing on the screen all the time... it's much more in the style of bullet hell than it is in the style of Raiden. That's part of why I intuit the hitbox as being a tiny box in the center of the ship.

i need to make an ad spot for this game now

LOTS OF BULLETS!
VERY FAST!
CRAZY STUFF FLASHING!
HUGE HITBOX!

it's clearly a feature hahahaha

[captpain]