Trigonometry Wars 3 Redux: The Revengeoning (v1.0 released!)

[Giest118]

There's so many ways to go about this though, like simply capping the reward you get from buzzing many bullets at the source (ex: even if you get a super hyper very quickly from doing that, you have to use it before you get another, and while it's active you also can't get another super hyper, so you can't chain hypers/invincibility and graze infinitely)

I have a better idea. I simply won't stack the rewards for grazing more than one bullet at the same time.

This is a system that I already used in Trigonometry Wars 4, and it worked quite well there. Grazing bullets in any quantity is always risky, so there is risk/reward.

[n0rtygames]

Also, what's wrong with allowing a player to gain these things permanently? Yeah okay, invincibility you want to keep a cap on (anything other than temporary invincibility upon activation of a hyper is a no no, for me at least)... but what's wrong with having a permanent hyper if the player has to work for it?

It adds to scoring possibilities and I subscribe to the ethos that you should never stop your player doing something they want to do to have fun with your game. I currently prevent hyper tokens being released while a player is in a hyper state, or during a boss battle if they have a full bomb stock (?!?!)

I may be changing these to allow more mayhem for precisely that reason.

[Giest118]

So, the system I am currently thinking about is this.

You can get hypers by:
* Blowing shit up/accumulating Hits
* Grazing

You can get up to a tenth-level hyper. Up to five of these levels can come from accumulating Hits, and up to five of them can come from Grazing. You need to do both to get above a fifth-level Hyper.

Using a hyper would do the following:
* Cancel all bullets on the screen, but offer no invincibility beyond that.
* Increase your damage output proportionally to the Level of your hyper.
* Increase your Get Point value by 1,000 per level. This means, for example, that if you use a seventh-level Hyper, your Get Point value can go up to 27,000, and if you lose your chain, it will reset to 7,000 rather than 0. This is only in effect while the Hyper is still going.
* It will last for 10 seconds, plus 2 seconds for every level. (Subject to rebalancing based on how it plays)
* All point items will be gold while a Hyper is in effect.
* You will get more Hits per kill, proportional to the level of Hyper used.

And of course, bombing or dying during a Hyper will cancel the shit out of it.

[n0rtygames]

Considered adding in a short invincibility window (I mean really short, like 2-3 seconds) upon activation of a hyper to allow the player to sit on top of the boss for giggles and style?

[railslave]

I dont think i breathed for 5 minutes then, wow loving this.. did you do the music ? its second to none..Im well out of my depth here, how the hell do you get them bullet patterns ! i take back what i said about the graphics, who cares lol

[Giest118]

I dont think i breathed for 5 minutes then, wow loving this.. did you do the music ? its second to none..Im well out of my depth here, how the hell do you get them bullet patterns ! i take back what i said about the graphics, who cares lol

The music I use all comes from other sources because music is another one of those things I suck at making myself. I'm a big fan of the music in Cave's shmups, so basically all of my games use at least a few from them.

As for the bullet patterns... I've basically had five games worth of practice making bullet patterns at this point, so my answer is "I've done it a lot." XD

Considered adding in a short invincibility window (I mean really short, like 2-3 seconds) upon activation of a hyper to allow the player to sit on top of the boss for giggles and style?

Since the idea is that the mechanic is minimally abusable, I feel that might be a bit generous. Still, it's early yet; even after I make the system I mentioned above, I will have plenty of time to figure out which parts about it work and which ones don't.

[railslave]

excuse my utter newness at all this, but do you create a group of bullets with varying speeds then sort of adjust there speeds to come up those kind of whip effects ? or am i going the hard way around?

if the first way was right, are there any sort of patterns/strings that would be universal over all game engines? (adjusting speed angles ect for desired effect )

i can only do a realy basic one at the moment.

very nice stuff !!!

[Giest118]

To make that "whip" sort of effect depends on the exact attack you're thinking of. I assume you're thinking of something like the lasers in this attack from DoDonPachi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsTnsIm2x2I&t=03m10s

That effect is achieved by shooting several bullets in rapid succession (all in the same or a very similar direction), increasing the bullet speed each time.

I don't know exactly what development environment you're using, but speaking in very, VERY general terms, the easiest way to do this is to store a variable into the object launching the bullets, something like "bulletSpeed". From there, the function that launches the bullets will be called a bunch of times in rapid succession, each time increasing bulletSpeed by a small amount. You would stop calling the function after bulletSpeed reached a certain limit. If you want to go through the cycle again, just set bulletSpeed to its initial value again and repeat. :V

[railslave]

aha... well explained, all about variable, cant believe i didnt think of that tbh.. the bar has been set now
i shall get to work

[n0rtygames]

I tried taking on some of your "whip" patterns in Ultra mode in Trig Wars.

The story ends there, you sadistic bastard.

[railslave]

That effect is achieved by shooting several bullets in rapid succession (all in the same or a very similar direction), increasing the bullet speed each time.

I don't know exactly what development environment you're using, but speaking in very, VERY general terms, the easiest way to do this is to store a variable into the object launching the bullets, something like "bulletSpeed". From there, the function that launches the bullets will be called a bunch of times in rapid succession, each time increasing bulletSpeed by a small amount. You would stop calling the function after bulletSpeed reached a certain limit. If you want to go through the cycle again, just set bulletSpeed to its initial value again and repeat. :V

do you have any sort of universal predefined patterns/paremters (based on your simplified example above) youd share so i can get my head around them...
i was going well last night, but i TRIED to over complicated things as usual as you can see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkpcnNcnPHM&feature=plcp

[Giest118]

What development environment are you using? Game Maker? Flash? C++? I could try to be more helpful if I knew exactly what format I'm supposed to be using to help you.

The patterns in that video look nifty though.

[railslave]

What development environment are you using? Game Maker? Flash? C++? I could try to be more helpful if I knew exactly what format I'm supposed to be using to help you.

The patterns in that video look nifty though.

cheers, i was up all night doing that, till 7 am ..lol..i got it well refinded now(thats embarrasing). Im using html5, construct 2, its all related i guess.
Oh, the whips i was on about are in the sentry guns on level 2 of your game, the pink bullet ones.
Im finding it takes so much imagination coming up with enemies and so on .


Still loving your game, i understand the graphics now, it actualy makes the game more enjoyable, if any thing these game can have graphics that are too complex. that vid i did has about 4 layers of rocks

heres an example of the game engine https://dl.dropbox.com/u/84483952/bandi ... 45-462.jpg

[Giest118]

From what I can see in that code of yours, that should generate the whipping effect. What's it doing instead?

[railslave]

well its not as neat and tidy as your stuff ... im sort of a one trick pony at the moment..
this new vid shows how unorganized it all looks


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkpcnNcnPHM&feature=plcp


guess ill just keep experimenting, or just make traditional games out of my depth ..

any threads or sites on the subject of how to pull off certain patterns ?

[Giest118]

It kinda looks like the speed of the bullet isn't actually increasing with each shot?

And I never really looked for guides on how to make bullet patterns; I just saw bullet patterns I liked and wondered how I could replicate them, or change them to be my own thing. And then I figured out how to do it.

[railslave]

ah ha, i just worked out a way to do what i want by vibrating/rotating the sprites and other stuff +variables

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A-2iDH2 ... e=youtu.be

works for me right im off to make something insane

[Giest118]

Soooo progress.

I've implemented the Hyper system. I think I've found a pretty good balance of making them useful without making them overpowered: You need at least two or three levels of hyper to start to make it really powerful, and you need to not press the bomb button for an entire stage if you want to get a max-level hyper. Also, you can't charge hypers while a hyper is currently in effect; since higher-level hypers last longer anyway, this makes it pretty well impossible to abuse the system by constantly getting hypers.

Also I've made a good chunk of stage 2. It's a bit interesting figuring out how to "abridge" the nine stages of the original TW3 down into five; the original stages 3 and 4 sort of switched places and both became stage 2. :V

[Cagar]

Progress? I like this game.

[Giest118]

Stage 2 boss is nearly done. Once I finish with that, I'll add in a rudimentary high score saving system, add in a "How to Play" screen in my usual style, and release a little demo.

Stage 2's difficulty will probably be toned down by the time the full game is done, but two stages should be enough room to play with the mechanics and such.

Progress has been slow because university decided to suddenly give me an onslaught of constant shit.

[Giest118]

Sooo I released a demo and shit. Link and more info in the first post of the thread.

[Cagar]

Best fangame evar. Seriously.
Just add some kind of flying indicator which shows your hyper level (a la sdoj)
Configurable controls don't cause slowdown this time, which is great too.

EDIT: I plugged out my gamepad and holy shit this slowdown... It seems that having a controller plugged in prevents it
EDIT2: Strange things happen if you kill a boss while hypering
EDIT3: Make chaining more forgiving please?

EDIT4: Safespot over here:
EDIT5: Not sure if relevant, but if you keep lasering after defeating stage 2 boss, the laser sound keeps looping
EDIT6:

[Giest118]

It's good that you found that safespot because that's a bug. Colliding with that boss is supposed to kill you. :V

In response to your EDIT2... I assume that when you say "strange things" you mean "the hyper carries into the next level but without all the extra options." I think I actually found this once before and intended to fix it by ending the hyper between stages, but never got around to it for some reason.

EDIT5 is definitely a bug.

Also it's kind of lol that you wanted me to make the chaining more forgiving, and then later got a score that indicates that you full-chained the shit out of everything. :V

[Cagar]

Please make chaining more forgiving. Please. Your run is worth nothing if you fail once, this is the reason I'm playing DOJ only for survival. Even CAVE realised (SDOJ) that there's no good enough reason to fart in your face by 100% chain drops.

[Giest118]

Please make chaining more forgiving. Please. Your run is worth nothing if you fail once, this is the reason I'm playing DOJ only for survival. Even CAVE realised (SDOJ) that there's no good enough reason to fart in your face by 100% chain drops.

This is kind of the reason I capped the Get Point value at 20,000; it limits how much a screwup can really destroy your score.

Nonetheless, I would like more input on this subject. Anyone else looking at this thread who would like to give me their take?

[Giest118]

By the way, I just reuploaded the demo with fixes for the bugs mentioned above. Same download link as before.

[Cagar]

Please make chaining more forgiving. Please. Your run is worth nothing if you fail once, this is the reason I'm playing DOJ only for survival. Even CAVE realised (SDOJ) that there's no good enough reason to fart in your face by 100% chain drops.

This is kind of the reason I capped the Get Point value at 20,000; it limits how much a screwup can really destroy your score.

Nonetheless, I would like more input on this subject. Anyone else looking at this thread who would like to give me their take?

Reset GP-value to zero and reduce chain to 65% on drop

[shmuppyLove]

Pretty awesome game, much respect for ripping SDOJ soundtracks lol

I found a bug though!

1. Go to training menu
2. Press the 'cancel' button
3. ???
4. Profit!!

Actually it doesn't do anything. But if you choose a level then hit cancel on the ship select it goes back to the main menu.

[Cagar]

I PM'd you giest.

[RNGmaster]

Where the shitting hell is hyper rank? If you get that many hypers you better have some reason not to use them continuously.

If there is hyper rank it's not scary enough.