Teaching a class on shmup development - any suggestions?

[monoRAIL]

As part of a game development course I'm teaching, I'm going to do a 4 week session on prototyping a shmup. The focus of the class is on creating precise movement controls, understanding the essence of shmups (the relationship between the player's firepower and movement, and the enemies' firepower, movement, waves + patterns) and devising an original scoring mechanic.

I'm also going to have to include a crash course on the history of shmups, and explain how the genre has branched into multiple styles, since many of my students will have never played a shmup in their life.

Do you folks have any recommendations for what are the key games I should cover, games which are ideal examples of their sub-genre.

For example...

Shmup origins - Space War, Space Invaders, Galaxian
Memory/pattern shmups - R-Type, Gradius
Bullet Hell - Touhou series, some Cave games?
Doujin - Guxt, Warning Forever, Ring^-27
Arena/dual-stick shooters - Robotron, Smash TV, Geometry Wars
Euroshmups (and why so many people hate them)
Modern/high-end games - Ikaruga, Sine Mora, Omega Five

So - what games are essential for anyone who wants to make a shmup to have played or at least seen?

[Squire Grooktook]

Outside of a few areas (Shadow Dancers etc.) I don't think Gradius counts as a memory/pattern shmup at all. Or at least, not any more then other traditional shooters. In fact I've always thought of Konami as one of the least foresight/memorization focused shmups developers.

[Mortificator]

Xevious is unquestionably the most influential shooter. Its trend-setting for verts is obvious, but it wasn't until reading the interviews blackoak's translated that I realized how it was the seed for the major hori series as well.

Batsugun should be covered as well, being the start of the shift to danmaku. One of the Donpachi games could represent Cave; I'd go with Dai-ou-jou.

A couple other major styles you may want to hit, with a recommendation in parentheses:
Toaplan / Raiden (Kyukyoku Tiger) - old-school-style verts
Video System / Psikyo (Dragon Blaze) - gotta go fast!
Compile (Zanac) - adaptive AI
Yagawa / Raizing (Battle Garegga) - rank management
Caravan / Carnival (Super Star Soldier) - timed score attack competition
Takumi (Giga Wing) - bullet reflecting
Technosoft (Thunder Force IV) - weapon switching

You've made good choices for the other games (well, I'm not qualified to speak on doujins). One you might trim is Galaxian, because while it and Galaga are good and famous games, they're incremental improvements on the Space Invaders formula, not new styles.

[monoRAIL]

Squire Grooktook - got any suggestions for other memory/pattern games like R-Type?

Mortificator - thanks for the list! Perhaps instead of Galaxian I'll talk about Centipede, as it goes further than just allowing vertical movement (which Galaxian introduced) to full, track-ball controlled, free movement.

[Crazy Climber]

I would second Raiden. Its been around a long time and might even be recognized by a younger generation (it did have two actual north american disc releases on the 360)
Batsuguns another great suggestion as it did kind of change things

[soupbones]

Euroshmups (and why so many people hate them)

Why DO so many people hate them? I kind of hate them, but not really sure why...

Thunderforce 3 seems like a good choice for memorization shooters, no? Or Truxton?

Imo, the thing that makes R-Type such a "memory" game, is that it's like a puzzle. You have not too many bullets, big beefy enemies that limit your space, and claustrophobic environments. You gotta find out the right ways to manipulate the enemies while managing your charge shot, and that can take a bit of time and experimentation to do. The claims of it being a "thinking man's shmup" are not unfounded.

EDIT: actually, You might want to consider Aldynes instead of Thunderforce or Truxton. After reading the above quote from Squire, Aldynes fits closer to that description IMO.

[MathU]

Here is a list I've used before for games to refer newcomers to before they can really know the genre on a deeper level, from a historical/experience perspective but not necessarily "what you should play before designing one":

Galaga
R-Type
Gradius II: Gofer no Yabou
Zanac
Raiden II
Darius Gaiden
Cho Ren Sha 68K
Dodonpachi

One of Raizing's more manic shooters or a Raiden Fighters game would also be a useful addition. The list could definitely use some more modern games as well; perhaps a MileStone shooter like Karous or Illvelo for creativity.


That doujin list is pretty weak in my opinion. I really think any doujin list needs to include at least Cho Ren Sha 68K, a Siter Skain game, and Hellsinker--if your goal with the "doujin" category is to present what developers can do with very limited resources, anyway.

Finally, I think you ought to include a category for 3D shoot 'em ups like Star Fox and Panzer Dragoon, what few of them there are.

I have many more thoughts on this subject but I'll post this for now.

[Squire Grooktook]

Squire Grooktook - got any suggestions for other memory/pattern games like R-Type?

Well you could try the rest of Irem's library. Image Fight is probably a good one. Ikaragua could count if your going by scoring. I might be inclined to say Darius series, if for no other reason then how ridiculously punishing it is if you die before permanently powering up your shield, but it might be a bit hypocritical of me to call that a memorizer and not Gradius.

Imo, the thing that makes R-Type such a "memory" game, is that it's like a puzzle. You have not too many bullets, big beefy enemies that limit your space, and claustrophobic environments. You gotta find out the right ways to manipulate the enemies while managing your charge shot, and that can take a bit of time and experimentation to do. The claims of it being a "thinking man's shmup" are not unfounded.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The most important thing to know when developing a good shmup: no freaking inertia. Ever. I cannot think of a single shmup that would be better with inertia, and all shmups with inertia would unquestionably benefit from its removal. A game genre that's supposed to be about precise dodges only suffers when inertia is introduced.

[BulletMagnet]

If you'll pardon the bit of plugging, you might want to check out this article, and maybe this one too.

[Observer]

Shmup origins - Space War, Space Invaders, Galaxian <<<< I would add Xevious like someone else did. It essentially added the ground-based targets as part of the mechanics. This was later polished in the Ray series, most prominently RayForce.

Bullet Hell - Touhou series, Mushihimesama Futari, DoDonPachi, Ketsui, Espgaluda...

Agreed with MathU, you can't spell doujin shmups without mentioning SITER SKAIN and Hellsinker (by Ruminant's Whimper) nor Edelweiss with Ether Vapor and the upcoming Astebreed. I would also mention GENETOS by Tatsuya Koyama, a freeware shmup about the history of shmups.

Funny enough both Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun are rotten memorizers respectively because if you want to score you have to pretty much know every single pattern that's coming your way. On Ikaruga to do the proper colour switching, on RSG to learn which enemies to ignore in order to properly power up your weapons or else face a terrible death at the hands of Xiga.

Hope that helps!

[Meseki]

Doujin - Guxt, Warning Forever, Ring^-27

All good games (though I've barely played Guxt), but that selection may give the impression that Doujin games are simplistic graphically. Also, I'm not sure if Guxt and Warning Forever are technically Doujin, since they're freeware.

Stuff like Crimson Clover, RefRain ~prism memories~, and/or a Siter Skain game could go there as well.

A lot of posts happened while posting this...

[MathU]

Also, I'm not sure if Guxt and Warning Forever are technically Doujin, since they're freeware.

I was thinking of mentioning this as well. They are technically doujin since they're still games made by hobbyists, but they're not independent games like Ring^-27, whose goal may be to recoup losses incurred during development because the developer needs money. It's a small nitpick really, but can have some important consequences when making design decisions. Do you want to make a game for the hell of it or because you need to support yourself?


You might want to refrain from using a bunch of CAVE games for bullet hell. One is enough; CAVE's particular style of bullet design varies little between most of their games and there are loads of other bullet hell developers out there with their own distinct take on the sub-genre.

[Observer]

Doujin - Guxt, Warning Forever, Ring^-27

All good games (though I've barely played Guxt), but that selection may give the impression that Doujin games are simplistic graphically. Also, I'm not sure if Guxt and Warning Forever are technically Doujin, since they're freeware.

Stuff like Crimson Clover, RefRain ~prism memories~, and/or a Siter Skain game could go there as well.

A lot of posts happened while posting this...

FUUUU, how could I forget of Crimzon Clover! Mea culpa, mea culpa! Yes, you must add that one! Also points for RefRain but I would add Samidare too.

[Squire Grooktook]

Funny enough both Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun are rotten memorizers respectively because if you want to score you have to pretty much know every single pattern that's coming your way. On Ikaruga to do the proper colour switching, on RSG to learn which enemies to ignore in order to properly power up your weapons or else face a terrible death at the hands of Xiga.

On second thought though, I don't know if a game should be counted as a memorizer if scoring is the memorization focused element. I mean what game isn't a memorizer based on scoring? I'm also not sure if one boss would count the entirety of RSG as a memorizer, but then again what do I know, I started playing last month and haven't made it to Xiga yet lol.

[Ed Oscuro]

Also, I'm not sure if Guxt and Warning Forever are technically Doujin, since they're freeware.

Abusing the size tag is bad. I suppose the answer to this is if "self-published" includes free releases (which are still published, technically). Anybody care to comment?

[BPzeBanshee]

Solid State Survivor could definitely be an interesting freeware doujin to cover. It's not graphically sexy but it does do 'conventional' pretty well.

Also, you definitely need a manic section (ie. Raiden Fighters) as a separate category from bullet hell. People seem to forget they're styled differently from bullet hells these days. And if you have any plans on showing Sine Mora to your class make sure you're pointing out every single one of it's issues (it has a lot) or don't include that game at all.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I've always thought of doujins as convention / specialty shops although i'm the Japanese have a different idea of what constitutes doujin.

If Japanese PC indies are to be mentioned Kenta Cho is the Japanese equivalent of Cactus. The game Nolmtest by another dev might be worth mentioning too as it has no seperate stages it just carries throwing random waves outs until game over.

Maybe you could mention some golden does and don'ts like off screen snipers, inertia, colour palette choices, not going overboard with explosion effects when a small sprite explosion is better. Fair and balanced score systems & leaderboards with no autofire exploits like Sine Mora had.

Speaking of Sine Mora and the problems that game has with randomisation I was reading recent "Tripwire says CoD has ruined a generation of gamers" PC Gamer article where the dev talks about using randomisation to compress the skill gap, I've heard that this is a common game design trick so I'd thought I'd bring it up.

Here's the article as I'm sure others will enjoy reading it. http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/13/call- ... interview/

EDIT The western bullet hell Jamestown is worth talking about for how the devs split the stages up into separate parts with the last 2 stages blocked from very easy and easy difficulties, thus forcing noobs to get better at the game. It also includes separate challenges too. I think it's worth a mention of how other shmups use different methods to hand out continues, like in the 16bit console era where easy, normal and hard just meant 3,5 & 7 continues, unlock more with a shop like in Mars Matrix, Crimson Clover or CAVE's arcade ports and how the hand out unlimited credits allowing ppl to creditfeed.

[Squire Grooktook]

Also, you definitely need a manic section (ie. Raiden Fighters) as a separate category from bullet hell. People seem to forget they're styled differently from bullet hells these days.

Is that really needed? IMO 'manic' shooters could easily be lumped in with traditional shooters. I know some of them, like psyiko's games, are a bit closer to bullet hell and have a unique style, but then every developer has a unique style. I just think it's redundant to create a third genre (traditional, bullet hell, and manic) when most of the 'manic' games out there could be classified as one or the other, or borderliners at worst.

Speaking of Sine Mora and the problems that game has with randomisation I was reading recent "Tripwire says CoD has ruined a generation of gamers" PC Gamer article where the dev talks about using randomisation to compress the skill gap, I've heard that this is a common game design trick so I'd thought I'd bring it up.

Curious, I'v heard a lot of talk about Sine Mora randomness, but is that just relegated to the power up system, or is there more to that?

[louisg]

As far as design goes, common pitfalls to avoid is a good idea. Udderdude had a good list at some point. Someone already mentioned inertia as pretty much always making it feel sloppy and imprecise. Another huge pet peeve of mine are scrolling games where guns are more "pew pew" instead of rapid fire (like Xenon 2). And a lack of popcorn enemies -- if a game's levels are just made up of enemies that you can barely destroy with your given firepower, it's annoying and frustrating. I guess this should be filed under Euroshmups And I don't think Euroshmups are universally bad-- I got enough enjoyment out of Battle Squadron, Lethal Xcess and Tyrian, though I wouldn't rank them up with the best console shmups either.

I'd replace Galaxian with Galaga. Galaga has such a great mechanic in the dual-ships: You can choose to be captured, which is a risk-- you can lose one or both lives that way. But the payoff is a much better weapon. However, the downside is that you're a larger target. Perfect risk/reward balancing IMO.

EDIT: Trev's list of do's and don't is pretty good. I'd also add sprite prioritization as a must: Shots always need to be visible over explosions, and clearly discernible. I'd also add studying AI-- good shmup AI isn't all that simple. Watch how aiming and patterns even in something as old as Twin Cobra work.

[BPzeBanshee]

Also, you definitely need a manic section (ie. Raiden Fighters) as a separate category from bullet hell. People seem to forget they're styled differently from bullet hells these days.

Is that really needed? IMO 'manic' shooters could easily be lumped in with traditional shooters. I know some of them, like psyiko's games, are a bit closer to bullet hell and have a unique style, but then every developer has a unique style. I just think it's redundant to create a third genre (traditional, bullet hell, and manic) when most of the 'manic' games out there could be classified as one or the other, or borderliners at worst.

Everyone here so far seems to have to jumped to R-Type, Galaga, and Gradius as 'traditional' - which is nothing like Psikyo/Seibu's 90s-era work. Furthermore, from what I've seen in recent years such manics seems to get compared more to popular bullet hells anyway - believe it or not newcomers I've met somehow managed to draw Touhou from Raiden Fighters - they weren't thinking of Gradius or Space Invaders then for sure. Your idea makes sense in theory but I don't think it adds up to how things are being seen in reality, thus it deserves a separate category.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Speaking of Sine Mora and the problems that game has with randomisation I was reading recent "Tripwire says CoD has ruined a generation of gamers" PC Gamer article where the dev talks about using randomisation to compress the skill gap, I've heard that this is a common game design trick so I'd thought I'd bring it up.

Curious, I'v heard a lot of talk about Sine Mora randomness, but is that just relegated to the power up system, or is there more to that?

TBH I haven't played a great deal of it, so I'm not the best person to ask, the randomisation of power ups and losing power ups in stupid ways was enough to put me off in disgust. The randomisation is a bad fit for the badly thought out time mechanic as you can be so underpowered that it's impossible to beat a boss before the timer runs out. It's like all the worst aspects of the Gradius 1 life syndrome with none of the good.

I recon the game could be used as a good teaching aid for how a game looks great for casual play but is the worst POS for those who know the genre.

[majik989s]

In regards to design, it would be pretty cool to show the difference between verts, horis, and vertizonals. You can even go back to pre-tate arcade without scrolling. Games that utilize the vertical and horizontal space appropriately are wonderful.

[Squire Grooktook]

Lemme just apologize in advance for breaking up your quote, I usually hate it when people do this to me because it feels pedantic and it's a bitch to answer, but I just wanted to answer two things.

Everyone here so far seems to have to jumped to R-Type, Galaga, and Gradius as 'traditional' - which is nothing like Psikyo/Seibu's 90s-era work.

I dunno man, something like Gradius III Snes on a very high loop, Raiden on a very high loop, doesn't feel terribly different to me in a superficial sense. I mean sure it doesn't have the unique interpretations of the genre as something like Psikyo, nor does it have the static pretty patterns, but the dodging itself "feels" close enough to be the same genre. As opposed to something like Bullet Hell which was obviously different to me the first time I played it.

I've seen in recent years such manics seems to get compared more to popular bullet hells anyway - believe it or not newcomers I've met somehow managed to draw Touhou from Raiden Fighters - they weren't thinking of Gradius or Space Invaders then for sure. Your idea makes sense in theory but I don't think it adds up to how things are being seen in reality, thus it deserves a separate category.

That comparison is probably more due to the lack of experience in the genre at large. I can understand how if you went from Touhou to Raiden Fighters, which has boss attacks that look like "proto danmaku", you could draw the comparison.

Myself, generally I would call Raiden Fighters traditional for the most part (I haven't played the third game yet), but would call stuff like Armed Police Batrider or Gunbird 2 bullet hell, or at least extremely close to it. But that's just my opinion.



Anyway UNRELATED but I read that COD article, and I have to say that even though I'v heard it all before about COD's failings, I really empathized strongly with two things he said. Namely how people won't let go of "training wheels".

"but I think there’s a depth of enjoyment there that a lot of these players are missing out on. And when you try to get them to branch out, their knee-jerk reaction is “The training wheels have come off, I’m gonna fall!” And I hate to see that."

I feel like this whenever I try to get my COD playing friends to play a fighter or an rts or a shmup or something. I don't know why some people are so afraid of not doing well at first, it's not like you're going to die in real life if you die once or twice in a game your new too.

The other thing I liked about the interview is when he talked about how a sense of fear and vulnerability were integral. This has always been my personal philosophy of difficult action games. It's like a lot of people these days are coming up with this misconception that hard games are ALL about the sense of achievement of winning after trial and error. Personally I believe that they only think this because the Souls series is built around this concept, and it's one of the few hard games that are huge money these days. For me though, hard games have always been about the sense of excitement and immersion of being in a nerve wracking situation with a strong penalty for failure.

Even though I'm not into military fps, I think I wanna play this guys game now because his feelings are so in line with mine. Great minds must think alike!

[Crazy Climber]

What about some of the neogeo dev teams games? Fast striker is great and last hope is pretty good too (pink bullets version) would be cool to show your class what just a couple guys can do in there free time for homebrews they are top notch if you ask me!

[rancor]

Be sure to pick up the Shooting Game Programming book here.

[BPzeBanshee]

Hmm, fair game Mr Grooktook. Lemme try to rephrase here, since my response is not so much on anything you've said in segments rather than your overall proposal (thus why I'm not using quotes). Please correct me if I've misunderstood.

You seem to think it'd be best to just bundle manics together under 'traditional', right? But this is a class on shmup development monoRAIL is talking about - I think it is important for newcomers to be able to distinguish those different game styles and that begins with showing a decent shmup to gather interest, and then showing other shmups' unique features, NOT by bundling different stuff from the same era together and showing what's popular.

To try and paraphrase, one learns to read with a small picture book, then advance to novels, which have different genres.
One can try to just shove the novels into just 'fiction', 'non-fiction', but in practice most good libraries won't do that - they'll split the non-fiction books into different distinct sub-genres, with the borderliners treated on a case-by-case basis.
Fantasy books can be sci-fi, sci-fi books can have fantasy elements, but they're definitely not one and the same by convention.

Your proposal seems to be to shove a novel into a kid's face, and call it 'fantasy' when it's got Captain Kirk and the starship Enterprise on the front cover (very 'sci-fi' convention), and then expect the kid to be able to figure out where it actually stands. Liquidating 'sci-fi' and 'fantasy' into one topic may be "easier" but I think it'll just get newcomers confused. It'd be better to leave 'sci-fi' and 'fantasy' separate and let the kid start off with a children's book. In the case here, start off with just whatever shmup is actually a decent example, and keep 'manics' and 'traditionals' separate for distinction to begin with and *then* look deeply into it and point out the similarities.

[Squire Grooktook]

You seem to think it'd be best to just bundle manics together under 'traditional', right?

No not exactly. I'm more advocating that the games should be evaluated on a case by case basis. I just think that the 'manic' label isn't different enough from either genre to warrant an entirely new label, as well as the fact that there just aren't as many of them.

I know it's often debated how to define subgenre's in shmups. I'm just saying I myself prefer for simplicity and clarity's sake to stay with the two genre's, since while there are borderliners out there, distinguishing from bullet hell and traditional/normal games in them is a lot easier as both genre's have very clear and instantly recognizable mechanical differences from each-other IMO.

Defining a manic shmup to me seems to be more about the shape and speed of the bullet patterns, which is iffy IMO because both bullet hell shooters and traditional shooters experiment a lot with those things between developers, and even between games among-st the same developers. If we're going to call something like Gunbird 2 or Giga Wing an entirely different sub genre because they have different play styles from Cave style bullet hells, then we might as well say Eschatos and Qute style shooters are a different subgenre since they feel very different in playstyle and execution from most Cave style bullet hells.

Believe me, I understand where your coming from and I mean no insult. I know a lot of people add the manic category themselves and it helps them, and that's fine. This is just the way I personally categorize shmups. I figure out which broad subgenre it shares from the mechanics, and then I try to understand it further by it's unique play style.

[BPzeBanshee]

Well the thing is, it's actually not a 'brand new label' at all as you say, maybe for you because you're new here, but 'manic' has been the term for that style of game regardless of quantity for quite some time now (although the Glossary seems to lob it it with the 'bullet hell' category too for some reason). Certainly it was used in Development subforum when I arrived in 2009.....guess even the basic word is up for debate.

I always saw the Toaplan-era games etc as mostly manics, danmakus as danmakus and Raizing's material as the borderliners, but I digress: My concern, which I have now voice, is that this subgenre was completely ignored until I brought it up, but 'memorisers' and Sine Mora are being put in for defining specific subgenres already. If they're different enough from the other genres to warrant mention than I think manics are too.

[Squire Grooktook]

Oh I'v been aware of the manic label as well as the debate over defining subgenre's. I once got into an argument with someone who was saying that Einhander was a bullet hell shooter, so I'm aware of how there are different interpretations of these labels.

Personally, I would avoid the memorizer label as well. It's highly subjective, and more of a quirk of certain developers and play styles then an actual genre. And while there are a few shmups out there that are deliberately marketed as puzzle shooters/memorizers, I don't think there are quite enough of them to label it as a genre either.