What makes a good bullet pattern?

[Ult]

I'm working on an engine for a danmaku/tactics hybrid, but level design was never my forte and that doubles for bullet patterns. I know how to code them, but idk what makes a good bullet pattern. It's like when you know how to play guitar, but whenever you try to write a song you just can't.

So, what makes a good bullet pattern? Is there a concrete answer even?

[Cagar]

It's a pattern which forces the player to move more than some small tap-taps.
Experiment!

[Dave_K.]

For inspiration, just look to your favorite danmaku shooter and try to emulate specific the patterns, eventually modifying them to your own unique liking.


And if you haven't read up on BulletML, go here: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/bu ... dex_e.html

and try your own BulletML scripts here: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/bu ... dex_e.html

[BrooksBishop]

I think what you're asking is really kind of a broad question.
What will be a good pattern is highly situational as to what you want the player to be feeling at a given point in time.

Do you want them to feel pressured but not overwhelmed? Maybe a few aimed bullets is all you need.
Do you want to herd the player somewhere? A laser or stream could be your best bet.
Want the player to actively seek out a path? I like filling the field with something slow moving and big, and then adding aimed bullets after so the player has to dodge and avoid at the same time.

It's also a lot about finding a flow. Sometimes you will want to push on the player with the same type of thing for a specific duration.
Other times you'll want to find ways to change things up, either to keep them on their toes, or perhaps to speed the game up and pressure them, or slow it down and give them some breathing room.

I agree that one way to get a good feel on how to design is to find some patterns in other games that you like and try to re-create them.
After that, start playing with different variables, or making some parts of the pattern do different things or mixing different patterns together.

In developing Aeternum, I usually also tried to find some "theme" for the stages and for the bosses to tie things together and let me focus on ideas rather than get lost in trying to make all new things.
Stage 1 is a very teaching stage with lots of obvious aimed shots to let the player know what they're in for. The boss is themed around the ideas of curves and explosions of small points of color.
Stage 2 is a lot about making the player dodge through a screen full of slow bullets. The boss being a lot about straight lines and firing bullets from secondary sources.
Stage 3 adds on the interaction of screen edges by making the screen fill come from the screen edges more than enemies themselves. The boss here very much about the movement of circles through space.
Stage 4 as a boss stage attempted to use the character's pirate theme by utilizing the ideas of water waves, throwing anchors and shooting a blunderbuss.
The extra boss again used the character's themes of cold and sewing to make patterns around ideas like cutting fabric, and forming ice crystals.

If you want to have a look at my work and see what I'm talking about, Jaimers Lunatic clear is a good place to start: http://youtu.be/ieKqH5Je6zc

[littlenando]

Aeternum is very cool.
Thanks for this feedback, it´s great!

[yorgje]

You hint at an analogy to guitars, and rightfully so. As a classically trained musician who has happened to put thousands of hours into the series which indisputably has the most elaborate, beautiful, challenging, and moxious danmaku patterns, I have found that analogies between the two realms have been extremely pertinent to my development as a shmupster, and for this reason I believe analogies will also serve you well as a developer.

Thus, rather than directly answering your question, I will answer the related question: what makes a good song?

This question was asked by ancient musicians centuries ago, and the answer that they came up with can be found in Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum, which roughly translates to "steps to musical divinity" or something. These steps were comprised of the 5 species of counterpoint, or the art of writing a melody that harmonizes well with a given bass line. You can (and should!) read the precise rules of each of the 5 species on the Wikipedia page, but for now it suffices to give you a brief run down of the most relevant points.

The bass line, or "cantus firmus" as I will henceforth refer to it as, should begin and end on the tonic, roughly following the shape of an arc with a negative second derivative. When you hear the first note of a cantus firmus is a F#, it's not just a note, but a guideline for the rest of the firmus (even explicitly determining the last two notes) as well as a whole bundle of emotions waiting to be unravelled by the various steps you take as you journey along the arc. When writing a counterpoint on top of your firmus, you have to make sure that all of the strong beats are consonant (well, with advanced exceptions), but there's more to that. Perhaps the least intuitive rule is the disallowing of parallel fifths and parallel octaves, i.e. parallels of the two most perfectly consonant intervals. The issue the ancients had with these structures was that the two lines would start to lose their identity, sounding as one dualled melody rather than two harmonizing ones.

We haven't even scratched the surface of a whole song yet, but even from this brief discussion we can already see an application to shmups. A developer could plausibly consider his bullet patterns to be a cantus firmus that the player must then compose a counterpoint on top of on the fly. By practicing many times, the player can try different choices and finally come up with the counterpoint of ultimate beauty (i.e. highest score). However, it is important that the bullet pattern harmonizes with the restrictions of the gameplay mechanics in such a way that an ascending player who is developing new counterpoints regularly levels out at beautiful harmonies, but with a slight sense of lack until he has achieved perfection. Also, as discussed in the previous paragraph, the player should never feel like he is simply a dual of the bullet pattern, simply mimicking the movements of some aimed turret. Contrary motion is ideal, but similar non-parallel motion is also okay and often necessary.

When you think you have mastered the art of 5th species counterpoint, send me a PM for a lesson on rhythm.

[Zengeku3]

Good bullet patterns are the ones that are moe.
The ones where the player feels like a badass whenever he dodges them.
The ones where the player feels like he's always dodging in different ways despite approaching them similarly every time.
The ones that bullies the weak, cuddles with the cute and touches the tsundere in awkward ways.
The ones with different variables to keep in mind to effectively read it.
Macro-dodging. Be sure to have some attacks that involve macrododging. Oh and forcing the player to move quickly is cool too.

Basically do everything in your power to avoid patterns where the strategy is mindless tapping in some direction and definitely also try to avoid patterns that the player can simply micro memorize. That stuff gets old fast. That's not to say the memorization is inherently bad though. If you get an idea for a cool pattern that will require some memorization work then that's of course fair enough, just look at how well a lot of the Psikyo games turned out.

[chum]

You hint at an analogy to guitars, and rightfully so. As a classically trained musician who has happened to put thousands of hours into the series which indisputably has the most elaborate, beautiful, challenging, and moxious danmaku patterns, I have found that analogies between the two realms have been extremely pertinent to my development as a shmupster, and for this reason I believe analogies will also serve you well as a developer.

Thus, rather than directly answering your question, I will answer the related question: what makes a good song?

This question was asked by ancient musicians centuries ago, and the answer that they came up with can be found in Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum, which roughly translates to "steps to musical divinity" or something. These steps were comprised of the 5 species of counterpoint, or the art of writing a melody that harmonizes well with a given bass line. You can (and should!) read the precise rules of each of the 5 species on the Wikipedia page, but for now it suffices to give you a brief run down of the most relevant points.

The bass line, or "cantus firmus" as I will henceforth refer to it as, should begin and end on the tonic, roughly following the shape of an arc with a negative second derivative. When you hear the first note of a cantus firmus is a F#, it's not just a note, but a guideline for the rest of the firmus (even explicitly determining the last two notes) as well as a whole bundle of emotions waiting to be unravelled by the various steps you take as you journey along the arc. When writing a counterpoint on top of your firmus, you have to make sure that all of the strong beats are consonant (well, with advanced exceptions), but there's more to that. Perhaps the least intuitive rule is the disallowing of parallel fifths and parallel octaves, i.e. parallels of the two most perfectly consonant intervals. The issue the ancients had with these structures was that the two lines would start to lose their identity, sounding as one dualled melody rather than two harmonizing ones.

We haven't even scratched the surface of a whole song yet, but even from this brief discussion we can already see an application to shmups. A developer could plausibly consider his bullet patterns to be a cantus firmus that the player must then compose a counterpoint on top of on the fly. By practicing many times, the player can try different choices and finally come up with the counterpoint of ultimate beauty (i.e. highest score). However, it is important that the bullet pattern harmonizes with the restrictions of the gameplay mechanics in such a way that an ascending player who is developing new counterpoints regularly levels out at beautiful harmonies, but with a slight sense of lack until he has achieved perfection. Also, as discussed in the previous paragraph, the player should never feel like he is simply a dual of the bullet pattern, simply mimicking the movements of some aimed turret. Contrary motion is ideal, but similar non-parallel motion is also okay and often necessary.

When you think you have mastered the art of 5th species counterpoint, send me a PM for a lesson on rhythm.

I'm crying right now, this post is so beautiful

[n0rtygames]

Throw a fuckload of bullets at the player and try to kill them. Delight in the salty tears.

On a serious note: Try playing Cagars modification of Giest118's TW3. Some seriously good Futari players have just crashed and burned on that game, thing is - its all doable. There was a pattern that previously pissed me off but I was playing it on stream one day, got through the pattern like it was nothing. Then 2 hours later I got trapped in Stage 1 hell due to not concentrating and being tired

Sometimes you're gonna be hit with a pattern that seems like its unfair. But usually it's doable.

SDOJ EX Stage 1 Midboss. Irritating as shit. We all know how to dodge it, everyone who plays SDOJ has dodged it in practise mode numerous times and felt like a badass. Yet it's very easy to fuck it up in a real run, misread and have to pop a hyper to get through it.

That's how you make a good pattern. One that you can visibly see a way to dodge it... but requires you to be alert constantly.