Greetings fellow shmupers.
[Incoming mountain of text]
This is likely going to be a long one so I hope you don't mind to indulge me for a bit
If you enjoy reading developer stories then perhaps this will float your boat...
There are a couple of reasons why I made this post.
1: Talk a little bit about the origin story of this game
2: Explain what type of shmup it is
3: Start to create some awareness for this title
4: Potentially look for some playtesters (This might be last on the list but is the main reason why I chose to post this now than when the game is much further along)
1. Origins of this game
I grew up in the 80s playing many of the shmups from that era. (Thunderforce, Gradius, Macross(NES), 1943, Twin Bee, Fantasy Zone, R-Type, Einhander, Darius, FireShark, Raiden, Raystorm, Batsugun, Aero Blasters, Arrow Flash, Dangerous Seed, Paranoia, Musha Aleste, Aero Fighters, Darwin 4081, Super Space Fortress Macross(Arcade) and Raptor to name some..)
With that said, I have to admit that I am not as up to date with the shmups of the last 2 decades as much as the pre-2000 ones. I did get to play subterranean animism awhile back and boy was it different from the shmups of old! I have since been educating myself on how shmups have evolved from the ones I played in the 80s & 90s. It does seem like the bullet patterns and scoring has greatly increased in complexity since the early days.
Anyways, this sort of covers my experience and familiarity with shmups - I had an intense shmup period with the classics up till about age 20ish, then a gap of the last 20ish years except for subterranean animism.
How does this become game dev related? It was around roughly 2.5 years ago, when I got retrenched from a job that I was in for 15 years(vfx company that shuttered their operations here and left the country entirely).
Foolhardy me then decided, of all things, to become a rookie indie developer
It was certainly a risky decision, but I felt it was the right season to finally pursue something of personal interest and passion.Having no prior experience in game dev, the road has been rather long and difficult. I did have some basic programming knowledge from my schooling days but game dev is definitely way more complex than that, seeing that programming was just one aspect of game dev among the many disciplines needed. I spent the initial months learning how to work with a game engine and then made several prototypes of different games just for practice. Somewhere near the last quarter of 2024, I decided to finally start work on the first serious title. It would be a scifi/military themed vertical scroller shoot em up.
2. What kind of shmup is this?
Seeing as the main bulk of my experience has been on the classic side of shmups, the game I am making will be leaning towards the classic side of things in terms of bullet patterns and simplicity of the scoring system.
Before I go into more details regarding the mechanics, I would also like to talk a bit about the general feel/atmosphere of the game.
I was looking to create a shmup that captures the chaos and intensity of battle. The lighting, vfx and sfx needs to be effective in adding to the immersion of the player. The guns/weapons needs to be satisfying to fire. Even without hitting anything, just firing the guns alone should be fun. There should also be satisfying feedback when enemies are hit. To help with that, I looked at some combat footage and tried to mimic some of the sparks and flashes I see. Destruction must be satisfying and intense -> Flashes, sparks, smoke and fire.
As such, even before there was any game stage/enemy spawns laid out, I spent quite a large chunk of time in my early prototype, just purely tweaking the feel of the firing, movement, hit feedback and destruction of enemies. I felt that I really had to get this part right before I move onto the rest of the game. If this basic loop of shooting and destroying an enemy wasn't fun, then there was no point in developing the rest.
It will be using 3D graphics(shudder!). I know there is some PTSD associated with "Modern 3D" shmups. This term has gained a lot of baggage over the years - non standard camera angles, tiny player craft, tiny enemies, tiny bullets, acceleration, inertia/drift, lots of unused empty spaces in full widescreen, mushy gameplay, unavoidable hits, shields/hitpoints, grinding, level-ups and upgrades to eventually out-gear a level, you name it. What will I be doing with all these you might ask?
Before I dwell into the mechanics of my game, I would first like to talk about the theme of the game. I felt that there was a gap in the shmup market for a certain type/theme of 3D shmup that I have been looking for but have not yet seen. I am quite a scifi and space opera fan and I really enjoyed shows and movies like space:above and beyond, babylon 5, battlestar galactica, firefly, the expanse, ID4, serenity, and many more. I also grew up playing a lot of space combat sims such as xwing, tie fighter, XvT, xwing alliance, wing commander series, descent:freespace, freespace2, freelancer, starlancer etc... You get the gist.
There are indeed quite a number of existing scifi themed shmups but I felt there wasn't one that explored the setting of being in a large, epic war, with capital ships on both sides, lancing beams at each other while small fighters dart between the behemoths, taking shots at the player. All this while explosions cast light on the capital ship hulls as they duke it out. Massive explosions when the cap ships go down. Amidst the chaos, there will be some military radio chatter in the background to add to the immersion. Preferably with somewhat realistic military lingo, definitely no cheesy or cartoony dialogue. It needs to be gritty and moderately grand.
Also, some form of semi "realism". Granted, how realistic is scifi when the word fiction is in it? But at the very least, no stars or coins popping up after enemies explode, that fills the screen and flies towards the player that breaks the immersion of the battlefield. I mean, I am not trying to throw any shade here. I play those games as well and I certainly enjoy them. However, there is certainly a gap here and I think there is a niche/space for this kind of game that I am describing.
So where am I going with this, especially regarding 3D? I felt that in order to achieve the type of game I depicted above, it would really help if the game was in 3D. Also, I do have more experience with 3D graphics vs 2D thus there should be less friction in that area...
Now we come to the mechanics. Besides not being able to find a shmup with the theme/atmosphere I mentioned above, a lot of the 3D shmups have many of the "baggage" I mentioned earlier. To be honest, my game will not be a complete 180 from the list I gave but I think you will find that most of them will not be in the game I am making. I guess I will just go through them in point form.
2.0. Firing - Full auto firing when fire key/button held. There is no secondary focus fire mode since holding the input is already used for auto fire.
2.1. Movement - No drift. No acceleration. Diagonal movements are normalized(Not faster than horizontal/vertical). It should be 1:1. Stops on a dime when movement input is released. There is a "precision/slow" move button/key that the player can hold to do more precise/slower movements(Might change it to toggle instead of holding it, need more testing).
2.2. Camera - Strictly top down view. Orthographic(parallel lines will never converge).
2.3. Player bullets - No slow, lackadaisical player bullets. Fast, high impact. Generally high fire rate. Must feel energetic. Needs muzzle flash vfx, sfx.
2.4. Smart bomb - Kills all popcorn enemies. Does heavy damage to medium size enemies. Slight damage to bosses. Cancels all enemy bullets for a short interval(Enemy lasers remain and are not affected). Grants player invulnerability for a short interval.
2.5. Hit feedback - Needs impact vfx, hit flash and sfx.
2.6. Player hit box - Much smaller than player craft. (indicated by purple orb in center of craft)
2.7. Player durability - Not single hit destruction. Still tweaking the exact number but it will not be a large hitpoint pool. I am also exploring varying the number of hitpoints by the selected difficulty. Also, there is a possibility of mounting a shield module that can take a tiny amount of hits. I guess this is probably a point of contention but I would really like the game to be just a tad bit more forgiving. With that said, my aim is that everything should be dodge-able. The hit points are not meant to be a poor/lazy stop gap measure for unavoidable hits. I have to say this again, also to remind myself, there should be no unavoidable hits. Also, taking hits will not be completely trivialized. The amount of damage received by the player is tracked and will affect the scoring.
2.8. Player/Enemy size - Should not be tiny.
2.9. Scoring system(Also called threat level/rating in the game) - To explain the scoring, I have to briefly mention the main idea of the game. It is a simple premise. You are defending your home. In the lore of the game, every enemy you let pass you means trouble for the people behind. Every hit you sustain uses up resources for the maintenance of your craft. The longer you take to complete a stage, the more damage the enemy inflicts on your home(in general). Every smart bomb you deploy has to be replaced and those take resources to build. These 4 concepts are all symbolically simplified into the scoring system. Every enemy/turret/missile launcher that you leave undestroyed increases the threat score. The time taken to complete the stage adds to the score. Every point of damage you receive adds(with multiplier) to the score. Every bomb you use adds(with multiplier) to the threat score.
But wait, "something isn't quite right" you might ask. Indeed, this system would be odd if high scores were what we were aiming for.
In this game, the player's objective score wise will be to achieve as low of a threat score as possible.
2.10 "Power up" system - Probably another point of contention, this would probably be looked upon as euro-shmupish. There are no powerups dropped mid stage(With the exception of stage 1 in the current demo where a support ship docks with the player and installs some upgrades). Destroying enemy supply ships during gameplay will yield resource containers which the player can pick up. After completing a stage, the player will be brought to a hangar scene where there will be the ability to fabricate and mount equipment/modules in 6 individual equipment banks. Each bank is unique to itself and has its own range of available modules that cannot be mounted on another bank. I have to stress that each piece of equipment available for the player to fabricate and employ will be fairly unique in functionality. This will not be the kind of game with small incremental upgrades that do +2% damage or +2% fire rate increase etc... For example, in the primary weapons bank, you have the starting gatling gun, then a spread shot gatling, a piercing dual barreled plasma cannon and a heavy laser armament. All quite different in functionality. In the secondary missile bank, you have your staples like the homing missile, but also straight fire missiles that on impact damages what it hits, along with any enemies caught in the blast radius. You also have missiles with proximity fuses that don't require a direct hit etc... In short, no small incremental upgrades. Generally, each module change should affect how your craft operates significantly. All fabricated items can be scrapped for resources to be re-used with no diminishing returns. In short, you can never lose the resources you have gained.
This game respects your time. There is no artificial wall that needs to be out-geared through grind by replaying stages till you are sufficiently upgraded and ready for the next stage.
Each stage should have enough resource drops to sufficiently upgrade and prepare you for the next one. There is no way to grind even if you wanted to.
2.11 Aspect ratio - It runs in horizontal 16:9 ratio.(Apologies, no tate) However, part of the left side of screen will be filled by the UI indicators so the play area is narrower than full 16:9.
2.12 Some additional items that I will just include here:
. Enemy bullet draw order is last and should render on top of everything else
. No mid gameplay pop ups that breaks the game flow to select some upgrade etc..
. No grinding of exp points, no level up system
. No gacha mechanics, loot box, random equipment stat rolls etc...
. No daily missions etc...
. No enemy firing from off screen.
. Bullet patterns more akin to the 80s and 90s classics, possibly with a bit of "light" bullet hell patterns
. Minimal "empty" areas or moments. No long winded intro cutscene etc...
. Have camera shake but only during boss destruction and smart bombs but can be turned off(not implemented yet) in game settings.
. Overall gameplay should be coherent, consistent and not crazy(crazy as in enemy movements/bullet patterns becoming an erratic chaotic mush where it is not possible to tell what is going on, much less avoid).
. No proximity bullet sealing at the moment but am still deliberating this.
. Not planning to do any early access, the game will be released in full.
3. The game itself.
That was a lot of text... I guess its time I stopped typing for a bit and show a short snippet of the game in its current form.
Right now, I am working on a 3 stage demo that will sort of serve as a vertical slice and the snippet of game play you see below will be from this.
These 3 stages are supposed to depict the overall feel of the beginning to mid level stages.
Overall, I feel the enemy bullet patterns are a little basic and I plan to amp it up at some point. Would also like to add a bit more of small animations, like missile hatches opening, boss having some modular/moving parts etc... I plan to do a pass on the enemy bullet visuals to increase its visibility, as well as add other types of enemy bullets.
Just to add, if at various points you see the words "Q61E", that is just the codename I used to stand in for the game title before I had decided on a name.
Again, all this is in heavy development and are subject to change.
Do note that this game has not been officially announced yet, and won't be for some time. What I am about to link is an unlisted video on youtube:
https://youtu.be/UKS7BVY8m4I
4. Call for testers for game demo.
I hope that the long explanations and the video has piqued some interest.
This demo has been in private testing among 5 friends/acquaintances for the past 2 months.
However, other than one tester, the rest are not too familiar or well versed with shmups and have kind of hit the limits of what they are able to test.
Out of the five, one made it all the way through the 3 stages and completed the demo. Another one could not get pass stage 2. And the rest of the three were unable to get pass stage 1.
I am now proceeding to phase 2 of testing, expanding to a slightly larger group beyond the few people currently testing the game.
The potential tester should hopefully:
- have a windows machine (both win10 or win11 are fine)
- have a steam account (I will be providing a beta release override key that you can use to redeem the title on steam)
- have sufficient time to spend on testing. I know this might be silly to say but I hope the potential tester does not test it once and then go radio silent... If you need to pull out for some reason, do inform me
It would be nice to get feedback at least once per version released. Right now, I generally average an update every 1 to 2 weeks so it shouldn't be demanding time wise. Of course, you are most welcome to test it more frequently than that!
This game supports both keyboard and gamepad devices but do note that the glyphs/buttons shown in some of the UI prompts might not be correct as I am still tweaking the detection code. Refer to the keymap in game for more details. The game will eventually have full rebinding implemented.
The in-game player onboarding is not complete yet and thus the scoring mechanics and resources containers etc.. are not yet explained.
The game is currently running smoothly(as in 60fps) on my oldish DIY rig built in 2018, which is a ryzen(5) 2600 with a GTX1070 and 16GB of ram. It would be useful to see how it performs on various machine specs.
Just fyi, I am in the south east asia region(Singapore), so my timezone is GMT+8. But there is no restriction regarding which time zone you are in.
If this sounds like something up your alley, please head to the google form at:
https://forms.gle/jRQoNrQWzAk5dRaw7
Some ending thoughts:
Shoot 'em ups are a niche genre, and shmup players are some of the most passionate and technical gamers I have encountered.
However, as most of you here know even better than myself, the term shmup branches out to many sub genres.
There are many strongholds of defenders in each sub genre and things can be contentious sometimes. I hope I haven't created anything too offensive here.
One thing I did not expect after writing all this; It has been rather cathartic putting this post together.
I guess the long period of development in silence gets kind of lonely sometimes as one goes through all the ups and downs of indie game development alone.
Really appreciate anyone who reads this all the way, kudos to you!( Even if you don't like this style of shmup
)Onwards and upwards!
(do excuse my self-deprecating humor)
