Spark | Combo-centric Shoot 'em Up | Releasing Nov 10

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EckyYakov

Guest




Spark is a creative, combo-centric, Shoot 'em up game. It's a 3-in-1 old-school arcade game fueled by the competitive urge to climb the leaderboards.

The unique shooting system hooks the player as they discover more and more ways to create beautiful and effective combos.



Everything in Spark is rooted in the player's arsenal of destruction-- four bullets that vary in power and speed.

Whether you are testing your precision and cunning in the Puzzles, your destructive skills in Conquest or your resilience in Survival; mastering the multitude of combos at your disposal is crucial.

Blast, Dodge, and Solve your way to the top of the leaderboards to crown yourself the king of Spark.




Conquest
Did you ever dream about a world in perfect harmony, with no conflicts or power-hungry tyrants??? Yeah, me neither. That would be way too boring.

Time to step up! Crush your foes, and their fearless leaders in Conquest. Elaborate bullet patterns, coordinated enemy movements, and... BOSS BATTLES.

Rack up points by blasting everything that shows its ugly mug. Bonus points if you can defeat the final boss. I have to warn you though; he is a little bit... crabby.



Survival
Surviving is all the rage right now... It's been trendy since the inception of this beautiful blue planet. Even if trends aren't your thing, hop aboard the hype train in Survival.

Your objective is simple: Stay alive as long as possible. Think about it... you've been 100% effective so far IRL. Time to transition that effectiveness in game.

Craft combos to clear enemies, collect powerups to help when times get tough, and don't forget your dancing shoes because you are going to need some fancy footwork to dodge all those bullets.



Puzzles
Okay... so killing everything isn't your style? Maybe you're more of an intellectual? Don't fret, Ruler of the Riddles... these Puzzles were made just for you!

Flex your brain, show off that surgeon-like timing and precision, and solve your way through as many as you can, you Emperor of Enigma.

If you want to be the Captain of Conundrum, you're going to have to be fast. It is a race against time.And, I can assure you, time didn't skip leg day.

If you are interested in watching this game as it is developed I stream game dev on Twitch
 
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nvrogers

Guest
This is a pretty interesting idea, but I think you need to put some more thought into how you're using it. This mechanic really shines when you're weaving between enemy bullets while simultaneously trying to build combos, not when you have to solve arbitrary puzzles. Because the puzzles are naturally dependent on angles and timing, you can figure out the solution and then spend fifteen minutes trying to get the timing exactly right (which is exactly what happened to me on the first puzzle). Not only is this frustrating and boring, but it also fails to teach the player anything, since the timing changes for every situation. You might not even need to teach players combos explicitly, since figuring them out naturally is rewarding in itself and necessary to progress. I suggest you refocus the design entirely around combat. Allow the player to move right and left in addition to up and down. This will let you increase the bullet density, and therefore the complexity of the combat "puzzles." I love the your idea, but puzzles like the first one are going to turn away 90% of your player base.

Side notes:
-The music loops terribly and the track is quite short.
-The artwork and animations are inconsistent in style and quality.
-A combo book would be a nice addition. That way players could look up combos they don't frequently use.
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
This is a pretty interesting idea, but I think you need to put some more thought into how you're using it. This mechanic really shines when you're weaving between enemy bullets while simultaneously trying to build combos, not when you have to solve arbitrary puzzles. Because the puzzles are naturally dependent on angles and timing, you can figure out the solution and then spend fifteen minutes trying to get the timing exactly right (which is exactly what happened to me on the first puzzle). Not only is this frustrating and boring, but it also fails to teach the player anything, since the timing changes for every situation. You might not even need to teach players combos explicitly, since figuring them out naturally is rewarding in itself and necessary to progress. I suggest you refocus the design entirely around combat. Allow the player to move right and left in addition to up and down. This will let you increase the bullet density, and therefore the complexity of the combat "puzzles." I love the your idea, but puzzles like the first one are going to turn away 90% of your player base.

Side notes:
-The music loops terribly and the track is quite short.
-The artwork and animations are inconsistent in style and quality.
-A combo book would be a nice addition. That way players could look up combos they don't frequently use.
Hey, first off.. Thanks for playing and taking the time to give some feedback. So i will agree with you that the mechanic feels best when dodging enemies and enemy bullets whilist creating huge combos for yourself. We actually have an unlockable end-game reward game mode dedicated entirely to this called 'Survival Mode'... You can earn powerups and the speed/intensity/difficulty of the enemies increase with time. I feel like that's more your style. As for the puzzles... This is a tough one for me to gauge because i personally can beat them in a matter of seconds. Contrary to what you think, it is not all about angles and timing... and if you dare to take another shot at it. you may figure out there are much easier ways to solve the puzzles. I can see how weaving the bullets for 15 minutes would be pretty f*cking boring lol.
The only thing i tell the players about combos in the tutorial is that they exist. Discovering them all, and making your favorite ones is all on the player and i intend to keep it that way. Haven't really considered making a combo book... But not ruling that out. I also have been back and forth about full movement not just up and down. i will code it in tonight... and play around with it. I have not had time to work on the Music looping... unless i suck, i feel like game maker doesn't have very useful music functionality, but am working on it. Artwork being inconsistent... do you have any examples in particular? I know the main character is generally perceived as out of place which i am aware of and okay with. I consistently stream my game dev to twitch.tv\EckyYakov if you are interested in popping in and giving me feedback as i code, if not i hope you play the demo and figure out the key to those first 3 puzzles... I promise there are multiple ways to solve every one! And you can do them super fast, without real timing.

Thanks again for the feedback!
 
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Misty

Guest
This game has good graphics, don't listen to them.
So, I play the tutorial, its one of those long tutorials that takes forever, then it finally gets to the advanced part of the tutorial and it tells me to dodge, I have one second to dodge and fail, then it gives me a fatal error about no health bar, and I have to restart the all the way from the beginning, well I did then I missed the dodge and it gave me a fatal error and I had to restart the tutorial again, with no way to skip it, I love your sense of humor!


"Cerebral shooter" indeed...because that error made my mind go crazy.
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
This game has good graphics, don't listen to them.
So, I play the tutorial, its one of those long tutorials that takes forever, then it finally gets to the advanced part of the tutorial and it tells me to dodge, I have one second to dodge and fail, then it gives me a fatal error about no health bar, and I have to restart the all the way from the beginning, well I did then I missed the dodge and it gave me a fatal error and I had to restart the tutorial again, with no way to skip it, I love your sense of humor!


"Cerebral shooter" indeed...because that error made my mind go crazy.
Well thanks for the comment about the graphics... And That đź’©đź’©đź’©đź’© is my bad.. there's code in the main game that obviously plays with a health bar that doesn't exist in the tutorial.. My fault. I will fix that in a few minutes and commit a new demo. If it is any consolation, after i fix that... and you play through the tutorial.. You don't have to play through it ever again! And i might add in a very primitive skip the tutorial screen at the beginning for now too. I sense your frustration and sarcasm lol.. I hope you'll give me another chance bb =]. I'll edit this post when i put the new Demo up. Should be like 30 minutes tops.

EDIT: That bug is fixed. I suck.. Let me know if you find others.
 
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Misty

Guest
Wasn't sarcasm, I find it hilarious. I hope other people get to play this before you fix it, so they too can experience the humor.
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
Wasn't sarcasm, I find it hilarious. I hope other people get to play this before you fix it, so they too can experience the humor.
Well it is fixed. Thanks again!
 
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Misty

Guest
Well I was sitting at my computer playing this game then I got abducted by aliens because I was meaning to write a review yesterday but they abducted me before I could.

So I got to the first boss and none-of my weapons or combos did anything, it was very weird the boss wasn't even shooting at me and it was a standstill, so i quit.
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
Well I was sitting at my computer playing this game then I got abducted by aliens because I was meaning to write a review yesterday but they abducted me before I could.

So I got to the first boss and none-of my weapons or combos did anything, it was very weird the boss wasn't even shooting at me and it was a standstill, so i quit.
That's super crazy. I'll make sure to keep all that in mind as I continue to develop the game.
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
More updates into 0.0.4... We have changed the way the laser works, it now not only is a good tool for aiming tricky shots, but also can be used as a very powerful weapon. Charge it up by creating combos... then unleash the damage onto the world! Creates a pretty satisfying game loop IMO... A little bit more interaction with the boss, and some basic abilties in there, but nothing too crazy yet. Working through updating the tutorial with the new gameplay mechanics now. Then boss. Then bring in survival mode. Yippey!
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
Even more updates for 0.0.5, who would have guessed. We have reworked the laser to look totally badass as well as being practical and fun. Have added in subtle particle effects to give players a better logical connection to what is going on. I have also started porting over survival mode, right now it is playable but there is no score tracking and is pretty unbalanced as far as difficulty goes, but still super fun. I encourage you all to check it out. Tons of minor bug and gameplay fixes. Next on the plate is allowing the player to select there control system. Still iterating on this but the current idea is to allow a 'WASD' setup and a arrow key set up. Not sure if we want to allow full control/keybinding customization, so any thoughts on that are appreciated. Will updated the base post with some news GIFS and such. Good day all!
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
I am the sole programmer and I have a friend who does alot of the art for me, and then there is a musician who i pay who occasionally makes time to do music, but hasn't gotten to SFX yet lol.... There is a significant portion of the game that i have already built in previous iteration of the game.. but have not been able to 'port' it over. So that is probably why the development seems to go so fast. I get to work on it four nights a week though usually and stream a lot of my progress if you are curious about the pace i work at.. which i believe to be marginally slow actually haha. But let me know how everything is feeling. If you wait until tomorrow to play the 'New Game' game mode (yet to have a name) i want to put in a couple quick changes that force the players to learn the mechanics a little better. And i would love to get feedback on how the feels. When we had people playtest they were not able to figure out the barrier mechanics on the third 'puzzle'. Hoping the new setup will help the player learn those mechanics faster and more intuitively. But won't be in til tonight. Thanks for the time and feeback tho as always!
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
Hey! Got a lot of what i wanted done in stage 1 implemented.. Its definately not polished... but if you end up playng i would love to know if you could make it to the boss... and how difficult it all was for you! You will have to download from that link again if you ended up downloading it already as i just commited a new demo to that link! Hope to hear from you soon!
 

Gravedust

Member
Have to say I LOVE the concept, I think it has real promise and I'm sad I didn't think of it myself. ;)
But it is going to take a lot of work and finesse to bring it to it's full potential. I don't think it's quite there yet.

Only had time for a quick playthrough, but I will try to play more later and try to give some better impressions of the gameplay once I've had more time to experience it.

Also, game crashed with an error:
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object obj_Lou:

Variable obj_Spark_White.bulletSpeed(100167, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Script_initSpark
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_initSpark (line 0)
gml_Script_Shoot
gml_Object_obj_Lou_Step_0

//===============================================================================

My kid was playing so I have no idea what they were doing at the time, sorry. : / Never experienced any errors myself.
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
Have to say I LOVE the concept, I think it has real promise and I'm sad I didn't think of it myself. ;)
But it is going to take a lot of work and finesse to bring it to it's full potential. I don't think it's quite there yet.

Only had time for a quick playthrough, but I will try to play more later and try to give some better impressions of the gameplay once I've had more time to experience it.

Also, game crashed with an error:
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object obj_Lou:

Variable obj_Spark_White.bulletSpeed(100167, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Script_initSpark
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_initSpark (line 0)
gml_Script_Shoot
gml_Object_obj_Lou_Step_0

//===============================================================================

My kid was playing so I have no idea what they were doing at the time, sorry. : / Never experienced any errors myself.
Hey! Thank you for playing the game and the compliments =]. Idk why my quotes replies weren't working yesterday haha. Anyway, thanks so much! It is my little brain child that i love so much and am really excited to try to share with the gaming world! I am always amazed at how creative you can get making combos. Even after playing with it for months. I also appreciate the stacktrace there, i will get that bug knocked out asap. Should be pretty easy to find.

If you don't mind... while you give it a further playtest, i am really curious as to how you feel with the puzzle-like mechanics in the (New Game) main game. I just changed around the layout to more intuitively introduce the more complicated mechanics. They are supposed to be difficult and require you to think. But they have been really doing numbers on people so i am not doing my job right as a game designer. I think i am getting there though with my most recent changes... With only one more mechanic i need to clarify. So if you play through the new game you will have 3 puzzles, a wave of enemies, then the boss. You can't kill the boss yet. But i would love to hear how you did making it to that point.

As always i appreciate the time and effort spent helping me improve the game! Looking forward to hearing your likes/dislikes and observations.
 

Gravedust

Member
Okay. I've had some time to give this a more thorough run, so here's my impressions:

As I mentioned, I really love the concept. I'm kind of a fan of bullet hell games (despite being terrible at them) and this is a really neat mechanic to use in one and I think it can be ridden a long way.

I admit I was surprised about the puzzle direction, but having seen it in action I think it can be made to work, or blended into the gameplay. I will say that bullet hell shmups and puzzle game may not have too much in common and draw audiences for different reasons, so fans of either genre but not both may find the game perplexing. I think harmonizing these two aspects might be your biggest challenge on this project.

Anyway. I'll walk you though my train of thought as I went through the New Game mode for the first time (Previously I'd only done the Tutorial and Survival modes)

//---------------------- New Game progression----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1st puzzle, I actually solved without realizing what I'd done, I just button-mashed fire while trying to kill the turrets and all of a sudden I was on the next screen because I hit the brain by accident. Retroactively, I can tell the intended instruction was 'shoot the brain'.

2nd Puzzle was pretty easy, there's a big green bar, I have a green shot, et viola, charge the green shot to shoot through the barrier. No problems figuring that out, though I did try to shoot the turrets for a while before focusing on the brain.

3rd puzzle was similarly pretty easy to figure out, but harder to execute. Timing the three balls through the barriers was a bit tricky, and ocasionally I would miss a targets with one or more of my shots, which, for the green and white shots, would have to be launched from further and further away and were harder to line up visually. The turrets kind of made a mess of things, while trying to avoid their fire and line up a brain I would sometime overcharge a shot, which would essentially make me need to redo the puzzle.

The boss unfortunately I could not figure out. The eye was green so naturally I tried firing green shots at it, but that seemed to have no effect so I then tried the other shot types with similar nonresults, and the same with the laser. And that's where I pretty much called it a day.

There were a couple of things I noticed while running the game a few times:

//----Possible Bugs / exploits ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

+ When transitioning into the level with the green vertical bar, if the player was far enough forward the bar would spawn on top of them and damage/kill them. Likewise, the player can move to the right side of the screen before the transition and the bar will spawn to the left of them, allowing them to beat the puzzle without having to use the green shot.

+ Don't know if it's intentional or not, but by using the laser you can beat the 3-color puzzle without having to 'correctly' solve it.

+ I had this crash occur twice shortly after loading into the level after the yellow/green/white barrier. Sometimes the crash will occur and other times it loads fine.
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object obj_enemy4:

Unable to find any instance for object index '112' name 'con_SurvivalStats'
at gml_Object_obj_enemy4_Step_0
############################################################################################


//---------- Gameplay Notes / suggestions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Important note: This is 100% my opinion, feel free to disagree or disregard as you like. I won't get offended. It's your game. :) ))

+ Everything is really small
I would advocate making enemies and shots larger. Especially shots, since hitting one shot with another is a core gameplay mechanic, and smaller shots makes this harder to do especially if the player is dodging around while firing.

+ The shot charge system seems a bit unwieldy

This was highlighted for me in the 3-color puzzle, when I was having trouble dodging turret shots, charging my gun to the right color, and lining up the target all at the same time. It was pretty difficult for a beginner, even with comparatively little else going on. It might be worth looking into methods to allow any shot to be fired at any time (a keybind for each one?) or otherwise somehow streamlining the charge process.

Perhaps also consider an indicator that shows when your ship is lined up with a shot of a certain color, to aid in lining up combos.

+ Make sure Combos are better than white shot spam.

Since the combos are essentially what the game is about, and since they cost time to set up, versus the faster and easier to aim white shots, the payoff for a combo should be something effective and spectacular and the player should feel really good for having planned and set one off. There is some of that present as-is, but my suggestion would be to find ways to crank that up to 11, and to make combo use really superior to the faster, easier methods of just spamming regular shots. Because players will inevitably ignore all your intricately crafted systems if slamming one button is what gets them the best results. ;)

+ Learning all the combos properly will take time, players will need to be eased into it.
It may be best to introduce the player to shots one at a time and give them the opportunity to practice and get the each different effect memorized and into muscle memory, rather than hand them all of them at once. I had a fair amount of difficulty remembering what combinations do what. In a certain sense, you may want to consider most of the game to be one long invisible tutorial (like Portal is essentially 80% tutorial) as you introduce new shots and combos until the player has his full arsenal near the end.

As mentioned above, a popup combo guide would probably make a useful addition.

You may also want to consider creating different associations for combo shots besides color, for instance natural elements sometimes have an easier time sticking in peoples brains, especially if they are arranged in relationships that make logical sense, (Ice shot + Air Shot = a forward burst of Ice Shards) or however you want to dress it up.

+ SPECTACLE!!! (sorry, couldn't resist.) ;)
Mostly just an aside, but a big part of the Shmup genre is screens filled with enemies, lasers and explosions, and a lot of bullet hell players will expect that going into this game.
It's probably worth making an effort to meet those expectations as you move along, even if it's only on the surface level.

Anyway, enough of that.

//------------Great Stuff---------------------------------------------------------------

As I already mentioned, I love your core gameplay idea.

I really like that you identified the hitbox in the tutorial and explained what it was. Very nice touch for players not familiar with the genre.

For such an early version, your New Game space backgrounds are rather nice. :) The color-changing and animated tutorial BG is also really cool.

You make good use of particle effects, the laser especially looks nice and has a satisfying fire effect.

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyway. Hope this is helpful, let me know if you'd like me to clarify anything I just said.

I'll be happy to check out the next version, when it comes out. :)
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
So... I was going to quote reply... But that is a really long post and i decided not to!
First off, thank you so much for putting the time and effort in to elaborate at the level you did. You probably don't realize actually how useful this all is for me!

NEW GAME:
I am glad you got through the New Game progression fairly easily. You're thought process was exactly what i have when i play, but unfortunately is not what everyone thinks like when they play. I am going to switch up the first stage to make it so you have to deliberatly try and shoot the brains to pass through it, probably by moving the players starting position. I haven't really came up with a good way to force the players positioning relative to the spawns yet. I don't know how i am going to force the player behind that first green barrier so i need to do some design work there. It's also hilarious you messed with the boss... there is no beating him yet. He has no AI programmed in or anything he just kinda is there and you can force him to do some of his abilities by pressing the 'M' key i think and pressing 'T' to cycle through his different colors. Obviously that is just for testing purposes but it can still be pretty fun.

BUGS/EXPLOITS:
I think i have tracked down both the bugs you reported to me. I added in some logic to deal with those cases, and am surprised i never ran into them beforehand. I dicussed the player position and that green barrier, idk what i will do there yet but i am thinking about it so thank you. And the laser beating the three brain puzzle... I will have to have the laser be blocked by barriers as well, that was not intentional.

GAMEPLAY NOTES/SUGGESTIONS:
-Size... I am not sure what i will do here. I think i like the size of everything. Although i do see your point, especially with the combos. I might tweak and test some different sizes out but i might end up staying where we are here.

-Charge system... I agree. I feel like it is outdated and with a focus on combos, there is just too many variables for consistency. I am thinking about taking the charge system out completely. White sparks are mapped to 'spacebar', then green-yellow-red are mapped to 'E-R-F'. I am also considering a Overheat feature, to try to get people away from spamming bullets. I am also going to try to implement more complex and beautiful combos. Like this for example:



-White spam.. I addressed this as well. Overheat system from the player spamming too much.

-Combo Introduction.. This is also a good idea but one which i have not come up with a solution for, and with the introduction of even more complex combos. I really don't know where i will go with this.

SPECTACLE:
So i definately feel this, I have not been good at putting in 'Juice' and other spectacles. But am getting better. I just did the laser and the explosions. And will work towards more effects and particles and such without clutterring the best i can. But it is noted and i will continue to try my best.

I stream at twitch.tv/EckyYakov Monday-Thursday 9PM MST-11PMMST usually. I will put links to my discord and such as well if you want to continue to be in the loop as i develop and help me out even more! I really do appreciate the time and effort, it is extremely helpful!!

Discord Link: https://discord.gg/0xjr2kYvM3bUA8tI
 

Gravedust

Member
No problem, glad you found some of that I wrote useful. :) I do actually know how important and useful any sort of feedback can be. In faaact, *nudge, wink, nudge* ;) I have a project in WIP at the moment that I am looking for feedback on, link should be in my sig. If you could take the time to give it a run and let me know what you think about the combat, I'd really appreciate it. :)

Anyway, I think the green barrier problem has a very easy solution; instead of spawning it in the middle of the screen, start it off the right side of the screen and then have it move left into position. (in more or less the same way the boss appears.) That ought to prevent players from bumping into it by accident or getting behind it.

One final thing for now that I forgot to mention: an unexpectedly good resource I found when it comes to Shmup games is a youtube channel called Bullet Heaven, ( https://www.youtube.com/user/Serraxor/videos ) which has tons of concise shmup reviews, and talks about the mechanics of each game, and the good/bad points about them. For me it's been a passive way to pick up on what's been done in the genre, and works and what doesn't and why. (and, I won't lie, I keep an eye out for cool shot patterns, effect tricks, and enemy AI for my own games. ;) ) Your mileage may very, but it might be worth a try.

Unfortunately my evening schedule is a little tight so I probably can't show up for any streams, but I'll watch the thread when it comes up, and feel free to PM me if ya need. :)
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
No problem, glad you found some of that I wrote useful. :) I do actually know how important and useful any sort of feedback can be. In faaact, *nudge, wink, nudge* ;) I have a project in WIP at the moment that I am looking for feedback on, link should be in my sig. If you could take the time to give it a run and let me know what you think about the combat, I'd really appreciate it. :)

Anyway, I think the green barrier problem has a very easy solution; instead of spawning it in the middle of the screen, start it off the right side of the screen and then have it move left into position. (in more or less the same way the boss appears.) That ought to prevent players from bumping into it by accident or getting behind it.

One final thing for now that I forgot to mention: an unexpectedly good resource I found when it comes to Shmup games is a youtube channel called Bullet Heaven, ( https://www.youtube.com/user/Serraxor/videos ) which has tons of concise shmup reviews, and talks about the mechanics of each game, and the good/bad points about them. For me it's been a passive way to pick up on what's been done in the genre, and works and what doesn't and why. (and, I won't lie, I keep an eye out for cool shot patterns, effect tricks, and enemy AI for my own games. ;) ) Your mileage may very, but it might be worth a try.

Unfortunately my evening schedule is a little tight so I probably can't show up for any streams, but I'll watch the thread when it comes up, and feel free to PM me if ya need. :)
Thanks again. Yeah you are right that is a simple solution and i will implement it asap! Also i will check out that resource and certainly reciprocate effort by playing your game and providing feedback. I should be able to get a chance tonight. Thanks again as always. I'll be looking forward to you playing future builds where you have obviously influenced the direction. Cheers
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
Oh the great additions in the best update yet... 0.0.6. I may have to break down some of the large changes in this one. fueled by your feedback! So i appreciate all who have given some feedback.

New Shooting System:
We have reworked the way the player shoots, now having specific keys for each type of spark rather than the charge system we had before. We did this for many reasons, the biggest being that is how the game was originally intended, but we pivoted when we had a focus on mobile. Now that our focus is back at the PC it was a good opportunity to go back to the original idea and implement it. The biggest difference is now each spark has an internal cooldown. This prevents white spamming as much as the combos are much more effiicient for clearing out enemies. Red has a longer cooldown than yellow which has a longer cooldown than green which has a longer cooldown than white. Which matches their respective power. Right now the control system is:
WASD - for movement
Space Bar - White Spark
NumPad1 - Green Spark
NumPad2 - Yellow Spark
NumPad3 - Red Spark
Laser - F
PowerUp (survival mode) - NumPad5

This makes the last update, which was a lot of tutorial work, completely bogus now. So the tutorial will not actually teach you how to play yet... Ooops. Still waiting to see if people like this shooting system before i change the tutorial again. I will be 'hotfixing' 0.0.6 tonight 9/20 to hopefully allow the player to choose their control scheme. But for now this is what you have to work with. So if you don't have a NumPad... you are screwed. Sorry =/

I am very interested how this control system feels in general. Also looking for feedback regarding the cooldown timers and how much you use combos compared to white spam. Pro Tip: Press any two button at the same time to instant cast a basic combo. I find myself using the Red/Yellow combo ever few seconds as like a shotgun blast. Feels good.

Super Combos:
In this update i have introduced Super Combos. If you haven't played. Normal combos are made up of two different Sparks. Super combos are made up of 3. This requires very, very precise timing and a little bit of practice/mechanical skill. They are extremely effective. Some more useful than others in certain situations. I encourage you to try to find/learn them all. See the visual demo video (Youtube Link) if you want to check out how to do them or what they look like. If you play, i am interested in feedback regarding how balanced they are in Survival Mode. Are they too easy to do, too difficult. Do they clear too many enemies? Do they not clear enough enemeies for the effort? How much do you find yourself using them? Or you know... any general thoughts.
I am aware that the super combos produce too much 'dust' towards your laser meter. So right now you get your laser back pretty fast. Working on it!

Survival Mode:
Survival mode has had so many things added to it. If you played the last update. You could play survival but you could not die, your score was not tracked, etc. Now... that is all implemented. There is full stat tracking, medal system, arcade style High Scores! I also have all the powerups in and working with the new shooting system. There are a few bugs. Like the Red/Yellow combo while you have triple shot is a bit buggy/OP. That being said you can now compete and put your initials on an all time leaderboard. This is updated live, so you can see how you stack up real time. Please help me fill in the highscores table so there are at least 10 spots filled out haha. Survival Mode is what most of these changes were based around so this is where i would like a majority of the feedback to be about if i get any!

I have also made some minor changes to the way the first stage works. Play that and see if you can get to the boss, even tho he still does not have AI. That will be implemented in 0.0.8 hopefully.

I love hearing back from you guys! Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.
Cheers.
Ecky
 

Gravedust

Member
Okay! Got to play for maybe 20 mins or so tonight and like 10 last night, will take another stab at it once I get the chance.

I reallly like the change to the shots, much faster to shoot combos and the ship has I think a bit more flexibility in terms of maneuvering and timing now.

Played through the 'reguar' game mode, the 3-color puzzle is now no longer as much of an pain as before. Huzzah!

I like the scoreboard, stat tracking and achievements! Pretty cool. The scoring is a little unclear, however. Obviously you are getting points for each step you are alive for, but the numbers are ticking by so fast it is hard to tell what else is contributing to your score, and how much. I assume that killing enemies grants points, but the numbers change so fast it's hard to tell how much. Probably minor in the big picture, but knowing how much enemies are worth might let players prioritize blowing up ships vs. just avoiding them. Maybe text popups with score values when you kill an enemy might solve this? But like I said, pretty minor.

In survival the most useful combo for me seemed to be 3-2, Mashing both at once gets you a nice spray that clears a good chunk of the screen. I think I relied on that more than anything, very easy to remember and execute. The second one my fingers kept wanting to do was 2-1, but that shoots backwards and so wasn't ultra useful when all the enemies come from the right. If there were left-spawning enemies, it would probably be really useful. White shot spam is now much less effective (yay!) though I would occasionally use white shots to clean up mobs that my 3-2 shotgun missed.

I basically forgot about the power-ups until my last 2 runs or so. Had a go with them, and I'll fiddle with them more later. They seem pretty cool, though I can tell you right now that my favorite is the 3-way, which makes for some completely ridiculous combos insanely fast. I fully admit that I just button-mash through it and watch everything explode while having no idea what I'm actually doing. But it is glorious.

I did notice something wierd about the score screen, certain combinations of letters would only let you input 2 instead of 3. It seems like "O" is the culprit, maybe in combination with some others.

Anyway. Must pass out now, but will play more later when I have a chance. (^_^)b

I'm GVD on the scoreboards, BTW. :) (along with a few others since you asked to fill it out)

Did have a few crashes, unfortunately:

Happened once, I forget the exact circumstance but I think it was in survival? Not 100% sure
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object obj_Lou:

Variable obj_Spark_Yellow.bulletSpeed(100197, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Script_initSpark
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_initSpark (line 0)
gml_Script_fireWithCD
gml_Script_Shoot
gml_Object_obj_Lou_Step_0
Crashed with this error, pressing escape on the name entry screen. This one is repeatable.
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Key Press Event for <Escape> Key
for object obj_homebutton:

Variable obj_homebutton.room_menu(100581, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Object_obj_homebutton_KeyPress_27
############################################################################################
Got this one when pressing enter to submit a high score. Only happened once.
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Key Press Event for <Enter> Key
for object obj_HighScoreEnter:

Call 'flox_init()' before using any other method!
at gml_Script_flox_die
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_flox_die (line 0)
gml_Script_i_flox_assert
gml_Script_i_flox_assert_initialized
gml_Script_flox_player_get
gml_Object_obj_HighScoreEnter_KeyPress_13
 
E

EckyYakov

Guest
Okay! Got to play for maybe 20 mins or so tonight and like 10 last night, will take another stab at it once I get the chance.

I reallly like the change to the shots, much faster to shoot combos and the ship has I think a bit more flexibility in terms of maneuvering and timing now.

Played through the 'reguar' game mode, the 3-color puzzle is now no longer as much of an pain as before. Huzzah!

I like the scoreboard, stat tracking and achievements! Pretty cool. The scoring is a little unclear, however. Obviously you are getting points for each step you are alive for, but the numbers are ticking by so fast it is hard to tell what else is contributing to your score, and how much. I assume that killing enemies grants points, but the numbers change so fast it's hard to tell how much. Probably minor in the big picture, but knowing how much enemies are worth might let players prioritize blowing up ships vs. just avoiding them. Maybe text popups with score values when you kill an enemy might solve this? But like I said, pretty minor.

In survival the most useful combo for me seemed to be 3-2, Mashing both at once gets you a nice spray that clears a good chunk of the screen. I think I relied on that more than anything, very easy to remember and execute. The second one my fingers kept wanting to do was 2-1, but that shoots backwards and so wasn't ultra useful when all the enemies come from the right. If there were left-spawning enemies, it would probably be really useful. White shot spam is now much less effective (yay!) though I would occasionally use white shots to clean up mobs that my 3-2 shotgun missed.

I basically forgot about the power-ups until my last 2 runs or so. Had a go with them, and I'll fiddle with them more later. They seem pretty cool, though I can tell you right now that my favorite is the 3-way, which makes for some completely ridiculous combos insanely fast. I fully admit that I just button-mash through it and watch everything explode while having no idea what I'm actually doing. But it is glorious.

I did notice something wierd about the score screen, certain combinations of letters would only let you input 2 instead of 3. It seems like "O" is the culprit, maybe in combination with some others.

Anyway. Must pass out now, but will play more later when I have a chance. (^_^)b

I'm GVD on the scoreboards, BTW. :) (along with a few others since you asked to fill it out)

Did have a few crashes, unfortunately:

Happened once, I forget the exact circumstance but I think it was in survival? Not 100% sure
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object obj_Lou:

Variable obj_Spark_Yellow.bulletSpeed(100197, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Script_initSpark
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_initSpark (line 0)
gml_Script_fireWithCD
gml_Script_Shoot
gml_Object_obj_Lou_Step_0
Crashed with this error, pressing escape on the name entry screen. This one is repeatable.
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Key Press Event for <Escape> Key
for object obj_homebutton:

Variable obj_homebutton.room_menu(100581, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Object_obj_homebutton_KeyPress_27
############################################################################################
Got this one when pressing enter to submit a high score. Only happened once.
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Key Press Event for <Enter> Key
for object obj_HighScoreEnter:

Call 'flox_init()' before using any other method!
at gml_Script_flox_die
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_flox_die (line 0)
gml_Script_i_flox_assert
gml_Script_i_flox_assert_initialized
gml_Script_flox_player_get
gml_Object_obj_HighScoreEnter_KeyPress_13
Thanks again for the feedback! I ran into that Highscore bug last night. Have a a couple plans for fixing that one. The esc key one is an easy fix but i didn't know about that so ill get that one in. And the first one is eerily similar to the first one you sent me which i thought i stomped, but i guess i need to go give it another shot. Thanks for reporting them and the scenarios. One bug at a time it will get better haha.

I appreciate all the feedback. Glad it is all feeling better to you as it was mostly based off of your feedback. I am working on a customize the control system right now. Hopefully be in soon along with these bugfixes. Won't make a large post about it, so if you ever are bored later on down the line it is probably best to redownload to make sure you have the latest patch.

I like the feel of the 3-2 combo. It is a very useful, not that spammable forward shotgun blast. The backwards blast is good if you are getting overrun by the grey enemies that shoot very fast in front of them because they won't shoot back. Feels good but is situational. I rotate between the shotgun and trying to hit super combos. When i get the 'Rapid Fire' powerup... the purple lightning bolt i will spam white because i can just hold space and get a nice amount of dps. Other than that i hardly use it. Which feels good but makes it much more difficult for sure. Make sure to use the laser too. It is super op right now because you can charge it stupid fast with a good super combo.
There are plans for items you can equipped that change the way a powerup is used and i have all the code ready to go for that but no art yet so won't implement for some time. My favorite being one that actually slows down the things around you opposed to giving you more speed. Love it. There are some bugs with the 3-2 combo in triple shot. It is supposed to be good but not that good. Need to get that tracked down too.

About highscore entering, yeah it must be doing something with the character width because if you capitalize you sometimes can't enter 3 letters and if you do i or l you can get 4 in there. Need to work on that as well as making it more clear the you are entering a score, by highlighting the box on click or doing that pulsating vertical bar.

Cheers!
 

Gravedust

Member
>>About highscore entering, yeah it must be doing something with the character width because if you capitalize you sometimes can't enter 3 letters and if you do i or l you can get 4 in there.

Think I might be able to save you a bit of time: Have a look at string_length(), I think that'll do what you want. :)

...I only know because string_width() has tripped me up as well. :p
 
E

EckyYakov

Guest
>>About highscore entering, yeah it must be doing something with the character width because if you capitalize you sometimes can't enter 3 letters and if you do i or l you can get 4 in there.

Think I might be able to save you a bit of time: Have a look at string_length(), I think that'll do what you want. :)

...I only know because string_width() has tripped me up as well. :p
Those bastards. That's exactly what i need haha
 
E

EckyYakov

Guest
Quick Update. Added in customizable controls into the options menu. It is not fully built out but should be pretty functional. Also took 'huge' out of the title because this is not a huge update. Going to edit the original post with some news gifs.
Also, I am still number 1 on the leaderboard. So there's that.
Good Day
 

Gravedust

Member
Heya, just letting you know I haven't forgot, I've just been super busy! Will check this out again when I get the chance.
 
E

EckyYakov

Guest
Heya, just letting you know I haven't forgot, I've just been super busy! Will check this out again when I get the chance.
No problem! I did the same thing. Life is busy. Make sure to download the latest as i update the game pretty consistently. Also. We have a new idea for the Campaign mode that we are hoping to start implementing within the next few weeks so if you want to focus on the Survival mode and how the new shooting system/super combos feel that would probably be the most useful feedback for us. Also, the tutorial is gonna be out of date. So hopefully it won't force you to check that out again haha.
Thanks as always!
 
E

EckyYakov

Guest
People have supposedly had issues downloading the executable from the itch.io page. It initially blocks the popup but if you enable the popup to go through the download works just fine for me. If any of you run into issues downloading using itch.io please let me know!
 
E

EckyYakov

Guest
Hello all! Long time no talk. I have been busy working... It is just a lot of stuff the player will not notice. But i wanted to bump this post... so here is what i have been working on.
SFX:
I have more menu sounds, clicking noises, an introduction sound on my logo screen, and some shooting sounds. I have a few more that i need to get working, and more are steadily coming in... It is really making the game come to life. Let me know what you think of certain SFX they are sparse but any feedback on those is appreciated!

Options Menu:
Options menu should feel really good now. It saves your preferences, has sfx, gives you a lot of feedback if you are doing something you arent supposed to, or will just not allow you to do it in general. It should feel really good, so if there is any bugs or any improvements here let me know because as far as i am concerned it is 'finished' so i won't go back in there until i work on Global Music and SFX volume bars.

Customization:
Here has been the brunt of my work... Customizatoin. We have 13 modifications you can make to your ship, as of last night they all have descriptions too. This is to upgrade your ship or modify how your game plays out a little better. This menu will show up before you start a campaign mission or a game of survival. I have alot of the basic functionality built out, you can click on the different mods, and you can have one selected per category, they show up on the preview on the right side of the screen as well. But they do not yet actually do anything in game, and none of your customization data is saved.

TODO:
1. Get the menu behaving so it remembers your selections, and is persistent between sesssions.
2. Get the description of how your modifications selected will effect your game.
3. Actually implement all the modifications.
4. Polish the look and feel of the menu

That should be done relatively soon as that is my number 1 priority. Some of my other priorties are
  • Categorizing Survival Mode as a Mini-Game, and adding in another mini-game Puzzle Mode, where the player instead progresses through about 20 static puzzles that test your wits and timing. (They're pretty cool)
  • More SFX, the ongoing struggle to give the game sound will fight on!
  • Do the rest of the modifications. There are plenty more i need to add in!
  • Start on the campaign mode again... I have decided on what i hope is my final design for the Campaign... The player will be challenged with a ton of different enemies, dipping, dodging and shooting like in a SHMUP or bullet-hell... But alot of the enemies will have vulnerable spots that can be exploited by proper use of combos. Each campaign mission will have a boss i think. Haven't decided on boss or not. Any thoughts on this while i am still designing it is also very much appreciated
  • Update the tutorial again to teach new core concepts of campaign, super combos, and allow the player to skip over parts or go back to parts of the tutorial at will.
Thanks for reading this! And consider playing survival and giving some feedback =]. Oh if you beat my number 1 score on the leaderboards ill like buy a cheap game for you on steam or something! Good luck
 

Gravedust

Member
Hey hey! Very sorry it has taken so long to get back to your game; I've been doing the headless chicken run for the last couple of weeks. But I did get to look this over briefly tonight.

The new sound are cool, I appreciate the effort. I can probably give better feedback when they have been filled in more, but they all seem well done so far.

I definitely like the idea of the add-ons, and it's cool that they appear on the ship sprite. It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

The direction you describe for the campaign sounds cool. Giving enemies specific vulnerable areas that have to be hit sounds like it would make good use of the mechanics.

Options menu is a great addition, I only changed one keybind, but it seemed to work fine.

Didn't get aaaaaannnyywhere close to the scoreboard this time around. ;)

Got this error during New Game, occurs when trying to use an item. Repeatable, looks like an easy fix. :)
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Create Event
for object obj_TripleShot:

Unable to find any instance for object index '194' name 'con_SurvivalStats'
at gml_Object_obj_TripleShot_Create_0
############################################################################################
 
E

EckyYakov

Guest
Hey hey! Very sorry it has taken so long to get back to your game; I've been doing the headless chicken run for the last couple of weeks. But I did get to look this over briefly tonight.

The new sound are cool, I appreciate the effort. I can probably give better feedback when they have been filled in more, but they all seem well done so far.

I definitely like the idea of the add-ons, and it's cool that they appear on the ship sprite. It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

The direction you describe for the campaign sounds cool. Giving enemies specific vulnerable areas that have to be hit sounds like it would make good use of the mechanics.

Options menu is a great addition, I only changed one keybind, but it seemed to work fine.

Didn't get aaaaaannnyywhere close to the scoreboard this time around. ;)

Got this error during New Game, occurs when trying to use an item. Repeatable, looks like an easy fix. :)
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Create Event
for object obj_TripleShot:

Unable to find any instance for object index '194' name 'con_SurvivalStats'
at gml_Object_obj_TripleShot_Create_0
############################################################################################
First off, because we are going a new direction with the campaign i am just going to disable that mode for now which gets rid of that error haha.

Thanks again for coming back and checking it out, as always i appreciate the time you take to play it and write up your thoughts. Sounds are tough, I am not a big fan of GMS's music functions. I have had issues with sounds having heavily varying volume levels and other things but i will work through them and continue to fill out more as time goes on. I have the add-ons now working and saving and appearing on ship, now i get to code in their actual functionality which will be cool! Which keybind did you change out of curiousity? and to what?

I know you said there genre of games aren't your typical skill set so making the leaderboards may not be in reach, but is your overall experience in survival mode fun at all? Do you think it is too difficult? Are you finding yourself using combos or super combos often? Are the powerups any fun? Do they spawn at a decent rate? Any thoughts on that kind of stuff as well is really useful!

Thanks again for the feedback! I'll go take a look at Kensei again within the next few weeks when i get some time. I hope all is going well on that front.
 

Gravedust

Member
No problem. :)

I rebound the Laser key from F to Q, but that was just so I could test to see if the rebinds worked. ;) When I test I try to push all the buttons just to make sure they work, and I also try to find cases the programmers didn't think of, to dig up bugs.

But the default keysets are just fine as far as I'm concerned. :)

So, my impressions of surivival; I'll just go down your questions:

Do you think it is too difficult?
...Nah, at least not at the points I was getting to. I am by no means a great shmup player, but I can hold my own in stuff like Sine Mora and Super Galaxy Squadron. (neither of which are super hard, but ehhhh...) I guess I have to chalk most of my deaths down to the kinds of mistakes that come from lack of experience (not knowing enemy patterns /behaviors, instinctively knowing which objects to dodge without thinking about it, etc. I >was< surprised a number of times by enemy chain reactions, which come out surprisingly quickly once set off. >.> Also, I'm not sure if you have invincibility frames post-hit; (seems like maybe no, or very short ones) but if not big clouds of bullets like the ones that seem to be caused by enemy chains can possibly kill you instantly.

Are you finding yourself using combos or super combos often?
Yeah, at first I stuck pretty exclusively with the 3-2 because honestly there isn't much of a reason to use anything else.

Super combos, I will admit I did not actually understand very well at all, so just now I went back and watched the video where you demonstrated some of them and then practiced in the tutorial room. Once I got the hang of them more or less I went back into survival to try them out.

I think I found myself first using the yellow-yellow-white combo the most, because it was relatively short to set up and had an effect that lasted a long time.

After reviewing the video again I started trying to pull off consecutive yellow-green-whites since I found that with really good timing you could set it off at the nose of the craft almost instantly, and the pattern seemed like it would clear most of the screen. Actually hitting that timing was pretty difficult, but with practice it could probably be managed pretty consistantly. (or, if I wanted to be a jerk I could set up my macro keyboard to probably hit it every time. ;) )

I didn't get to the point where I had the technical skill I needed to actually do it, but I think my strategy would be to super-combo my way to a full laser bar, use the laser, then lather rinse repeat.

I am definitely still in the phase where I'm still learning stuff.

Are the powerups any fun?
Yeah, they are pretty neat, I especialy like the rapid fire one, and the 3-way or whatever that is, both for their ability to fill the screen up with bullets. I think in addition to their icons you may want to include their names somewhere on-screen, to help people know what they are until they get familiar with the icons.

Do they spawn at a decent rate?
It seemed like it, sure.

Is it fun?
Sort of a sticky question. It just flat out doesn't have the kind of gameplay that most people expect from a shmup, so players who are looking for that sort of dodgy-shooty 16,000 bullet pattern mayhem will probably be disappointed.

Likewise the puzzle elements aren't really used to their greatest effect at the moment; for me at least the dominant strategy seems to be finding the easiest/fastest combo to do that will fill the screen up with bullets. Which really means your player will probably only be using 1-2 combos for the whole game, and doesn't really -need- to use one combo over the other; the main factor being time to execute and whether they have the space to do so.

So, the game right now seems to be stuck between being a shooter and a being a puzzle game, and for that reason I feel it doesn't work as well as it could. ...I have some ideas about how the two might work together, but I don't like making too many suggestions unless asked...

...But that doesn't actually answer the question either, so let me try again. :p I guess I want to say that the more I learn about the game, the more enjoyable it becomes. Being finally able to do the super combos was fun, even though not being able to do them consistantly (yet) was a bit frustrating. But gaining mastery feels good, like it should.

(Oh, before I forget; consider having a local scoreboard in addition to an online one. That way even if (like me) you aren't getting close to the global leaderboards, you can still track your own progress and not just be tossing your scores into a vacuum. Anyway, minor thing.)

However the game in it's current state also has kind of a steep learning curve. There is a lot to memorize, (color combos, what their keys are, what the combos actually do, item icons, what they actually do, etc.) and that's hard for a player to cram into their head and muscle memory all at once. So new players will probably do a lot of flailing and dying and feeling like they are missing a lot about the game (which they are) because they don't know everything they should.

...and I STILL haven't really answered the question, so let me try again, again:

It is fun?: Yes. But it takes a while to get fun, and before that it is kind of frustrating.

Soo.. I hope that is helpful, feel free to ask more questions about any specific points if you like.


Kensei is going well, making progress and such. :) I think I may put it on the backburner for a few weeks to work on something else for a while.
 
E

EckyYakov

Guest
No problem. :)

I rebound the Laser key from F to Q, but that was just so I could test to see if the rebinds worked. ;) When I test I try to push all the buttons just to make sure they work, and I also try to find cases the programmers didn't think of, to dig up bugs.

But the default keysets are just fine as far as I'm concerned. :)

So, my impressions of surivival; I'll just go down your questions:

Do you think it is too difficult?
...Nah, at least not at the points I was getting to. I am by no means a great shmup player, but I can hold my own in stuff like Sine Mora and Super Galaxy Squadron. (neither of which are super hard, but ehhhh...) I guess I have to chalk most of my deaths down to the kinds of mistakes that come from lack of experience (not knowing enemy patterns /behaviors, instinctively knowing which objects to dodge without thinking about it, etc. I >was< surprised a number of times by enemy chain reactions, which come out surprisingly quickly once set off. >.> Also, I'm not sure if you have invincibility frames post-hit; (seems like maybe no, or very short ones) but if not big clouds of bullets like the ones that seem to be caused by enemy chains can possibly kill you instantly.

Are you finding yourself using combos or super combos often?
Yeah, at first I stuck pretty exclusively with the 3-2 because honestly there isn't much of a reason to use anything else.

Super combos, I will admit I did not actually understand very well at all, so just now I went back and watched the video where you demonstrated some of them and then practiced in the tutorial room. Once I got the hang of them more or less I went back into survival to try them out.

I think I found myself first using the yellow-yellow-white combo the most, because it was relatively short to set up and had an effect that lasted a long time.

After reviewing the video again I started trying to pull off consecutive yellow-green-whites since I found that with really good timing you could set it off at the nose of the craft almost instantly, and the pattern seemed like it would clear most of the screen. Actually hitting that timing was pretty difficult, but with practice it could probably be managed pretty consistantly. (or, if I wanted to be a jerk I could set up my macro keyboard to probably hit it every time. ;) )

I didn't get to the point where I had the technical skill I needed to actually do it, but I think my strategy would be to super-combo my way to a full laser bar, use the laser, then lather rinse repeat.

I am definitely still in the phase where I'm still learning stuff.

Are the powerups any fun?
Yeah, they are pretty neat, I especialy like the rapid fire one, and the 3-way or whatever that is, both for their ability to fill the screen up with bullets. I think in addition to their icons you may want to include their names somewhere on-screen, to help people know what they are until they get familiar with the icons.

Do they spawn at a decent rate?
It seemed like it, sure.

Is it fun?
Sort of a sticky question. It just flat out doesn't have the kind of gameplay that most people expect from a shmup, so players who are looking for that sort of dodgy-shooty 16,000 bullet pattern mayhem will probably be disappointed.

Likewise the puzzle elements aren't really used to their greatest effect at the moment; for me at least the dominant strategy seems to be finding the easiest/fastest combo to do that will fill the screen up with bullets. Which really means your player will probably only be using 1-2 combos for the whole game, and doesn't really -need- to use one combo over the other; the main factor being time to execute and whether they have the space to do so.

So, the game right now seems to be stuck between being a shooter and a being a puzzle game, and for that reason I feel it doesn't work as well as it could. ...I have some ideas about how the two might work together, but I don't like making too many suggestions unless asked...

...But that doesn't actually answer the question either, so let me try again. :p I guess I want to say that the more I learn about the game, the more enjoyable it becomes. Being finally able to do the super combos was fun, even though not being able to do them consistantly (yet) was a bit frustrating. But gaining mastery feels good, like it should.

(Oh, before I forget; consider having a local scoreboard in addition to an online one. That way even if (like me) you aren't getting close to the global leaderboards, you can still track your own progress and not just be tossing your scores into a vacuum. Anyway, minor thing.)

However the game in it's current state also has kind of a steep learning curve. There is a lot to memorize, (color combos, what their keys are, what the combos actually do, item icons, what they actually do, etc.) and that's hard for a player to cram into their head and muscle memory all at once. So new players will probably do a lot of flailing and dying and feeling like they are missing a lot about the game (which they are) because they don't know everything they should.

...and I STILL haven't really answered the question, so let me try again, again:

It is fun?: Yes. But it takes a while to get fun, and before that it is kind of frustrating.

Soo.. I hope that is helpful, feel free to ask more questions about any specific points if you like.


Kensei is going well, making progress and such. :) I think I may put it on the backburner for a few weeks to work on something else for a while.
Thanks again for the wonderful wall of feedback!

I will reply much shorter this time but be assured i have read through your comment multiple times.
Notable things:
I am going to be nerfing a few super combos, i like the difficulty they have right now as far as being able to pull them off in the heat of the battle, and i think those should be the main point of getting yourself out of a bad situation in survival. But a few of em produce just way to large of a spread of bullets for how quickly you can pull them off. Mainly the y+g+w one.

I will be adding invul frames for being hit, i can't believe i didn't really notice that was a thing before, that is a must.

Now as for the state of the game. Two weeks from now, here is what i want to have... Two Mini-Games, think Zombies to call of duty, super fun... but not that actual game. Those are Survival and Puzzle. Both of these modes are reminiscent of the actual game, but highlight something different. The third thing i want is a full level 1 in Campaign... which is to be the actual game. I want to make it a very difficult, schmup/bullethell cross... With little blips of shoot to kill, alot of dodging enemy bullet patterns, and alot of the player being able to use combos to hit specific vulnerable areas on enemy ships. That is going to be the big thing, if i can pull off this level 1 demo. I made a new enemy for it last night, I have a boss ready to go, and am going to use the Surivival enemies (minions) for extra things to shoot at. In about 1.5 weeks. I may want some fast feedback on how campaign level 1 feels cuz i am going to a local indie game expo on saturday the 19th and want everything to be really good going into it!

Here is a speed gif of the enemy i made lol:
https://gfycat.com/RequiredWindingDunnart

Thanks again.

PS: New project looks sweet, is it multiplayer? Also... Do you have a feedback thread/demo for it on here??
 
E

EckyYakov

Guest
Hello again all! I am still super busy trying to get ready for a indie game convention here in Denver on Saturday, but i wanted to let you know what i have got done recently and what i plan to get done in the next few days...

If you look at my last post i mentioned i would want feedback on level1, well... now is the time. This was the list:
Puzzle Done
Surivival Done
Customization Done
Level 1 Done + BOSS

Now here is the list:
Level 1 Done + BOSS
Polishing

Specifically, puzzle mode is now in... customizations are all in, and the first 2 minutes of level 1 are in when you press new game, I am hoping to get it to about 5-7 minute experience total... I honestly think it is super fun right now. I am really looking for feedback on the Level 1, depending on when you download it will dictate how much content you get, but at minimum 2 minutes right now. I still am curious what people think about puzzle/survival but those are less important in the short term.
Thanks again for anyone taking their time out to read this and/or play the game.

=],

Ecky
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
Hey guys! We are now Launching a Steam Greenlight campaign.
It would be so much to me to get this thing Greenlit. With how much help i have got from some of you and my stream I really think we have a good game!
Please vote (preferably 'Yes') on our Greenlight Page:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=804673344

Other details. Level 1 of the campaign mode is complete and is actually pretty damn difficult. So if you play the latest demo let me know how that feels! As always any feedback, comments, questions, whatever is appreciated. Thanks all.
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
I'm back. So our greenlight is going OK, not good; not bad. For the type of game we have and the art currently in there i think we have a pretty good reception but i don't know if it will be good enough to get greenlit just yet. That being said, we continue you on with development and improving. Right now we are reworking the graphics, they are severely out of date. The artist on the game is in university so has had less time with school in session, but is going to rework the art over the break hopefully. Here is the design direction:

Our main character (Lou) is going to be the only organic thing in a somewhat digital/electronic microworld. Think tron/matrix. He is going to have a really organic feel to him. The bullets he shoots are going to have a similar style, but instead of being different colors for different sizes/power it will be different amounts of subparts. smallest bullet = 1, largest 4; so largest would have 4 of the smallest bullets. This makes the combos seem more logical and hopefully well help the player memorize them a little easier.

The enemies are going to be very sharp,electronic, rigid, basic. Think just colorful shapes, they're bullets are going to be polygons, linked in a simlar pattern, that shatter when they are combo'd.

Background/General environment is going to have the feel like you are in a computer, or surfing a circuitboard or something like that. Check out our puzzle background for a similar concept. We wanted to go more with that direction as Space Shooter is pretty generic, and i really like the aethitic of tron and similar things to that.

The reasons why these things are the way they are will be tied together in the story. I won't ruin it for you (also i haven't finished it haha) but here is the intro. It is in the point of view of the main character Lou.

When I was first created by my Father, he did not explain to me who I was or why I was here. He kept the grandiosity of my purpose a secret; He swore to only teach me what I needed to know in order to fulfil my destiny.
Did he know?
Was he aware?
He must’ve been.
I needed to be able to continue on with our mission after he was taken away.
I’ve learned so much on my own. The corporeality in this place. They don’t know. They couldn’t possibly comprehend the effect they are having on... Everything.
That’s why I must teach them. One thing my father said to me, told me to never forget, remains truer now than ever. “One single point, one single moment…. one single Spark can catalyze the entire future”.
 
M

MEITdev

Guest
Hi there!

I have recorded a short "honest first impressions" feedback video for your game.

I explain whyHERE

The purpose of this video is for you as a developer to see how players play your game, what are their expressions as well as some likes and dislikes.
Basically the personal feedback is something that is hard to get, so I am hoping to help you just a little bit with this video.


All the best with your steam GreenLight !!!

Keep up the good work!
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
Thanks again for taking the time to do this video for us. Very helpful.
A lot of what you mentioned as far as functionality goes is on my list of things to do in the near future. As most are aware we are in a graphical rework as well. I think we are going to rework the graphics completely and hopefully then all the functional things like Volume Levels, accessing options from the pause menu, things like that will be fully implemented.

We are very happy with you liking the core game play mechanic, the combos. That really is what makes the game different, makes it unique, and I think makes it something worth playing.

After observing people playing the campaign, and watching your video, I made the design decision to give the player their full arsenal of sparks at the very beginning. The idea was to have them pickup the ability to shoot more powerful sparks as the campaign progresses in order to ease them into learning all the different combinations. Now, we are going to instead give the player all four, and then have them pick up the super combos (like the one you discovered during the tutorial). I think learning the combos just comes from playing and maybe the puzzles, but the super combos are actually pretty tough to guess all the ones that exist. So we can introduce the player to those more slowly and keep that progressive pick-up mechanic in the campaign to give an rpg-like feel of getting more powerful as the game progresses.

A side effect of giving the player a full arsenal is the first level should be much, much easier. Which is needed it appears. When making the campaign, I really wanted to challenge the player but it may be a little overtuned. I am hoping without changing anything but giving the player more power it will make the first level more managable. We will see.

I am trying to up the community around the game a little more, the most active portion being the Twitch/Discord community. Fair warning, we are hilarious, random, and weird. So if that isn't your cup of tea, we understand. But i do encourage anyone looking to get involved or stay updated on the game to join the discord HERE.
 
M

MEITdev

Guest
Thanks again for taking the time to do this video for us. Very helpful.
A lot of what you mentioned as far as functionality goes is on my list of things to do in the near future. As most are aware we are in a graphical rework as well. I think we are going to rework the graphics completely and hopefully then all the functional things like Volume Levels, accessing options from the pause menu, things like that will be fully implemented.

We are very happy with you liking the core game play mechanic, the combos. That really is what makes the game different, makes it unique, and I think makes it something worth playing.

After observing people playing the campaign, and watching your video, I made the design decision to give the player their full arsenal of sparks at the very beginning. The idea was to have them pickup the ability to shoot more powerful sparks as the campaign progresses in order to ease them into learning all the different combinations. Now, we are going to instead give the player all four, and then have them pick up the super combos (like the one you discovered during the tutorial). I think learning the combos just comes from playing and maybe the puzzles, but the super combos are actually pretty tough to guess all the ones that exist. So we can introduce the player to those more slowly and keep that progressive pick-up mechanic in the campaign to give an rpg-like feel of getting more powerful as the game progresses.

A side effect of giving the player a full arsenal is the first level should be much, much easier. Which is needed it appears. When making the campaign, I really wanted to challenge the player but it may be a little overtuned. I am hoping without changing anything but giving the player more power it will make the first level more managable. We will see.

I am trying to up the community around the game a little more, the most active portion being the Twitch/Discord community. Fair warning, we are hilarious, random, and weird. So if that isn't your cup of tea, we understand. But i do encourage anyone looking to get involved or stay updated on the game to join the discord HERE.
I am very happy I could help, and that making the video served its purpose to provide information for you to work with! :) Very Happy !!! If you know about anybody else who could benefit from it, let them know ^_~

In regards to the difficulty, there is a balance between hard and enjoyable and hard and "I will kill this game" response :D I think the difficulty could just increase gradually as you progress through the game :) Nothing wrong with challenging game! Quite the opposite is true!

Like your approach of building a community, I may pop in to your Discord room every now and then to say hi! :)

Keep up the great work! All the best!
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
So things are going much better! We are being features in this Groupee bundle, the art rework is nearing completion, and we finally got some traction on the Greenlight. We are in version 0.0.8. It's mostly just the new graphics but you will feel a difference in the gameplay as well. More bullets... more often... which makes things alot easier. I am going to edit the original post up top with the new graphics and such when i get a chance tomorrow. Cheers all!
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
Okay. So i have updated the original post. In the demo you will find many new things:
All new art!
Everything has been update. It is not final, but it is definitely more in the direction we are intending to go as we finish up the game.
Boss is a little choppy, but I will smooth it out. I think there are some clarity issues, I need to get that in check.
Survival no long has customization, that will be reserved for progressing in the campaign.
Puzzles, no big changes here. Just an easter egg i am testing out on puzzle 11.

Next focus is a career stats menu, I have been tracking a lot of data already so i just need organize and display it i think.
After that, I want to get some new enemies in, smaller, faster, easy to kill, but fills some gaps in action, and makes it a little more dynamic.

Download the demo and give it a shot. Feedback is still very, very much appreciated. Looking to tune the gameplay more now that art is in a consistent direction.
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
Thank you for the vote! We definitely appreciate it. I'm optimistic =]
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
Well the optimism paid off because we have indeed been Greenlit! Thank you all for the support, it means so much to us. We are just one (albeit very big) step away from achieving the game of truly being game developers. There's a lot more work to be done, but we are definitely nearing the finish line.

Nothing to crazy is happening right now. I am optimizing my code, cleaning up the project, and trying to get exporting to Mac working properly. We are moving to GMS2. This is almost over, and when I am done with that the focus will be to build out the next 5 levels of story. We contracted an artist for the story so I am excited to see how that goes. We are still working on more music and sfx... it is something I am a little worried may delay our release, but ohh well.

Demo is gonna be polished off and put on a shelf soon(late next week maybe). It will have full survival and puzzle modes, stats, all options, and 1 level + boss of story to tease people with. I am not sure if that is too much content or what, but I guess it is a learn as we go thing. Please play that demo and give us any and all feedback. It is not too late to change something if there are fundamental flaws. I am also interested in general feel, difficulty, and of course and bugs or glitches you find.

Thanks again for all the support over the course of this project! It's not done yet. I still need you guys haha.
 
E

EckyYakov

Guest
We now have the first few frames of the story done, our port over to gms2 is like 80% done and i am super burnt out on it. I know that you could essentially just import gms1 to gms2 but i didn't like compatibility scripts and there was some odd behavior so i have painstakingly been doing it all by hand. Its a real b*tch. But should be done soon. While I have been taking a break from that i have been workin on a tool to help us build better enemies.

I have also been taking care of more behind the scenes stuff such as getting Knightmare Games, Limited created... and getting a business bank account set up. All important. Just not directly influencing the game.

Let me know if you all play the demo, or use the enemy builder to create anything cool. You have to open up the javascript console and it outputs Draw Event code to there... Obviously not that useful for you guys but i can plug it into my projects to build out the exact enemy you built! If you make something super awesome and want us to use it in game we will give you credit, and I mean it's just super awesome to see something you made in the final product. There are many more features and fixes i am working on the Enemy Builder tool as well, but you can put comments/concerns/feedback here for that and I will look at it.

Good day friends!
 
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EckyYakov

Guest
Hey all, finished the enemy builder. Check out the how to video here:

Or you can dowload it HERE.
Other good news is i got some work done on the new enemy design oh AND ... Controller support! i have tested xbox and ps4 controllers, both working pretty good so far! Excited. Getting pretty close to what i'd call a beta. Let me know if anyone gives er a play!

 

Gravedust

Member
Finally, I can live out my dreams of battling endangered sea turtles...

Seriously though, looks great, I like the new direction the art seems to be going in.
I fiddled around w/ the enemy builder a while back, seems like an interesting addition.

Congrats on getting Greenlit as well! :)

Will check out the newest version whenever I get the time, but who knows when that'll be. -_-
 
S

Spike

Guest
Just tried out the demo, seems promising. i try to play games without having to read instructions, so I was a little lost as to what Z and X did. I wasnt sure how to activate the powerups either
 
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