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[I_smell]

HEY! I made No Time To Explain last year, and that's all wrapped up n finished now. We didn't get on Steam
I've got a happy little animation job right now, but THE SOUL STILL BURNS!!!!!!!

So I'm prototyping what I'm HOPEFULLY gonna dive into as my next big swing... but who knows, maybe I'll just put it on Newgrounds, right?
I wanna take the scrolling-shooter genre, and just splash new ideas all over it. So you can punch guys, beat em up, throw em around, I want goofy dumb weapons to collect, I wanna get my black-hole gun to lv.3, and have really fun enemy behaviours instead of just some giant face that spawns a hundred bullets in a circle. Y'know?
I want enemies to pick stuff up n throw it at me, and set traps n all sorts of idiot crap, right??

-Here's a lil test chamber in browser
-and here it is as an exe (RECCOMENDED!)

I'm makin a prototype in Flash cos that's what I'm good at. This is just developing the idea though.

So how does this feel to you guys? Is this annoying? or slow? or confusing?
I've got all nutty character and art stuff in mind, but y'know, let's just talk about punching and shooting dudes right now.
TIP-- Hold the right mouse button to grab a dude!

Also please post in this thread, cos so far I've got nobody to chat to :/

[Pandara_RA!]

Grabbing people and the sword fight part has a gleam of awesome in there, you could do things like have big enemies who need to have a small guy chucked at him to break his armor etc, the sword fighting breaks the side scrolling shooter part of it, but that is the fun of it, and actually a style of gameplay from your previous game "no time to explain" (which I not only played long before this post, but actually right when it was uploaded on a flash site =P).

It's short but entertaining

[I_smell]

Yeah it's just a short test room.

Breaking the scrolling shooter vibe by making it a beat-em-up is totally what I'm going for, so cool.

[noah!]

I love bullet hell shooters, so I'm cautiously optimistic about how this turns out.

I tried out the .exe version, and it feels like it has a lot of potential. Even at such an early stage, the attacks feel visceral, and satisfying to pull off. However, I can't say I'm a fan of the mouse controls (both on a conceptual level and in implementation), and the screen shaking gets rather nauseous when the action ramps up.

If you decide to go on with this, the only suggestion I can really give is to be extremely careful with your game design. Right now, I can sense that this game will either turn out to be incredibly terrible, or incredibly amazing.

I really hope it turns out to be amazing.

[I_smell]

Ok, well I'm taking it slow as heck cos I've already got a job and am doin pretty fine for a while. I'm kinda nervous about it getting too cluttered or confusing or difficult in a bad way.

I am actually totally in love with using the mouse like this, I made a beat-em-up a while ago that ran on mouse controls like Noitu Love. I think they're fluid and natural and simple n all sorts of shit.
I'm thinking I'd have to also make it gamepad-compatible, but I can't see myself making this work with a keyboard. Is that ok?

And yeah, I'm thinking of this as closer to games like Metal Slug or Streets of Rage or something- it's kind-of the antithesis of all those japanese bullet-hells. I wanna swing around like a nut, throwin bombs at shit, so there's gonna be no crawling waves of purple circles or anything.

[noah!]

My main problem with mouse controls is that, at least in the prototype, the player has theoretically-infinite speed. But yeah, if you decided to put in gamepad support, I'd totally be down for that.

Now that I think about it, the way you're explaining it sounds like it'll be like the shmup equivalent of Gunstar Heroes...fast paced, outrageous stuff flying everywhere, with a variety of combo-able attacks. Sounds like a good time to me!

[Pandara_RA!]

Ok, well I'm taking it slow as heck cos I've already got a job and am doin pretty fine for a while. I'm kinda nervous about it getting too cluttered or confusing or difficult in a bad way.

I am actually totally in love with using the mouse like this, I made a beat-em-up a while ago that ran on mouse controls like Noitu Love. I think they're fluid and natural and simple n all sorts of shit.
I'm thinking I'd have to also make it gamepad-compatible, but I can't see myself making this work with a keyboard. Is that ok?

And yeah, I'm thinking of this as closer to games like Metal Slug or Streets of Rage or something- it's kind-of the antithesis of all those japanese bullet-hells. I wanna swing around like a nut, throwin bombs at shit, so there's gonna be no crawling waves of purple circles or anything.

When the sword enemies jumped out at me I was expecting a short QTE initiation as a transition to fighting with your sword suddenly, it may be  a nice touch if you go hardcore with this project.

PS: I personally had no issue with the mouse controls, but that's what floats my canoe

[I_smell]

Yeah I think those enemies are pretty messy with their introduction. They blended in better back when I just had them fly in one-by-one, but I wanted to show that I could have animation pieces and fun stuff happening mid-level.

I totally wanna have guys swooping in from infront of the camera, and big background mechs firing missiles into the foreground n stuff.

You're right though! I should introduce enemies slowly in the actual game.

My main problem with mouse controls is that, at least in the prototype, the player has theoretically-infinite speed.

Oh I've made shooters with the mouse before, infinite speed isn't as much of a god-mode as you might think it is. You can still be inaccurate and slap into a missile, or lose track of enemies under pressure or make all the usual bone-headed mistakes.

And dieing because your guy is dragging himself across the screen too slow is fuckin annoying anyway, so I'm happy to kick that out.

[Happy Shabby Games]

I loved how weighty it felt but there was a bit too much screen shake for me. I actually liked the intro of the flying humanoids. It very cinematic and made it feel like I was playing a 2d Star Fox 64 when you fight the mech dudes.

[iffi]

It would be more intuitive and less awkward if the middle-click weapon selection interface selected the weapon when you let go of middle-click, rather than requiring a left-click (which is hard to do if you press middle-click with your index finger). If you change that it could be pretty fun.

Also, I agree that it could do with a little less screen shake.

[HernanZh]

Uh, I turned off the game pretty quickly because the screenshake made me nautious.

[I_smell]

Just a heads up: All screen-shake related comments will be THROWN IN THE GOD DAMN TRASH!!!!

[oyog]

Purple-sperm-shot is the best weapon.

[Dragonmaw]

Just as an aside, this isn't a bullet hell shooter. Those generally refer to games where the player is dodging obscene amounts of bullets, not shooting lots of bullets.

That beings said, neat concept.

[I_smell]

Yea that's the point of the game. I like scrolling shooters, but every one I play is like a nostalgia thing based on some old anime bullet-hells; and I'm not into that.
So I think it's a shame everyone's going in the same direction with these games.

I got excited when I first heard of this game, but then I saw it was just another spiral-of-orange-pellets thing and that was pretty sad.
And that's why the title of this thread is "I hate bullet hell shooters, so I'm making this instead".
This game has a name, but y'know, that's not important yet.

Purple-sperm-shot is the best weapon.

Good! I was starting to worry nobody noticed there were other weapons.

[Jcup]

You could make the grab something other than right click... I mean if you wanna stick with Flash. Just seemed odd that their couldn't be a dummy button or something in the mean time.

Also just something to think about,is making it so the player gradually moves towards the mouse, so he doesn't out run his bullets he shot 10 minutes earlier. I can't see it in my head if it would make it look better but like I said just a thought and wouldn't make or break the game.

Otherwise I liked it, it was pretty cool. I've always loved bullet hells and such. 

[I_smell]

Here's an update

If you press R to restart now, you'll be sent to the loadout screen, where you can pick your weapons and perks and so on.
I made weapons and perks take up the same slots. The idea is that some of the more over-powered ones will take up 2 or 3 slots, and you can buy or discover new capsules, and you can mix em around if you can't beat a certain level or boss.
Or maybe you just wanna play it twice, right?
There's more weapons than you can fit in one playthrough, so try it out twice.

So this is cool, right?

[bome99]

This is really good!

I like the diversity of the weapons, the grab and sword is bada**.

But I think the mouse control feels a bit to responsive. It almost makes the game to easy.
Maybe you could let the hero "drag" after the mouse? you could make powerups that make him react or move faster. It might give the feel of him using a jetpack? I dunno..

I think it could give the game a nice flying feeling.

But really good!

Have to give that "No Time To Explain" game a try, the trailers are great.

[I_smell]

DILEMNA!!!!




This new enemy type will grow larger until he explodes. He grows faster if you shoot him, but will deflate and die if you get in close and attack him to death.

When he explodes, he harms other enemies and you. So it CAN be tactical to encourage him to blow up.

Here's the problem though: Why wouldn't you just shoot him to death every time? The point of making this enemy was to force you to stop shooting, and switch to attacking.
If he doesn't do that, then he's a boring enemy...

I tried it so he'd pop, and still be there, back to small-size. So he'd loop; and the only way to get rid of him would be to attack.
BUT that gives the problem that you could just use him to harm enemies over and over again, and that's not interesting.
Then I thought that he could pop into 2 every time, but that's the same problem. So he should definately pop and dissapear...

THEN I REMEMBERED! While writing this post, I remembered that you collect coins to spend on the weapons and upgrades. So duhh- I'll make it so that he only releases coins if you get in close. That way, you have the choice of popping him (damaging other enemies) or chopping him (getting a bunch of coins).
Or being a dumbass and letting him blow up in your face (damaging you).

PROBLEM SOLVED! That sounds like a fun conclusion.

I started off with 2 enemy ideas: one that would grow bigger and explode, and one that would be invincible to bullets, and release an area-of-effect attack. Halfway through drawing him, I just fused em into one.
It makes no sense having 2 enemies who're almost the same thing, right?

I forgot how hard this design thing was, ughhh.

[I_smell]

New enemy:



This guy can be REAL FUCKING TROUBLE if you don't know how to handle it.
Oh and these aren't final graphics, obviously.

Maybe move this thread to devlogs.