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[StephenM3]

I strongly recommend that you use a mouse while playtesting this yourself, since that'll be the way most people will be playing it.  If there are subtle differences where an enemy feels more fun with a tablet or more fun with a mouse, you should how it feels with a standard mouse.

This looks very fun! I first saw it through the little clips you dropped on youtube, out-of-context, which I have to say is a very fun and intriguing way to discover a prototype.

[Gremlin]

I love the solid feel that the physics and animations have. The follow through and the responses on the hits give it a strong physicality.

I know they're just programmer art, but I actually like the art style, too. Very clean.

[I_smell]

If you like that I'm using pink and cyan rectangles for lasers instead of 10 layers of gradients... good! Cos I like that aswel.

I officially announced this dev blog, cos people are enjoying this early concept stuff so... why not, right? Scary 

[character]

sweet! You mentioned controller support in the post. Does that mean no more mouse control or is that in addition to?

[Udderdude]

Most of what you listed on your blog has already been done, and the rest is just not a good idea in the first place.

Why can’t you EAT ENEMIES TO GAIN THEIR POWERS in shooters?

There's at least one game in the Darius series that lets you capture enemies.  There's another one that lets you turn into the enemy you capture, but the name eludes me at the moment.

Why can’t you CATCH MISSILES AND THROW THEM BACK AT DUDES?

Bangai-o has a very similar system where the more missles are near you, the more you shoot when you launch them.  Also your entire game is very conceptually similar to Bangai-o.  Diadra Empty is also another very similar game.

Why can’t you pick up a pipe, do a combo on a guy, and suplex him through a table like in Streets of Rage, but in a shooter?

Because the entire time you're doing the miniature cutscene with the suplexing and comboing, bullets would still be moving towards your guy and possibly hit him.  You'd either have to stop all bullets from moving while the animation is going on, or make the player invincible while it's happening.  Both are just really kludgy ways of jamming in a short animation/cutscene, when any other close-range instant melee weapon attack would be more suitable.  Speaking of that, Radiant Silvergun had an up-close sword weapon you can swing around ..

As to why these ideas haven't been used in Cave-ish bullet hell shooters?  It's because Cave realizes the draw of their game is the advanced scoring systems. 

[I_smell]

I AM completely ignoring the scoring. Arcades haven't been a thing for like 20 years, and the only games I've ever even noticed high-scores in were XBLA games. I don't wanna make a game about scores.

CATCHING MISSILES isn't what you do in Bangai-O at all. I'm talkin about straight-up fuckin grabbing rockets out of the air:


In Bangai-O you hold down the fire button, and then fire a hundred rockets in a circle, and they hit the enemy shots.
I can't find any good videos of the game that aren't crazy Youtube speedruns, but it's a hundred dots and lines and numbers onscreen like I'm avoiding.

Radiant Silvergun's a shooter with one special move where you fill up a bar, and he sweeps a sword around in a giant circle and kills everything. That's just as nuts as the first thing to say that's anything like this.
And Darius lets you capture enemies? Come on, I'm talking about Kirby-ass Megaman style take the shield guy's shield. Or eat the fire guy to breathe fire. I made a game a while ago where you

. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

You're calling out games that have one weapon each that're KIND OF... BARELY like the goofy examples I made up. This is stupid. If you like bullet hells and know how all the ones I'm dismissing are totally different and unique, then say that. Don't make out as if I'm making some boring generic clone thing for some reason.
And none of the enemies I've shown even fire bullets, and there is no score system.

[noah!]

Okay, here's the thing. One of the vibes I'm getting from this devlog is that you seem to be disparaging bullet-hells without making any effort to understand them. Like, it's one thing to reject a model of design that you don't like, but that doesn't mean you have to be an ass about it.

Now, I'll admit. I was in your boat for a while. I used to find these kinds of games boring. But, when you finally find a game you like, and sink some time into it, you start to see the subtleties of the genre begin to shine through. The dots stop becoming messy dots, and form into patterns, puzzles...a natural flow begins to emerge, and harmony springs forth from chaos. It's a beautiful thing, really. But only if you're willing to put yourself in the mindset to appreciate it. (for the sake of pimping,

was the game that broke down that wall for me, and as it seems to gel with many of your design philosophies, I'd highly recommend giving it a spin)

Take scoring, for instance. Yes, it can be useless, and in a lot of games it is useless. But shooting games manage to exploit the concept of score to add a layer of depth that you just don't see in other games. This clip (from one of the better western superplayers of our time!) pretty much says everything I want to say about the matter, so...yeah.

I don't know, and really, none of this really applies to your game. At this point it seems like it's moving into a sort of hybrid genre. I'm just a little miffed that you're taking a genre with some brilliant philosophies, and instead of studying it and learning from it, you only see fit to bash it. It's the equivalent of your dad bringing home an important businessman for dinner, who's worth millions and has the savvy to prove it. He finishes helping himself to the mashed potatoes, passes the bowl to the left, and starts talking about his struggles to the top. And in the middle of his anecdote, there you go, standing on the table, dropping your pants, and straight-up pissing in his mashed potatoes. He was too polite to make the gravy volcano, so you did him one better.

[I_smell]

OK- yes I am being super harsh on bullet-hells; because I don't want people to think that's what this is and think I'm doing it all wrong or get dissapointed.
Cos if I said "I'm making a scrolling shooter" or "I'm making a shoot-em-up", then people would come in with an expectation. So every time I say what this game is, I have to say "but it's not a bullet hell. I don't like those and I don't wanna make that." Then the expectation is "Oh, good, cos it doesn't look like one."
If I started talking about bullet-hells and which parts I like about em, that would be counter-intuitive to explaining what this game is.

And the second reason is that I jus hate em. Every time I click on a shooter, it's that. It's iike I'm looking for Half-Life, but all anyone wants to make is Quake.
There's decades of R&D in how Modern Warfare's deathmatch works, but I think those're boring aswel. Sorry buddy!
A lot of people say the Dynasty Warriors games are totally nuanced masterpieces, but no amount of Youtube videos is gonna make me have fun playin em.

Also you're over-reacting. Saying "I hate bullet-hell shooters" isn't the same as pissing on my dad, or his friend.

[Kit]

Glad you're making this, it looks pretty fun. Loving the mixture of silly/fricken cool robot designs that were made. Please don't just pick one. I want to mix and match parts But the bear, in particular, is my fave so far.

Not that it matters, but to weigh in on the whole people flaming your opinion thing, I'm glad this isn't a bullet hell shooter. I like the direction you're taking with it. I don't play Bullet Hell shooters for the exact same reason I don't play the highest difficulty on Guitar Hero. I'm not ADHD-OCD enough to be good at it. Also, I don't like having nose bleeds and siezures.   

[noah!]

Oh hey you made an edit.

Erm, sorry, that was a bad analogy, so let me make a worse one: Say you wanna build a motorcycle. But, see, right now cars are the snacks. Totally tops. Hotter than Bieber. However, cars are just so boring! You wanna build a motorcycle! With a motorcycle, you can do some super-cool stuff! Bank in on those turns so hard you can taste the asphalt!

So you unpack your gear and get to work. However, there's not a lot for you to base your work on. Maybe a few bicycle schematics, or an old moped you can disassemble, or some engines and parts for various machines, but overall there's not much info as to how to put those things together. Now, there's a ton of resources as to how to put together a good car, from getting everything all wired up to the subtle nuances that make 'em handle like butter...heck, there are even books on how to perfectly align the leather seats!

But why look at those? Cars are boring!

---

So here you are now. The real you, who just read that analogy, not the fake you inside the analogy. If you read the above and said " E X ☆ A C T ☆ L Y ! ! " then I understand now. I won't belabor my point further, and I wish you luck on your project. If you read that and briefly, if only for a moment, considered that maybe there might be something you could learn from the genre, then...well, I think you just made a pretty big step forward as a designer, and for that you have earned my respect.

[I_smell]

I've made like 3 scrolling shooters already, and have named about 5 in this thread, so yea I've not never played one before. I'm pulling from the things I don't like- that still means I've had to have played a lot.

And I edited 4 hours ago right after I posted it, you're makin me out to be some kind of post-editing jerk fr no reason here!

[noah!]

OK, I'm sorry. I managed to catch your post right before you edited it. I have a knack for doing that.

I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions and I shouldn't have done that. I just get really defensive when I see the genres I love talked about that way, and I'm a firm believer that everyone can experience The Joy of Shooting Game™.

It's good that you've done your homework. I apologize for letting that slip my mind.

Anyway, I've said what I needed to say. I've said far more than that, and I regret it all. I'll let you get back to development, now, and hopefully we can put this whole thing behind us. Cool?

Cool.

[I_smell]

I did the craziest thing yesterday: I took an hour aside, got a PAPER NOTEBOOK and just wrote down n doodled ideas WITH A PENCIL. The time just dissapeared, I filled like 10 pages. I don't know when this hardware came out, but I wish someone would've told me sooner. It definately wasn't trending, from what I remember.

Anyway I decided some of this stuff would be a mid-game or late-game reveal, so this video's a spoiler for anyone who's really that interested:


With good sounds n special effects, this is gonna be FFFFFUCKIN SWEET!!!

[StephenM3]

So those guys combine with other enemies to make them extra-badass, right? Is there some way you can influence which enemies they choose to power up, or prevent them from doing so at all?

I'm just curious how encountering a Sheild Brawler and a Glowy Thing will be different from just encountering a Super Sheild Brawler in the first place.

This is looking neat as hell.

[I_smell]

You can destroy the pink blobs. It's explained in an earlier video, they are their own enemy. If you slash them they split in two, but if you shoot them they die.

[StephenM3]

Ohhh, the powerup blobs are the same thing as the splitting blobs? I didn't notice! That's awesome. And devious.

[Udderdude]

You can destroy the pink blobs. It's explained in an earlier video, they are their own enemy. If you slash them they split in two, but if you shoot them they die.

Wouldn't it be a better idea to just make them invincible to slashes?  This way the player doesn't accidentally screw themself over if they hit them with a slash, and you don't have to explain to the player not to do it.  It will be immediately obvious if they're invincible to them and make a 'ting' sound effect or something.

[I_smell]

Well the slash attack is basically the most powerful thing you can do, and the point of that enemy (before they mutated guys) was to get people who just swing around slashing everything to come up with a new tactic.
Having them split in half does the same thing as having them be invinvible, except it's much cooler and funnier. I think the idea that you can accidentally help an enemy and make them a complete fucking nuicance is really funny.

And I think them splitting in two is a way better way of communicating "this is a bad strategy" than just having them not take damage.
And it works as a narrative conciet that an alien virus that mutates everything is multiplying itself, and that's bad.
Also it's more of an enemy behavoir or a unique skill, which is what the game's all about.

If I changed it then I'd only be changing it to make things easier on the guy who never tries pressing the other mouse button, and more boring for everyone else.

[paste]

I remember seeing someone speak about game design (sorry I forget who or where), and they were talking about a game where they were trying to tell the player that they shouldn't go in this one area, and the way they did it was by making it so enemies came out and blocked the way, an endless supply of enemies. And so people would spend their time just trying to kill a ton of those enemies and end up dying in the process and then dying again until they wanted to quit from frustration. In the parlance of games, the splitting of enemies is ambiguous, but the first thing that comes to mind for me is weakening. Now if action is going on constantly, there might not be enough time for people to figure out that they're not doing what's good for them. Might be worth rethinking.

[character]

Wow! Loving the new stuff. Keep it up