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ThetaGames
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« on: November 01, 2013, 06:06:03 PM »

Ceramic Painter

Following the events of Ceramic Shooter:  Electronic Poem, the main character finds himself in an 8-dimensional normed vector-space.  It's rather grey - so he decides to fill it with color.

In this "sequel," you face endless waves of procedurally generated enemies, and each wave culminates with a (procedurally generated) boss.  The game, however, "evolves" as you play - a bit like Hikware's Warning Forever.  Enemies have six continuously-varying "stats" (bullet spread, fire rate, bullet speed, speed, intelligence, and shields), all of which affect their behavior, attack patterns, and appearance.  If an enemy successfully damages you or escapes through the bottom of the screen, its stats will likely be "passed on" to future generations of enemies.

When you destroy an enemy, it may drop a powerup which contains it "stats" information.  Holding <X> will attract them to your ship (you do not shoot while attracting).  Once picked up, the powerup adds its six stats to your ship's own stats (note that "intelligence" is replaced by "attract," which affects your ship's ability to attract powerups).  Your ship's stats are displayed on a hexagon-shaped display.


Screenshot:



Controls:
Arrow Keys:  Move
<X>:  Attract powerups
<P>:  Pause game
<ESC>:  Exit


Download links:

Mirror I (MediaFire)
GameJolt Page


Specifications:

Title: Ceramic Painter
Download Size: 7.77 MB zipped
File Type: A '.zip' archive that contains the main executable, README.txt, and folders containing the game music and SFX.
Version: 1.1
Written In: GM8 Registered
« Last Edit: November 03, 2013, 09:36:32 AM by Theta » Logged

ortoslon
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« Reply #1 on: November 02, 2013, 03:41:12 AM »

played for half an hour, scored 270k top. impressions:

* my eyes!

tho
* is my hitbox a wobbling and swaying triangle too?
* music drowns out powerup-picking sounds so i have to look at my ship when i'd rather look at all the bullets flying at stationary me
* i get into the habit of holding the attract button for an instant when passing right over a powerup. superfluous
* some bosses love to hug the bottom of the screen
* smoothly fluctuating speed of my ship prevents me from getting the feel of it
* some bosses are too erratic and fast to avoid
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ThetaGames
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« Reply #2 on: November 02, 2013, 07:13:09 AM »

played for half an hour, scored 270k top. impressions:
Wow, that's a pretty good score!

* my eyes!

tho
Haha - I remember that game!

* is my hitbox a wobbling and swaying triangle too?
No, it's just a small circle of constant radius, which will always lie within the wobbling triangle.

* music drowns out powerup-picking sounds so i have to look at my ship when i'd rather look at all the bullets flying at stationary me
This is a good point - I'll see if I can increase the volume for that specific sound.  I didn't want the sound effects in general to be too loud, but that one can probably be increased in volume.

* i get into the habit of holding the attract button for an instant when passing right over a powerup. superfluous
I suppose this is true when your attract radius is small, but with a large "attract" parameter, you can draw powerups from all over the screen.

* some bosses love to hug the bottom of the screen
* some bosses are too erratic and fast to avoid
I'll look into add some other variation to the boss AI (for those cowardly ones who avoid you the whole time), and also ensuring that they don't get "too fast."

* smoothly fluctuating speed of my ship prevents me from getting the feel of it
I'm not sure if I'll change this one.  Though I do see your point, I personally like how the "speed" parameter changes the gameplay style.
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ortoslon
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« Reply #3 on: November 02, 2013, 07:42:15 AM »

i've seen how useful full Attr. is but standing for a second is still costly, while tapping X over a large powerup is a no-brainer. automatically collecting powerups that the ship's passing over (like in most shmups) wouldn't upset the balance. i see one downside: someone who doesn't read readmes will try to play the game with arrows only but you could show the controls on the title screen.
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ThetaGames
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« Reply #4 on: November 02, 2013, 01:04:24 PM »

i've seen how useful full Attr. is but standing for a second is still costly, while tapping X over a large powerup is a no-brainer. automatically collecting powerups that the ship's passing over (like in most shmups) wouldn't upset the balance. i see one downside: someone who doesn't read readmes will try to play the game with arrows only but you could show the controls on the title screen.
I played around with this, and I really do think it improves the gameplay.  I've uploaded a new version (v1.1); now, you don't have to be holding <X> to actually pick up the powerup.  Also, I increased the volume of the powerup sound.  As for a description of controls in the title screen; maybe I'll implement it in the future if I can do it while maintaining the "clean" feeling of the title screen.

Thank you for your comments,

 - Theta
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ortoslon
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« Reply #5 on: November 03, 2013, 05:13:58 AM »

yes, v1.1's much better. i've played for an hour more. after a couple tries i started recording my games to show unfair bosses:

,

, 350k (jump to 20 seconds before the end). i console myself with the thought that my bosses evolve into unavoidable seeking missiles because subtle tactics don't work against me
« Last Edit: November 03, 2013, 05:26:35 AM by ortoslon » Logged
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« Reply #6 on: November 03, 2013, 09:20:59 AM »

looks like every indei game ever made 0/10
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ThetaGames
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« Reply #7 on: November 03, 2013, 11:48:03 AM »

yes, v1.1's much better. i've played for an hour more. after a couple tries i started recording my games to show unfair bosses:

,

, 350k (jump to 20 seconds before the end). i console myself with the thought that my bosses evolve into unavoidable seeking missiles because subtle tactics don't work against me
Wow, those bosses were indeed aggressive.  I noticed you were very good at bullet-dodging, and thus the algorithm favored fast, intelligent enemies over "let's spam bullets" enemies.
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ThetaGames
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« Reply #8 on: November 06, 2013, 07:30:47 PM »

Does anyone else have any comments on this?
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Noyb
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« Reply #9 on: November 18, 2013, 03:43:11 AM »

Funny how Shooter is the non-violent entry and Painter is the violent one.

Made it to wave 5 after a few times. Scored 150,277. Liked the chill music.

With all the data on screen, I felt like my shields were a big black box. Are all enemy bullets the same strength, only my shields get stronger? Why not show my shields in units of bullet hits instead of whatever that stretching asterisk thing is? If bullets aren't all equal, is there a way for the player to know this besides trial and error?

Difficulty curve is odd. Slow enough at the start that I don't necessarily feel like replaying early bits to get to the more frantic later waves. Normal waves start out cramped since it's not possible/easy to kill every enemy before they get shots off, get a little easier as you upgrade spread, then fill in again.

Boss difficulty seems to depend more on when how often they like camping around the bottom of the screen. Happens to me even though I'm nowhere near as good at shmups as ortoslon. That strategy makes it hard to kill, not very fun to fight. Didn't realize they were adaptive until I reread the description: why not show their parameters onscreen like the player's?
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ortoslon
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« Reply #10 on: November 18, 2013, 07:30:20 AM »

i agree that early waves should be beefed up/skipped: notice how my score for the first two waves doesn't rise across the 3 videos though i'm clearly getting better
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