First of all, let me just
thank you for taking me at my word. Not everyone here realizes just how valuable feedback like your post can be. I will happily endure a couple sentences worth of of hyperbolic swearing to get at the paragraph after paragraph of
genuinely helpful criticism here.
The ship follows my mouse pretty badly. My mouse is about 10 cm away from the ship and is controlling the ship from there instead of, well, on the ship. I noticed that it happens because the ship follows the mouse when it goes down, but doesn't go as fast as the mouse, creating a gap, which gets larger the more I play. I got the footage here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0TS7CMKvmI&feature=youtu.beI should explain. You might know that the game is designed for mobile. It used to be that when you clicked the Start button, the player's ship was directly under the mouse. On mobile, this resulted in a game where the shots were coming out of your fingertip and you couldn't really see your ship, and in particular anything down and to the right of your ship (or left, if you happen to be left-handed) was covered up by part of your hand.
Some shmup developers on mobile, such as Cave, solve this problem by putting a large circular force-field around your ship, making you more visible, but essentially making your ship a larger target with a big round hitbox. (In the player's mind, if not physically.) In general, I'm not a fan of that solution. It has ramifications for gameplay that I don't like.
So instead, I just moved the ship up a bit. Now when you're dragging your finger on the screen to control the ship, you can still actually
see your ship and enemy bullets on all sides of it, all the time. It's basically the way I already play Abyss Attack on mobile. (And why the "speed increase" relics are a cruel joke in that game.)
The gap increase over time occurs when you move the mouse cursor further than the ship can go. The workaround is to watch the ship and not watch your mouse/finger.
Now, that was the headspace I was in when I was designing the game for mobile and then hastily porting it to Unity's web player to get it into some strangers' hands.
However, after reading your post, I now realize what should have been obvious: that the solution I came up with for mobile is completely inadequate for the web. I should be hiding and centering the cursor, at the very least. If you have any specific suggestions for how to improve the inputs on the web version of the game, please do post them here.
The shooting works fine. It's auto-fire, and that's something I like. I mean, why do I have to spam the A button to shoot instead of just doing it the whole time? This mashing doesn't add to the fun and carpal tunnel syndrome. However, this game doesn't have simple firing. The ship fires a burst of 4 shots, then does nothing for a while. I would rather have the option to choose when to fire and not to fire, because sometimes, I just shoot projectiles into nothing, then the enemies actually come, but I have to charge. A bar showing me how much time I need to wait before getting my burst would be useful too. I know you're designing this for phones, but if PC can have the option to be better at controlling the game, let it. Or you could design the game a different way and add in auto firing where it just shoots a projectile every 10 milliseconds without the cooldown.
I think I may actually change the design of the game. The concept of burst-fire is an old one dating back to games so old they literally could only store so many player bullets in memory at once. It's not all bad. There's a kind of rhythm you can get into, scooting under a target, waiting for the burst, then flying off to the next spot.
But it's not at all intuitive for new players. So, you're right. The player's default weapon should be as simple to use as possible. Once I get weapon upgrades in there, maybe I'll make some of the optional late-game weapons fire in bursts.
I didn't understand that the green thingies were pickups at first, I thought they were bombs you had to avoid. You can put some small story segment before the game to explain how the green crystals give you the power to... Eehh? What do they even do? I'd like to have that explained, too.
"The gems you collect aren't used for anything." Oh screw you.
You're gonna use those to buy upgrades eventually. You're completely right that they need to be better-explained. I don't really have anything else to say. The upgrade system isn't done yet. The collection mechanic is.
Also arrow keys controls for PC for those who want that
I can add arrow controls, but I can't completely re-balance the gameplay around them. Mouse/touch is where this game lives. Move a little, get a little. Move a lot, get a lot. I'll happily put arrow keys in, but they'll never be quite as sensitive or subtle as mouse control. I'm just saying that up front right now. Even analogue sticks would translate better than a keyboard's binary inputs.
Seriously, thanks for your post.
You've drawn my attention to some legitimate issues that I was pretty much either blind to or else glossing over. Stuff that we really all should know by heart by now, such as: Make your inputs intuitive; Keep your core mechanic simple, especially at the start of the game; There's no excuse for a half-assed port, etc.
Also, glad you liked the handle.