Oh my god! I feel you dude. Try having to meet with other people who also have school, work, family, friends, and chores. Finding time when I'm free and they are free is like finding a time where the all of the planets align.

But you can tell when all of the planets align though.

I use an internet browser.

Seconded.

Seems odd with Twin Nvidia 9800 GTS SLI video cards that I'd have to turn the quality down... anyway its not my style of game...

I downloaded and tried to play it, but the colours were skewiff... i.e. on the second screen all I got was black and green..... so couldn't play it.

Hmmm I'm coming from a different angle sorta. I was writing a book for a while, but then realised that I don't actually read books.. so I was sorta making something someone like me would never read... which was quite weird... then I switched to the idea of making a documentary (which I do watch) to express my ideas, which I started going down that road, but it wasn't until shortly after I thought... fuck.... why not do it in the form of a game where people interact with the ideas? WOAH.... and my mind went wild. So theres about 200,000 words of book sitting there waiting for me to transmute the ideas into a game.... which I will get to, but I'm currently building up my chops on a series of smaller projects to get to the stage where I feel I can adequately do that.

I share the feeling that most games don't inspire me, but thats because quite a lot of games are just remakes of old games with different graphics and sound. Having played SO many games, if I put one on and I've played a very similar game before, My mind quickly says "You've done this before, what are you doing"... hence disconnecting me from the game and I shut it down. Not being able to play games is a good sign for a creator.. it means you have higher standards, and it takes more to stimulate your brain than the average player. I play as many games as possible of a particular genre that come out as possible, but most of the time it's about 5 minutes of me going... hmmmm.... ok.... theres one good idea to take away from the game (if that), but the game as a whole doesn't inspire me to move further.

What gets me excited about games? The ability to mix all forms of media together to interact with the players mind in the most exacting way possible. Books only interact with symbology/language, music only interacts with the auditory/emotion systems, Visual is visual/emotive.... to a certain extent films blend all three of those, but I think the interactivity is an extra element that is yet to be truly exploited.

But perhaps the lateral way to fix this problem would be to drop the joypad support all together and force people to use the keys/mouse. I'd recommend that if you aren't going to fix the joypad issue.

Hmmmm... you might find your design issues more pressing, but I stick by the joypad+tutorial issue.

If you are writing this to extend your portfolio and you are going to hand this to basically anyone who works in the game industry... say if you are looking for a job... the first thing they will do is install.. second, double-click the exe..... third, pick up the joypad..... casual PC/Mac gamers may use the keyboard but I imagine anyone in a position of power to give you something, whether funding, publishing or employment, in the game industry will probably be reaching for their well-worn gamepad. Also any player who would actually buy the game, rather than pirate it, probably also owns a well-worn gamepad.

The major point for me as a personal note is that I have been researching shmups and have a great number of them on my computer and they are basically all derivative pieces of crap for reasons you probably understand, and I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments... but... I played them all... and even some of the crappiest ones I may never play again, but gave me a singular good idea... with yours, I turned it on..... I thought 'This looks absolutely rad! Can't wait to play it!' tried to sit through the tutorial but it was WAY too long, so I skipped it, got into the game and the joypad controls were so terrible I turned it off. So, if it does take you 50 hours... I'd recommend going down to the local bottle shop, getting two cases of beer and locking yourself in all weekend and fixing it, and revising the agonizing tutorial while you are there. I'd be saying this about any game, its not just a shmup thing, its how the player interacts with the game which is absolutely fundamental...

I wholeheartly love your approach and what you are trying to do.... but.... for someone like me who likes to explore shmups and look at new ideas for shmups.... for me to turn it off before I even get to the innovative aspects of your game... well, thats sorta fatal in my opinion. The 'storycontent, fight mechanics, lack of sounddesign, shopbugs and the missing instant save feature' may be issues, but I couldn't even get to them! But I didn't notice anything wrong with the sound design... what problems do you think you have with that?

I do think you should put in the effort to fix the joypad/tutorial issue, then the game would probably be rad even if it is missing a bunch of features you'd want in the final game. If people can get in and see where you are going, perhaps they'd throw you some kind of support for it if you know what I mean.... but if you alienate the large (and probably majority) number of players wanting to use joypads, I don't think that will happen.

Fitz

P.S. what are you using to make the game? I actually find that configuring joysticks is pretty easy?

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for saying hello! I actually did not end up playing it very much at all as the controls for the joypad were terrible as you seem to know. I hate using the keyboard, so seeing the joypad controls sucked so hard, I just didn't bother playing the game much at all. That, and the tutorial section dragged on way too long (i.e. having to sit there reading the story was incredibly frustrating). These are simple problems to fix, especially the joypad one... and if you want to market or sell the game then you'll definitely have to address them I reckon... 'just stick to the keyboard' isn't going to cut it with me, and definitely not with a large fraction of the shmup community who love their joypads.

Thats my thoughts, looks good though, and I'd like to be able to enjoy it as I love shooters but didn't find it accessible.

Fitz

I found the tutorial section you had to sit through fairly annoying. I also found the controls (analogue stick) too sensitive, couldn't get into it due to the controls....

Hey thanks for the compliment

Don't worry about being impolite Thing is, I never really made the music to represent myself as a 'musician', it was just something I enjoyed doing and just made for the love of it... And I never thought it was going to be particular popular as it is kinda idiosyncratic, so I just wacked it up.. but then I'd go to parties and stuff, and all these dudes started going "Woah! Your the dude that made that stuff! Killer!" and getting booked to play festivals and even was a headliner at one.... but I really haven't put any real effort into it.  I have one more 'oxygene' batch of music to release (composed towards the end of last year) in the next month and I'll just wack it up. The next music project I create though, I will take much more seriously as now I've got the chops and know that, at least for some niche sub-market, people quite like my music. The 'oxygene' project though, I am quite happy for people just to discover and enjoy/hate my sounds and complain about my website haha!

Music is like cooking

A perfect metaphor.

Nope. Most people can cook cheese on toast, most people can't reach the equivalent in music.

I utilise a crapload of time to make music, and it took two megacraploads^2 to actually get to a point that it was objectively worth listening to. I'd say if you are simply looking to make music for your game and are not passionately motivated about the music yourself, find someone else to write and produce it for you.

I also use Steinberg Neuendo as the base for my stuff. It's either that or Ableton Live depending on your composing style. Nothing else compares unless you are amateur.

It is my current opinion that if you are going to design the gameplay and the graphics, you may as well design the audio.... so 'Royalty-Free' should be the last thing on your mind. You should choose the best music that fits the game, and if that means paying minimal royalties to KISS for the use of the classic song "God made rock'n'roll for you" then you should bite the bullet and pay for a little bit of their make up....

.... But you can make much better and exacting music than KISS by exploiting the saturated market of ultra-talented musicians going nowhere.....

Numbers are pretty essential to an rpg game. RPG as in "I'm a watered down AD&D game on a computer" style.... you need numbers.... without them it would be like chess without identifiable pieces. Its a game defined around numbers...

If you didn't include numbers in the game, either implicitly or explicitly, I don't think you could even call the game an rpg.... so for me the question is ill-defined. Even if you got rid of the numbers you would still have to construct some kinda communicative method that tapped into the numerical comparative parts of the brain... which might be a bar of a certain length or something... but then... all you've done is add an extra step : Your brain would have to interpret the bar into a ballpark number and you are back at step one with numbers!

Still new to TIGSource. Still finding my way around.

Heres my music. Completely ungame related, but take what you will from it, I just got home and I'm just drunk eating a burger and trying unsuccessfully to get to my bed which is 4 metres to my left and found that this is as good an excuse as I am going to get to go to my fridge instead which is about 8 metres to my right.

I'll get there one day.

All hail the ancient greek jewish burger maker down the road.

www.myspace.com/o2e
www.soulofanoxygene.com

P.P.S. Hello from australia, and thanks for reading my first post on TIGSource!

Who are you and why is your name so awesome?

Done and dusted Thanks for pointing it out

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Hello.

I'm new here and confused as to the nature of ManCrib.... I'm sure that it is a secret of the inner sanctum.

I'm Fitz, I live in St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia. I once grew what must have been one of the largest moustaches in Melbourne after I broke up with my girlfriend a few years ago. it was ginger. I support myself by teaching the physical sciences, mainly astronomy, at one of the largest universities in Australia. I like my free time, so I work crazy for three months of the year, then for the rest of the year I work on my own personal projects of which I have quite a number. I drink way too much coffee. I have also a degree in philosophy. I hate blue jeans like a vengence. I am the cruisiest guy you will ever meet. I have incredibly long dreads. Most of the furniture in my bedroom is brown or goes with brown. I recently moved house. I am learning to make fantastic games. I can put my legs behind my head, but do not exercise. I'm hungry but lazy. I live on the third floor, 5 minutes from the beach. I think games are the most interesting and unexploited aesthetic endeavours in the current history of the human race. One of my friends just texted me and invited me out for a drink. I'd better go, cause I like beer.

Any other questions you would like to ask me, fill out the required forms in triplicate and send to "That awesome dude, St Kilda, Melbourne". It'll find its way to me. And happy to meet you all

Fitz

The balaclava is a subtle attempt to hide my identity. And unfortunately girls, the moe is no longer!

I think its very important to keep a dev journal. I'm only starting out as well, although I am picking up things at great velocity. Thing is, is that if you have a diary and journal, you can actually see how things are progressing and you can look back and see that you have achieved things. If I didn't have a dev journal, I'd look at my game and think "This is a piece of shit that I could knock up in a day".... but then you forget that the point that you have reached was hard fought and hard won, and the fact that you COULD knock it up in one day now is a sign of your progression. I think it is a vitally important motivating tool, it lets you see that you are making progress and its also a great place to dump your ideas, important code snippets and links to inspirational anythings. I also upload my source code as it develops about once every few days so that people can see how it progresses and follow how I progressed. I write my dev journal online with Movable Type, but I keep it password protected. This allows me to not have to worry about what people are going to think when they read it.. because they can't.... but once I hit a particular milestone, I am going to turn the password protection off and let people read it.

P.S. These guys are f'ing brilliant : http://www.archive.org/details/LostChildren044
P.P.S. Hello from australia, and thanks for reading my first post on TIGSource!