By the way, I really like how the player's sight radius affects play and how certain items and such increase it, that's really neat.

This game has some wonderful variety if you play it long enough though I almost didn't witness it due to bad rolls on my early plays making the game seem kinda boring. Then I loaded it up one more time and was finding weapons and a bandana that gave me a little familiar friend. It was amazing, but in my first bunch of plays I never found anything like that.

I don't like how you need to level up to get what seem like basic abilities like ATTACKING UP or JUMP WHILE SHOOTING. The fact that these are not default moves makes the game feel very frustrating to new players and I fear that you are losing a lot of potential fans of the game by making it seem so frustrating like this. When you make a game where enemies frequently come from above or below you, and then give the player no up or downward facing attack by default, it's not challenging, it's frustrating. It seems like a very bad design choice to me to make the feeblest of enemy encounters require draging the enemy along to a horizontal area so that you can have any chance of fighting them without taking damage. It's compounded by the fact that you can just randomly find a weapon SOMETIMES, that attacks up early on. It makes all other play throughs where that doesn't happen very annoying.

If you want to make early enemies tricky to kill, make them do something trickly like dodge attacks they sense coming, making them hard to hit with anything but fast attacks, ranged attacks, or by backing them into a corner, don't hamstring the player. The slimes and the jump out of the ground guys work well.

Megaman could only shoot side ways, but had an immediate attack that he could fire at anytime by default. Having a game where you can't attack upwards OR easily attack and have it land at the apex of your jump feels very unnatural to me. Spelunky has a slow whip attack that won't hit at your jump apex if you jump and then attack BUT, it allows you to start your whip attack before you jump, thus allowing for a proper jumping attack if you just time things right. Vagante gives you no such recourse as you are not allowed to jump or even move once you begin an attack unless you have points in certain abilities.

Save the level ups for actually powerful and not essential platform abilites, please. Being able to shoot a laser from my sword at level 5 is cool. Not being able to fight the simplest of enemies because I don't have an attack that moves the right way is retarded. It's like making a Street Fighter game where low level players can only attack to the left or something.

I honestly think this is a sour point in an otherwise really deep and atmospheric game. I fear a ton of people will play this game for a few lives, go "Why does my character control like a retard, I can't fight anything properly." and then give up on it and that would be a real shame.

Oh also, here's a preview of the eventual improved arquebusier sprites that will look as good as the pikemen and etc.

I fixed pretty much all of the pikemen bugs that are in the alpha and I've been able to tweak the behaviour of Doppelsoldners some more.

I attempted to update the project to XNA 4 tonight in hopes of having access to more fancy graphics stuff, but the result was a lot of wasted time downloading things and failure. But I regrouped and managed to implement a cool little "flash" mask animation thing to my sprite class. Now when say an arquebusier has to reload they can sort of get grayed out, brighten overtime as they reload and then when they are actually fully reloaded and ready to shoot again, they'll FLASH bright white for a split second. I think it looks pretty good. When I pair it with a subtle audio queue, you should be able to tell when your guys can shoot a lot easier, making for no need to pound fire until they fire when you want to shoot.

Honestly one of the biggest frustration is I can't dodge enemy bullets, if I'm in range and they shoot, by dude is already dead.

I'm not sure what you mean. I dodge projectiles all the time, even when I'm very close to the ranged guy shooting it at me. Try harder?*shrug* Are you maybe just trying to run away from the shot in the same direction it's moving? It's true, you can't outrun most shots if you just move back, you have to move to the side to dodge things. You know, like perpendicular to its path.

Maybe it would feel less silly if they bounce back and charge back in?

This is a good idea. As it is, what happens now has always just been a place holder animation (it's just part of their melee animation played backwards and forwards over and over). Maybe if the final animation looks more like them pushing and shoving more or yeah, if they actually bumped into the pikes and bounced off over and over, it might look better.

I just finally saw this game. I love the combat in it, it reminds me of playing Mount & Blade (especially cRPG mod) but in 2d. I'm one of those people who didn't even like Zelda 2 as a kid and saw it as the black sheep of the series, but this game and Elliot Quest are turning me around on that. The combat in this looks really dynamic and fun. I'll have to grab it on Itch sometime. I'll probably have more design/dev questions after I actually play it.

Great shot patterns, Batz. I really like the feel of the semi random spread ones, do you think those could be level designed around well? Of course, who doesn't love bullet-hell style spirals and such, hehehe.

What are your ideas for enemy movement patterns and player weapon shot patterns?

I think this game should be about scifi fire fighters, trying to put out living fire aliens/spirits. separate from the game play which would just be a bullet-hell shmup, lots of the background elements could get harmlessly set on fire by enemy attacks and put out by the players attacks while you shoot at enemies, just to dress things up visually.

Hehehe, sorry, I just want to see more fantastical firefighting games out there and I can only make so many games.

Hey man, thanks for all the compliments and feedback.

I'll say that i think the move speed is way too slow. I really wish i could have some sort of limited dash, as things move way too slowly and i found it quite frustrating.

Figuring out the move speed of the player's formation and enemies has been tricky. I've changed it a lot of times already, usually making it faster. It's a sort of thing where if the player formation is very fast, I can't make the enemies as fast or the game becomes too hard to play. But if I leave the enemies as slow, it makes them start to look a little silly and more importantly, starts to make the game too easy to play. Now, there's other things that could be altered to make enemies more imposing even if they are slow (amount, hardiness, etc), but it starts to change the nature of the game, so it's risky and doesn't always lead to something I like. It is something I need to mess around with more though, and will in future.

As far as dash moves go, one of the formation leaders will have knights as their body guards that will do a lance charge as their attack. Also one of the formation leaders might have pikemen with shorter spears rather than pikes, but that will dash whenever their spears are lowered. I dunno how many of these ideas will end up in the final game, but at least the knights will I think.

Other than that there really needs to be a solution for shielded guys just getting pushed, like that mechanic feels really unrewarding. I'm not too sure of the best solution there however, but i think maybe bouncing off and loosing a shield could be cool.

Well, the concept with these is that they are a troop that really needs to be shot to be delt with, but unlike ranged troops, you can put off shooting them if you need the fire power for something else and it isn't the end of the world. You can't kill them with pikes, but you can prevent them from damaging your formation with pikes until you have arquebuses ready to fire or in future builds, body guards to attack them with. That's the idea, they are a managable threat that you need to deal with eventually, but not necessarily immediately. Also I just like enemies in shmups that take multiple shots to kill and seem to break apart and change state as you fire on them.

They can slow down the pace of the game if you fail to shoot them before you have to defend against them, but I'm not convinced this is bad. Sometimes I worry that I bill Pike & Shot too much as a shmup and then people expect a quick, fast success or fast failure situation when they play the game. I want the game to feel smooth mechanically, but I don't think it needs to always be fast paced in terms of the resolution of every enemy wave. I think that expecting it to play like a shmup maybe isn't fair to the game. It could be fun in it's own right while not always mirroring a shmup. It could be more of a thinking, strategizing game, I think that could be its strength in the end.

Heh, when your gif gets too big in dimension and frame count, gifcam starts to lose a lot of framerate on my computer. The timing gets all jerky and fast like an old "flicker show" too. Makes me want to add some film grain and a silent movie dialogue placard to the end of this. All this stuff happens a lot slower and smoother in-game, heh.



Doppelsöldners are one of the special attack soldiers in Pike & Shot. Paid double, they will fearlessly run into the fray, swinging their zweihanders or halberds. They temporarily create a protective screen of deadly steel around the formation.


Couple of variants on appearance.

Heh, when your gif gets too big in dimension and frame count, gifcam starts to lose a lot of framerate on my computer. The timing gets all jerky and fast like an old "flicker show" too. Makes me want to add some film grain and a silent movie dialogue placard to the end of this. Things are actually much slower and smoother in game.

I don't think it's the amount of screen shake that is bothering you guys, it's the fact that it tilts when it shakes.

I think it looks fine, it has an "old photo" quality to it.

You did, you survived the gauntlet! You are now a Pike & Shot v 0.1a champion. People don't know your hiscore, but I do and I will make sure songs are sung of you for generations.

Baby, baby, naughty baby,
Hush, you squalling thing, I say.
Peace this moment, peace, or maybe
Bonaparte will pass this way.

Baby, baby, he's a giant,
Tall and black as Rouen steeple
And he breakfasts, dines, rely on't,
Every day on naughty people.

Baby, baby, if he hears you,
As he gallops past the house,
Limb from limb at once he'll tear you,
Just as pussy tears a mouse.

And he'll beat you, beat you, beat you,
And he'll beat you all to pap,
And he'll eat you, eat you, eat you,
Every morsel, snap, snap, snap.

Beware Mete, for he became Bonaparte.

Hehehe, sorry. I just learned of that nursery rhyme last week and I really like it, and then someone brought up the name Bonaparte.

But yeah, thanks for your feed back and for trying it out. EVENTUALLY, I'll have some full levels for you guys with bosses and all of that so that the screen doesn't just run out of enemies anticlimactically.

Here's how game maker studio can do them. I guess you aren't using that though?

http://help.yoyogames.com/entries/25069458-GameMaker-Studio-1-2-Shaders-YYC-and-more

I dunno, I've always made my games in C# with XNA or Unity *shrug*.

What are you developing this in? Can it handle openGL shaders (GLSL)?

I got some more work done on Doppelsöldners tonight. They need more work though. In the meantime, the medium of the devlog, gifs! Here are some more of some snakeman brigands.

Yayyyyy! Thanks so much,Poe.

rnik's game sounds crazy. I'm Intrigued

But I have my own game I can't remember.

A little while ago, I think during a game jam, someone made this little arena shooter thing where you could become any of the enemies you encountered and use their abilities to fight on. It was very low rez, basically monochrome but not quite, and the floor of the arena had this cool glowy effect. Does anyone know what the hell I'm talking about? I really liked it and I can't remember the name, developer, or find it anywhere. It's driving me nuts.

I wouldn't really call that a CRT effect at all. That said, I kinda like how it looks anyway. It makes me think more of something like a Gameboy Color, Game Gear, or Atari Linx screen.

I've been horribly ill since last Friday until pretty much yesturday, so not much work got done lately. But I did finish a little command giving animation for La Pucelle to go with her idle one. I've implemented her as a unit in the game and rigged her up so that she waves her flag whenever you press the pike or shot button so it looks like she's directing the formation.



I've also been working on Doppel Soldners a little bit, her special body guard. But their pathing needs to improve before they'll be where I want them to be.

In response to some people not liking one of their lines with a man or two in it and feeling spread thin, and also just in my search to make the formation as automatic controlling as possible, I have implemented some formation balancing so that they will beef up the rows a bit when one has too few guys in it. I'm trying to feel out if there is some way I could let you contextually get wider or thinner without it being annoying (ie. formation suddenly deciding to get wider to better attack a threat resulting in an end guy getting hit by a projectile you had intended to narrowly dodge).

Seems to me like in any game, the concept of having different character classes is just to enable the player to play the game differently. Mechanic wise, yes, they should be different, but why should I have an easier or harder time depending on which class? I prefer to play as the rogue, but because it's harder, it feels like I'm being punished for making that choice.

I would argue "Why should every class be exactly as easy/hard to play the game with?"

That's a pretty tall order for a developer to fulfill for one, and more over, what's the point? Lots of games have different difficulty settings, different parts of the game that are harder or easier than others, modes that are harder or easier. To me, classes in a game like this are akin to different modes in a game. It's not multiplayer, so why is it so important that all the classes be equally powerful? Can a harder game not be as fun or more fun than an easier game? You aren't owed the right of your arbitrarily favourite character being powerful. Reality is reality, if your preferred approach/strategy/class/choice is inferior... that's sorta just how it is.