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[gamesfrommars]

Hi,

I'm #ponce, I make freeware games. See my website for more info.

I would like to introduce Vibrant, an abstract arena shooter revolving around inertia and ballistic 2D action. I just released the 1.5 version and I feel it has become good enough to be shown on this board.



The graphics don't do the gameplay any justice

website
download Vibrant v1.5
help page

I think it's worth the try, but this game is hard to get into and definately not for everyone. Some people can't grok inertia.

I'm searching for possible remaining bugs. If you find any, let me know.

Cheers,
#ponce

[RichMakeGame!]

cool game! I like the graphic style, nice minimalist look- personally I found it a bit tricky to get into, but not because of inertia. I think two things made it tough for me:

1. the low health- bullets can come flying into the screen from any direction with very little chance to dodge, I found myself getting blown up by random stray bounced bullets more than from the enemy I was dogfighting with. maybe bullet damage should decay with age, or if it bounces off the energy wall? or, the player gets more starting health?

2. hitting bad guys is hard because of the player's low bullet velocity- i understand the interia theme is key to your game vision, but I also think that if I'm moving backwards and fire a bullet, the bullet should be moving away from me and not just the same direction I'm going in, but slower. I felt getting hits on enemies was a bit random because of this, and my tactic in the end was move backwards and let the bad guys follow me, firing bullets more like mines than bullets and hoping they ran into them. If that's your desired combat, fair enough but like I say I found myself 'hoping' rather than 'aiming'. I understand you might say ' move fast to fire fast bullets' but when you're moving that fast, the enemy you're trying to shoot isnt even on the screen and you can't aim

one last thing- I found the 'trap' collect a bit unfair. At first I thought it was a trap I could deploy, so I wanted to collect it. Next time I got one by accident, I wanted to get rid of it so I bounced off the energy wall. That gets rid of other powerups on your string, but not trap :/. What's the aim of that pickup?

[gamesfrommars]

Thanks for trying the game 

the low health- bullets can come flying into the screen from any direction with very little chance to dodge, I found myself getting blown up by random stray bounced bullets more than from the enemy I was dogfighting with. maybe bullet damage should decay with age, or if it bounces off the energy wall? or, the player gets more starting health?

All bullets do the same amount of damage, that make the game quite predictable in regards to "highlighted" ships. Maybe bullet should decay with time faster, that would lessen the occurence of such randomness. On the other hand, you have infinite lifes. Slightly unfair, unexpected death is part of the game. It's a game where you are not healthier, stronger and faster than the ennemies. And they are all after you.

2. hitting bad guys is hard because of the player's low bullet velocity- i understand the interia theme is key to your game vision, but I also think that if I'm moving backwards and fire a bullet, the bullet should be moving away from me and not just the same direction I'm going in, but slower. I felt getting hits on enemies was a bit random because of this, and my tactic in the end was move backwards and let the bad guys follow me, firing bullets more like mines than bullets and hoping they ran into them. If that's your desired combat, fair enough but like I say I found myself 'hoping' rather than 'aiming'. I understand you might say ' move fast to fire fast bullets' but when you're moving that fast, the enemy you're trying to shoot isnt even on the screen and you can't aim

I thought about it a lot but this problem is not really fixable. I want the player ship to follow the same rules as the AI ship, so that only intelligence will make a difference. If I increase bullet speed, the #1 problem you mentionned get worse.

A way out would be to damp bullet speed over time. I might try that in the future.

With the current rules, the more you practice, the more natural bullet movement will seem. And the more problem #1 will be a matter of having an eye on both the radar and the main view. (EDIT: or I'm completely blind with things that feel natural to me)

one last thing- I found the 'trap' collect a bit unfair. At first I thought it was a trap I could deploy, so I wanted to collect it. Next time I got one by accident, I wanted to get rid of it so I bounced off the energy wall. That gets rid of other powerups on your string, but not trap :/. What's the aim of that pickup?

There is two ways to avoid the "trap":
- being invincible when you hit it
- give away the trap powerup. It means flying around an ennemy ship so that the enemy is nearer to the powerup than you. Then wait for enemy to "press SPACE". The more you wait to do that, the more difficult . Likewise you can steal powerups to other ships.

Flying around a big ship with a trap can be an effective way to get rid of it when you're energy-bound, or fire only one bullet at a time.

[Netsu]

Things I liked:
-sound and gfx
-MUSIC
-the external walls
-catching power-ups

Things I disliked:
-exe installer, it is much handier to just unpack a zip/rar/whatever wherever I want
-you die very easily (as mentioned before)
-bullets could really be a little faster
-I felt the camera should be zoomed out more, so I could see what I shoot at, but maybe I'm just not used to using the radar for navigation and fighting

As you said, the game isn't for everyone. A game with movement inertia is nice, a game with bullets inheriting your movement is nice, but when you combine those two... it's just too much for me

[gamesfrommars]

Hi Netsu, thank you for reviewing!

exe installer, it is much handier to just unpack a zip/rar/whatever wherever I want

To be honest I did the installer because I had a strange current directory bug. Some prefer the installer, others the zip file. I should provide both.

-bullets could really be a little faster

Well... As I explained before if I just raise the bullet speed this will bring other gameplay issues. If the bullet speed is no more (the player speed + bullet speed * direction) then it will bring inconsistencies when you go fast. It's not that simple.

-I felt the camera should be zoomed out more, so I could see what I shoot at, but maybe I'm just not used to using the radar for navigation and fighting

It's a bit the same, if I unzoom the camera more the game become too predictable and stops being stressful.  Could be a powerup though.

[maxwell]

Nice game.  After a couple minutes I got decent control over the ship and really enjoyed the challenge of managing inertia while also trying to keep track of orientation and location of threats.

While I did like it, I would probably play a lot more if there were a greater escalation of powers and challenges. When I was playing I died pretty often and kept losing all my stuff, but the enemies didn't really get much harder either so it didn't matter. It would be more interesting if you could build up more and more speed and firepower while playing against bigger mobs of enemies too. (Maybe that does happen but the pace or difficulty curve was just off for me?)

[Netsu]

Well... As I explained before if I just raise the bullet speed this will bring other gameplay issues. If the bullet speed is no more (the player speed + bullet speed * direction) then it will bring inconsistencies when you go fast. It's not that simple.

But I do not suggest changing that equation, just increasing the 'bullet speed'. And/or add a multiplier to the 'player speed', so it could look for example like this:
(0.5 * player_speed) + (2 * bullet_speed * direction)

[gamesfrommars]

While I did like it, I would probably play a lot more if there were a greater escalation of powers and challenges. When I was playing I died pretty often and kept losing all my stuff, but the enemies didn't really get much harder either so it didn't matter. It would be more interesting if you could build up more and more speed and firepower while playing against bigger mobs of enemies too. (Maybe that does happen but the pace or difficulty curve was just off for me?)

The difficulty curve is very even, each level brings an additionnal ennemy, and the enenmies aim better and better. I might add a timer and a end goal to the game, it's undefined at the moment.

[RichMakeGame!]

something that might be worth attempting is making the radar large and overlaid onto the whole screen, so you don't have to look at a seperate area to get a sense of where the enemies are- I think I've seen this done before, but can't remember where..

[gamesfrommars]

But I do not suggest changing that equation, just increasing the 'bullet speed'. And/or add a multiplier to the 'player speed', so it could look for example like this:
(0.5 * player_speed) + (2 * bullet_speed * direction)

Well, I was suggested that once but it didn't work.
If I increase the bullet speed (that was already done to the max in a previous version), the player will die more often of random shots being faster and harder to avoid (and we do need the bullets to go far). Current ones are often avoidable once you're used to the game.

If I add a multiplier as in (0.5 * player_speed) + (bullet_speed * direction), there will be a problem when the ship goes at maximum speed : the bullet will be shot backwards. Moreover when I tried it, it didn't feel physic anymore. Even if you don't use 0.5, no constant really fits.

I guess the solution is more into slightly damping missile speed. It will temper the problem of random deathly bullets death and allow faster bullet. Sadly it will not solve anything without breaking something else in the gameplay.

Another solution is to cheat with the AI-human equal-treatment rules but this is a principle I don't want to touch.  

[gamesfrommars]

something that might be worth attempting is making the radar large and overlaid onto the whole screen, so you don't have to look at a seperate area to get a sense of where the enemies are- I think I've seen this done before, but can't remember where..

I think it would be hard to do that and stay legible.

I tried arrows. This didn't worked out either. The game become boringly predictable, with redundant information in both the arrows and the radar. But I can't remove the radar since it shows ennemies and bullets and powerups, and that would be a lot of overlapping arrows. The bottom-line is that we need a clear separation of the radar view and main view because you need the center of the screen to dogfight.

I generally agree with the placement of the radar but couldn't come up with a better one. A work-around is to squint.

EDIT: sorry for saying no to most everything, but these are known problems and I've tried it all, to be fixed in Vibrant 2 perhaps

[Netsu]

If I add a multiplier as in (0.5 * player_speed) + (bullet_speed * direction), there will be a problem when the ship goes at maximum speed : the bullet will be shot backwards. Moreover when I tried it, it didn't feel physic anymore. Even if you don't use 0.5, no constant really fits.

This means the bullets are much slower than the ships maximum speed, if 0.5*player_speed + bullet_speed is still slower than the player, than he is more than twice as fast as the base bullet_speed. This doesn't sound right to me, but if you say the game suffers if the bullets are faster, well, you probably tested it

I would just speed the bullets up a bit, decrease the player_speed input a bit, and make the bullets more visible on the radar, so they would be easier to spot before they hit you. But this was probably tested already.

Also, the radar is totally fine as it is, making it fullscreen would be unreadable imo.

[gamesfrommars]

make the bullets more visible on the radar, so they would be easier to spot before they hit you.

Now that's totally doable. I like this proposal. Thanks!

[gamesfrommars]

This means the bullets are much slower than the ships maximum speed, if 0.5*player_speed + bullet_speed is still slower than the player, than he is more than twice as fast as the base bullet_speed. This doesn't sound right to me, but if you say the game suffers if the bullets are faster, well, you probably tested it

It's also a matter of intuition.
Imagine you are standing still and throw an apple forward. The apple get a speed of 20 m/secs.

Now imagine you are running at 8 m/secs and throw another apple with the same impulse. You would expect it to go at 20 + 8 m/secs, not anything else.

[Dozer]

I love this game. At first, I was kinda frustrated. After I figured it out, I found that I am actually REALLY good at it. Most of my deaths though came from the traps (oh I hate those lil buggers!) The only thing I would change is get rid of the traps (or make them a lil more forgiving) and make the bullets take a bit less energy. I find it's really easy to hit an enemy once they are on the screen, but when they aren't and you have no weapon upgrades it is extremely difficult to hit them. Also... when you die, I don't think you should lose ALL of your powerups. I found it incredibly frustrating right as soon as I found 3 or 4 weapon powerups BOOM! random death! I also saw the "It's ok to lose often." What it should say is "Whether you like it or not, you WILL lose often." It's not necessarily fun to die every minute or so. It wouldn't be so bad if, like I mentioned, you didn't lose all of your powerups. BTW, bullet time should last longer... I loves the bullet time. Thanks for the great game! :D

[gamesfrommars]

Most of my deaths though came from the traps (oh I hate those lil buggers!)

Seems you are better than me. A power-user 

The only thing I would change is get rid of the traps (or make them a lil more forgiving)

Like, you hit a border and the trap is unlinked like another powerup ? Why not.
Or I could put less of them in the game (prefered)

and make the bullets take a bit less energy. I find it's really easy to hit an enemy once they are on the screen, but when they aren't and you have no weapon upgrades it is extremely difficult to hit them.
Also... when you die, I don't think you should lose ALL of your powerups. I found it incredibly frustrating right as soon as I found 3 or 4 weapon powerups BOOM! random death! I also saw the "It's ok to lose often." What it should say is "Whether you like it or not, you WILL lose often." It's not necessarily fun to die every minute or so. It wouldn't be so bad if, like I mentioned, you didn't lose all of your powerups.

If you didn't lose your powerup there wouldn't be any reason not to die.
Most of what you said could be fixed if the baseline ship was a bit stronger energy-wise (like, with 1 energy+). Also, life-regain is too slow to be noticeable.

BTW, bullet time should last longer... I loves the bullet time. Thanks for the great game! :D

It's already 10 per bullet time extendable to 20 secs. When you take it and there is nothing on screen it feels like an eternity.
I've another idea : one could enter bullet time magically when highlighted (when 1 bullet => death).

[gamesfrommars]

Vibrant has been featured on Pixel Prospector, with a

. 

EDIT: non-installer version available at http://www.gamesfrommars.fr/vibrant

[ANtY]

I found this game on pixel prospector and I really like it. Nice techno-vibe and ai

[RCIX]

Wow. At first i was really bad at playing but then i learned tricks like stop and reverse to shoot an enemy that's swinging behind you and bouncing bullets off walls (never intentionally though >.<) and i had a ton of fun. I think the big thing is that you're controlling a "normal" spaceship when an omnidirectional type one would be better (so pressing D and W would thrust you up and left). Then people could more easily understand the mechanics behind this game

[caribou]

I love your game.

The physic is nice, after 5 minutes playing with your ship and the controls comes your first kills and a lot of fun. Showing the bullets on the map make the fight fair and the music fit really well !

The only things (and details) that bothered me are : a PAUSE BUTTON, I want to pause the game if i'm dying of thirst or whatever the reason (actually suicide is ok), the trap, which is quite tricky to destroy and the feel of a progression when you level up or maybe achievements or whatever. This is mainly some (awesome) deathmatch against bots. That's why...

...I'm wondering if i'm the only one thinking that it would make a super online game ? This is the first thing i felt when i started killing enemies.

I don't agree with having longer bullet time since you can stack them.

Good job