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[RCIX]

Hey you're the first one to complain about the actual physics vs the lack of strafing. Is it the inertia or the slow build up of the acceleration of the ship?

Mainly the inertia of the ship, it feels like revving up revving up revving up top speed! instead of an actual acceleration

As for your XBOX 360 controller not working, yeah Joystick support is super-rudimentary atm. Honestly at this point you're not missing out. What's your OS though? And how many pads do you have connected?

win7 64 bit and only the Xbox controller.

Regarding procedurally generated gameplay: What if you generated the gameplay like before then ran some metrics on the generated gameplay and tweaked a few stats to compensate? So if the enemies have high health and the players gun has low fire rate, then you come up with some solutions (like skewing up the player gun's damage or reducing enemy ship speeds or something) and pick one at random.

OK, tried the new controls. They're very interesting, though i'm not confident that they're the best setup. I'll test them some more.

The loosened up ship physics feels almost perfect! Much better

[VomitOnLino]

[...]
win7 64 bit and only the Xbox controller.
[...]

OK, tried the new controls. They're very interesting, though i'm not confident that they're the best setup. I'll test them some more.

The loosened up ship physics feels almost perfect! Much better

Hmm strange, what does it do when you configure the controls? You have configured the controls right?
Does it show blank text (buttons not recognized) or doesn't it react at all?

As for the control scheme - yeah I'm also not that hot on it. I'll try to think of a better solution. Ideas welcome as usual.
Glad you're at least liking the loosened up controls.

The generative gameplay, yeah I've been going back and forth about that a ton. I actually tried compensation mechanisms like you stated but it always ended up being iffy, probably because different enemies required a different amount of compensation and so on. I never was really happy with it. In the end I opted for pragmatism & predictability.

PS: The above download links now contains the updated versions.
It has the new - experimental! - control scheme.
I made some minor additional fixes to the HUD when you beat the HI-Score and some other small tweaks.
Colorful explosions are also back, I like them better. Sped up the animation a bit.
Small data fragments retained the dusty black & white version, though.
Also fixed a really embarrassing Windows XP crash. (Read an array beyond what I initialized... )

[Geoffrey]

Really fun game ! Proud to be 3rd on the online hightscore =p

I just find that the canon's bonuses are a lot more powerful than others, but it's a problem in a lot of shooter I played :/

(Little bug ? I paused the game ~20mn, and when I came back and restart playing, I had no music. (on windows 7 64)

Edit : Ok I'm addicted. (I'm not 3rd anymore :p)

[tesselode]

WOAH what happened to the controls. I don't think when people wanted strafing they wanted it to be relative to the ship. Or maybe they did, I don't know.

I think it would be good if the ship had Geometry Wars-y controls except with inertia. That would be pretty unique.

[Akari]

I've always held the opinion that FPS-like controls don't work in top-down games. This control scheme is yet another proof of that.

Personally I think you should try something like 8-directional movement with space-like inertia along with mouse aiming. Just make it so that changing direction can still be done relatively fast so that players can still pull of tight dodging maneuvers at relative ease. The main reason why arena shooters have very precise controls is exactly for the fact that you need to be able to dodge tons of stuff, and this game certainly has tons of stuff to dodge. And since you reward the player for tight dodges, the more reason there is to have a very solid control mechanism.

Anyway, with that said, the visuals are looking very good. Though I only managed to get one powerup (the double cannon), which wasn't really all that exciting... Some pickup suggestions would be temporary powerups (multiplier x4, piercing bullets, limited ammo superweapons) and stuff like a shield etc.

[VomitOnLino]

Once again I'll toss out a quickly banged together windows only experimental control-scheme. Sorry for the lack of "real" updates to the thing, but I am super loaded down with work. Sorry folks!

This time is's the classical 8-WAY control mixed with mouse aim. Joystick and keyboard "standalone" have 8 way control, too. (And hence are easier to play, methinks)

I'm not sure if I like this new scheme, but I'd love to hear your opinions! Thanks!

[Links Redacted]

PS: For fairness sakes, this version uses a different online HI-Score list & checksum, so don't be surprised if your previous scores don't show up. Also it will delete your old score-file - sorry about that!

If you downloaded the previous versions, please redownload! The last versions contained a serious crash bug! (I didn't allocate memory for a certain sample that plays when a laser Mine is spawned.)

[tesselode]

The ship is a lot easier to control now. But to make it more interesting, you could give the ship more inertia (and have it accelerate slower).

[VomitOnLino]

The ship is a lot easier to control now. But to make it more interesting, you could give the ship more inertia (and have it accelerate slower).

Hey Tesselode,
Thank you for your continuous feedback, it's what makes this community so great!
I just coincidentally added more inertia and a slower acceleration curve to the current control scheme, without reading your post - even. I also buffed the speed of some "unique" enemies slightly to accommodate for the players newly enhanced evasion skills.

Also I fixed a serious crash bug, due to a stupid mistake of mine. Please consider redownloading. Cheers! 

You - my very observant friend - are right! Fixed, thanks!
vvvv

[RCIX]

The windows link should end in win, not windows.

Re: difficulty. It just occured to me: you said that when seeds affected gameplay more, you ended up with some levels that were easy and some that were hard. This seems fine to me, as long as you categorize seeds by high score. Tie that in with my next suggestion and you could realy have something here

Finally, i'd like to have an option where it will rotate randomly through a seed list i provide (a new one for each game). I found a coule of really cool ones and am looking for more!

[Dozer]

This is by far the best control scheme so far. but...

The ship is a lot easier to control now. But to make it more interesting, you could give the ship more inertia (and have it accelerate slower).

...Seconded

Also, one problem... I love the deep sound effects, but when I literally jumped outta my chair when I died. And I died on purpose! I turned the volume way up (I wear headphones by the way) so that I could hear the gun blasts and the explosions, but when I died that sound was just so high pitched that I think it broke my ears lol. Still, gameplay is looking fantastic and I am enjoying it very much.

Have you come up with any ideas for the corruption aspect? I was thinking maybe something along the lines of it spawning little nodes that don't move and these nodes produce small weak enemies in high numbers until they are destroyed... just my 2 cents. Again, great game!

[VomitOnLino]

Re: difficulty. It just occured to me: you said that when seeds affected gameplay more, you ended up with some levels that were easy and some that were hard. This seems fine to me, as long as you categorize seeds by high score. Tie that in with my next suggestion and you could realy have something here

Finally, i'd like to have an option where it will rotate randomly through a seed list i provide (a new one for each game). I found a coule of really cool ones and am looking for more!

Yeah what you said was basically my initial idea it all started out on.
Well other than the fact, which you just discovered yourself if I'm not mistaken , that generative stuff can look dang cool.

Basically my main hang up right now is how I want to share seeds. I already have the interface and code in place to click on a online score to grab that seed.

But: I'd like to give people some privacy. Because they might put things into seeds which are of personal nature, which they inherently don't want to (involuntarily) share with the internet. Now I could encode seeds - but that in turn would make them look rather boring....
Ho hum!

In other news, I think I have what may be the semi-final control scheme.
I'll package it together with some GUI and Menu inconsistency fixes (can now right-click all toggle-ables to toggle) - probably later today or tomorrow.

CC: Sound issues. Yeah I can see where you are coming from, and have some other "complaints" from other testers as well, so I'll forward this to John.

[RCIX]

A simple idea to me is you add a "seed is private" box. Then when you go to send the high scores, you hash the seed and if that box is checked, you only send the hash. Otherwise you send both.

So can we have more varied random generated gameplay now?

BTW: there were SFX? i didn't hear them... :/

P.S. you inspired me to make this thing.

[davidp]

holy shit, i read through the whole topic on work today (yea, totally counterproductive i know) and my fingers really started to itch when lookin over screens and videos and man, this game is sweeeeeet, when i finally got the chance to play it.

my seed was holyshit, now i'll try something different, to see if i notice any changes in randomness  anyway, it ran smooth, fluid, it looks awesome, it sounds awesome and it's awesome in general. can't wait to play that data defend game mode 

great game!

[RCIX]

holy shit, i read through the whole topic on work today (yea, totally counterproductive i know) and my fingers really started to itch when lookin over screens and videos and man, this game is sweeeeeet, when i finally got the chance to play it.

my seed was holyshit, now i'll try something different, to see if i notice any changes in randomness   anyway, it ran smooth, fluid, it looks awesome, it sounds awesome and it's awesome in general. can't wait to play that data defend game mode  

great game!

I recommend RCIX or VomitOnLino for seeds

I also just came up with an awesome idea: what if you borrowed a mechanic from Burnout and made near misses and such give you some sort of super meter which you can use to spit clouds of bullet-laden death at enemy swarms whenever you want?

[davidp]

finally nailed the highscore

[VomitOnLino]

Hey guys I apologize for the long time without updates, but it seems that work life caught up with me. 
Even so I still managed to plod along nicely updating the game steadily and it's coming together nicely.
Oh and also I have a new composer aboard: Carlo Castellano!

He's writing the absolutely fab music for the game now. Make sure you have a listen at his Site.

Then there is a huge laundry list of new features - such as:


New Version - Coming Tomorrow!
It contains tons of stuff, but see for yourself:
-Overall gameplay balancing - starts out easier gets harder (More perks, Collision checks more lenient in favor of the player)
-Corruption finally implemented (Nodes, Corrupted enemies, Infection of other invaders)
-Two new enemy types, some other enemies changed
-Player and "Spinner" generator tweaked (More interesting shapes)
-Online hi-scores improved (Better ranking, Playtime tracking, Monthly Scores)
-Seed sharing, Seed catalogue (Grab seeds from the on/off-line hi-score list)
-Frenzy mode added (Near misses, Close Encounters and other dangerous maneuvers fill a 'Frenzy' bar)
-More dangerous moves are rewarded, such as: shooting enemies at extremely close range, or rebounding of the border to evade enemies
-Seed influence on gameplay strengthened, a bit more random, less deterministic - gameplay
-Better joystick input (Better analog input support)
-Explosions and mayhem! Graphics tweaked fore more eye-candy
-More and better animations. Score is animated now.
-One all-new power-up
-HUD Revised, Now uses final graphics
-New sounds, old sounds revised & improved
-New Logo, new Icon
-Completely new soundtrack, featuring a whopping 8 tracks - courtesy of Carlo Castellano!
-Many more easter-eggs for you to uncover
-Main menu, about-screen typography fixes
-All menu options (Resolution etc. functional)
-The usual laundry list of technical improvements & fixes (Slowdown mode gains 9-12fps on netbooks and low-spec cps)

Hope to see you here again soon! Cheers! 

[RCIX]

There's only one word i can use for this:

 

[VomitOnLino]

It's here! Go and grab it now, while it's hot!
Oh and if you have feedback please consider that my personal deadline for this game is the 20th of this month. (November)
Not that this should deter any kind of feedback, but just so that you won't be cross in case your awesome suggestion doesn't make the deadline.

Why such a rush?
The Japanese magazine MacPeople decided to have a (probably small-ish) feature on some of my games together with all of them on their cover DVD. The magazine always comes out on the 29th of each month, thus the hurry to get something good to them in time. I don't normally do this but the free publicity seems well worth it.
[...]
This is also why the 'Data Defense' mode won't make it until post v1.0. I would rather have a very polished shooter mode than two half-assed game modes in my game - and I think/hope you agree.

Okay without further ado here the downloads:
Grab the latest version/info -> here!

[Fallsburg]

Well, first things first.  It's gorgeous. Now the negatives,  I know other people asked for it, but I'm not a fan of the weightiness of the player.  Personally, I feel that in an arena-shooter like this, the ship has to be an extension of the player, i.e. the control needs to be tight and crisp. There were more than a few times where I was moving in a direction, an enemy spawned on my path, and I wasn't able to correct in time. 
Other than that, I'm not sure if I didn't last long enough (although I did last long enough to get above 85,000 twice), but I'd like a few more enemy types.  Unless I'm incorrect there seem to be 3 (the random floaters, the followers, and the corrupted) current types. I feel like one or two more behaviors would add a nice bit of variety.
Anyway, these are just nitpicky critiques, and you have something really special here.  You are certainly an inspiration to me. 

[VomitOnLino]

Well, first things first.  It's gorgeous. Now the negatives,  I know other people asked for it, but I'm not a fan of the weightiness of the player.  Personally, I feel that in an arena-shooter like this, the ship has to be an extension of the player, i.e. the control needs to be tight and crisp. There were more than a few times where I was moving in a direction, an enemy spawned on my path, and I wasn't able to correct in time. 
Other than that, I'm not sure if I didn't last long enough (although I did last long enough to get above 85,000 twice), but I'd like a few more enemy types.  Unless I'm incorrect there seem to be 3 (the random floaters, the followers, and the corrupted) current types. I feel like one or two more behaviors would add a nice bit of variety.
Anyway, these are just nitpicky critiques, and you have something really special here.  You are certainly an inspiration to me. 

Thank you very much!
I'm checking out your procedural Zelda-thing out atm. Nice!

Well the weightiness of the ship is obviously intentional and is actually part of the gameplay as in such that there are upgrades, which make the player's ship faster and more agile. So I'm kind of opposed to throw it out of the window completely and go the route of every other arena shooter, where I feel that I'm controlling a weightless cursor. (Direct input yields direct results, no physics.)
But, none the less I can probably make it feel less weighty in the beginning.

Is there anything specific that makes you feel this way about the controls? Besides the weight of the ship?

There are actually dozens of different enemy types and behaviors in the game - a total of 18 behaviors in 10 enemy types.
Also there are 10 different power ups, and 5 different ways to get Frenzy. So I hope that this, together with the seeds, will make for enough variety until I get around to implement the 'Data Defense' mode.