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[Theophilus]

Day 38

Today, I:
-Finished the font
-Tried to sort out screenrecording. It didn't go well.
-Submitted my game to IndieDB, awaiting approval.




The W and M are awkward.

I'm having trouble with screen capture software:

Camstudio doesn't record my audio
Camtasia Free Trial has a thick black box over the bottom edge. It appears I can only remove this in the full version.

I'm going to ask around if people would record themselves playing my game for a 10, 15 minutes and hand me the footage, so I can make a trailer.

[TheLastBanana]

Give Krut a try. It's free, it's simple to use, and it produces pretty decent quality recordings.

[Theophilus]

Give Krut a try. It's free, it's simple to use, and it produces pretty decent quality recordings.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll give it a try.

[Theophilus]

Day 41

Today, I:
-Adjusted difficulty
-Added online high score test so I can collect information about how you play my game (harmless)
-Let the player put in his name.
-Made a build.


So here's the deal
I feel that I can't proceed making my game without some feedback on it first; particularly on the difficulty and the visibility of things; however, I would LOVE critique on ANYTHING. PLEASE!

Here is the latest build: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9942053/Neon%20Strikers.zip

I challenge you to play at/beyond wave 10. The first 5 waves are designed to ease the player into the game, and they get progressively more difficult (more enemies on screen) starting at wave 6. Hue-shifting is practically mandatory here as it makes you not die.

[Chris Pavia]

I would say that you should build the game around the color shifting much more. Currently there isn't really a need to shift colors, I played quite a while without ever shifting and seemed to be doing fine. You could probably make the shifting speed a lot faster too, it takes so long to go from one end of the spectrum to the other that you can kill the enemy faster just by shooting it normally.

Have you tried making the enemies invulnerable to shots that aren't equal to or near they're own color?

I guess in general I would say think of some ways/situations that the player HAS to be shifting colors to proceed/not die, and making shifting as easy as possible (as in perhaps not have a full spectrum so there are fewer in-between colors).

[Theophilus]

I would say that you should build the game around the color shifting much more. Currently there isn't really a need to shift colors, I played quite a while without ever shifting and seemed to be doing fine. You could probably make the shifting speed a lot faster too, it takes so long to go from one end of the spectrum to the other that you can kill the enemy faster just by shooting it normally.

Have you tried making the enemies invulnerable to shots that aren't equal to or near they're own color?

I guess in general I would say think of some ways/situations that the player HAS to be shifting colors to proceed/not die, and making shifting as easy as possible (as in perhaps not have a full spectrum so there are fewer in-between colors).

Yo Chris,

I just made an edit to my last update:

I challenge you to play at/beyond wave 10. The first 5 waves are designed to ease the player into the game, and they get progressively more difficult (more enemies on screen) starting at wave 6. Hue-shifting is practically mandatory here as it makes you not die.

I see that you only played until wave 4 - would you mind trying the game out again? I feel that the hue shifting mechanic is much more well fitting there. I think it is very necessary to surviving beyond wave 6.

[wademcgillis]

What are my stats, you privacy voiding warlock?

[Chris Pavia]

If I stopped playing at wave 4 that should give you some clue as to how much fun I was having  


I'll give it another go though to see how things evolve, you sneaky little devil!

[Theophilus]

What are my stats, you privacy voiding warlock?

Scores: http://www.gmhighscores.com/highscores.php?gameid=2157
Wave: http://www.gmhighscores.com/highscores.php?gameid=2165

If I stopped playing at wave 4 that should give you some clue as to how much fun I was having  !

 

[Chris Pavia]

If I stopped playing at wave 4 that should give you some clue as to how much fun I was having  !

 

I should have prefaced that statement with a warning of how notoriously impatient I am. I'll definitely give it another go or 3 though.

[wademcgillis]

What are my stats, you privacy voiding warlock?

Scores: http://www.gmhighscores.com/highscores.php?gameid=2157
Wave: http://www.gmhighscores.com/highscores.php?gameid=2165

It became very boring.

edit:
Where it says that I died, I just stopped playing and went back to programming. I let the game lose on its own. It's far too easy.

[Chris Pavia]

Okay, I got to wave 13 before I quit. The easiest changes I would suggest are:
1. Triple the hue shifting speed. It feels more like a chore than a weapon right now because it's so slow, especially when things start getting busy.
2. Halve the amount of dots enemies drop. By wave 13 I didn't ever feel like I was in danger of losing. Whenever I got knocked down a few pegs I was always surrounded by more than enough dots to bring me back up to full.

I would happily play another build with these changes if you think they are worthwhile.

[Happy Shabby Games]

I'm stoked to see all the progress you're making on this Shelby! It's looking nice. I played it a bit and here are some thoughts I had.


-Nice consistent visual style
-Easy to pickup and play without any explanation
-The color damage multiplier would be satisfying if the way you change your hue wasn't so clunky and slow. It's a cool idea but As I got more into the game I didn't even bother with that mechanic. It was much easier just killing them regardless of color. As of now, it really breaks up the action waiting to go from one color to the other side of the spectrum. If you did what Chris Pavia suggested by speeding up the shift rate, I think people would accidentally cycle past their desired color and just get frustrated.

What if right clicking fired a round that would copy the color of the ship it hits? Or killing a ship would drop a little pickup that would match your hue to the enemy ship nearest you? That could lead to some really cool chain kills.

Keep up the good work 

[Theophilus]

Thanks for playing, everyone. I'm planning some things which hopefully will fix the major issues with the game, some of which are:

Random boss encounters. Hopefully this will break up some monotony. I would likely include 4-5 bosses, along with a boss rush mode.
More enemies. Again, monotony.
Different weapons. Not actually sure about this.

[Theophilus]

Eeh, this is tough.

I've made the hue shifting faster by 1.5 times, however, as Seasons pointed out, it is much more difficult to land on the correct hue.

[Chris Pavia]

Have you considered a more active way of shifting color instead of holding down a button and waiting? For example, if the player right clicked and held (or pressed and held a button), a color wheel could appear over the mouse position or the ship, and the player can click which color they want or something similar. The player is taking a more active path this way.

Or maybe work the color switching into the environment? Like there are colored portals around the arena, and passing over one turns you to that color? That might be annoying, but maybe it will generate some other ideas.

[Manuel Magalhães]

Tested your build. Here's some feedback:
-Like someone suggested before you should make the color shifting mechanic more engaging. For example there could be bullets that don't hurt you if you're in the same color. (ala Ikaruga) 
-Either there's too much energy or the enemies do too little damage.
-You should speed up the pace of the game by a bit.
The graphics are looking cool, btw.

[Theophilus]

Day 43

Today, I:
-Adjusted some values with healing, fixed a bug
-Changed hue shifting

Tomorrow, I want to:
-Add a radar which point to the nearest enemy.



The healing, as you guys mentioned, was totally borked. I had planned on letting you heal double if you are the same hue as the chunk, but I was multiplying it by 250/500/1000 instead. So that was probably contributing to the mass healing. However, I did lower the healing values. I will adjust them again if need be.

The hue shifting is now done this way:


-Hold the right mouse button
-Aim to the color you would like
-Release


While you can shoot and change hue at the same time, it is ineffective as you would change hue as soon as you move the mouse to aim. It is, however, useful in case an enemy passes by in that direction.

You guys can test it out here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9942053/Neon%20Strikers.zip

[Chris Pavia]

It's definitely improving! I like this color shifting mechanism a lot more than the old one, but I think it can be improved further by drastically reducing the number hues (take it down to like 8-10). As a player, I just want to choose between blue or purple (for example), I don't care about the myriad of in-between hues. In fact, it's way too many choices so it only slows me down. As a player I don't have time/energy to examine exactly what shade the enemy is (especially when there are multiple enemies) and try to match it, I just say "it looks closer to blue than purple so I'll switch to blue."

[Theophilus]

@Chris Pavia

There's actually 10-15 values (out of 240; I don't remember the exact padding as I'm on my phone) on both ends. For instance, if your hue is, say, 90, 105 and 75 would be accepted. At least, I think that's how I made it... I haven't tested it enough. 

So it doesn't need to be exact, just approximate.

Is there any way I can exemplify this more? I'm thinking I could draw two lnes with the min and max hue range.

(PS: I've been reading The Design of Everyday Things on your suggestion and I feel I'm learning a lot.)