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[AD1337]

You could make the shield slowly fade out. Or blink when it's about to go off.

[Gueib]

Blinking is a good idea. I'll do that asap.

[Trev]

Game looks really lively and not without a sense of humor!
Are you looking to add a sound department yet?

[Gueib]

Thanks! It needs some visual enhancements, and I have yet to explain a couple of absurds regarding the game's plot, but yes, it has a sense of humor. The whole robot customization aspect can be quite funny. (I was planning to put a mariachi set on the game as a joke, by the way.)

I haven't thought much about audio until you mentioned it. If you're interested in working on it, I'm pretty open. You can PM me and we'll talk. I've listened to your music and it's pretty cool!

[Deraj]

The hitbox is a bit smaller. I'm using a square tilted 45 degrees and its vertices barely touch the smaller rectangle. Do you have any advice regarding collision boxes?

Super naive question, but if your framework/engine allows for tilted squares, I would think it could support a mesh of squares (or perhaps triangles). Could you just use more than one square to form a mesh that more accurately covers the image?

This is what I've done in the past and it's worked well for me.

[Gueib]

I could easily do that, but it would increase the difficulty of dodging. Shmups are known for having small hitboxes, so the player gets a chance at slipping through enemy projectiles.

Now if you meant only making the overall shape of the hitbox more similar to the player's and not its size, I guess It works. :D

[Deraj]

Ah, ok, got it. I thought you were asking about feasibility/accuracy

One thing to keep in mind when making the hit box small is that a lot of collision detection algorithms (not sure what is being used here) only evaluate the current state each frame. So if a small shot is traveling quickly, on one frame it might be in front of the hit box, then on the next frame behind it, but since it was never inside the hit box on a frame boundary, no collision is registered.

Giving the player a chance is great, but letting them violate physics is not

[Gueib]

I wasn't really worried with it, but now I'm curious to know how fast a projectile can travel before it completely ignores the robot.

I'll probably test it later, but I'm pretty sure the speed necessary to accomplish it will be fairly high.

[misterdoge]

I ran into that as well using per-frame hit checking on an Android game... but actually getting it to matter in my case ended up requiring things to move so fast the game would have been completely unplayable.

That might not be the case for you, though; my sprites were pretty large, and a smaller sprite/object wouldn't have to move as fast to have the same problem (particularly if whatever it's colliding with is moving in the opposite direction).

[Gueib]

I ran into that as well using per-frame hit checking on an Android game... but actually getting it to matter in my case ended up requiring things to move so fast the game would have been completely unplayable.

That might not be the case for you, though; my sprites were pretty large, and a smaller sprite/object wouldn't have to move as fast to have the same problem (particularly if whatever it's colliding with is moving in the opposite direction).

I imagine this won't be a problem in my case unless I try to speed things up.

---

Made the shield blink based on its remaining time on:


And decided to record a video of me kicking the ass of this boss with no power-ups:




I need to balance some things such as parrying dealing less damage, maybe extending shield cooldown a bit, possibly increase drone health or make it possible to improve their health through power-ups (most likely sticking with the latter).

[misterdoge]

Yeah, from that it doesn't seem like you're risking the hitbox speed issue. And... holy freaking crap, man, that reminds me why I was never any good at those games. It looks great though!

[Gueib]

Yeah, from that it doesn't seem like you're risking the hitbox speed issue. And... holy freaking crap, man, that reminds me why I was never any good at those games. It looks great though!

Thanks, dude!
I'm not the best player, but I really like shmups.

--

Made a new enemy:


They are pretty weak, and will be spawned in groups.

[Buzzwerd]

Man, this is looking intense and awesome. You've built in a ton of room for expansion. Have you thought of having the time remaining on the shield be less distracting than a countdown? It seems like whether the white number is visible is more important than the integer displayed. Could be an opportunity for a cool charging animation.

Also, how do you record such high framerate gifs? Or even your gameplay video.

[yaomon17]

Man, this is looking intense and awesome. You've built in a ton of room for expansion. Have you thought of having the time remaining on the shield be less distracting than a countdown? It seems like whether the white number is visible is more important than the integer displayed. Could be an opportunity for a cool charging animation.

Also, how do you record such high framerate gifs? Or even your gameplay video.

I believe most people use LICEcap to record. You can set the FPS to record on the gif.
As for the game, it is definitely an amazing concept. My favorite part is definitely the shield. Bullet hell style shumps always gave me a headache because of me trying to weave the hitbox between the bullets. Hopefully the shield can take off some of the stress T.T

[Gueib]

Man, this is looking intense and awesome. You've built in a ton of room for expansion. Have you thought of having the time remaining on the shield be less distracting than a countdown? It seems like whether the white number is visible is more important than the integer displayed. Could be an opportunity for a cool charging animation.

Also, how do you record such high framerate gifs? Or even your gameplay video.

Thanks a lot!
This is good advice, I may use something similar to Megaman when he's charging his shot, I'll have to think about the animation.

I capture gifs with GifCam and the video was made with Fraps.

I believe most people use LICEcap to record. You can set the FPS to record on the gif.
As for the game, it is definitely an amazing concept. My favorite part is definitely the shield. Bullet hell style shumps always gave me a headache because of me trying to weave the hitbox between the bullets. Hopefully the shield can take off some of the stress T.T

Thanks, dude.
The shield does take some of the stress out, but not entirely. Dodging is a huge part of bullet-hells and that is something I'm trying to keep in the game. Shield plays an important part, though. I have planned some nice bosses and enemies around this mechanic.

[Gueib]

Spent the day rewriting wave generation. It is now more flexible.
Nothing to show, though.

[Gueib]

Removed completely the countdown and now there's this animation. I'll probably change it later.


I've been too busy so that's all my progress today.

[Buzzwerd]

That's awesome. Exactly what I imagined.

[Gueib]

That's awesome. Exactly what I imagined.

Thanks, dude!

---



Started working on a new boss. It'll introduce a fun ramification of the hacking mechanic that I intend to use a lot throughout the game.
(I'm the king of placeholder art, I know.)

[Gueib]

Upgrade information.
Pixel ratio in this gif is shitty and the head icon is awful, I know. I drew it in a couple of minutes just to show the way information regarding upgrades will be showed. I'll eventually increase both the font and window size.

I've been making little progress, work + college = no time whatsoever. Came up with a new way of wave generation and probably will scrap off the method I'm currently using (again).