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[FlanPlan]

Alright, so. I've been working on a bullet hell game which I did originally have on greenlight, but I decided to take it down because it wasn't ready and the graphics look like a SNES game (Which was intentional, but the people of steam didn't like that too much PLUS the original UI was TERRIBLE.) ANYWAYS, I have always been a huge fan of the bullet hell genre and would like to dive into some more of it's unknown sections (preferably SNES titles since that console was the bomb) so I can make my game better. Oh, and if anyone is interested in playing said game I have been working on, I'll have a demo at some point real soon (like within the next 2 days.)
Thank you for taking the time to read this and have a good day.

[Polly]

There are no bullet-hell / danmaku games on SNES. But when it comes to SNES shmups, i'd recommend taking a look at Axelay, Macross and Super Aleste. And for SNES-era bullet-hell shooters, check out the titles available for the ToaPlan V2 arcade board.

[FlanPlan]

Much appreciated, I'll check those out.

[diegzumillo]

I'm not a fan of this type of game but you should keep in mind japanese people never stopped making bullet hell games. but most never became too popular in the west. So there is a huge library that isn't obviously on sight.

[Tanner Fruit Fly]

I'm not a fan of this type of game but you should keep in mind japanese people never stopped making bullet hell games. but most never became too popular in the west. So there is a huge library that isn't obviously on sight.

Precisely. I'm also not a huge fan of games like this, but if you're looking for some inspiration, there's a pretty large number of these types of games surging on Steam lately. Mushihimesama, Sora, and even Western games like Shiplord might be a good place to start!

[FlanPlan]

I'm not a fan of this type of game but you should keep in mind japanese people never stopped making bullet hell games. but most never became too popular in the west. So there is a huge library that isn't obviously on sight.

Precisely. I'm also not a huge fan of games like this, but if you're looking for some inspiration, there's a pretty large number of these types of games surging on Steam lately. Mushihimesama, Sora, and even Western games like Shiplord might be a good place to start!

It's actually pretty sad that these kinds of games aren't as popular in the west, because they're really fun. I'm not into impossibly hard bullet hell games, but I do like them challenging. Also some bullet hells make it impossible to get unstoppable at. When you can get through the game without taking a single hit while still maintaining the insane difficulty, that's when you've perfected difficulty. I believe it was this steam game called Super Galaxy Squadron, but it had a difficulty sort of like that and it was absolutely enjoyable. I wish it was longer and had more replay value though.
I WISH I WASN'T THE WORST ARTIST ON THE PLANET SO I COULD MAKE A GAME THAT PEOPLE WILL GIVE A CHANCE. 

[Tanner Fruit Fly]

I WISH I WASN'T THE WORST ARTIST ON THE PLANET SO I COULD MAKE A GAME THAT PEOPLE WILL GIVE A CHANCE. 

There's plenty of massively successful games that rely on things other than appealing visuals to garner a following (my game, for instance, is a bunch of glorified stickfigure scribbles haha), you don't have to be a world class artist to make something people are attracted to. Would you be willing to show or direct me towards some of the art from your previous upload of the game so I know what you've started with?

[FlanPlan]

I WISH I WASN'T THE WORST ARTIST ON THE PLANET SO I COULD MAKE A GAME THAT PEOPLE WILL GIVE A CHANCE. 

There's plenty of massively successful games that rely on things other than appealing visuals to garner a following (my game, for instance, is a bunch of glorified stickfigure scribbles haha), you don't have to be a world class artist to make something people are attracted to. Would you be willing to show or direct me towards some of the art from your previous upload of the game so I know what you've started with?

I actually have a demo of the first 5 levels here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6-Yo-tE8KLHZjBDSlpyTGxXUUk/view?usp=sharing

Sorry about the large file, but the game is well over an hour long and this is half of the game haha.

[FlanPlan]

I must warn you though, it's really difficult haha

[Tanner Fruit Fly]

I actually have a demo of the first 5 levels here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6-Yo-tE8KLHZjBDSlpyTGxXUUk/view?usp=sharing

Sorry about the large file, but the game is well over an hour long and this is half of the game haha.

Awesome, thank you! I'll be checking this out soon and I'll let you know what I think!

[FlanPlan]

I actually have a demo of the first 5 levels here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6-Yo-tE8KLHZjBDSlpyTGxXUUk/view?usp=sharing

Sorry about the large file, but the game is well over an hour long and this is half of the game haha.

Awesome, thank you! I'll be checking this out soon and I'll let you know what I think!

Thanks fam, this is the first game I've ever worked on as well.

[Tanner Fruit Fly]

Bummer, I went to go load up your game three times, but it kept just displaying a black screen with the "Made In GameMaker" logo, then a fatal memory error box would pop up and close the window. Any idea what might be happening?

[FlanPlan]

Bummer, I went to go load up your game three times, but it kept just displaying a black screen with the "Made In GameMaker" logo, then a fatal memory error box would pop up and close the window. Any idea what might be happening?

hmmmmm, I'm not sure. What's your specs?
I've tested it on a total of 5 different computers with no issues. Maybe the file in the google drive link isn't complete?

[zqf]

Old Japanese arcade games ran on low spec hardware and are mostly sprite based, so although their graphics are higher detail than a SNES game they're still just blitting stuff.

Hardcore gaming 101 has detailed articles about a lot of shmups

Cave are the most prolific and influencial studio (personal favourite: Dodonpachi Dai-ou-jou)
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/catalog/company-cave.htm

Raizing didn't make a large number of shmups but ones they did were very creative in boss and stage design. (Personally I'd single out Armed Police Batrider for it's creativity with characters and a huge amount of secrets)
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/catalog/company-raizing.htm

Of course there are others, but I've found those two studios the most interesting design studies

[bdsowers]

My favorite modern bullet-hell game is Enter the Gungeon. It's not a SHMUP, it's closer to a rogue-like action game, but when the bullet-hell kicks in it gets a little crazy. It's good in that it actually has a couple mechanics to manage the chaos (a dodge-roll to avoid bullets and a semi-common item to clear all on-screen bullets).

[oxysoft]

My favorite modern bullet-hell game is Enter the Gungeon. It's not a SHMUP, it's closer to a rogue-like action game, but when the bullet-hell kicks in it gets a little crazy. It's good in that it actually has a couple mechanics to manage the chaos (a dodge-roll to avoid bullets and a semi-common item to clear all on-screen bullets).

I like shmups and bullet hell games but I don't think enter the gungeon is a really good game. The gameplay is slow and boring, the dodge mechanic is clunky and the first boss I had to fight was badly designed. (the bird boss, almost no pattern, just walked around shooting bullets in random directions with no way to dodge anything unless I went 30 feets away because your hitbox is also insanely big which is the opposite of what it should be if it wants to succeed as a bullet hell game. Also from what I saw, a lot of the guns are lame and uninteresting, just shoots a different bullet and has slightly different properties. Seems to me like a team of skillful artists lacking a proper game designer honestly. I wanted to keep this post not too long but I could talk for a while on why enter the gungeon does NOT meet the hype it had generated.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

My favorite modern bullet-hell game is Enter the Gungeon. It's not a SHMUP, it's closer to a rogue-like action game, but when the bullet-hell kicks in it gets a little crazy. It's good in that it actually has a couple mechanics to manage the chaos (a dodge-roll to avoid bullets and a semi-common item to clear all on-screen bullets).

I like shmups and bullet hell games but I don't think enter the gungeon is a really good game. The gameplay is slow and boring, the dodge mechanic is clunky and the first boss I had to fight was badly designed. (the bird boss, almost no pattern, just walked around shooting bullets in random directions with no way to dodge anything unless I went 30 feets away because your hitbox is also insanely big which is the opposite of what it should be if it wants to succeed as a bullet hell game. Also from what I saw, a lot of the guns are lame and uninteresting, just shoots a different bullet and has slightly different properties. Seems to me like a team of skillful artists lacking a proper game designer honestly. I wanted to keep this post not too long but I could talk for a while on why enter the gungeon does NOT meet the hype it had generated.

Can you explain in what way the dodge mechanic is clunky?

The bird boss has actually a predictable pattern if you know how to keep the right distance and is the easiest boss (to perfect) on par with the floating guy in the first floor.

You unlock interesting guns as you play by unlocking them (you have to buy them)

[oxysoft]

My favorite modern bullet-hell game is Enter the Gungeon. It's not a SHMUP, it's closer to a rogue-like action game, but when the bullet-hell kicks in it gets a little crazy. It's good in that it actually has a couple mechanics to manage the chaos (a dodge-roll to avoid bullets and a semi-common item to clear all on-screen bullets).

I like shmups and bullet hell games but I don't think enter the gungeon is a really good game. The gameplay is slow and boring, the dodge mechanic is clunky and the first boss I had to fight was badly designed. (the bird boss, almost no pattern, just walked around shooting bullets in random directions with no way to dodge anything unless I went 30 feets away because your hitbox is also insanely big which is the opposite of what it should be if it wants to succeed as a bullet hell game. Also from what I saw, a lot of the guns are lame and uninteresting, just shoots a different bullet and has slightly different properties. Seems to me like a team of skillful artists lacking a proper game designer honestly. I wanted to keep this post not too long but I could talk for a while on why enter the gungeon does NOT meet the hype it had generated.

Can you explain in what way the dodge mechanic is clunky?

The bird boss has actually a predictable pattern if you know how to keep the right distance and is the easiest boss (to perfect) on par with the floating guy in the first floor.

You unlock interesting guns as you play by unlocking them (you have to buy them)

What I mean by the dodge being clunky is that it feels like it was quickly hacked together in an hour or two and never touched again. Whenever you roll, you have zero control over the course of the roll, you simply go straight towards one of the 8 directions you could possibly move towards with WASD. To make the character controller feel more responsive and add depth, the player should be able to slightly influence the roll's movement even during the actual rolling frames. Another detail is that the player should be able to shoot a few frames before actually coming out of the roll. A good character controller must be an extension of your mind, something that just works and never gets in your way. I'm sure there are other improvements that could be made to the character controller for rolling but I haven't played the game in the past 1-2 weeks so it isn't fresh to my mind. The idea really is to allow the player to influence their character's movement and controls at all time, and never have moments where their inputs have no effects. All of these little details result in more responsive controls and add dynamism and depth.

Super Smash Bros Melee is a golden example of a game with insane depth to the player controls. It's hard to explain just how complex the controls actually are in that game and most people will ever never realize the sheer granularity of the controls during casual play. Take a look at SDI for example http://www.ssbwiki.com/Smash_directional_influence, a mechanic that I guarantee nobody ever noticed when playing the game back then but added subtle feels to the game that weren't very obvious. Went a bit on a tangent here but so many games neglect character controller depth and whatnot these days it seems

The bird boss may be predictable but I doubt there was a pattern to the bullets he fired off his minigun, they just flew all over the place at random angles. But the only other boss I faced during the first floor was a king-like boss and was a lot better and actually had proper bullet hell patterns.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

 

Whenever you roll, you have zero control over the course of the roll, you simply go straight towards one of the 8 directions you could possibly move towards with WASD. To make the character controller feel more responsive and add depth, the player should be able to slightly influence the roll's movement even during the actual rolling frames. Another detail is that the player should be able to shoot a few frames before actually coming out of the roll. A good character controller must be an extension of your mind, something that just works and never gets in your way.

I don't really understand why you would need to have total control over a dodge roll. The purpose of the dodge roll his is quite clear actually. Maybe you're used to Nuclear Throne Fish's roll but this was suited to the speed of bullets and how fast NT is.
Gungeon bullets are actually slow in motion, a dodge roll as you suggested would just be overpowered.


Redid some runs to fight against the bird boss, and he definitly has a pattern when it looks like he's shooting randomly. What makes it looks like random is the fact that he 's walking towards you. If you get cornered it gets difficult to dodge his bullets.

There's some boss people complains a lot about and they are in floor2 and floor3, the snake and the wizard which randomly pops bullets and sometimes appear under your character,making it unavoidable. But so far, it's probably the best (rogue-like) twin-stick shooter bullet hell available.

[Willy Elektrix]

Cave are the most prolific and influencial studio (personal favourite: Dodonpachi Dai-ou-jou)
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/catalog/company-cave.htm

Raizing didn't make a large number of shmups but ones they did were very creative in boss and stage design. (Personally I'd single out Armed Police Batrider for it's creativity with characters and a huge amount of secrets)
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/catalog/company-raizing.htm

I've been a big shmup fan for a decade so I thought I would weigh in here.

The bullet hell genre most likely started in 1993 with Batsugun, which is a Japanese arcade game developed by Toaplan. Closely following that were DonPachi developed in 1995 by Cave, and its sequel DoDonPachi developed in 1997.

Cave is the Japanese developed who is most credited with popularizing this genre and DoDonPachi is a good place to start to get some history (and it plays great). Another poster (ZQF) mentioned Raizing. In my opinion, their games are not as pure of a bullet hell experience as Cave's. However Armed Police Batrider by Raizing is INCREDIBLE! It's maybe the best shmup ever in terms of variety and depth.

...

Also:

While I hate to derail this thread to trash Enter the Gungeon, but it’s a game I’ve been quite dissatisfied with recently. It’s almost great, but not quite!

I don’t have a problem with Enter the Gungeon’s dodge roll (although altering the direction might be nice), but I am constantly annoyed by how underpowered I feel. The weapons in the game all seem weak. The enemies have too many HP, but that is only part of the problem. Until the 3rd area, it is not common to get a weapon that is good at quickly dispatching groups of enemies. As a result, the gameplay frequently involves peaking out of cover or rolling around, dispatching one enemy at a time. It’s very slow and methodical and feels tedious. When I get hit, I always feel its because I wasn’t paying attention (out of boredom).